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ageofevermore · 2 years ago

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OH, LORD SAVE ME

SUMMARY — after a night out with the girls, wanda gets possessive after learning maria couldn’t keep her hands to herself. oh, lord save me my drug is my baby i’ll get using for the rest of my life.

WARNINGS — nsfw minors dni, alcohol consumption, marijuana and cocaine usage, smoking a blunt, biting, face slapping, ass slapping, strap-on usage, vibrator usage, blowjob, brief nipple play, scratching, fingering, doggy/missionary, degradation, mommy kink, orgasm control, overstimulation, multiple orgasm, dom/sub dynamics, brat shenanigans

A floral aroma hits your nose the second you enter the bedroom. The rest of the house holds the scent of weed, and the scattered lighters in the living room tell you enough. The lights are low, and a nature documentary is paused on the television screen across from the bed, but no trace of your girlfriend is visible from the doorway. Remnants of white powder cling to the oak furniture you recently bought, and her credit card lies beside the evidence of a chased high. Wanda D. Maximoff is stamped into the card, already an obvious give away as to who the perpetrator is. The room spins as you walk deeper into it, and clumsily your body collides with the bedpost.

The fan is running in the bathroom, and the faintest tinge of yellow peeks out from beneath the door, shining into the room like slivers of sunlight hitting a prism. The shower isn’t running, and neither is the sink, either of the two an indicator that she’s ready to call it a night. It’s approaching two am now, and the sunlight that filled the bedroom before has turned to inky midnight. The spontaneous night out with some girlfriends from work has left you giggly, artificial cherry on your lips as your tongue swipes across them. You don’t bother knocking as you enter the bathroom, though the seconds you spend fumbling with the doorknob are enough warning that you’re coming in, not that she’d mind either way.

The sight of her, sprawled out on the floor, brown hair scattered about and bloodshot eyes staring at the ceiling gives you a pause for a second before you burst into giggles that shake the gold chains holding your dress up. The skimpy black number was one of Wanda’s personal favorites, but your girlfriend hadn’t been home when you left to comment on it. If she had been, your neck wouldn’t be as clear as it is now, only soft, healing hickeys remain from nights prior, not too bad for your usually bruised up appearance. Wanda startles at your added sound, but her eyes never peel away from their concentrated dedication to the fan on the ceiling. There’s an abandoned bowl laying next to her, and your customized red lighter is left on the countertop next to a bottle of water. Having to hear her whine about how dry her mouth is when she’s high is a nuisance, so you’ve begun to leave bottles of water in her favorite smoking spots, and clearly, it did you some good.

“Baby!” Your voice drags, slightly slurred together and raised in pitch as you tumble to the floor to lay beside her. Hating when your hair ends up in your face, you’d been proactive for a change, and had decided to braid it for your night out, and as you fall to the ground, it whacks Wanda in the face, but you don’t notice, too absorbed in trying to see what she’s so interested in. “I missed you!” When the fan no longer interests you, because why would it, you roll on top of her effectively elbowing her in the chest, and it’s enough of a commotion to finally break her concentration. The second her eyes are on you, a darkness blooms in the typically evergreen centers. Her huff of surprise for the air being knocked out of her lungs is only a half second long, before she's scanning your smudged makeup and biting down on her bottom lip that's in desperate need of some chapstick. “You smoked without me!”

“You weren’t home.” The accented edge to her words sends warmth spiraling down your bones. The alcohol having already flushed your cheeks and tickled your belly only amplified the desire that burned in your bones, igniting a flame so hot you were sure tomorrow wouldn’t see the light of day. “You look hot.” Her hands leave where they had been lying flat on the tile floor, grabbing your ass in rough handfuls that make you giggle.

“Mmm, wore your favorite dress. Maria got a little handsy. I think it’s a fan favorite.” You taunted her, dancing your lips across hers before pulling away to look at her face fully. Cocaine is still clinging to her porcelain skin, dusted between her nose in what looks like an attempt to wipe it away. Whatever makeup she’d been wearing before was gone, only a faint stain of black below her eyes that indicated she’d been rubbing her eyes before she took her mascara off. You shouldn't be so bothered by the state of her, but the combination of her wandering hands and hungry eyes was pulling you apart piece by piece.

Wanda growled at the mention of your mutual friend who was known for her wandering hands and sultry commentary, though it didn’t bring Wanda any amusement to hear about her interest in the dress. Not when she wasn’t around to remind Maria that you were hers. Your attention drops to Wanda's exposed neck, and your teeth find a home sinking into the soft flesh. Hints of her perfume twist with the scent of cocaine and marijuana, and it's entirely intoxicating. “Maria needs to learn to keep her hands to herself.”

“And what if she doesn’t?” Mischief swims in your eyes, and you sink your teeth into a particularly sensitive spot on Wanda’s neck, just beneath her ear. Her breath hitched, her hands grabbing at the fabric of your dress around your hips. Her entire body shudders, and for a moment, she freezes entirely to just enjoy the sensation that travels through her previously numb limbs.

Your tongue soothed the bite, dancing circles around the marks you’d left. Wanda’s eyes fluttered shut, bunching your dress up around your hips in favor of twisting the ridge of your lace panties between her delicate fingers. “Do I need to remind you who you belong to?”

“Why don’t you remind me?” You nipped her neck a final time before pulling away to watch her process your words, which were more like a silent invitation for her to have her way with your body.

Wanda shoved you off of her messily, a growl crawling from the depth of her throat as she watched you smirk like you’d been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. “Get in the bedroom.”

“What? Don’t want to fuck me on the bathroom floor? Again.” Your breath tickled her wet skin, a cold shill crawling up her spine that she very narrowly avoided reacting to. “I’m sure Maria would.”

“Go.” Her tone left no room for arguments this time, and you scrambled to comply, although clumsily with your still strapped heels and spinning vision. Giggles spilled from between your lips when you rammed into the doorframe, completely absorbed in completing Wanda’s direction and not noticing how she spent a few extra minutes fumbling for something in the bathroom.

Your body sank into the soft bed, black sheets blending into the tiny dress you squeezed yourself into. The skin tight material still bunched around your hips in messy folds, exposing the front of your lacy black thong that left little to the imagination. Suddenly aware of how desperate you were without Wanda’s neck as a distraction, one hand slid between your legs while the other fumbled to grab your breasts through the thin material. Your panties were soaked through, sticking to your folds uncomfortably. Your thighs spread without any invitation, and you pulled them aside desperate for attention where you most needed it.

Eyes fluttering shut at the first stroke against your engorged clit, you didn’t hear Wanda shutting the cabinets and turning off the bathroom lights, only feeling her presence when a hand grabbed around your neck and startled you enough that your antsy fingers stilled between your legs.

“Did I tell you to touch yourself?” She growled, leaning over you with a dominating presence. Your head shook side to side quickly, your pussy abandoned. You ached for something more, but words failed you as you stared back at her. Something landed beside your head, but before you could look to see what it was Wanda was demanding more from you. “Use your words, you had no problem doing that before.”

“N-No.” You spluttered, fighting to keep your eyes open the longer she held your neck. Her fingers tightened, and it was then you realized she was still wearing her rings, the metal digging into your skin harshly.

“No, who?” The words pulled the breath out of your lungs, and you’re sure you looked like a fish out of water scrambling to find the right words to answer her. “Huh? Don’t make me wait. No, who.”

“N-No, Mommy.” You managed, gasping for breath when her hand finally left your neck, and it was only then you realized she had dug out your red strap, and her hand was holding the base tightly.

“Stupid slut.” She scoffed, moving backward so she was standing farther from the end of the bed. “Since you had so much to say before, I figured we’d put that mouth to use. Get on your knees.”

You dropped to your knees so fast you were sure they’d be bruised by the morning, but the only thing you could think about was how badly you wanted to feel her in your mouth. Bracing your hands on her thighs, you waited for her to instruct you to begin, knowing you were already playing a dangerous game. A smirk crept onto her lips at your clear impatience, and she was no stranger to making you wait. Spitting on her hand, she brought it down to the silicone cock, spreading it around teasingly. You whined, silently begging her to stop her torture and let you have a taste.

“What's wrong? See something you like?” Your girlfriend taunted, throwing her head back as she stroked the silicone cock, your favorite of the collection you’ve acquired since getting together a few years ago.

“Please.” You begged with hooded eyes, wanting to be the one that was turning her on and giving her pleasure.

“Please what?” Wanda cooed, voice dripping with lust as she watched you writhe in front of her, desperate for anything she wanted to give you. “Do you want to suck my cock? Feel it against your tongue? Let me fuck your mouth? Is that it?”

You nodded, tears pooling in your eyes the longer she made you wait. Your thighs pinched together, looking to relieve the aching in where you needed her most. She didn’t say anything about your actions, and for that you were grateful, but it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy you and she knew that. “Please. Please let me suck your cock, Mommy.”

“Get on with it then.” You wasted no time, one hand holding onto the base of the strap while the other stayed in place on her thigh. Her salvia has slickened the silicone, making it easier for you to take more of it quickly. She was heavy against your tongue, and for a second, you just enjoyed the feeling, before you began working the length with your hand and your mouth, hollowing your cheeks and letting the bulbous head ram into the back of your throat, desperate to please.

Wanda’s hand fell onto your head, a guttural moan leaving her lips watching you take her length. The strap wasn’t small by any means, one of your bigger ones, and yet you devoured her. Your eyes watered when she began to thrust at first shallowly, but losing her reserve the longer she watched you endure it. You gagged when she forced your nose to her pelvis, the cock practically down your throat, but she didn’t pull away, forcing you to feel her and remember who owned your throat. She pulled away with a pop, ready to absolutely obliterate your pussy.

“Strip. Panties and heels stay on.” You scrambled to comply, rising to your feet with shaky movements, not only from the anticipation of finally getting what you want, but the alcohol that was still coursing through your system. “Hands and knees. Ass up.”

Your dress ended up in a puddle on the floor to be dealt with later, and the bed sank with your weight as you got into position, impatiently pushing your hips backward to meet the scarlet strap. A slap left your ass cheek tingling, your body jolting forward in shock.

“Patience.” Wanda demanded thickly, sokovian accent twisting her words into something dangerous. Your entire body shuddered in anticipation, keeping your eyes forward knowing how much she likes it. You jumped when her fingers found your panties, tracing the lace design before slipping lower. Wanda groaned at how wet you are, thighs glistening with your arousal and panties clinging to your folds. She pulls them to the side, fingers toying with your lips and narrowly avoiding your clit each time she makes a pass around your pussy. “What got you this wet, moya lyubov'? Hmmm?”

With shaky breath, your head dropped onto the comforter, fists balling up the cotton material, “Y-You, Mommy. You did. You got me this wet.”

Her fingers pressed against your weeping entrance but never farther, pushing you farther and farther toward the edge of desperation, and from experience, you knew it was a steep fall. She wanted you at you breaking point, she wanted you to remember who owned you the next time you decided to fuck around. “Not Maria? But I thought you liked her touching what's mine?”

Brattiness tempted you to fuck with her, but your desperation to be touched was winning the fight, and you bit back your sarcastic answer in favor of finally feeling her and being given some relief. “N-no. I like when you touch me. I’m yours.” You gasped when she slipped two fingers inside of you, giving you a second to adjust before she began to scissor your sopping pussy. Every ridge of your pussy fit her fingers like a glove, and Wanda yearned to hear your whimpers as you sought out pleasure at her control.

“You gonna let Maria get handsy with you again when I’m not around?” Her fingers were set at a brutal pace, but still she avoided your aching clit that was begging for attention. Your hips stuttered, your eyes pinched shut so impossibly tight you thought you were seeing starts. When her fingers caressed the sweet spot inside of you, all thoughts vanished from your mind as you whined for more and less at the same time. “Are you. Going to. Let her. Get handsy. With you. Again?” Wanda repeated, annunciating each word with a harsh stroke against your g-stop.

“N-no! No I’m n-not! Please. Please!” You needed more. You needed her cock in your pussy, pounding you into the bed, or her fingers on your clit, you needed something more than just her brutal pace going in and out of your cunt knowing full well you wouldn’t be able to cum from just that.

“Please what, moya lyubov'?” She taunted, stilling her fingers all together but not pulling them out, just leaving you full enough to want more.

“Fuck me already!” You sobbed, turning your head to meet her eye, watching how she enjoyed breaking you down for her to play with.

“Are my fingers not enough for this slutty pussy? You need more? Desperate whore wants to get fucked?” She teased, pulling her fingers away from you completely and watching strings of wetness bead between her knuckles as she plays with your slick. She moans when she tastes you, fingers running your wetness across her tongue. “Get on your back.”

You watch as she walks away, pulling out a pre-rolled blunt and a lighter she stole from Natasha the last time the redhead was over. The black design stood out in the otherwise near darkness, the gold snake that wrapped around your favorite design in the stolen collection you both kept adding too. Wanda lit up, grimacing at the first hit that burnt the back of her throat. She blew the smoke out in a near perfect o shape, taking another drag before she came back to you. She passed off the blunt, climbing over top of you when you accepted it and took a drag. The grungy taste of smoke filled your mouth, adding to the heaviness in your limbs almost instantly.

“You ready?” She asked, positioning the bulbous head of the dildo with your entrance. You nodded, taking another drag before offering it to her. Her lips wrapped around it angelically, a stark contrast to how filthy the both of you were being. Wanda wasted no time, burying the dick in your pussy in one thrust, and setting a brutal pace as she fucked you.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head, the blunt burning a hole in the comforter as ash fell off. You gasped at her brutal pace, reaching to set the blunt in the ashtray on your bedside table, immediately bringing your newly free hands to her back, digging your nails into her bare skin. Her tits bounced with each thrust, hanging over you with an invitation to pinch her perfectly pink nipples. Wanda's hands squeezed at your hips, gliding down your body until they reached your thighs. Pulling your legs further apart, the head of her cock rammed into your cervix, shooting white ropes of pleasure through every nerve in your body. Your back arched off the back, nipples pointed to the sky as you searched for more. The pebbled buds taunted your girlfriend, who leaned down hungrily and took one between her teeth, pulling at the sensitive flesh that was a one way shot to your clit.

“Please Wands, touch my clit.” You begged, tears welling in your eyes as pleasure built. Wanda's pace was brutal, and you were impossibly full, but she had still yet to touch your clit and every nerve in your body was burning with need.

“Hand me the vibrator.” She grit out through clenched teeth, leaving your nipples in favor of pointing to the scarlet vibrator she’d thrown on the bed before. Your hand fumbled to grab it, limbs shaking not only from the power of her thrusts but from desire. “God, I love this pussy.”

Wanda switched the vibrator to its second highest setting, settling it right on your sensitive nub. A sharp whine left your lips, back arching and hands searching for her skin. Your nails dragged marks down her back, your orgasm approaching quickly as she worked your over sensitive body.

“O-Oh, o-oh! Right there, r-right there!” You gasped, digging your nails into her hips, hips writhing to meet her thrusts and fall over the edge that was just out of reach. A hand slapped your cheek before moving onto pinch your nipples, your body alight with so many sensations you didn’t know how to react. “I-Im gonna cum! Mommy! O-oh I'm so close! I'm so close!”

Wanda slapped you again, shaking her head with pinched shut eyes, “Hold it.”

“I can’t!” You moaned, head thrown back and neck perfectly exposed for her to grab. Her fingers wrapped around your soft skin, squeezing in all the places that made you melt and worked you up simultaneously. Your head felt so heavy, your limbs each weighing a couple hundred pounds as they dropped onto the sheets and grabbed handfuls. “Wanda! Wanda I’m gonna cum! Im gonna cum!”

Minutes passed without a response from your partner, and the coil in your belly was desperately close to snapping with or without her permission, but before you could warn her, she was speaking, “Cum for me. Cum for me, slut.”

You came with a screech, but Wanda’s thrusts didn’t stop, they only seemed to amplify as she worked you through your climax and fought for her own, switching the vibrator to the highest setting despite the tears already falling from your eyes. “It’s too much. W-Wands it too much!”

Your body was alight will the combination of marijuana and alcohol, and your second orgasm was being pried from your body with a force that could break bones. Your teeth bit into your bottom lip so hard you could taste the metallic tell of blood, but the pleasure was so intense you didn’t care. “C-cum with me! Cum with me, dorogoy. Fuck. F-fuck.” The both of you exploded with a scream, Wanda dropping the vibrator somewhere on the bed and falling on top of you, heaving to catch her breath. The clock on your wall said it was after five am, and the drugs mixed with general exhaustion was pulling on her muscles.

“I love you.” She gasped, pressing soft kisses into your skin and wiggling until her feet weren’t dangling off the edge of the bed anymore. Her thighs were sticky from her orgasm, but neither of you cared to clean yourselves up. You kick your heels off, and Wanda undid the strap, throwing both objects somewhere in the room to clean and put away later.

Shimming out of your soaked panties, you grimace as the cold wetness brushed against your sensitive clit. “I love you too.”

A beat of silence fills the space, and you think she’s fallen sleep before she speaks again, “Did Maria really grab your ass?”

A giggle rustles your chests, and you shake your head while brushing your fingers through her tangled and sweaty hair. “She was too preoccupied with Nat to spare me a second glance.”

“You could’ve just asked to be fucked.” Wanda laughed.

“This was more fun.”

#wanda maximoff #stoner wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff smut #wanda maximoff fic

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malvoile · 6 days ago

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Me and the Devil ; ii

ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛᴀɪɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ - ɴᴏᴛ ᴀᴛʀᴇɪᴅᴇꜱ, ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴏᴜʀʙᴏɴ - ʙᴜᴛ ʜᴀʀᴋᴏɴɴᴇɴ. ᴘᴀᴜʟ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ꜱᴇᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀꜱ ᴀ ʙᴇᴀꜱᴛ, ᴡɪꜰᴇ ᴏʀ ɴᴏᴛ.

word count: 8.5k warnings: familial trauma, descriptions of blood/violence, irrationality due to bad coping mechanisms, fear, Paul has one (1) almost-panic attack, switching POVs, arranged marriage, politics, not much else. mutual mistrust. notes: hi again <3 here with chapter two remastered of this fic. feedback very much appreciated, i rly love 2 chat :) also a little bit of smut in the next chapter ! should be coming soon. previous series masterlist

In the traditional customs of House Bourbon, the path to marriage is paved with symbolic rituals and gestures, each sacred to the planet Sabberon's native culture. Though the house may have dwindled in stature over the past three centuries, its customs and rituals remain rooted deeply in the enduring legacy of a once-great lineage, which claims to come from the root of the planet itself.

Unlike the grandiose affairs of many larger noble houses, betrothal within House Bourbon is considered an intimate and sacred process, guided by the rhythms of nature. Rooted in their own ancient spiritual religion – which has embattled centuries of change and upheaval – marriage is viewed as not merely a union between two individuals, but an acknowledgement of the ancestors who came before them, and those who will come next.

This section reviews the process of Courtship and Betrothal for the House of Bourbon, including:

Betrothal Gifts

Heirloom Exchange

Harvest Festival Offering

Ceremony: Handfasting Ritual and Vows

Marriage Consummation: The Sacred Pine of Sabberon

- “Chapter 68: Customs of Marriage,” The Noble Lineage: Exploring the Customs and Cultures of the Houses Major of Landsraad. Atreides Library.

A skip in the audio of the holovideo playing before Paul jolts his vision.

Gathered back to the land of the living, his head jerks in the palm of his hand, lashes sleepily knotting over the glossy page below him.

The video does not cease its accented drone, the voice sounding eerily similar in cadence to your own Sabberovna accent; though his eyes laze along the words as they are read out to him in the documentary; a faint twitch of muscle below his eye does not give up as he blinks the syrupy remnants of his dozing away.

"Marriage consummations are a deeply personal and intimate affair–” An innopportune time perhaps to focus; an unease pools within Paul’s stomach as his eyes flick from Thufir back to the textbook before him, fighting a sprout of resistance that blossoms into disdain as he reads the page.

Among the more unique traditions of House Bourbon, the consummation of marriage takes place outdoors, through a path walked by many ancestors. Upon a pristine white sheet, under the House's Sacred Pine tree, this ritual symbolizes not only producing legally recognized descendants, but also the sacred union of the betrothed with nature and their ancestral lineage.

It grows increasingly hot in the study room; Paul’s cheeks burn, his throat drying up as his ears pick up the droll words that read just a line behind his own pace. A glance to Thufir reveals an irritatingly calm expression – Paul blinks away his rising anxiety, some stirring creature of reluctance and alarm; what kind of archaic ritual culture does your house have?

Paul can hardly imagine you practicing any such traditions on Geidi Prime – though the very thought of what your life had been like sends a wave of nausea through him.

Words blur and dance; mocking with implications, with visions of white, with soil under grasping fingers, with soft sounds swallowed by thick brush, sharp gasps dissolved by the call of birds in the trees.

A sunbeam penetrates his vision, and it is searing; with a sharp breath, Paul's fingers pinche the bridge of his nose.

A life guided by the words of duty and future is one too swaddled by a promise of one day – but to Paul’s horror, one day has seemingly overnight become today, and he feels the sands of time slipping through the cracks of his cupped hands, blinded by the sun.

Noises are too loud – birds scream in the sky outside, the wind howls and wails – the hum of the holovideo has set his teeth on edge, and the quiet breathing of the tutor in the corner has caused a twitch upon his eye.

It is all very suddenly too much.

Here he sits, a boy in a castle; and a looming presence upon his shoulders, shadows which bend in the light and whisper the names of those who have sabotaged his family for centuries. Such small panic suddenly festers and blooms into a garden of contempt, curling with branches of sharp thorns.

A hand to keep within his own – a hand which curled around pools of shadows for years. You, who walks the halls of this very castle – who haunts his mind with the ghostly absent gaze and your very own kinds of shadows.

It is too much.

With a sharp sigh, he snaps. “Don’t you think it’d be more pertinent to study Harkonnen tactics, instead of this?” Paul’s voice cuts clear through the accented drone of the video, his arms crossing sharply. “She’s just as accustomed to that, I’m sure.”

Erratic breathing takes his senses in a moment; and he is left with a sweat-stuck tunic and a panicking heartbeat. Thufir turns to Paul, eyes sage, wary.

“Paul, she was–”

And immediately, his voice is far too calm for the matter at hand; a Harkonnen puppet walks these halls, and yet even in the preparation for the upcoming Space Trade Referendum, Paul seems to be the only one with any such sense of alarm.

It is just as soon as Thufir begins that Paul’s rage takes hold. “–No! Nobody will listen. She was one of them for almost half a decade. She was accused of espionage, her family was proven of it – who's to say this isn't just another trap?"

Mentat training can take a lot out of one, Paul has been told; and so Thufir lets him release his anger, with very little protestation – it serves to irk Paul further.

There is that anger once more, the scraping hunger that claws through his chest and calls for him to pick up a blade. Abruptly, Paul rises – an uncharacteristic burst of emotion, he swallows. “Thufir,” His heart thunders, panic rising, “I will finish my readings on Sabberon later, I swear to it. But I’d prefer to do it on my own, if it’s alright.”

Thufir holds his gaze for a moment, though a ghost of acceptance reflects in his visage. “Very well. Though I may remind you: Your father suggests you initiate the heirloom exchange soon.” He finishes; Paul’s overwhelmed expression must bleed through the deep breath he takes.

“Sit down, young lord. Let us begin today with cause and effect–”

On Caladan, the sun casts long shadows through the windows at midday.

But hiding behind drawn clouds of moisture, it is sullen and gray this afternoon. The third day waking up within the castle has brought you news that the Duke wishes to meet with you in the late afternoon; and that you are invited to join the Duchal family for supper this evening – though besides this, your day is free.

A daunting thing indeed.

The morning is spent staring warily at the dark corner of your chambers, awaiting the ghost to crawl from the shadows once more; though he does not, and your dreams begin to slip away into a misty memory of a wooded forest and a sinister grin.

Despite your fears of the dark, it is serene in your chambers – natural curves of patterned wooden beams, spined arches which draw in the warmth of the sun; steaming tea and three girls who sit with you quietly, watching you move as if you’re made of porcelain.

The news of your impending meeting with Duke Leto has settled anxiety deep within you – a foreboding thing in of itself, but the sense of apprehension has spiraled you into a restless stirring.

It is not until you finish preparing your hair for the mourning veil that you speak – and with a voice soft but firm, you turn to the girls who tidy your space. “I'd like to go explore,” you decide, turning from your vanity to watch their looks of surprise.

You have not left your chambers much since your arrival; aside from attending sparse meals and the first morning when Paul had escorted you through the premises, you’ve remained in the dreamspace of your room, twitching at shadows and waking yourself up with hoarse screams.

In truth, you yearn for the comfort of metal and leather curled beneath your fingers; an itch unable to satisfy, a phantom limb which looms somewhere in the depths of the castle. In a blink, you're lost to it: A glint of a blade from your dream, hands lithe and pale reaching for the hilt.

You watch the shine of the sun over the sea as your veil is lifted over your eyes, haunted by visions of metal glinting under a black sun.

It is with mercy that you are dressed today – dark trousers and a tunic the same deep cerulean as your veil.; and your chambers are left quietly with a denial of company from the workers who clear your tea.

You slink in that way you know how; with a small smile growing on your lips unbidden as you inhale such a clean breeze that courses through the ancient place. It is, in a way, quite a solace; your lungs, so heavy and exhausted by the recycled air of Giedi Prime – a fresh breath, one that does not sting your throat.

A freedom licks at your spine as you continue, turning corners on a whim, eyes sliding in avoidance of any other being you pass, though you bid them a good day with a nod of your head. It is peaceful in this castle, and some resentment bubbles in your stomach because of it. Beams high above your head are patterned and shaped to breathe intricate shadows over your frame; high, vaulted ceilings, old stone cool beneath your palm. Along the castle, plants burst with the fruits of healthy care; and laughter echoes somewhere far off in its depths.

In another world, you would have felt such joy to call this your home.

Today's clothing is more forgiving; your trousers are loose but more reinforced at the hips and waist, allowing you to move much quicker and quietly through the halls. A gentle swish comes from the cloaked veil upon your head – and you, with a moment of resistance, nearly rip the damned thing off. How easy it would be, to toss it into one of the several lit hearths in the vicinity, eliminate the evidence of it.

There still remains a small rage within you, simmering and igniting more each day you go on like this – resentment for the customs that you barely know, for your house that no longer exists; for the people lost to time and slipped through the grasp of your family’s lineage. An embarrassment, you know, to be told of your own family's traditions by foreigners.

Out the window is a glimpse of the glistening sea. Violent in its own way, it slams against the cliffside, silent to you but louder than life; it is green in the way everything is, and once more, you wish to see the planet without the veil’s tinted vision.

But in a blink, the sea changes; it is dirt, soil acidic and unfamiliar – and a casket is lowered into it, forested and glossy; it is sand, sun glinting and white – and bodies are thrown down upon it, black blood leaking and jeweled.

Guilt is an old friend, and you welcome its embrace with a swallow and shaky hands.

You leave the window behind.

The walls seem much more empty as you go further into the castle's bowels, dragging your palm along the cool stone; at the turn of a corridor, you find yourself at an ornate doorway. There are intricate carvings deep set within the wood – a man and a bull; your fingers trace the slope of the man’s shoulders, pressing gently to feel the door give way easily.

The air is still within the room – a study, one with shelves and shelves of ancient artifacts, of tomes and scrolls. Your arm stirs the sunbeam leaking in from the high-set window; dust particles swirl and dance in your wake. A slow turn yields an understanding – several pieces of select furniture are covered with sheets, as if the room is no longer commissioned; You bite back the lingering feeling that you're somewhere you're not supposed to be.

There is no true danger – if you were to wander somewhere you didn't belong on Giedi Prime, you'd have been punished; though in truth, you doubt the guards here would dare touch you unless you gave them a reason to.

You walk among the forgotten room, hidden away from prying eyes; fingers over the spine of a leatherbound tome, eyes tracing over the foreign language.

You come upon a large hawk spreading its wings carved in the window in front of you: large, proud; green and black with gold embellishments. The Atreides colors.

And then, another book that your forefinger traces – a deep blue color, the spine is old and well-read. A few of the pages are even dog-eared, the dust deliberately swept off its pages as if it was read recently.

Caladan: A Comprehensive Ecological Study of Biodiversity.

You pull it out gently, if only to study its contents quickly, momentarily forgetting the task of finding the armory in your piqued interest; Yet before you can explore further, you hear footsteps approaching from behind.

Hair stands up on your neck.

They're light, sneaking – intentionally quiet. In less than a breath, you whirl around, slipping the book into the waistband of your trousers, hidden by the train of your veil from behind. Though the presence becomes apparent, your hand instinctively goes to your hip; and you come up empty, a flash of irritation washing over you as a reminder of your absent beloved nameday knife.

Paul Atreides stands in the doorway, expression guarded as he takes in the sight of you, stood amidst the shelves.

You flounder, having expected it to be one of your handmaidens coming to redirect you, or perhaps a member of the Duke's guard – but his stare is similar in its surprise; flecks of green turn suspicious, glancing to the desk beside you, towered with old Atreides family war strategies and tomes of battle tactics.

“What are you doing in here?” His voice is accusatory in itself; no greeting to you beforehand to soften the blow of accusation. His cheeks are flushed, eyes narrow – he is harsh in the dim light, and you do not need to see the crazed look in his stare to know he’s agitated about something. Irritated.

This causes no waver in your position; you lift a concealed brow. “The door was open.”

His voice returns with its same sharpness. “This is my father's old study.” He takes another step into the room, “It's not meant for prying eyes.”

A lurch in your heart at the implication, a rush of heat prickling your skin. You stiffen.

“I was looking for a place to train,” your voice shoots back, stubborn and defiant. No matter how thinly veiled, you bristle at his suspicion. “I didn’t intend to intrude on your father's privacy.” You continue, “You may give him my apologies when you see fit.”

Dust swirls in a storm next to Paul; his gaze is piercing, laced with distrust despite his chivalrous facade. Your pride prickles under his narrowed scrutiny.

“Forgive me if I’ve offended you, Lady Bourbon,” His words clip you and set your jaw tight, “Considering certain circumstances, I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.”

A bristle in your spine, temper heating your cheeks as he continues, “But if you're lost, then allow me to escort you.”

Your step forward is no such acceptance of his venomous tongue. “Forgive me for assuming you’d know better than to judge based on matters of circumstance,” you retort, your voice sharp with wound, “Please don't exert yourself, my Lord, I'm sure I can find the armory without a chaperone.”

It is a brush past his shoulders in the doorway; you leave with a burning frustration, fingers flexing for a blade – your footfall echoes in the corridor, some staccato rhythm you cannot care to hide any longer. Anger pulses through your veins, simmering your resentment; a belittling thing, to let Paul speak to you like you are the enemy.

Paul told you just yesterday that you will one day be Lady Atreides; if he is so afraid of your so-believed connections with House Harkonnen, why has he not insisted you be cast away?

Resentment is a familiar beast clawing in your heart: Your own lineage is gone. A house as old as the planet it ruled, burnt to the ground – the other Houses Major, complacent and willing to see it happen – and they plan to use you for themselves.

You may be betrothed to Paul Atreides, but you will never be a part of their house; your blood is the ancient blood of the Pine, of the Sword.

You'll have to be a wife to the future Duke – sire an heir, live in the castle, command the planet.

But you will not go down easy.

The armory is not as empty as you'd wished.

In fact, it is one person too many; you're mistaken sorely when you storm in, chest heaving and cheeks hot with anger, to find one person standing in the middle of the floor. Hurt and anger boil dangerously within you; and the only thing that might placate you is swinging a blade.

Your arrival is not quiet.

“Duncan.” You greet the man icily; He faces you, blinking back his surprise with a poorly concealed expression.

And, salt rubbed into your poorly healed wounds: He uses your first name; a gentle thing as he nods to you. "Is everything alright?" He wonders.

A foolish question, really.

In anger, you nearly scream; Why did you wait so long to get me? Where were you? Where were my parents?

But you already know the answer. They were doing nothing.

You grit your teeth, instead striding purposefully towards him, tossing the book from your waistband onto the floor with a smack. “You're the Swordmaster of the Duke,” Your voice is cool, masked – and of course, this is known; He's been Duke Leto's Swordmaster since before you were born into the world.

“That's right.” He affirms, wary of your movements as you stride towards the weapons rack.

You hum, fingers tracing over the various weapons laid out – none of which, your precious nameday blade. “I find myself missing my knife,” You muse, “If I remember correctly, you took it from me on Giedi Prime.”

It is then that you walk slowly towards the center of the sparring mat where he stands, in front of the rack of shortswords. You look up at him. “I would like it back.”

To your surprise, Duncan nods – a flicker of something in his gaze. “Of course,” He agrees, “Would you like to spar for it?”

He reads you like a book.

You, after only a brief moment, acquiesce: “No honor without a fight.”

And so without waiting for a response, you snatch a blade from the rack; He tosses you a shield that you activate swiftly around your wrist, assuming an offensive stance as he settles his own.

For a moment, neither of you move; your blood sings, eager to take out your anger; eager to show him who you've become.

To show the beast everyone expects you to be.

You lunge at him; it is quick that you are reminded of his impeccable skill – you’ve not sparred with anyone in over a week and a half, save the weak attempt at a fight you gave to Duncan and his men when you were taken on Giedi Prime.

In the commotion of your family's abdication, the arenas had been filled to the brim with your house's soldiers and advisors the whole week leading up to your exit from Giedi Prime; Even Feyd had been too occupied to fight with you.

It takes only minutes before your muscles are aching, screaming.

The frustration of the morning and the despair within your stomach spurs you forward, keeping your feet under your body; and soon, your panting and the clang of steel on steel fills the room, punctuated only by both you and Duncan's measured breathing.

It’s been a lifetime and a half since you last trained with Duncan Idaho.

There was a time that you moved together like water, even when you were just fifteen; he'd taught you how to fight like a Ginaz Swordmaster just as much as your own family did – and though his visits were sparse, he'd never miss Sabberon’s harvest festivals.

He, arriving onto the snow-kissed tarmac and you, always with a blade in your grip and your brother's hand in the other.

You were graceful when you were young and still learning – but now you're quick, snarling like a rabid dog, lashing out with tooth and nail. It feels nothing like it used to be, and it shows in his expression.

“Have something to say, Idaho?” you hiss – a quick gasp from you as he gets near to taking you down, ducking at the last second as he charges your right side. He lets out a breath as you slide past him, slamming your elbow hard into his side; A dirty move.

You have little room to feel relief that he seems some manner exerted – you, however, are drenched in sweat, fatigued, and alight with endorphins. A sheen over his forehead in the light leaking into the room is all forgiven to you as you duck a blow. His brows raise. “You fight different, Little Bourbon.”

And a pang in your stomach once more at the nickname, how easily it comes to him. As if nothing’s changed. “You already told me that.” You hiss, wiping sweat from your brow and parrying a strike to your side, “It's the veil.”

To be fair, it could be the veil – it's restrictive, catching on corners, pinning beneath your arm, tangling as you fight hand-to-hand; simply, it is inimical to your interests.

Though he does not bite at such bait. “Is it not the years with those beasts?”

Your blood runs cold.

“What do you know of those beasts?” You snap, heart pounding; memories of pale hands slipping over yours, of a glinting black smile – the one that'd called you pet but paraded you like a wife; Spoiled you, ruined you – haunted you, nurtured you.

What is that old saying, about biting the hand that feeds you?

But in a swish of the veil and a blink, Feyd-Rautha is once more in front of you; curved blades, painted chest, and a sinister smile.

Your steps stumble back in shock, your breath caught in your throat. An intimidating, lithe frame of shadow – and he laughs a mirthless, dangerous chuckle.

Don’t worry, my pet. I will find you again.

It is all you can do: You lash out, grunting as you swipe at his face – though as your blade comes down against the shield, it is once again Duncan in front of you.

You can't hide the gasp as you blink away the vision, heart thudding heavy between your ribs.

His recovery is swift, tutting, “I didn't mean to imply that it is a weakness, my lady.” He blocks a blow and you struggle for a moment against his sheer strength; with a twinge of anger, you can tell he's going easy on you.

He continues on. “–Far from it. You seem to forget that I've fought them, that I know them, too.” He's momentarily distracted when he disarms you, and you use the opportunity to flip sideways, jumping gracefully over the water station to retrieve the blade. His countenance betrays a grin of appreciation at your acrobatics, smirking as the pitcher of water upon the table shakes slightly.

Concealing a grin, you creep back around, launching into an attack that he parries quickly, dropping you on to your side. You grunt, kicking with your legs to twist, trying to force his body off of yours – you strain, muscles screaming.

He stares down at you, raising his brows. “I'm just saying – maybe there's aspects of your training that could benefit from a balanced approach.”

He finishes his sentence just as he bests you, your blade flipping against your own ribs as he forces your arm tight against yourself; your shield flickers red.

He's won.

Still fighting the adrenaline from your vision of Feyd, you hiss. “What are you implying? I'm too rabid an animal to tame?” Your head tilts on the ground, dragging your veil upon the mat.

“Is House Atreides scared of Little Bourbon?” You muse, still heated by the previous encounter with Paul this morning, by Duncan’s unremarkable reaction to your jabs, by the ghost who seems to haunt you awake and in dreams. “Or, are they just afraid I've become Little Harkonnen?”

Once more, he does not take your bait – instead he rolls off of you, offering a hand. With a sharp glance, you take it, letting him pull your full weight off the ground as if you're nearly weightless.

You sigh, side cramping as you move from his grip to pour yourself a glass of water. You pour a shaky one for Duncan, too, trying to fight the creeping sensation that he's talking to a stranger. He regards you, wiping sweat from his brow, “What I am saying is that I am here every day. Come train whenever you please.”

You give him the glass and he grasps the water gently, watching you from the corner of his eye. The hesitation makes your jaw clench in anticipation; You busy yourself by examining the various blades that lie before you, knowing what's to come.

Finally, he says your name softly. You hope he does not see your spine stiffen.

“We haven't had the time to speak about…” A gesture half-thought; he is clearly trying to put together words, but you cannot bear to hear them. You drag your finger along a curved blade, eyes squinting shut, pain swirling in your heart.

“I'm sorry. I–” Duncan starts gently but trails off as if he can't bear to say it out loud. His fingers hesitate just before your bicep, as if reaching out to you; For a moment, you almost lean into his presence – but a memory of sharp words and harsh eyes courses through you. I'm sure you understand our cautiousness in matters of trust.

You swallow down bitterness as you step away slightly, tossing the knife back on the rack with a clatter. “I'm fine,” you reply curtly, voice steelier than ever. “Nothing to do about it now.”

Duncan sighs, but does not call your bluff. You almost appreciate him for it.

You turn to face him again, glad for the veil to conceal the glint of tears upon your waterline.

“Now where did you put my knife?”

It is one of the many things that strikes you about the Atreides as you sit in the conference hall that evening: They do not sit like a council, looking down at you – instead, the table is rounded, attended at all sides with only one chair unoccupied. You suspect Paul's is the body absent from the chair – he’s training with Duncan, then; you must have just missed him on your way back.

Your newly reclaimed blade shines, restored and clean, with etchings inlaid across the hilt; you’re significantly fatigued after your sparring, though Duncan’s words have threaded unease through you. This string of angst pulls taught when your eyes land upon Lady Jessica. A relieving presence, quite welcoming – though her ability to stare through the veil and into your own gaze is rivaled only by her own son. It is a wholly unsettling talent of them both.

A press of your finger upon the tip of your blade; it beads with a lick of crimson, and you sigh.

After a moment, you set the blade in front of your place for all to see; a threat, or a sign of respect – you’re unsure.

Though in the flash of your fingers upon the hilt, guards in the room unsheathe their own blades – and without a blink, Duke Leto holds a hand to halt them, signing something to them in their war-language.

You watch on with a stilled heartbeat.

“Lady Bourbon, thank you for meeting with us.” His voice is a deep caramel, “We understand the weight of your sudden responsibility, and it does not go unappreciated.”

There is a knot in the table before you, glistening within the polished wood; you nod rather curtly, not particularly keen to drag out the pleasantries of this meeting. Your voice comes stonily. “How may I be of service, my Lord?”

At your deflection, he merely nods slightly. “I was told you spent the afternoon training with Duncan Idaho.”

He speaks plainly and you are, if nothing else, appreciative of that; His eyes glance over the short sword that lays in front of you, to the signature black leather that wraps around the hilt. Once, it had served as a claim: A detested thing, one held out of self preservation; perhaps in a way it still is.

“Yes, my Lord.”

Brows draw over his eyes; an expression serious and dutiful, and for a moment you can see the echoes of Paul in his father’s expression.

It is not surprising to you that Paul is a well-respected figure in the castle; even the workers who tend to your quarters each morning seem to speak well of him. Hestia, around the rim of her teacup just this morning, had spoken to you of his rigorous training, the time he spends with his mother and with Dr. Yeuh, Thufir Hawat, and Duncan Idaho; and though you were less than interested in the more sentimental aspects of her recount, of some promise of intelligence, of depth, of humor – a thought you find most impossible – you can admit that he will easily assume his father’s role when the time comes.

A voice from beside the Duke: “We’d like to reiterate that you are free to pursue your interests, to educate yourself, and to engage in hobbies that bring you joy or interest. We hope for you to consider this your home, and know that we are here to support you in any way we can.”

In the moment that follows, you blink rather dumbly; thrown off-balance, a raft in a sudden clench of rapids – this is not how you’d anticipated the meeting would go.

And here you sit, rigid as a board, eyes wide: It is not shocking to learn that your unease and discomfort on this planet has been rather clear – you hardly rest, you have never eaten around any others than your handmaids, you barely speak; hostility grows from you as branches of a willow weeping in summer.

You shift within your seat, growing uncomfortable under such attention, the kindness so raw and unburdened in the room. “We’d like to know of your interests, so we may set you up with any materials you may need. I'd like to introduce to you Dr. Yueh, as well as Thufir Hawat, who have volunteered to help tutor you, should you wish.” The Duke’s words bring a rush of heavy emotion through your chest, “Duncan Idaho also wishes to help you train if you see fit. I understand you knew him when you were young.”

Your eyes have begun to sting with the lurching sensation of emotion; For the first time in what feels like an eternity, you're being offered a taste of freedom, and it has sent you into a state.

It is a feeling of fight or flight; your heartbeat pounds against your ribs, your hands clenching tight against the healing crescents within your palms. A mantra in your mind, some whisper of a breath leaking from your lips as your gaze bounces wetly from Duke Leto, to the knife before you, to Lady Jessica.

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

With a sharp inhale, you come back to life; a blossoming willow as your headchain chimes, steadying your palms on your thighs. “Apologies, I…” A weak attempt, and with a swallow of humility, you begin again: “Your generosity overwhelms me.”

In a silent beat, it occurs to you that they await your revelations; and with a sheepish swallow, you wonder: What, indeed, are your interests? Have you any, anymore?

You swallow the burning bile climbing up your throat. “I was educated in politics and Imperial economics for some time.” It is difficult to speak of yourself as the faces watch you – though you continue stoically, your heart thunders in your ribcage. “I've always been fascinated by cultures, by botany and ecology– I…” your mouth is incredibly dry, voice void; a tear has escaped your waterline, and you hope it does not come through in your voice. You don't know what else to say.

“Thank you.”

There is a small gleam of recognition that passes Duke Leto's eyes at your words, his smile intrigued. “Those are all noble pursuits, my Lady. You have similar interests to my own son; I believe you two will have much to discuss.”

A laughable thought – and your mouth bitters at the realization; For a moment, you'd slipped away – into a world where you are their daughter, a world where you aren't tainted by the last several years, by the crimes of your House, of your blood – where you haven’t been turned into a monster that hisses at a glimpse of the sun.

“I’m sure we will.” You echo; and in the breath following, it becomes clear there is no good will for free:

“Though we are hesitant to put you into another painful situation,” Gurney Halleck’s voice errupts from across the table; you move to stare at him with the patience of a statue, back stiffening. “It is hard to deny just how helpful you could be to us, my Lady.”

Your eyes snake over his pressed uniform, back prickling. You resist the urge to run, or to throw your blade at his head.

Though his following words are surprisingly delicate: “–And we hope, when you are ready, you might give us some insight into your previous arrangements.”

It is a song and dance well-known from your time on Giedi Prime: Coercion disguised as cooperation.

You do not by law owe the Atreides anything besides marriage to their son; though perhaps cooperating with them would be in your own interest as well as you await the upcoming arraignment.

Faces watch you, sharp and poised; a dark green that runs nearly blue in the light, their uniforms are cerulean and pressed, and you wonder indeed how many lifetimes ago it was that you were back in the strategy room on Sabberon, surrounded by tan and green.

Perhaps, if not just the Harkonnens, they prefer you for your relationship with your mother’s sister, the lady of House Ginaz; This thought has several times crossed your mind, but you're sure they'd be displeased to hear of how strained such relationship became when the Harkonnens started filtering your messages.

It has been ages since you heard from her – the Baron grew suspicious at such interactions, and you’re near certain almost none of your letters made it out of Barony Castle at all. Certainly none came in after only months.

A mountain grows within you – one with sharp slopes, with hissing winds – a self preservation remaining from the days of survival. You unfurl slowly, calculated. “During my time with the Harkonnens, I became privy to certain…” Your lips purse, “lateral moves.”

Gurney Halleck's eyes fly to you, as do Lady Jessica's.

Your jaw ticks beneath the juniper fabric, “However, my interactions were primarily with Feyd-Rautha.” Your eyes flick to the blade before you before rising again to Duke Leto, “The Baron held little interest in me until my family was accused, and even though I saw him quite rarely, Glossu Rabban suspected me of being a spy long before he’d ever met me.”

An effort you put in to pretend not to notice the flicking of Lady Jessica’s hand’s by her side; the eyes of the Duke and War Master following the motions.

You continue, harboring a slight upper hand that you cling to with your resolve. “I admit, I do not know much about their deals on Arrakis. But I have gathered enough about their industries on Giedi Prime.” You say, eyeing them all. Recalling Paul’s earlier mistrust, you add, “The Harkonnens destroyed my life. I have no reason to lie.”

In the corner of the room, a sunbeam strikes through a swirl of dust; it pierces through the budding leaves of a jade succulent and casts a dappled shadow onto the table. The members of House Atreides discuss in short whispers until Duke Leto turns back to you.

“I’d wonder if you might attend a meeting with our Strategy Council next week.” His proposal sends your brows to raise in intrigue. “As you are surely aware, there is a Space Trade Route Referendum on Kaitain during the same summit as your House's arraignment. I believe we would benefit greatly from your insight as we prepare for the drawings.”

A wildfire of flush spreads across your cheeks; pride, that little kerneled seed, festers in the poisonous soil of your heart – and yet you must remind yourself where you are, who you are. Yes, they see your value, a mistake your last keepers have reaped; but a key is only valued for the locks in which it can turn.

You are a rabid dog for them to muzzle; a blade to sheath. A pawn to play.

“I’d be pleased, my Lord.”

Melodious as it is in its Sabberovna lilt, your voice remains short of genuine in tone and you cannot effectively mask your apprehension.

Duke Leto says your name once more, and it sends a jolt through you. “If I may.”

You wait in your evergreen stillness, and he takes your quiet as acceptance to continue. “Plans have changed quickly, as you well understand. Though regrettable, it is more than understandable if you have felt unwelcome, or alienated here on Caladan.”

The breath out of your lips blows the veil; you bite back a bitter quip regarding his son’s willingness to chew you out for walking the halls of what is supposed to now be your castle – and instead take another breath.

Your anger and resentment is not the Duke’s nor Lady Jessica’s to receive; no matter how distrusting or misguided their son might be – because they have shown nothing but respect for you since your arrival.

Quarters with a view of the coastline, of rolling moors of green that shoot up suddenly in dark rock – bowls of fruit in the mornings with your tea, an offer to study any such subject you wish… you bite your lip, the gnawing pain of guilt bleeding through the bodice in your gown just as your sisters did that fated day in the black sun.

“I regret that I have come off as ungrateful.” Your voice lands softer than anticipated, a footfall in fresh snow; you thank the void that the Atreides boy is not here to snicker at your apparent misery – though as sharp eyes turn to regard you, the self-deprecation melts away once more into a small beast of disdain towards Paul and his disrespect. “It was never my intention.”

You, calculating, choose your words carefully. “I am not unused to being treated like a spy, even in the house I am supposed to become a part of,” Your chin is tilted towards the Duke, resolved and unflinching. “Though perhaps if I were less interrogated by select members of House Atreides, I might feel more at ease.”

And, if nothing else, perhaps a childish part of you hopes Paul will face some hand to ear for this, some chastising by his father or mother. You do not falter at the faces of men and women who have known Paul his whole life, who have known you for mere days; you will not be pushed around.

You continue in the absence of response, folding your hands neatly before your nameday blade. “I'd like to pass along my personal apologies for entering your old study this morning when I was lost, Duke Leto,” You nod to him, “Lord Paul informed me that it is off-limits to my kind.”

And perhaps it is worth it, the indignation, if only to see the varying degrees of surprise upon the visages before you; the Duke, however, glances sidelong to the empty seat beside him before clenching his jaw. Halleck sighs gently, hand falling over his forehead; it is evident the Duke is about to speak – though you do not wish to hear whatever excuse is provided for the actions of his childish son, your future husband, who did not even bother to attend this meeting.

Alas, you do not dare disrespect Duke Leto, after all he’s done for you; and so you sit, knee bouncing restlessly, as he purses his lips.

“The suddenness of your arrangement was a shock to Paul, as I’m sure it was to you. Though that does not permit any disrespect towards you. You have my promise it will not happen again, my Lady.”

This, indeed, comes as surprise to you, having expected them to support Paul’s each whim; and you sit forward, spine still rigid, though interested.

“–As for my former study, it is now used as an archive room. I apologize if there was any confusion regarding its accessibility – I will speak with my son about the importance of clarity and respect in our household.” His words, stern – scolding, though not towards you; a silent admonishment instead directed towards his absent heir. “You are allowed wherever you wish.”

It hits you in some dropping sensation within your stomach: Perhaps the Duke's son has his own opinions about you and your history, but that does not mean his parents feel the same. Soon grows a small spark of rebellion; could you find some new purpose within this House, despite any ulterior motives – or, perhaps, because of them?

After all, your house was once a strong ally of theirs; and the thought, a tantalizing one, lingers for a few moments before being swiftly extinguished by the reality of your situation.

No, you remind yourself bitterly.

You are tainted with blood – not Atreides, not Bourbon – but Harkonnen.

And it seems Paul will always see you as a beast, wife or not.

Supper is called later than Paul expects.

It is past dark when he greets his parents in the room, his formal clothes dark and pressed. Paul’s stomach growls quietly in protest; though more than his hunger, he is mocked by the box he holds.

He places it beside himself, and it will sit there until the end of dinner; It glares at him tauntingly, mockingly.

He avoids its stare.

Words, echoed through his mind in the wake of his childish fit from earlier; and his father’s voice, then:

You may not always like her, but you will treat her with the respect and care befitting of a future spouse.

How foolish he’d been this morning – held captive by the terrene emotions in his mind: flustered, angry at the arrangement – and what awful coincidence he'd run into you, snooping around the old study.

Paul is no fool; he knows better than to treat you in such a way, despite his apprehension. It is difficult to dismiss the knot in his stomach as his father’s gaze lingers; the tension from their earlier argument hangs heavy, but still, Paul’s path is clear.

Whatever his doubts, it changes nothing – you will be his wife, and he your husband. Paul, with a quick glance to the dark horizon, rolls his neck; a sharp pop breaks the silence.

There is, of course, that aching sorrow he holds for you, still; he knows that whatever he is feeling, you're likely feeling a hundred times more.

So for both of your sake, he will learn to endure, to coexist; And it begins tonight.

It begins with the box at his side.

You find the dining room with a burst of doors; and despite himself, Paul’s cheeks heat rather quickly.

Your dress is a dark forest; simple – snug around your figure, though the sleeves flow and pull low near your ankles. Paul’s lashes tangle as he blinks slow, shocked.

Your veil, gossamer thin; it softens you in a way, though it hides less than any you’ve worn yet. Through its shroud, your eyes find his nearly immediately as you walk in – you stare, wide, unyielding.

Paul is struck with a bout of iced chill when he comprehends that he can see your stare, the fullness of your lips, the upturn of your cheeks, the line of your brows, the way you take in a quick breath; He's struck immediately with your evergreen, growing beauty.

The sweet slope of neck, a swirling lick of hair brushed beyond proud shoulders; and Paul forces himself to nod and greet you, his palms clammy from the heat from the castle’s hearth.

You sit beside him, and still there’s that look you always have: Contained, a schooled politeness – but Paul knows better.

A stolen glance once more – and eyes glow against dark green mesh, glinting just like the metal beads that fall over the crown of your head. Paul is struck with the strange desire to see more of you.

Instead, he stares at the knot in the polished wooden table before him.

Mercifully, dinner is an endeavor less strenuous than anticipated; you, more relaxed than he’s ever seen, though your voice is still calculated and stoic. Even his mother is relaxed. She asks you of the wintering sports you enjoyed in your youth; you describe stiffly the pack of wolves your family had and raced with on sleds, about the waxed narrow planks you strap to your feet to race down snowy slopes. His father, enamored with the bladed skates you'd wear upon the glacial lakes when their surfaces froze over; Paul's small huff that is met with a quick glance when you quietly recount the tale of you breaking your femur upon a tree while racing your sister.

Paul’s interest in the lifetime spent upon Sabberon is eclipsed only by the looming box beside him, watching him throughout the meal.

By the time the dishes begin to be cleared away, his heart is hammering in his chest. It is inevitable, something tells him in his mind; the first of several of your House's courting steps – he’d kept true to his words and poured over the chapters about your culture before going to train this afternoon.

Paul anxiously thumbs the box under the table, knee bouncing against the grain of wood – perhaps this won't be the most traditional example of your culture's marriage customs, but most of your people are gone, anyways – he simply hopes it will be adequate.

He will no longer fight it; and he can only try his best to make you feel more comfortable here, especially after his foolish actions this morning.

His parents excuse themselves, and you rise as well; with a jump of panic, Paul calls for you to stay, just for a moment.

You, stilling in your cascading dress, with your stare and your coolness; you stare at him, wordless, and he lingers as his parents wish you a good evening.

When they are gone, you remain standing half-turned from him, solid in your ground, rooted in the ancient sway of your gown. Your eyes are wary; Perhaps you expect him to berate you again.

A quick sigh, his eyes fluttering closed – and the passage flickers through his mind once more.

Gifting heirlooms is a sacred tradition, passed down through generations, where the betrothed proudly wear the sigil of their new house as a symbol of unity and commitment.

Paul's heart races – he wipes a palm upon his tunic, straightening it before approaching you; you, a flower thorny and veiled beneath a layer of frosted snow; you, a blade sheathed in silk.

He can see the apprehension in your gaze, now – an odd thought, one that stirs something foreign in his stomach – and with each step closer, your eyes sharpen with the glint of suspicion. One hand shifts through the skirt of your dress, as if searching for something; though you have no chance to wield any such weapon as he rounds on you, holding out the velvet box with a tremor.

His reluctance is swallowed down with a force of duty; he flips the box open, waiting with his gaze upon the crown of your veil.

You stare down at it, your demeanor guarded, unreadable.

And then, plush lips – partially hidden behind gauzy green – part gently; and for a moment, Paul wonders why indeed you seem completely...shell-shocked.

His brows furrow, though he brushes aside the thought – the formality of the gesture after his childish behavior earlier in the day must have brought upon some whiplash, and that he understands.

Paul chooses to go unspoken the intent of the gift; for it is your culture’s tradition, after all: “My Lady,” His voice is steady though a part of him winces internally at the tinge of nervousness, “I hope you will accept this pendant as a token of my–” Sharply cutting himself off, he clears his throat, “Of our betrothal.”

It is a mercy to have been so trained in diplomacy, Paul knows; for he sounds much more confident than he feels. “I apologize for how I acted this morning. It was childish,” His voice is quiet in the room, and his stomach flips at the memory of your muscles tensing in the morning light, watching him; a ghost in emerald, haunting the halls.

You stare at the necklace still within his palm.

Your lips remain parted, your gaze likely taking in the green and gold sigil of Atreides; a hawk.

Small, ornamental – it was his great-great-grandmother's, from her wedding day; cherished for many years.

It took him many hours to find something that seemed fit to uphold your family's tradition; though he’d decided upon this pendant once he laid eyes upon it – the color will suit you.

Paul awaits your response, hoping you'll see the gesture for what it truly is: An attempt to bridge the gap between the two of you; Suggested by his parents, yes, but chosen and executed by himself.

He, in the unease of the silence, nearly says more; but soon your eyes harden and your reach moves towards the box.

“Thank you.”

But your voice is much too cold; your eyes hold none of the shine he’d seen previously, and it is with a pang in his stomach that he recognizes your sharp glance sideways, towards the sparse workers who attend the dining room.

Your eyes are lethal – just as lethal as the rest of you.

You would not be as civil if it were just you and him, he is sure of it; His parents may be gone, but there are servants who watch you with the corner of their eyes as they clear dishes.

A crawling sense of regret, some grimy dishonesty that rises within him – perhaps he should have waited until the two of you were truly alone; he’d not even considered how it may look to you.

Your own hands shake as you reach under your veil – Paul watches warily as you clasp the necklace slowly; his lips are dry, throat begging for the relief of water – and he knows better than to recognize your tremoring hands as anything but a result of your sheer resentment towards him, towards the marriage.

Your lips are plush as they are freed from the trappings of your teeth.

“It is a gorgeous collar,” you utter; and with a turn to stare up into Paul’s eyes, his heart thuds, breath catching. His head tilts to hear you – and your voice comes just as it always does.

“I shall wear it like a dog.”

The choice of words unsettles him completely; a pang of regret within him – but you are out of the door before his lips find anything to say.

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#me and the devil ; series #paul atreides x reader #paul atreides x you #paul atreides smut #paul atreides fanfic #paul atredies x reader #paul atredies x you #paul atredies smut #dune 2021 #dune fanfiction #paul x reader #dune movie #dune part one

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clearlydiamondz · 1 year ago

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I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause

Erik!Stevens x Reader

After getting caught kissing Erik while he was in his Santa suit, Erik's and (Y/N)'s son is in complete distraught.

Just to get into the Christmas spirit ya know.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Ma, where is daddy?" her son, EJ replied with his toothbrush in his mouth. (Y/N) and EJ were in his bathroom, getting him ready to go to bed. It was Christmas Eve Eve (December 23rd), and (Y/N) was excited for the Holiday. It was their first Christmas in their newly built home, and she was determined to make it the best Christmas both Erik and EJ had.

The two of them grew up in Foster Care together. Knowing each other since they were 12 years old, they stuck together like glue. Erik was always her protector, damn near almost getting kicked out of their group home when he caused a fight about her.

She was his voice of reason. Her soothing voice and her logical thinking got Erik out of most of the trouble he got into. He always joked that if she was never in his life, he would most likely be in jail.

"Daddy went out to go help out a friend baby," she said moisturizing his hair. "Ooh lord, Ima have to braid this in the morning," she said grabbing his bonnet off the counter and placing it on.

"You don't get to..." he trailed off as she chuckled.

"Don't try and talk me out of it," she said tickling his sides as he giggled. "Alright, go get yourself in bed and I'll be in there in a minute" She started cleaning up around the sink. He nodded jumping off of his step stool and going across the hall to his room.

After she was finished, she walked to his room to see him on his bed, playing with his toy car. "Alright Munchkin.." she grabbed the toy placing it on his nightstand. She turned on his night light before tucking him into the bed.

"Is Christmas tomorrow?" your son asked. He was the most excited for Christmas, obviously. After Halloween, he was already talking about Christmas.

"No baby, it's in two days. So after tomorrow," she told him as he laid down.

"That's so long..." he whined with a pout. Even though he was four years old, it still surprised her how much of Erik's face he took. She didn't see an ounce of herself in him.

"It's literally less than 48 hours."

"I don't know how to tell time yet..." he said making her laugh.

"What I'm saying is that it's not the far baby. You will only have to go to sleep one more time after tonight. Then it's Christmas." she told him. His pouting face widened into a smile as his dimples showed.

"Really? Okay, I gotta go to bed," he said snuggling into his pillow as she chuckled. She stood up from his bed, grabbed his blanket, and pulled it over him. "Goodnight baby, I love you," she said kissing him on the cheek. He grabbed her head giving her a peck on the list before saying,

"I love you too." he yawned closing his eyes. She turned off his lights and shut the door. She walked downstairs grabbing herself a wine glass and a bottle of wine. She walked into the living room sat down and clocked a random true crime documentary on YouTube. She was watching for about an hour when the door opened. She paused it turning around and seeing Erik... in a Santa Costume.

"Hi?" she said in a questioning state with her head tilted.

"Don't ask," he said pointing towards her walking into the living room and sitting next to her. He plot down, and the red suit is opened in the front showing a white tank top with his gold chain.

"I'm tempted though," she said as he sighed.

"Angel called me about a toy drive at the group home on Elm Street." She pouted before saying,

"Why didn't you tell me, I would've gone," she replied as Erik sighed.

"Well it was kind of a last-minute thing, and plus I knew you were getting the house ready for everyone to come over," he said rubbing her thigh. "They were a great group of kids, it was so nice to see them get all happy." he chuckled as she smiled rubbing his cheek.

"I applaud you for doing what you did," she said smiling at him.

"It kinda reminded me of the group home we were at. I freaking hated Christmas." he sighed. She remembered those nights during the Holiday season. Seeing everyone at school with their new clothes and new devices while they had nothing. Not even a family dinner.

"Yeah... it kinda sucked didn't it," she said as he chuckled looking at her. "I'm just glad we turned out alright," he said grabbing her hand and squeezing it. She leaned over placing a kiss on his cheek, then on his lips. He deepened it, trailing his hands behind her neck and pulling her closer. She pulled away smiling at him as he started to kiss her on her neck.

"Is EJ upstairs?" he asked looking behind him at the staircase as she nodded.

"Yeah, he's been sleeping for about an hour." she bit her lip at him as he nodded. He let go of her thigh before leaning back into the sofa. He licked his lips one more time before looking up the stairs one more time.

"Ion knows if I've told you that you look real good today..." She looked down at her nightgown which was Grinch-themed that she found at Walmart. Her hair was already wrapped up in her bonnet and she had star pimple patches on her face.

"Uhh, what?" she chuckled looking down at her outfit once more.

"Come here." he grabbed her hand as she placed the wine glass on the table. She stood up walking in between his legs as he widened them.

"Ya know..." he started off placing his hands underneath her gown, slowly tracing up the inside of her thigh. "Maybe you should sit on Santa's lap and tell him what you want.." he smirked at her. Licking her lips, she placed both of her knees on the side of his thighs as his hands found his way up underneath her dress and gripping her ass. She placed her arms on his shoulders before saying,

"I think I may have a few things in mind.." she trailed off playing with his gold chain. He grabbed the back of her bonnet, pulling it and biting her neck.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

EJ tossed and turned in his bed, but the excitement of Christmas was keeping him awake. He heard what he thought was the TV turning off until he heard his dad talking. He decided to stay in bed until Erik would come in and kiss him goodnight.

But he never came.

Impatient, he threw his blankets off of him, opened his door, and tip-toed down the hall. Going down the steps and looking over the banister, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. He saw his mom sitting on Santa Claus's lap and kissing.

He gasped, (Y/N) pulling away and looking around to see where the noise came from. Eyes still wide, EJ ran up the stairs tears in his eyes.

"I'm gonna tell my daddy," he told himself.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"Erik stop. Stop," she said pulling away from him as he continued the attack on her neck. "I think I just heard EJ.." she said looking behind the couch.

"Come on now, quit acting like you don't want this-" they heard a door slam upstairs as she jumped up. "Oh my god.. EJ, I think I heard him on the stairs," she said standing up and fixing herself.

"I'll go check on him," he said standing up as she stopped him.

"No, you look like Santa Clause. That's just going to ruin it. I'll go check on him." she said turning around before he smacked her ass and grabbed it. He wrapped his other arms around her waist pulling her to his chest and whispered,

"Don't think I'm done with you." she moaned closing her eyes before he let her go. Catching her balance from her knees buckling, she ran up the stairs to see how EJ was doing.

She slowly opened his door to see him facing the wall, lying down with his pillow in his arms. "EJ..." she whispered walking by the bed to see him squeezing his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep. "Are you okay beloved?" she whispered bending down. Still no response. Sighing, she grabbed the blankets tucked him in and kissed him on his cheek, and exited the room. She walked down the hall to Erik's and her bedroom, her eyebrows furred in confusion.

"What happened," Erik asked taking off his boots.

"I think EJ saw us downstairs," she whispered to him walking towards the bed.

"I highly doubt it was anything scarring (Y/N). It wasn't like we were actually doing it." he chuckled before standing up and walking into their shared bathroom.

"I mean still... I don't want to expose him to that kind of stuff. He is way too young." she said worriedly.

"We kiss in front of him all the time. I don't think it's bad," he said taking off his white tank top only leaving him in his red Santa suit pants.

"That's different. We were making out, and you were touching me," she said, a slight blush creeping on her face as he smirked at her.

"I can touch you some more if you want," he said grabbing her waist and pulling her closer. She pushed him away,

"I'm serious Erik..." she trailed off as he sighed grabbing her shoulders.

"I don't think it's that serious. If EJ saw something and was bothered by it he'll let us know about it. Like he always does." he comforted her. It was technically true. (Y/N) took pride in her and Erik's parenting, letting him set boundaries for himself and not silencing him when he had questions.

"Yeah... your right." she sighed. "Maybe I'm just overthinking," she told herself before he kissed her on the forehead and then again on her lips. "Now come take a shower with me," he said grabbing her ass as she laughed.

"I already took a shower before you came."

"Well come take one with me.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Erik and (Y/N) close friends came to the house to celebrate Christmas Eve with them. They were enjoying some old R & B music, and having a few drinks and food. EJ was outside with his "cousins", Erik was showing the guys his new gaming room while (Y/N) was in the living room with her friends drinking wine.

"This house is absolutely amazing." Her friend Sasha, gawked at her house as she smiled.

"Thank you. I mean Erik did most of the architectural design," she said looking up at the high ceilings. "But there are still some things we want to add. But we are going to wait until EJ is a little older so he's not bothered by it," she said.

"I bet you and Erik have been all over this place," Jela smirked at her drinking from her wine glass.

"I mean... I can't help it," she said with a giggle. "But I think EJ may have caught us last night," she said.

"Awe that poor baby, y'all need to learn to keep y'all hands off each other," Sasha said hitting her thigh.

"We weren't even doing anything. We were just making out, but he's been acting all strange towards me." she pouted. Usually, EJ and (Y/N) would make breakfast with each other. Today, he didn't want to do it with her. EJ wanted to make breakfast with Erik.

Then when it was time to do his hair, EJ kicked and screamed not wanting her to touch him. Erik had to put a sloppy ponytail on top of his head.

"He'll be fine. He'll forget it by the morning when he sees all those gifts." Jela replied. (Y/N) was about to respond but was cut off with Erik and everyone else coming downstairs.

"Okay Stevens.. that's a nice little setup you up there." Jela's fiance, Jordan replied.

"That's not even the finished product." he chuckled. "Where is EJ?" he looked at his wife as she pointed outside.

"They are outside playing." Right on cue, the kids ran into the living room, EJ jumping into his dad's arms as Erik lifted him up.

"Look at the little man right here." Sasha's boyfriend, Leo asked ticking EJ in Erik's arm as EJ giggled and squirmed. Erik put him down as he ran straight to his auntie Jela. Jela gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before saying,

"Are you excited for Santa to come?" Jela asked. Immediately his face turned into a frown then anger.

"I don't want his fat self to come to my house at all!" he yelled. The outburst caught everyone off guard, but more Erik and (Y/N).

"Beloved, what's wrong?" (Y/N) asked going to rub his back but he smacked her hand away.

"EJ!" she exclaimed. Erik grabbed his hand, pulling him away from Jela.

"EJ, come here." EJ started to cry, and you looked at Erik confusingly. "I don't want to ever catch you putting your hands on your mother you hear me?" Erik chastised him as EJ cried harder.

"I-I saw you!" he screamed at his mom, tears rushing down his face. Being a toddler, of course, he threw tantrums. But this was more than a tantrum. She could really see the hurt in his eyes.

"I saw you kissing Santa Clause last night!" he screamed. Realization started to sink in before Erik covered his mouth trying not to laugh in front of his son. (Y/N)'s reaction was the complete opposite. She was horrified.

"Ayo!" Leo busted out laughing. That really angered EJ because he took a B-line straight to Jordan.

"IT"S NOT FUNNY!" before he could reach to do his attack, (Y/N) stopped him by picking him up. "Let me down! I don't want to talk to you!" he screamed, managing to get out of your grasp and running up the stairs.

"Auntie (Y/N), you know Santa?" Your "niece" Cleo gushed in amusement.

"No sweetie. I don't know that man." she sighed. "I told you he saw us Erik!" she yelled at Erik as he finally let his laugh slip. "It's not funny!" she exclaimed, sounding just like her son. She ran up the stairs after him.

"I knew y'all was freaky but I ain't know y'all was that freaky," Jordan whispered in his ear so that the other kids didn't hear it. Erik laughed before walking up the stairs to see his wife trying to open EJ's door.

"EJ come out here. Let me talk to you," she said twisting the door nob, but it was locked. "Erik can you go downstairs and get the keys," she said still trying to get it open.

"I'm not going nowhere. But he is about to open this door." he walked to the door, her moving out of his way to see what he was going to do.

"EJ, I know you are upset but you know how I feel about locked doors. If I have to use a key to unlock it, it's gonna be me and you." There was a silence before he said,

"I just want to talk to you Daddy," he said at the door. (Y/N) sighed rubbing her forehead.

"Okay.. that's fine," Erik said as (Y/N) looked at him. "Look, I'll talk to him okay. He obviously isn't giving it up." he said. She looked at his door one more time before nodding.

"Okay." he gave her a kiss on the forehead before she left down stairs. "Okay. She's gone." Erik said. He slowly opened the door, Erik looking down and seeing his son's wet and teary face.

"Aww man.." Erik started to feel bad as he picked his son up. "Hey stop crying." he wiped his tears as EJ looked at him.

"Daddy, I went downstairs last night while you were gone, and I saw Ma sitting on Santa's lap and they were kissing.. for like a really long time," he said. Erik sighed sitting on the floor with EJ in his lap. "Why aren't you mad?" he sighed before saying,

"EJ, that wasn't Santa... that was me," he said. EJ's mouth dropped. "No no. I saw him. I saw his hat, and the red coat and everything." he said.

"I know. I was dressed up as Santa," he replied, EJ looking at him confused.

"Wait so Santa isn't real..." he trailed off, tears filling in his eyes.

"No Santa is real... but Santa can't always visit every child. So I help him by visiting them." he lied. "EJ your mom would never do that to me, and I wouldn't do that to her." he comforted him.

"How do you know?"

"Well.. me and your mom when we got married we made promises to each other. And we have trust in each other that we won't break it." Erik explained to him, but the look of confusion was still on his face.

"What's trust?"

"It's like.. it's when you believe in someone, right? So I believe in your mom to not hurt me, and your mom believes in me not to hurt her." he told her. EJ thought of it some more before he slowly nodded.

"Okay... okay it makes sense," he said sniffling.

"You know you are going to have to apologize to your mom right?" Erik said wiping the rest of EJ's tears. "I know you were upset, but you really hurt her feelings. You were being mean to her all this morning."

"I know.." he whispered looking down and playing with his hands. Erik stood up with the boy still in his arms, making his way to their bedroom. He found his wife in the closet looking for something. She looked up seeing him in Erik's arms before Erik stood in front of her. He put EJ down, kneeling next to him.

"EJ got something to say to you," Erik said. She kneeled in front of him before he started speaking.

"Mommy, I'm sorry for hitting and yelling at you," he whispered. "I won't do it again," he said. She pouted looking at him, seeing how guilty he looked. She grabbed him pulling in into a tight hug before kissing him a kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you for apologizing beloved. I just want you to know that I would never do anything like that to your daddy, okay. I love him way too much to do such a thing." she said, moving the strands of hair that were in his face out of his face.

"I know, daddy told me that you guys trust each other," he said smiling as she smiled back.

"Ooh sounds like you learned a new word.." she said, acting surprised.

"I did! I did! A-And I trust you." he said as she smiled at him. Erik stood up grabbed him and placed him on the counter.

"And beloved.. if I ever do something to upset you, me, or your father, don't hesitate to let us know. It's better to talk about it than to just walk around angry, okay?" she told him as he nodded.

"Yeah, big fella.. don't be scared," Erik said tickling him as he laughed, with (Y/N) joining in and tickling him. "Alright, go in the living room with everyone else," Erik said placing him on the ground. He nodded running downstairs.

"We are never doing that again." She said. Erik winced at the statement.

"Well..." he trailed off.

"Erik, what did you do?"

"Well that whole little roleplaying thing last night did a little something.. so I went online and got you something. Well for me." he chuckled. He turned around grabbing an Amazon packet.

"How did you even-"

"Prime Delivery.." he smirked. She opened it to see an elf suit that was extremely explicit.

"C'mon, you know you want to be Santa's slutty helper," he said kissing her neck. She bit her lip but remembered that there was company downstairs

"Fine... but this happens upstairs," she warned him putting it back on the shelf. She turned around to leave,

"No problem!" he yelled after her.

"WITH THE DOOR LOCKED!"

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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doctorbitchcrxft · 2 months ago

Text

Ghostfacers | Supernatural Series Rewrite | Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Fem!Reader

Warnings: reader's a little traumatized by this one, angst, canon violence, canon gore, slightly NSFW (MDNI 18+ ONLY)

Word Count: 6023

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“Do we have to do this?” you asked Dean.

“Unfortunately, yeah,” he replied.

You, Dean, and Sam were heading toward the lair of “the Ghostfacers,” as they had dubbed themselves; otherwise known as the “mooks”— Dean’s words, not yours— you’d met at the Hell House in Texas.

After exchanging some awkward “hello”s with them, you settled into lawn chairs in the Ghostfacers’ “office,” otherwise known as Ed’s parents’ garage.

You and Dean had been to Batman Begins in theaters a few months prior, and from that experience, you knew neither of you would be capable of silence during this viewing of the Ghostfacers’ documentary.

With Dean on your right, Sam to your left, and the Ghostfacers sitting in front of you, you turned your attention to the projector one of them had set up and aimed at the garage door.

***

The screen faded in on Harry and Ed sitting in fancy chairs holding glasses of brandy and wearing suits.

“Hello. I am Harry Spengler”

“And I am Ed Zeddmore. Now if you have received this tape, you must be some sort of bigwig network executive. Well, today is your lucky day, mister.”

“Because the unsolicited pilot you are about to watch is the bold new future of ‘reality TV’,” Harry continued.

Ed hummed. “We know you've had it hard during the crippling writer's strike.”

“Lazy fat cats.”

“Who needs writers when you've got guys like us?”

Harry reached for a cheap dimmer switch.

***

“Why wouldn’t they edit that out?” you whispered to Dean.

“Skill issue,” Dean replied, smirking.

***

Ed appeared on-screen, voice carrying loudly through the basement once more. “Our team faced horrible horrors to bring you the footage that will change your world forever. So strap in for the scariest hour in the history of television.”

Harry stupidly continued, “In the history of your life…”

“Strap in for…”

“Ghostfacers!” Harry and Ed disjointedly exclaimed together.

Then, a horrific theme song started playing over the introduction to each of the Ghostfacers, and, to your surprise, Sam was introduced as well. The man in question went white when his face appeared on screen.

You snickered, but your laughter didn’t last long when you appeared next. Your name flashed across the screen in bold white letters while they played a clip of you pointing your finger in Harry’s face and yelling at him. Dean laughed at you, but again, his laughter was short-lived when he was introduced flipping off the camera, his finger censored by a weird drawing of a skull.

You turned to him smirking, and he jokingly rolled his eyes at you.

***

“You know,” Ed began, western music playing in the background of a shot of him and Harry walking forward, “it can get kind of hard balancing our daytime careers with our nighttime missions.”

“Yeah, but Ed and I pretty much call the shots at the Kinko's where we work, so we can usually pretty much get off by six every night?” Harry chimed in.

***

You shot a look at Dean.

***

The video continued. “Yeah, six o'clock. It used to be just, you know, you and I taking on the cases— just Harry and me.”

“Two lone wolves,” Harry added, his face appearing on-screen again.

“And two lone wolves need, uh… other wolves,” Ed finished.

***

“I can’t tell if I find their remarkable stupidity endearing or not,” you whispered to Dean.

***

“Morning, 'facers,” on-screen Ed announced.

“It's seven p.m., dude,” Spruce chimed in from behind the camera.

“It's morning to a Ghostfacer,” Harry said. “Corbett, what do we got, buddy?”

“Oh, I'm just putting up some of the—”

Ed cut Corbett off. “Yeah, this has got to go up here. That's got to go here. got to see the whole field. Markers, eraser— good job.”

Then, the video cut to Corbett introducing himself. “I first saw Ed putting up flyers down at the— the outlet mall in Scogan, so I- I read one, and I thought to myself, ‘huh. Where do ghosts come from?’ And now here I am.” He smiled awkwardly.

“Ed, your sister's abusing staff,” Harry said, appearing back on screen.

“That's adopted sister, thank you very much,” Ed replied.

It then cut to Maggie, the sister in question. “Ed has been obsessed with the supernatural since we were kids, y’know, and then he meets Harry at computer camp. And love at first geek.”

***

“I genuinely do enjoy her,” you whispered to Dean.

“What, you got a crush?” he whispered back.

“Hell, no. Harry can have her,” you said, nudging his cheek with your nose playfully.

***

“Spruce here.” He’d turned the camera around on himself. “What up, playa?” It then cut to him driving a cart picking up golf balls. “I am fifteen-sixteenths Jew, one-sixteenth Cherokee. My grandfather is a mohel, my great-grandfather was a tallis maker, and my great-great-grandfather was a degenerate gambler and had a peyote addiction.”

It cut back to the interior of the garage.

“Okay, people,” asserted Ed. “Let's cut the chatter and get on a mission. Okay? Morton house. One of our big fish. Alright, we all know the legend. Every four years, supposedly, this becomes the most haunted place in America.”

“The leap year ghost, some call it,” Harry added. “The ghost returns at midnight just as February 29th begins.”

“And no one has ever stayed the night, right?” Maggie chimed in.

Harry nodded. “Yeah, well, every testimony that we dug up, every eyewitness has cut and run well before midnight.”

“Well, that's all about to change, baby,” Ed commented.

Harry nodded proudly beside Ed. “Absolutely true, Ed. Absolutely true.”

***

Dean leaned down to you. “You think they’ve ever fucked?”

“Oh, definitely,” you answered.

***

Corbett handed Ed a coffee. “Mmm. That's good,” Ed told Harry. “It's French vanilla, 'cause the other day, you said how much you liked it, so…” Corbett cut his own rambling off.

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Then, Harry appeared in the driver’s seat of his car. “I like Corbett. I do. Shows up early, does his job, lot of good hustle out—” Suddenly, Corbett knocked on the window of the car and waved.

Harry awkwardly waved back. “I think he's got the hots for Ed, and that could spell trouble for the whole team.”

The camera cut back to Corbett. “Ed's kind of the more rugged, with that really golden… beautiful sort of beard. Definitely nice. Uh, and Harry's nice.”

While the antics on-screen continued, you reflected on how you’d ended up in this situation.

***

Coincidentally, Dean had always had an interest in busting up the Morton house. According to him, it was your “Grand Canyon” as Dean called it; whatever that meant. And with Dean running out of time, you and Sam were eager to appease him.

When you looked back at the screen, the Ghostfacers had broken into the Morton House, as had you and the Winchesters.

You remembered seeing the van Harry and Ed had driven their friends to the house in as you approached the house with Sam and Dean. From there, you and the brothers were as silent as possible while moving into the house.

***

Either Corbett or Ed had a camera on their head when you confronted them upon your entrance into the house.

“This is spooky, man. This place…” Ed trailed off.

Three flashlights appeared on screen with the three of you in shadow.

“Freeze!” Dean demanded. “Police officers! Don’t move! Let's see some identification.”

Corbett began to panic while you and the brothers confronted them. ““What— are we under— under arrest?”

“We are unarmed!” Ed squeaked.

“Oh, god,” Corbett mumbled, handing his wallet to you.

For the first time, your face was visible on-screen. “What’s with the get-up, Mr…” you trailed off, reading the I.D. in his wallet, “Corbett?”

“I know you,” said Ed.

Apparently, you’d recognized him at the same time. Still, you chose to keep up the act. “Yeah, sure. Lemme see your I.D.”

“Yeah, ho—” Ed snorted. “Whoa, hold on a second. I know all three of you guys. Yeah!”

“What?” Corbett asked.

“Holy shit!” Sam cursed.

Dean hadn’t caught on by that point. “What?”

“West Texas,” you rolled your eyes. “The Hell House. These fuckers almost got us killed.”

“Yeah, the hellhounds or something?” Sam remembered.

“Fuck me,” Dean sighed.

***

Pulling your eyes from the screen, you turned to Dean. “You’ve got a face for camera. Anybody ever tell you that?”

A chuckle rumbled deep in Dean’s chest while the interaction continued on-screen.

***

Ed had informed his friend Corbett that the three of you weren’t cops.

Dean was asking Ed where Harry was.

“He's running around, chasing ghosts,” Ed had told him.

“Okay, well, listen, you and Rambo need to get your girlfriends and get out of here,” Dean grumbled.

“Alright, listen here, chisel chest, okay?”

You snorted at Ed’s comment, both in the video and while watching it.

“We were here first. We've already set up base camp. We beat you.” On-screen Dean rolled his eyes, mockingly telling you, “They were here first.” He grabbed Ed’s shoulder.

Ed’s face paled, and he said, “Oh, god.”

***

You smiled proudly at your boyfriend as you watched the video.

***

“Where's your partner?” Dean growled in Ed’s face.

***

Dean leaned over to whisper to you as the video continued, “You look a little uncomfortable, sweetheart, you okay?”

He had obviously noticed the way you pressed your thighs together. “Fuck you,” you whispered in response. You turned your attention back to the video.

***

Spruce, Maggie, and Harry were poking around somewhere in the Morton House. They’d stumbled across the first of the death echoes you’d encountered that night.

Back in the living room, Dean was interrogating Ed. “What are you doing in the Morton House, Ed— on leap year— what are you thinking?”

“We're here to spend the night, okay? It's for our TV show,” Ed scoffed.

Sam’s eyebrows shot up as the camera turned to him. “What? Great. Perfect.”

“Yeah, nobody's ever spent the night before,” Corbett replied from behind the camera.

“Uh, actually, yeah, they have,” you said.

“Well, princess, we’ve never heard of them,” Harry replied.

“Don’t call me that!” you snapped, stepping up to him. “The ones that have, haven’t lived to talk about it!”

Ed shrank away from you. “Oh, come on, I don't believe you.”

*** Dean leaned down to your ear. “Can you yell at me like that?”

You shoved his head away from yours, cheeks burning.

***

“Look: missing-persons reports going back almost half a century.” Sam was showing Ed the research on the house you’d gathered. “John Graham stayed on a dare— gone. Julie Wilkerson— gone. There are tons more. All of them came to just stay the night through, always on a leap year. The only body they ever found was the last owner, Freeman Daggett.”

“These look legit,” said Ed.

“That’s because they are, dimwit,” you told him.

Sam kept going. “Look, Ed, we ain't got much time here, buddy. Starting at midnight, your friends are going to die.”

Harry, Maggie, and Spruce ran into the living room screaming about the apparition they saw in their bizarre ghost-classifying nomenclature.

“Hey, aren't those the dickheads from Texas?” Harry asked Ed, suddenly noticing the three of you were in the room.

“Alright, let's have this reunion across the street, guys,” Dean encouraged dryly.

Harry spoke over Dean as he continued to urge them outside. “Crap. What are you guys doing here?”

Maggie pulled up footage on her laptop of the apparition which you began to pay attention to. It was of a man in a sharp, 1920s-style suit, who then got blown away by an invisible gun shot.

You lightly hit Dean’s arm to get him to walk away from the group, and Spruce followed the three of you walking off with his camera. “Death echo, guys,” you said.

“Think we’re off on this?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, but what's it doing here? Did anybody get shot here?” Dean replied.

“No, not that we could find,” you told him.

“What’s a death echo?” Spruce piped up from behind the camera.

You sighed and turned to him. “Look, there’s a real problem here. But that ghost ain’t it.”

“What's a death echo?” Spruce repeated.

Dean was clearly exasperated. “Echoes are trapped in a loop, okay? They keep replaying how they died over and over and over again; usually in the place where they were ganked. It's about as dangerous as a scary movie.”

“So the echo’s not our goon,” you added. “Something else is, though.”

“You're right,” Dean nodded. “Alright, we need to get out of here, guys. Come on. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Pack it up.”

You helped the boys shove the Ghostfacers toward the door despite their rising protests.

“Wait! Wait!” Ed shouted. “Where's Corbett?”

***

“Oh, this poor bastard,” you whispered to Dean, who shot you an empathetic look.

***

The camera then cut to the feed rolling on the camera attached to Corbett’s head.

“I wish to communicate with the restless spirits here,” Corbett’s voice carried through the upstairs room. Then, the camera and the lights flickered. Corbett switched on his night vision. As soon as he flipped the camera around to himself, a ghostly, looming figure appeared behind him.

The camera cut back to the living room.

***

“That’s not a bad editing choice,” Dean told you.

You slapped him lightly, knowing poor Corbett’s fate.

***

“No man left behind,” Ed was saying on the screen.

Suddenly, Corbett’s scream echoed through the speakers in the garage. You shut your eyes and squeezed Dean’s hand, knowing the unfortunate fate Corbett had suffered.

Ed’s face appeared on screen when you reopened your eyes. “That was Corbett.”

The Ghostfacers were making a run for the second floor while you and the Winchesters protested.

“Guys!” Sam called. “Fuck!”

The camera cut to the remaining Ghostfacers searching for their friend among harrowing screams.

Spruce caught sight of you searching for the missing man. “Corbett!” you called.

“Help me!” Came his anguished reply.

The Winchesters took Spruce and began shoving him down the stairs with the rest of his group, the camera leaving you behind.

Dean made Spruce turn the camera off, which you thought was funny to watch back.

Back in the living room of the Morton House, the group was panicked. They tried to search all of the camera angles while Spruce turned his camera to you and the WInchesters bickering in the corner.

“Well, it’s 12:04, Dean,” Sam told his brother. “You good? You happy?”

“Yeah, I am happy,” Dean grumbled.

Sam continued his mockery. “ ‘Let's go hunt the Morton house,’ you said, ‘it's our Grand Canyon’.”

“Sam, I don’t wanna hear this,” Dean responded.

“You got two months left, Dean. Instead, we're gonna die tonight.”

“Lay off him, Sam,” you grunted as you picked up a chair and smashed it against the sealed front door as hard as you could.

“Whoa!” Spruce cried. “What the hell is going on, guys?”

“Every door, every window, every fucking exit of this house— they’re all sealed,” you announced to the room.

“Wh— Why are they sealed?” Maggie asked you.

Dean took over the explanation. “It's a supernatural lockdown, okay? Whatever took Corbett doesn't want us to leave, and it's no death echo. This is a bad motherfucker, and it wants us scared.”

“Or it just wants us,” Maggie suggested.

The EMF detector somewhere off screen went wild. The camera flickered, and Harry slid up to Maggie to hold her hand.

“Uh, guys, the camera's fritzing again,” Spruce told the group.

“Whoa. Whoa. Guys, the EMF's starting to spike. This is a big one!” Harry said.

“Everybody, stay close. There's something coming,” Sam instructed.

Another apparition appeared before the camera.

“That’s not the same echo!” you noted off-camera.

“Multiple echoes? What the hell's going on?” Dean’s frustrated grumbling came from behind the camera.

“Beats me,” Sam replied.

“Hey!” you cried, waving your arms in front of the echo’s face, form visible on-camera. “Hey, man, you’re dead! Hello!”

“What’s she doing?” Harry asked the Winchesters from behind the camera.

“It's rare, but sometimes you can shock an echo out of its loop if you can talk to the part of the ghost that's still human, but usually you have to have some kind of connection to the deceased,” Sam explained.

“You’re dead, man! Time’s up! Cross the veil, or whatever!”

The apparition flickered and turned around while the screen flickered.

“You guys hear that?” Harry whispered into the microphone.

You kept yelling at the ghost. “Yo, dude!” You jumped in front of it again. “You’re so very dead! Super dead! Wake up!” Suddenly a bright light appeared on the apparition’s stomach, and a train horn approached. It seemed as if the train hit the man as he flew backwards and disappeared.

You had cowered and covered your eyes to avoid potentially being hit by whatever was heading for the death echo.

“Where the hell did it go?” Harry asked.

The camera cut to footage of the outside of the Morton House.

***

“This is getting kinda painful,” Dean whispered to you.

“Absolutely,” you replied.

***

Back on screen, the group was following you, Sam, and Dean with the camera as you peeked around upstairs.

“Dude, there's no records of any of this here,” Dean grumbled. “No one got shot here. Obviously, no one got run over by a fuckin’ train.”

“Stay close,” you ordered the group.

“Did the echoes take Corbett?” Maggie asked from behind the camera.

“Yes. No. I don't know,” Dean huffed. “We don't know what's doing what here; that's what we're trying to figure out, okay?”

“Okay, look, um, death echoes are ghosts, okay?” Sam was now close to the camera and talking into it. “Now, ghosts, they usually haunt places where they lived or where they died.”

“Except these mooks didn't live or die here,” Dean added from a few feet ahead.

“So, what are they doing here?” Maggie asked. “Hey, give the lady a cigar.” Dean turned to the camera. “Alright, seriously, does looking at this nightmare through that camera make you feel better or something? I mean…” He trailed off, frustrated.

A string of disjointed replies ended in, “Uh, yeah. I think so.”

The smirk on Dean’s face faded. “Oh.” He kept walking forward. He led the group into a room where deer heads and kills of Freeman Daggett hung on the walls.

“Freeman Daggett, house's last owner, officially commended for twenty years of fine service at the Gamble General Hospital.” The camera turned to Sam, holding a broken frame with a certificate inside he’d just read from.

“He was a doctor?” you asked.

“Janitor,” Sam replied.

“This looks like his den. When'd you say he died— '64?” Dean chimed in.

“Yeah, heart attack,” you nodded.

“What are these, c-rations?” Maggie’s hand came out from behind the camera to point at a few objects around the room.

“Yeah, army-issued, three squares; like a lifetime supply,” Dean noted.

“God, is that all he ate?” You could almost see Maggie grimacing behind the camera.

“One-stop shopping,” Dean quipped.

***

“Hey,” Dean whispered as you continued watching, “this ‘Dean’ guy’s pretty funny.”

You rolled your eyes. “Egomaniac.”

***

You turned your attention back to the screen as Ed came into view. “Oh, come on, guys. This is ridiculous. I mean, how the hell is this supposed to find Corbett, huh? We should be digging up the fuckin’ floorboards right now.”

Maggie panned over to Sam. “Huh. ‘Survival Under Atomic Attack’.” He was holding a dusty pamphlet. “An optimist.”

Dean pried the safe open in the corner of the camera’s view. “Crap. Crap. Taxidermy. Okay. You said Daggett was a hospital janitor?”

You nodded.

“Ew,” he grimaced. “Got three toe tags here: one, death by gunshots, train accident, and suicide.”

“Oh, shit,” you sighed. “Well, hello, death echoes. Their bodies ‘ve gotta be somewhere in the house, then.”

“Daggett brought the remains home from the morgue. To… play,” Dean explained to the camera.

A chorus of disgusted sounds came from around the room of the Morton House.

Maggie moved the camera across a mirror and clearly startled herself. Dean tried to herd her closer, and the camera landed on you and Dean standing next to Sam. Then, the camera flickered, and you were gone.

You grimaced watching what happened to you. The room the ghost had brought you to smelled horrific, the scene was grotesque, and being in that room with Corbett… it was almost too much for you. You squeezed Dean’s hand at the memory.

Back on the screen, Dean was frantically shouting your name. You almost smiled at the sentiment.

“Where'd she go?” Spruce asked from behind the other camera.

Dean picked up your dropped flashlight. “(Y/N)!” he yelled.

The camera cut again, and as soon as it picked up, Dean was yelling for you again. Sam was, too, and the rest of the group was yelling for you and Corbett.

The camera swung around to face Maggie and Harry.

“God, I am so scared. I'm so scared,” Maggie said. “It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, Maggie.” Harry hugged her close to him before stooping to kiss her.

Then, the camera cut to Ed in a hallway.

***

Dean grumbled, “Sure, my girl’s missing, but cut to a fuckin’ love story.”

You kissed his cheek. “I’m back now. All good.”

***

On screen, Ed stumbled upon Maggie and Harry. He immediately flipped out. “My best friend... and my best sister. Are you banging my sister?!”

“No! No!” Harry shouted back.

“Hold my glasses,” Ed sneered.

“You got it,” Spruce said from behind the camera.

Ed jumped at Harry, albeit weakly, and the tussle carried on until Dean and Sam came to break it up.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Dean roared. “Cut it out! We're down by two people. (Y/N)! Sweetheart, answer me!”

“(Y/N/N)!” Sam called. “(Y/N)!”

Their voices became distant while Spruce stayed with the group recovering from the fight.

Then, the camera cut to a night-vision camera on the table in the room you’d been brought to.

***

You squeezed Dean’s hand tighter.

***

The camera was lying awkwardly on the table across from Corbett.

“Corbett!” you whispered from off-screen. “Corbett, buddy, wake up!”

“It’s My Party” by Leslie Gore was playing statically in the background.

You remembered the table in front of you had been set with a cake, confetti, and party hats.

“(Y/N)?” Corbett whispered weakly.

“Corbett, hey, you gotta keep listening to my voice, okay? I'm right here. Stay awake,” you urged him.

Off-screen, the ghost murmured, “Don’t listen.” He picked up a knife and moved behind Corbett. “It stops hurting, so don't worry.”

“Corbett, stay with me,” you pleaded.

You knew at that point you were struggling against your restraints.

“Stay with me!” your voice came from off-screen. “I’m right here, Corbett! Oh, god— no, no!”

Daggett stabbed Corbett through the throat.

***

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill these guys, I swear,” Dean muttered to you having watched you tear up as you relived the horror on-screen.

“Dean, it’s fine,” you whispered back. “I’m okay now.” You sniffed.

***

“Corbett! Where'd you guys go?” Harry called on-screen. “Dean, what are you doing?”

The camera pointed to Dean rummaging through Daggett’s belongings. “Okay, so Daggett was a cold war nut, okay? He was— he was an amateur taxidermist. He liked to slow dance with cadavers, and all he ate were c-rations, so what the hell are we looking for?!”

“Horrible little life,” Maggie commented.

“Dean, that’s it,” Sam realized.

Maggie turned the camera toward the younger brother.

“He was scared!” exclaimed Sam. He took off into another room.

Dean followed close behind.

Another camera closer to Corbett showed you on the opposite end of the table from him. On either side of you were two rotted corpses. The smell of that horrible room would never be erased from your mind.

“Get away from me,” you begged on-screen. You struggled even harder against your binds.

“This won't hurt,” Daggett sing-songed. “It's okay. It's okay. Relax. Relax.” He strapped a party hat onto your head.

The camera cut to Corbett, who was slumped over dead at the other end of the table.

***

“I swear, I’ll never forget what that looked like,” you whispered to Dean, referring to what Corbett’s corpse looked like six feet away from your face.

***

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you going?” Maggie asked from behind the camera, the video having cut back to Dean and Sam.

“Guys like Daggett back then, the ones who were really scared of the Russians,” Sam explained, “they built bomb shelters.”

“I'm guessing he's got one. I'll bet you it's in the basement,” Dean added.

Suddenly, Dean and Sam were cut off from Harry, Ed, and Maggie while Spruce was with them.

Dean yelled from behind the door, “It wants to separate us! Ed! listen to me! There's some salt in my duffel. Make a circle and get inside.” The group did as they were told despite some minor miscommunications.

Spruce’s camera showed Sam and Dean running down the basement stairs.

The camera cut back to the Ghostfacers getting in the salt circle.

“Harry, listen— listen to me, okay? listen. If we don't die... it's totally okay if you, uh, do my sister,” Ed told Harry.

Maggie pushed Ed from behind her camera.

“Ow!”

The camera flickered again.

“Hey guys, hey guys, it's coming again,” Maggie said.

The group huddled together as the lights continued to flicker around the Morton House, but Corbett appeared in front of them. He was bloody, the wound gnarly and gushing.

“Oh,” Ed muttered. “Corbett.”

Cutting back to Spruce, he had a question for Sam. “Hey, can I ask you something?” “What?” Sam asked.

“Earlier, you said he has three months left?”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “A while ago—” Dean cut him off. “No, no, no. We’re not gonna whine about our fuckin’ problems to some shitty reality show. I’m gonna do my fuckin’ job.”

“Is it cancer?” Spruce asked after a moment.

“Shut up,” Dean growled.

“You hear that?” asked Sam, shushing Spruce and Dean.

The camera cut back to you.

“I've been waiting for some more friends. I get lonely. But you're coming to my party, aren't you?” Daggett asked you, his melodic voice haunting.

You were crying by this point and trying to get to the dagger in your jacket sleeve. “Dean, help me!” you screamed, voice raw.

Dean squeezed your hand and traced circles on it with his thumb.

“Is that music?” asked Spruce, the video returning to Dean and Sam.

“Yeah, it's coming from behind this wall,” said Sam.

Dean shoved a cabinet away from the wall single-handedly.

“Wow, you're strong,” Spruce commented.

Dean flipped the camera off.

***

You laughed, but your joy was soon cut off by the camera returning to you.

***

“You’ll stay a good, long time,” Daggett sang, tracing your chin with his hand.

Then, Dean burst through the door to the bomb shelter. “(Y/N)!” He shot at Daggett while Sam untied you.

You hugged Sam briefly before throwing yourself into Dean’s arms. He hugged you close to him and buried his face in your hair.

Spruce panned his camera around the room to reveal the other guests at the party and Corbett, the new addition.

“Oh, no, Corbett,” Spruce sighed.

Back in the living room, Ed, Harry, and Maggie were still in the salt ring. The group realized the poor man was now a death echo.

The camera cut back to you, Spruce, Sam, and Dean.

“What's this Daggett guy's problem anyway?” Spruce asked you.

“Loneliness,” you said.

“What, he's never heard of a Realdoll?” Dean scoffed.

“Shut up,” you snorted. “He’s the… Norman Bates, stuff-your-mother kind of lonely. He threw himself a party, and the corpses he stole were the only ones that would come. If he wasn’t so scary, I think I’d feel bad for him. Anyway, so, at midnight, he sealed them in the bomb shelter and O.D.’d on horse tranqs upstairs.”

“How do you know this?” Sam asked.

“He told me,” you replied.

“Jesus,” Sam murmured.

“Okay, so now that he's dead, what? Same song, different verse, trying to get people to come to his party?” Dean wondered aloud.

“Pretty much, yeah. Stay forever,” Sam nodded.

Spruce paused and pointed the camera down to Sam’s and Dean’s guns. “Are those real bullets?”

“It’s rock salt,” replied Dean.

In the living room, Harry was quietly singing the Ghostfacers theme song to himself. Corbett kept coming in and out of view.

“We gotta try and pull him out of his loop. We have to,” Ed mumbled, more to himself than the others.

Ed stood to face Corbett.

“Ed?” Harry asked.

“Corbett. Corbett, it’s— Oh, god.”

“Don't cross the line of salt,” Harry insisted.

“I gotta do it, Harry.” He hesitated but stepped over the line of salt. “Corbett, listen to me. Okay, I'm not gonna hurt you. Listen. Listen. Oh, god. Corbett. Oh.”

“Get back!” Harry told his friend.

Corbett started to flicker, and Ed quickly moved back into the circle.

***

“This is such crap, (Y/N), they’re profiting off this guy’s death,” Dean whispered.

“Cool it, okay? I’ll handle it,” you said.

***

On the video, Dean was trying to break down the basement door still separating you, the Winchesters, and Spruce from the others.

Sam turned to face the camera. “Seriously, you’re still shooting?”

“It makes him feel better. Don't ask,” Dean responded, out of breath.

The video continued to show the Ghostfacers trying to snap Corbett out of it by playing into the crush he had on Ed while you and the brothers were fending off Daggett in the basement.

Harry convinced Ed to pretend to be in love with Corbett to snap him out of it.

Hesitantly, Ed stepped out of the circle again. “Corbett, look. Hey, it's just Ed, buddy. It's just me. Hey, hey, Corbett, listen to me. Listen to me. I— You meant... Corbett, you meant a lot to the team. You meant— You meant a lot to me. You know, never back down. I remember that, Corbett. I- I remember that. I remember because I love you, Corbett. I really, truly love you.”

“Hey,” Corbett said. “Ed?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Corbett, it's…” Ed trailed off, surprised by what he’d been able to do. “Corbett, yeah, it's me. It's me. look at me. You got to help us, man. you have to help us, Corbett. Please. please. Please help us right now.”

The camera cut back to the basement where you and Sam were holding shotguns and Dean was continuing to try and break down the door. Suddenly, Daggett appeared behind Dean.

“Dean, look out!” you screamed, shooting at Dagget. You missed, and your gun clicked to let you know you were out of rocksalt. “Fuck!”

Dean went sailing past your head into the wall, followed by Sam, and then Daggett kept stalking forward to you and Spruce.

Suddenly, Corbett appeared behind Daggett. In a flash of blinding light, both spirits were gone.

Spruce turned the camera toward you running to Dean and Sam on the floor.

“You okay, guys?” you asked them, helping them sit up.

Dean picked himself up, dusted himself off, and shoved the camera to point toward the floor.

***

You laughed at his sourpuss attitude.

***

The epilogue showed you and the Winchesters bidding the others goodbye with Ed voicing over the background. “Leap year, February 29th, the Morton House. A tragic day. A day of souls bound in torment, of lives held in cruel balance. But the Ghostfacers, they did the best that they could.”

“We lost a beloved friend, but we gained new allies,” Harry continued.

It then cut to the two in their suits again.

“We know this much: that every day, including today, is a new beginning. We learned more than we can say in the brutal feat of the Morton House.”

***

Ed’s dramatic, phony voice was making you angry given the situation.

“You’re tense,” Dean whispered to you. “Relax.”

***

“You know, Corbett, we just— we just like to think that you're out there, watching over us,” Ed was saying back on-screen.

“As far as we're concerned, you're not an intern anymore. You have more than earned full Ghostfacer status. Plus, it would be cool to have a ghost on the team,” Harry added.

“And here we were thinking that, you know, we were teaching you and all this time you were teaching us, about heart, about dedication, and about how gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day. Thank you, Alan J. Corbett.”

“Go well into that starry night, young Turk. Go well,” Harry finished.

The camera cut to a clip of Corbett, and you were genuinely saddened for the sweet young man.

“Come on, Spruce, I gotta get all this stuff packed up!” he was saying to his friend.

“So, pack and talk!”

“I don't know what to say.”

“Say what comes to mind. This is one of our confessional moments, Corbett, so confess,” Spruce pressed. “What did you think was going to happen tonight? What do you think is going to happen on this trip?”

“I think tonight, I really do, I think all of our dreams are going to come true. Does that sound stupid?” Corbett smiled.

“Kind of does, yeah.”

“In Memory of Alan J. Corbett, 1985-2008 King of the Impossible,” flashed across the screen, and the video ended.

***

Genuinely, you and the WInchesters were stunned.

All of the Ghostfacers stood and turned toward you, prompting the three of you to stand as well.

“So, guys, what do you think? Are you alright?” Ed asked.

“You know, I kind of think it was half-awesome,” Dean nodded dryly.

You fought a smirk off your face at the thought of the snarky comment that was sure to follow.

“Half-awesome? That— that's full-on good, right?” Maggie rushed out happily.

Sam nodded and spoke evenly. “Yeah, um, I mean it's bizarre how you all are able to honor Corbett's memory while grossly exploiting the manner of his death. Well done.”

In the meantime, you discreetly left a backpack under the computer table. You knew Dean was the only one who’d caught sight of you and that he’d have some questions for you later.

“Corbett gave his life searching for the truth, and it's our job over here to share it with the world,” Ed told the two brothers.

“Right. Well, um, our experience, you know what you get when you show the world the truth?” Sam continued.

“A straitjacket. Or a punch in the face. Sometimes both,” Dean added.

“Oh come on, guys, don't be 'facer haters just because we happen to have gotten the footage of the century,” Harry protested.

“You got us there.” Dean held his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, c’mon, guys. We gotta hit the road,” you said, walking past the brothers toward the door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, where you goin’, dollface? We didn’t really have much time to, uh, rekindle our connection,” Ed awkwardly flirted, chasing after you.

You scoffed. “ ‘Our connection’? What the fuck are you—”

Dean got between you and Ed. “We’re leaving now.”

Ed backed off immediately. “Yeah! Yeah, okay. You, uh—”

“Shut up already, will you?” Dean grumbled, leading you out of the door with a hand on the small of your back.

“Bye, guys,” Sam told them.

As Dean led you away from the house, Sam turned to you. “What’d you do? We clean?”

You stopped by the door of the Impala, smirking when you heard someone— possibly Ed— scream, “N0!” in the distance.

“Electromagnet. Every tape and hard drive they have is clean,” you grinned.

Sam mockingly sighed, “The world just isn't ready for the Ghostfacers,” as he ducked down into the car.

“It's too bad. I kinda liked the show,” Dean remarked, closing his door after settling in his car seat.

“It had its moments,” Sam noted.

“That theme song is abhorrent though,” you chimed in. “And a total ear worm.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll be stuck in my head for at least the next hundred miles.”

Series Rewrite Taglist: @polireader @brightlilith @atcamillanorrman @jrizzelle @insomnia-bookworm @procrastination20 @mrs-liebgott @djs8891 @tiggytaylor @staple-your-mouth @jesstherebel @rach5ive @strawberrykiwisdogog @bruhidkjustwannaread @mxltifxnd0m @sunshine-on-marz @big-ol-boat @mgchaser @capncrankle @chervbs @simpingdeadcharacters @nesnejwritings @stillhere197 @tearsforhan @take-it-on-the-run @iloveyou2mia @maxinehufflepuffprincess @ohgeehowdigethere @seninjakitey @berarenado @s0urw00lf @princessleahorgana @quarterhorse19 @isla-finke-blog @silverdoragon @karacaroldanvers @gayandfairycore @examishbookwyrm @star-yawnznn @real-sharena-h @fandomloverrr @metalmonki @onlyangel-444 @yu-winchester @benniwiththefanni @daisychaingirl @immagods @missmieux @yoongi-holland @littledebbieinabigworld

#dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x you #dean x reader #dean x y/n #dean x you #dean winchester #supernatural #supernatural series rewrite #spn #spn series rewrite

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kingofbodyrolls · 4 months ago

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For this rainbow, I finally picked up my professional camera again. The last images stored there tells me that the last time I used it was the 1st of December 2023. Wild. But I picked it up thanks to this pretty rainbow, which was actually a double rainbow. So pretty. This image is made up of three into a panorama shot, and Lightroom was a bit funky with putting them together, so please don't mind the badly processed house in the middle; no, we're not looking at that 😂

For people who want a wall of text status update, it's under the cut.

How are you all doing? I'm hanging in there. Not active much, but I still haven't gotten myself into deleting my tumblr app. So I still see and get all your notifs, even if I don't reply right away! I'm still taking time off, trying to figure out what I want to do with the blog for the future... I have not written a fanfic in some time now, but I have two finished stories that are ready to be published, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure about a lot of things these days... I've had dark days, written a lot of sad and dark poems (that will go on my sub blog some time in the future), and I've begun to write an original story. It's really fun; about magic, witches and mages; about good and evil and all the gray in between. It will probably bore you, but it's fun to write, even though I don't think anyone would read it except for a few friends (even though this thing might be the longest thing I'll write, turning into either two or three books lol).

Serotonin boost I get happy when I get notifs with comments and/or reblogs of my stories; it really touches my heart. To be honest, this is why I left/taking time off. I've always felt that interaction was low, and my stupid brain will not let me stop comparing myself to others, so it slowly killed my drive for writing and posting. If no one interacts, what's the point of posting? If no one interacts, what's the point of writing? But I love writing, and it's one of my creative outlets, so I couldn't let that go completely, hence I started writing original stories instead; no ones gonna read them anyway, but I can still play with characters, world building and storytelling. Those are the things I loved about fanfics---and I still do, don't get me wrong. But I feel so discouraged being on here. But I'm happy to know that a few people still care.

The Downfall This also made it quite hard for me to read; because I felt so unmotivated... I haven't read much this month at all. I tried to read a fanfic this Monday, didn't finish it and haven't picked it up since. Honestly, I've just been watching documentaries because I'm in a (tumblr) slump. I feel drained though; I feel like I've given so much, and I love it. I love making people happy, leaving lovely reviews, and it's as much for myself as it is for making another person happy---but to be honest, it has drained me. I know I shouldn't ask for anything in return, but I feel imbalanced. Like I'm not being filled with much love, if that makes sense? I don't really feel appreciated, but don't get me wrong, I don't feel hated (yeah, I'm so good at being black and white), sorry---I know I sound very pessimistic. But you guess have always been so kind to me, and I love you a lot, and I have a few super lovely mutuals and friends that are lovely internet friends that I adore, so I wanted to be real with all of you. You can hate me for it if you want to. Go ahead.

I don't think I'm going to make a recommend list this month. I haven't really read anything, so it'll be really small. And I don't like the pressure of it anymore... which is why for a long time I've thought about not doing them anymore. Maybe some day I will again in the future. But I'd still love to make rec list on the member's birthdays! And I think this will help me, take some pressure off myself (that I've created myself), so I'll still read and rec, it will just be slower---whenever I feel like it, and not because I have to read to make a monthly rec list. This isn't my job, I'm not getting paid doing all of this, and the amount of time I've been spending on both reading and writing is more than 37+ hours a week, sooo. I have to slow down.

A part of me thinks that I flew too fast, too high and too close to the sun, lol. I'm still gonna be here, you can still send in asks for rec list or whatever you want, all is welcome (except hate, because then I'll simply just delete my blog, my mental health can't take that).

To post, or not to post? Should I post the two stories that I have? Both of them are for the series Friendcation.

And for the unfinished mermaid stories I still have left, I hope I'll finish them in the future; when, I don't know. Maybe one day I'll feel love for them again, to finish them. I have them all planned out, but like I mentioned before, with low interaction, I'm really not motivated to finish them, even though part of me really want to for the like five people that are so sweet and invested, and always comments and reblogs (you guys know who you are, and I love you so fucking much 🥰).

To all the stories I'll probably never write...

I still have some other unfinished but planned stories, and I'm gonna list them here, just for the hell of it. Don't know if people would have found them interesting anyway, but here goes:

Words on a Page (a Namjoon x reader, idol!au where reader is a fanfiction writer and interviewer for a magazine and has to interview BTS). Author's comment: probably never gonna write it. It has been done before, and it was just a very very silly dream I had.

Songs of The Heart (a Jimin x reader, musician!au where Jimin is a single father and reader moves into the house next to his, hear his lonely songs etc, they meet, talk, very angsty, sad and nostalgic and 'Who' coded). Author's comment: this idea came to me after listening to 'who' and then thinking about Jimin being my next door neighbor, yeah, that's it. Don't know if this will ever get written.

IT Support (a Jimin x reader, office!au where Jimin is your nerdy coworker, but a freak in the sheets, lol). Author's comment: this has honestly been on my list for years, but I never written anything for it, and I probably never will, even though I've made the banner and all.

I do have a few more, but I've already scraped those, and then there's the four mermaid stories to add to the list. I'm probably mostly excited about the mermaid stories, and those would be my priority if I ever get back into writing fanfiction again.

I swear, I'm almost finished... Okay, this whole thing has gotten incredibly long. Sorry. Before I end this post, I just want to say how happy and grateful I am to each and everyone of you. I've met some incredible nice people on here, some really caring ones. I'll never forget that. And I'll never forget each wonderful and lovely comment, some people have really helped me, motivated me when I felt low, and when I wanted to stop writing a few months back. Thank you. I kept going, and I wish I could keep going for you, making something special, for the special people I met here. I actually really wanted to do requests for you guys in hopes that it would motivate me into writing, but I just don't know. I still want to give so much back to the people who have hyped me up, so I'm going to tag a few of you lovely people--- if you have a request for a story, you're welcome to message me or send me an ask. I don't know if or when I'll write it, but in case I get a bit of motivation, I have some things I could write from, so if you want to, you can send me a request (just keep in mind the story will probably be a one-shot from 10-20k max or maybe shorter, lol, you never know with me). You don't have to send me a request, I simply want to give back to some lovely people. I wish I could hug you.

@letjungcoook7 @honeybloomyyyy @babystarcandyjk97 @minpdrecs @bobathi @allie-is-a-panda @back2bluesidex @gimeow @antisocial-mochi267

These are but just a few of the people that have supported me on there, either by commenting, reblogging, ask, messaging--you name it. I could list many others, and one day I might make a post celebrating all mt lovely mutuals, that means a lot to me. Thank you for interacting; you've (as long with others) helped me when times were tough. Thank you.

I had actually planned to open a "recommend a fic" section/box, but I'm not sure about that. I still have so many fics on my to read list, and right now I don't want to pile more onto it. Might do it in the future, when I've finally made it through my own lists.

Okay, I have to end this post for real now.

I'm still on tumblr, I still have my app. I deleted my discord app on my phone, but I'm still part of the servers I was before, I'm just not active. It's better for me that way right now, because it all got to be too much. I was just reminded of how much of a failure I feel like (no, we're not getting into that not, store it away). But you can always contact me here. I'm lurking sometimes. I look forward to reading in a more leisurely pace and hopefully not feeling pressured to make the rec lists as I did before (even though just for the completionist in me I want to finish them for just this year, lol).

Okay. If you read this far---thank you, I adore you, I love you, you're nice, keep going 💜

#lissa updates #lissa talks #personal

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years ago

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In the ruins of Pompeii, there is a room inside a house where two men were painting on the day Mt. Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

The master painter was at work on the fresco itself, twining vines in green, men and women looking out of the image to one side. His partner, probably an apprentice or lesser, younger painter, was laying down fresh plaster nearby. We know it was fresh because the pumice left significant pockmarks in it as it dried that we can still see today.

There are holes where a shelf stood holding the different colors of paint, in the wall just below the unfinished fresco. We found jars of paint on the floor - red green blue white yellow black. We found his tools, the brushes and the pot of lime that kept the paint wet.

He spilled lime on the painting.

We can tell that, too. It is caked clear as day over the unfinished work.

In a documentary I am watching, an Italian anthropologist discussing the moment of eruption looks to the cameraman and says, with real sincerity, "We found their tools, but we didn't find them. We hope that they ran away, that they survived."

Next door, a baker left his livestock behind when he fled. We found the skeletal remains of the animals who helped to move the millstone, but we did not find the baker.

Not that we are certain of, anyway.

I just wanted to take a moment to think about a modern Italian anthropologist looking at unfinished paintings and bread turned to stone by ash and time, hoping to himself that those people made it out in time.

We are separated by almost two thousand years, but we still have empathy for lives facing terror beyond their understanding. We still hope against hope that two painters ran out of town and made a new life somewhere else, that they escaped before the final pyroclastic flows descended.

We hope the baker moved to another town.

We recognize ourselves in what was left behind, and hope that these people - who could have been us, but for a trick of time and place - had a fighting chance to survive.

I just.

Sometimes, I love people.

I love us.

#history #pompeii #mt. Vesuvius #mount vesuvius #vesuvius #volcano #italy #people have always been people

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whileiamdying · 6 months ago

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All the Films in Competition at Cannes, Ranked from Best to Worst

The twenty-two films that premièred in the 2024 festival’s main program offered much to savor and revile.

By Justin Chang May 26, 2024

The seventy-seventh annual Cannes Film Festival came to a startling and joyous conclusion on Saturday night, when the competition jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, awarded the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest honor, to “Anora,” a funny, harrowing, and finally quite moving portrait of a sex worker’s madcap New York misadventures. It was startling because the movie, though one of the best-received in the competition, had not been widely tipped for the top prize, which seldom goes to a U.S. film; with “Anora,” Sean Baker becomes the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick did, for “The Tree of Life” (2011), thirteen years ago. And it was joyous not only because the award was bestowed on a worthy and remarkable film but because Baker used the occasion to deliver the best, most eloquent and impassioned acceptance speech I’ve ever heard a Palme winner give.

Reading from prepared remarks, Baker singled out two other filmmakers in the competition, Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, as among his personal heroes. He dedicated the award to sex workers everywhere, a fitting tribute from a filmmaker who has put their lives front and center, with drama, humor, and empathy, in movies like “Starlet” (2012), “Tangerine” (2015), and “Red Rocket” (2021). He tossed some exquisite shade in the direction of the “tech companies” behind the so-called streaming revolution—including, presumably, Netflix, which came away as one of the night’s big winners; its major acquisition of the festival, Jacques Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez,” won two prizes. And, in a moment that drew rapturous applause, Baker delivered a plea on behalf of theatrical films, declaring, “The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theatre.”

I was fortunate to see all twenty-two films in the Cannes competition on the big screen, projected under superior conditions in houses packed with fellow movie lovers. It’s my hope that, when these movies are released in the U.S., as the great majority of them likely will be, you will seize the chance to see them on the big screen as well—even “Emilia Pérez,” which Netflix may not keep in theatres for long, but whose bold dramatic and stylistic risks have the best chance of winning you over if they have your undivided, wide-awake attention.

I have ranked the movies in order of preference, from best to worst. Here they are:

1. “Caught by the Tides”

Jia Zhangke, a Cannes competition veteran, has long been the cinema’s preëminent chronicler of modern China (“Mountains May Depart,” “Ash Is Purest White”), mapping its social, cultural, and geographical complexities with great formal acumen, and also with the longtime collaboration of his wife, the superb actress Zhao Tao. Jia’s latest work, drawing on an archive of footage shot in the course of roughly two decades, unfurls a story in fragments, about a woman (Zhao) and a man (Li Zhubin) who fall in love, bitterly separate, and have a melancholy reunion years later. It’s an achievement by turns fleeting and monumental: a series of interlocking time capsules, a wrenching feat of self-reflection, and a stealth musical, in which Zhao dances and dances, standing in for millions who have learned to sway and bend to history’s tumultuous beat.

2. “All We Imagine as Light”

As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début (after her 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing”) would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration. Winner of the festival’s Grand Prix, or second place, it tells the story of two roommates, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), who work as nurses at a Mumbai hospital. It teases out their personal circumstances—Prabha’s estrangement from her unseen husband, Anu’s frowned-upon romance with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon)—with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory. (A forthcoming Sideshow/Janus Films release.)

3. “Grand Tour”

The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (“Tabu,” “Arabian Nights”) delivered some of the most virtuosic filmmaking in the competition—as the jury recognized by giving him the Best Director prize—with this characteristically yet extraordinarily playful colonial-era travelogue. Shifting between color and black-and-white, set in 1917 but full of fourth-wall-breaking anachronisms, the movie tells a story of sorts about a roving British diplomat (Gonçalo Waddington) and a fiancée (Crista Alfaiate) he’s in no hurry to marry. But its true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.

4. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

It’s impossible to absorb this blistering domestic drama without thinking of its dissident director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who recently fled Iran after being sentenced to prison and a flogging. (His appearance at his film’s première made for one of the most emotional moments in recent Cannes memory.) Shot entirely in secret, the story follows a Tehran-based husband (Missagh Zareh) and wife (Soheila Golestani) who are increasingly at war with their progressive-minded young-adult daughters (Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki) during nationwide political protests led by women. The result is a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

5. “Anora”

The director Sean Baker is near the height of his storytelling powers with this dazzling (and now Palme d’Or-winning) portrait of a Manhattan strip-club dancer (a revelatory Mikey Madison) who impulsively marries the ultra-spoiled son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch. Much comic chaos ensues, some of it pushed past the brink of plausibility, but Baker’s multifaceted love for his characters proves infectious and sustaining, as does his belief that acts of unexpected kindness can redeem even the darkest nights of the soul. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

6. “The Shrouds”

Early on in this elegantly sombre yet mordantly funny new movie, which stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce, the director David Cronenberg, a master of cerebral horror, unveils his latest invention: a technologically advanced burial shroud that allows people to watch a loved one’s body decomposing in the grave. So begins a drolly fluid inspection of classic Cronenberg themes—the deterioration of the flesh, the instability of the image, the paranoia-inducing incursions of technology into every aspect of life—but imbued with a nakedly personal dimension that the director has noted in interviews; the story was inspired by his wife’s death, in 2017, from cancer.

7. “Megalopolis”

In this legendarily long-gestating passion project, which I’ve written about at length, Francis Ford Coppola posits that our fragile, battered civilization is headed the way of the Roman Empire. The grimness of that prospect is unsurprising from a director accustomed to peering deep into the heart of American darkness (the “Godfather” movies, “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now”). For all that, the filmmaking here glows with a particularly hard-won optimism, even a welcome sense of play—borne out by an ensemble of actors, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and especially Aubrey Plaza, who fully embrace Coppola’s rhetorical and conceptual flights of fancy.

8. “The Substance”

Sympathetic or sadistic? Feminist or misogynist? Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, which won the festival’s award for Best Screenplay, has been one of the competition’s more polarizing hits, which is unsurprising; divisiveness should be expected from a story about an aging actress and TV fitness guru who, desperate to regain her youthful bod of yesteryear, effectively splits herself in two. Whether the outlandish premise (think “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by way of “Death Becomes Her”) and its blood-gushing fallout withstand intellectual scrutiny, there’s no doubting the ferocity of the two leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, or Fargeat’s sheer filmmaking verve as she pushes her ideas to their sanguinary conclusions.

9. “Motel Destino”

Just a year after the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz appeared in competition with a surprisingly stiff-corseted English period drama, “Firebrand,” it was bracing to watch him rebound with the competition’s most sexually uninhibited and flagrantly horny title; corsets don’t apply here, and even underwear proves blissfully optional. Set at a seedy roadside motel where the clientele never stops moaning, it’s a feverishly shambling erotic thriller starring three very game actors (Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, and Fábio Assunção) in a romantic triangle that plays like James M. Cain with sex toys—“The Postman Always Cock Rings Twice,” as it were.

10. “Emilia Pérez”

A trans-empowerment musical set against the backdrop of Mexico’s drug cartels might sound like a dubious proposition on paper, and, for the many detractors of this genre-melding big swing from the French director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet,” “The Sisters Brothers”), what actually made it onto the screen was no better. But I was disarmed from the start by Audiard’s quasi-Almodóvarian vibes, his touchingly imperfect embrace of song-and-dance stylization, and, most of all, his three leads: the remarkable discovery Karla Sofía Gascón, a scene-stealing Selena Gomez, and a never-better Zoe Saldaña. All three (along with Adriana Paz) were recognized with the festival’s Best Actress prize, awarded collectively to the movie’s ensemble of actresses; Audiard also won the Jury Prize. (A forthcoming Netflix release.)

11. “Oh, Canada”

After a tense trilogy of dramas about male redemption through violence (“First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener”), the writer and director Paul Schrader has taken a gentler turn with an adaptation of “Foregone,” a 2021 novel by the late Russell Banks. (It’s his second Banks adaptation, after the 1997 drama “Affliction.”) In exploring the fragmented consciousness of an aging documentary filmmaker (played at different ages by Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi), Schrader bravely forsakes the narrative fastidiousness of his recent work and takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning, to formally ragged but sincerely moving effect.

12. “The Girl with the Needle”

This stark and terrifying black-and-white drama from the Swedish-born, Polish-based director Magnus von Horn (“Sweat”) was perhaps the competition’s bleakest entry. Set in Copenhagen immediately after the First World War, it pins us so mercilessly to the hard-bitten perspective of Karoline (an excellent Vic Carmen Sonne), a factory seamstress who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, that we scarcely notice her story shifting in a different, more sinister direction. It’s a bitterly hard-to-stomach brew of a movie, at once hideous and beautifully made, with a chilling supporting turn by Trine Dyrholm as a friend whose interventions turn out to be anything but benign.

13. “Three Kilometres to the End of the World”

The setting of this well-observed but emotionally opaque drama, from the Romanian actor turned director Emanuel Pârvu, is a small rural village where a closeted teen-age boy, Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), is brutally beaten after being caught in an intimate moment with a male traveller. Pârvu teases out the legal, psychological, and moral fallout with the pitch-perfect performances and laserlike formal focus that have become hallmarks of new Romanian cinema. But, though the movie is persuasive enough as an indictment of small-town religious fundamentalism and homophobia, it proves curiously incurious about Adi’s perspective, to the detriment of its own human pulse.

14. “Kinds of Kindness”

After his Oscar-winning period romps “The Favourite” (2018) and “Poor Things” (2023), the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scales back—but goes long—with a sprawling, increasingly tedious compendium of comic cruelty. My favorite of the film’s three disconnected stories, all featuring the same actors, is the one where Jesse Plemons (the ensemble M.V.P., as the jury recognized with its Best Actor award) plays Willem Dafoe’s Manchurian candidate; my least favorite is the one where Emma Stone joins a sweat-worshipping sex cult. The one where Stone slices off her finger and cooks it for Plemons falls—much like the movie in Lanthimos’s over-all œuvre—somewhere in the middle. (A Searchlight Pictures release, opening June 21st in theatres.)

15. “Bird”

My admiration for the English filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”) is such that I’m eager to revisit her latest rough-and-tumble coming-of-age story and find that I undervalued it. Arnold is certainly skilled at integrating recognizable actors, which in this case includes Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, into her grottily realist frames, and she has an appealing lead performer in Nykiya Adams, as a twelve-year-old girl who overcomes persistent abuse and neglect. But the story may lose you—as it lost me—with a magical-realist turn that magnifies, rather than minimizes, the tortured-animal symbolism that has often dogged Arnold’s work.

16. “Beating Hearts”

An exchange of insults at a high-school bus stop provides a saucy meet-cute for a good girl (Mallory Wanecque) and a ne’er-do-well boy (Malik Frikah); so begins a raucous and endearing love story for the ages, in which the director Gilles Lellouche, with outsized glee and little discipline, merrily appropriates the conventions of classic Hollywood musicals and gangster flicks. The result is much too long at nearly three hours—the story spans several years, with Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil playing older versions of the two leads—but I can’t say I didn’t warm to its rambunctious cornball charm.

17. “Limonov: The Ballad”

Why make a film about Eduard Limonov, the globe-trotting Russian dissident poet and punk provocateur reviled for his pro-fascist sympathies? The filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov never musters a satisfying answer in this muddled English-language bio-pic, despite an energetically uninhibited central performance by Ben Whishaw and a cheeky panoply of filmmaking techniques—jittery camerawork, lengthy tracking shots—meant to catch us up in the épater-la-bourgeoisie exuberance of Limonov’s revolt. Considering his earlier work, I prefer the rebel-youth vibes of “Leto” (2018) and the dazzling cinematic assaults of “Petrov’s Flu” (2021), both of which also screened in competition here.

18. “Parthenope”

Nearly every new picture from the Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino could be reasonably called “The Great Beauty,” the title of his gorgeous 2013 cinematic tour of Rome. (It left that year’s Cannes empty-handed, but won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.) His latest work remains most intriguing for its ambivalent but still sensually overpowering vision of the director’s home town, Naples, from which springs a modern-day goddess, named after Parthenope, a Siren from Greek mythology. She’s played by Celeste Dalla Porta, a great beauty indeed and an empathetic screen presence, though only fitfully does her character seem worthy of this movie’s epic enshrinement.

19. “Wild Diamond”

Another disquisition on beauty and its discontents, this time from the débuting French writer and director Agathe Riedinger. She hurls us the life and busy social-media feed of a nineteen-year-old, Liane (a terrific Malou Khebizi), who has nipped, tucked, and tailored every part of herself to realize her dream of being selected for a hot new reality-TV series. Part influencer-culture cautionary tale, part bad-girl Cinderella story, the movie glancingly suggests the soul-rotting effects of beauty worship, but it falls victim to the trap that Liane is trying to avoid: in a sea of worthy candidates, it doesn’t especially stand out.

20. “The Apprentice”

Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama about his early rise to fame and wealth under the mentorship of the attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage. Shot to evoke cruddy nineteen-eighties VHS playback, the movie is well acted by Strong, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and an increasingly makeup-buried Sebastian Stan as Trump himself, depicted from the start as a sack of shit that gets progressively shittier. It’s not dismissible, but it’s hardly the stuff of revelation, either.

21. “Marcello Mio”

In this trifling meta-comedy from the French filmmaker Christophe Honoré (previously in the 2018 Cannes competition with the lovely “Sorry Angel”), the actress Chiara Mastroianni embarks on a strainedly whimsical personal odyssey to examine the legacy of her late father, the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, and her own conflicted place therein. To that end, she spends much of this overstretched movie in “8½” and “La Dolce Vita” black-suited drag as she navigates a roundelay of industry in-jokes; among the French cinema luminaries making appearances are Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, and, most welcome, Chiara’s mother, Catherine Deneuve.

22. “The Most Precious of Cargoes”

The French director Michel Hazanavicius continues his uneven post-“The Artist” run with this animated Second World War fable, adapted from a 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg (and narrated by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant). It has an affecting opening stretch, in which a baby girl, thrown by her desperate father from an Auschwitz-bound train, is rescued and raised in secret by a woodcutter’s kindhearted wife. But when the child’s provenance is discovered, stoking local antisemitism, the movie becomes a bathetic wallow in Holocaust imagery, drowned in an Alexandre Desplat score whose every surge turned my heart increasingly to stone. ♦

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