#the way he not only takes her hand but brings it closer to him??? i-

[mommynott]

Slick Surfaces

Theodore Nott x Reader

Summary: Your first date with the hockey player ends up back at the ice rink and things seem to get a little slippery, not that you or Theo are complaining. This is my hockey!theo series. If you haven’t already, head over to the first part!

Warnings: 18+, MDNI, SMUT, Chars 18+, modern AU, pro hockey au, hockey!theo, nipple play, teasing, oral, pussy eating, masturbation, mutual orgasm, praising, dirty talk, semi-public, Theo being the munch he is

"Come on, you'll see…" Theo held a sly grin on his chiseled face, leading you into the empty ice rink. The dim lighting casts a dark and romantic ambiance over the vast space. You two had just finished a dinner date and Theo had surprisingly brought you to the arena. Why are we here?

Following him, a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty lingered within you. "Seriously, why are we here?" You asked through a cute giggle, scanning the space around.

Your voices echoed around the rink, he was leading you up the stairs of the bleachers, the chilliness evoking something between you both. “I’m going to show you…Just how fun hockey can be…” Your heart skipped a beat, was this going to lead to something?

Theo continued walking you toward the top of the bleachers, his smirk growing wider as he guided you onto the highest tier. "See…" His ocean blues met with yours while he gestured towards the ice. "…just the two of us…In the rink…No one around to interrupt us…"

It was obvious Theo was hinting at something more but fuck. You didn’t mind it. Not in the least. The date you two had together was absolutely perfect. Better than you could have even imagined.

“You’re right…just us two…” Whispering back to him, you could hear the sultry tone dripping out with ease. Theo reached out and took your hand in his, lacing his fingers through yours before scooting closer to you.

Not many people would think that a hockey arena could be romantic…sexy… but Theo did. In fact, bringing a girl here and ravishing her was a fantasy he always had. He just had to play his cards right…”You have the most beautiful eyes, Tesoro…” He husked, his face growing closer to yours.

At this point, you swore you could hear your heart pounding in your damn head. “You really think so?” Theo’s gaze flickered between your own, that same sly grin twitching on his lips.

“Oh, I know so…”

A low and deep growl rolled smoothly from his lips. His Italian accent seeming more prominent. But he didn’t hesitate any longer. Theo had been holding off the whole date. —Which was extremely difficult in the first place.

His free hand cupped your cheek roughly before smashing his soft lips to yours. Fuck. “Cazzo- Your lips…so fuckin’ soft.” Murmuring between the kiss, his tongue teased the crease of your lips, practically begging for an entrance.

“F-fuck” The softest little whimpers escaped your throat while the steamy kiss deepened into an intense make-out. Theo’s needy cock was rock fucking hard already, your panties a dampened mess.

Snaking his hand from your cheek, he wrapped it within your silky smooth locks, pressing you closer to him. But the other hand? It remained locked with yours. Feeling his thumb slowly grazing over your soft flesh. “You taste fuckin’ divine, bambina…”

The foreign pet name skated from his lips, both of your breathing getting heavier as the sensual yet rough make-out session only seemed to escalate. Theodore slowly began to lay you back against the cold metal bleacher.

“As do you, Theo…” your voice breathy and light, Theo could already smell the arousal wafting all around you. Only kicking his animalistic instincts into overdrive. His lips sloppily trailed down from your own. Across your cheek…

“Let…”

His hungry kisses fell from your cheek to your jawline. Taking his tongue and dragging it from the end of your lobe all the way down to your chin.

“…Me…”

A shiver ran down your spine, goosebumps pricking down your body as he swiftly dropped his mouth to the side of your neck. Sucking and teasing your sensitive skin. Surely leaving little love bites on his journey.

“…Taste…”

Soft moans were now freely spilling from your swollen lips, tilting your head to the side, giving Theodore better access to you. Your hair sprawled across the grey metal. He licked down to your collarbone, his free hand reaching up to grab one of your breasts, firmly massaging it as he groaned from the feeling.

“…All of you-“

Those dead eyes of his seemed to grow darker by the second, staring up at you as the hand that once locked with yours rubbed up and down your thigh. Waiting for your answer, knowing this could be risky.

“Please…gods- please fucking taste me.” Aching, begging Theo for more, you could see the smirk growing wider on his face. The dim lighting of the rink casting an orange glow across his features.

“That’s my girl.” Those words made your stomach do a backflip. His girl. Fuck. With that, Theodore yanked down your V-neck. Your lace bra on display but he quickly dug your tits right out. His mouth fell all over them, eagerly finding your swollen and perked nipples.

Trying to keep quiet for the low chance someone would walk into the rink at this hour, your back arched while your fingers playfully tugged at his brown waves.

You could feel his tongue flicking one nipple while his fingers twisted and tugged on the other. “Be loud for me, bambina…” He husked against your tits, now letting your moans naturally flow out.

Theo started to do a sucking motion with his mouth, your nipple swelling up as the pleasure began to bubble within you. No words could be made out, simply just taking in all the hockey player had to offer you. His. You were his tonight. And no one would stop him from devouring you. No one.

He sat up for a moment, looking down at the sloppy hickies plastered all over those perfect tits of yours. A prideful yet dangerous grin painted over his face before he took both hands, flapping up your mini skirt. “W-what are you-“

Your words cut off the second Theo softly dragged his pointer finger down your soaked lace panties. “Needy are we?” —God. Fuck yes I am. Your body shuddered beneath him at the tease. Feeling his fingers creeping over the side of the material.

“-Little bit…”

Cooing out, you couldn’t help but softly laugh at your own words. It was clear as day that you were a fucking wet mess for Theo. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, taunting you with his devilish stare.

“Only a little bit….huh, Tesoro?” Smirking down at you, his eyes never left yours. His jaw clenched momentarily just as he ripped your panties to the side so roughly that the material tore, the sound rippling around you both.

Theodore’s gaze dropped to your leaky little slit, glistening on full display for the player. His brows furrowed while his lips parted. Weakly falling to his knees as if he was in a trance from your pussy. —He was.

“Okay…Maybe a lot a bit.” Another seductive giggle freed from you, spreading your legs apart for him. The way he admired you, melted for you, had you going fucking wild.

“Cazzo…You have such a pretty pussy…”

Breathing his thoughts aloud, he let his slick fingers tease down your wet cunt. Seeing just how turned on he had gotten you. The compliment was swirling in your mind, feeling your ego get a major boost from it. “Do I now?”

Bucking your hips toward him, you let your own hands squeeze your breast together, his bottom lip dropping more. “-Fuck yes.” Speaking so quickly, he was aching to taste you. All of you. With ease, he threw his team hoodie right off, handing it to you.

“Here…For your head. want you to be comfortable and relaxed, Bella.” Smirking, he watched as you took the hoodie. His thick cologne still wafting around it. Feeling the apples of your cheeks flush, as dirty and raunchy as this moment was he still had a sweet side. A soft spot for you.

Laying the hoodie underneath your head, Theo nodded in approval. “Thank you, you’re-“ Again, you had gotten cut off, your body going into a euphoric shock.

Slapping your thighs even further apart, Theo immediately buried his face between your legs. Hearing a pleasurable groan mumble through your warmed core. “Fuck!—“ You cried out, feeling his tongue vastly dance around your swollen little bud.

God, he was fucking good. Already so fucking good. “Just as I expected…” Theodore trailed off, swirling his tongue teasingly around your clit purposefully.

“…You taste fucking delectable…deliziosa-“ He growled into your soaked flesh, finally flicking his tongue slowly across your clit. His stare burned up into yours. Watching your every reaction. Hearing those loud moans of yours was giving him all of the confirmation.

Progressively, he licked faster, snaking one of his hands down to his jeans to unzip them, pulling out his throbbing cock. “Fuckin’ Hell…”

The groan that guttered from his lungs, along with his bicep muscle flexing like crazy, you knew he was pleasing himself, getting off to eating you out. “Gods— That’s fuckin’ hot”

Whining out through your loud moans, your hand gripped tighter in his hair. Theo quickly took your other hand in his, interlocking your fingers together as he pressed his face further into you.

“That’s it, Tesoro…Use your words…Tell me how good it feels...How much I turn you on”

Speaking through his laps, his tongue was twisting and swirling in unimaginable ways. Little did you know, Theodore was spelling his name with his tongue. Over and over again. “I-it’s so good! Fuck— You’re so good!”

The sounds of Theo’s hand slapping up and down his massive length were only fueling your arousal. With each praise you gave him, the faster he seemed to go.

“—Mmmm” Theo was absolutely slurping you up, his lips suctioned right around your clit, keeping them parted ever so slightly so his tongue could flick with great speed. Sending your body in a vortex of desire and ecstasy. “Just like that- Fuck, Theo!”

Your moans were now turning into screams, his hand stroking up his precum-covered cock even faster than before. But never once did he remove that darkened ocean gaze from you. Taking you all in.

Sucking a tad bit harder on your little bud, you could feel your legs start to tremble, the pleasure dripping over the edge. But not just for you. For Theo too. “Finish with me, bambina-“ He spoke into your drenched folds, squeezing the hand he was holding as he jerked himself off faster and faster.

“Yes!- Yes!- Fuck!” Throwing your head back, your thighs closed against his head, heaven washing over you.

An earth-shattering orgasm hit you, feeling your wetness squirt out onto Theo’s tongue. At the same exact time, Theo’s groans rumbled against your drenched flesh, his seed spilling out all over his hand while he quivered from his own orgasm.

But he didn’t stop. No. His tongue lapped up your sweet nectar. Drinking all of your delicious juices up as if he had just walked through a desert and was quenching his thirst.

“T-Theo! Fuck— I-I’m so sensitive! Please-“

Your entire body convulsed while he munched down on you, slowing his pace and his tongue moving in longer strokes. A deep chuckle heard from him, he was loving this. The sensitivity he had given you. Reaching his cum covered hand to your mouth, he finally pulled away for a moment.

“Open, Bella.” A demanding tone released as he spoke. You didn’t even think about it. Wrapping your lips around his smeared fingers, tasting his sticky seed.

Watching as you bobbed your head up and down his fingers seductively he could hardly contain it. “Such a good girl…Cazzo…you’re too fuckin’ sexy.” Through a growl, he smacked down a few messy kisses along your thighs. “I can’t believe we just did that…”

You whispered, biting back a giggle, the afterglow starting to hit you as you let out a happy sigh. Theodore was about to reply when suddenly a loud boom of the main doors opening and closing was heard, followed by a few distanced voices.

“Fuck! Come on!” He whispered in a panic while he helped you put yourself together, shoving his cum covered cock back in his pants. Grabbing your hand, Theo led you over to the other side of the bleachers, careful to not get caught by whoever had roamed into the brisk rink.

Both of you getting a rush of adrenaline, but even through that rush, you couldn’t keep your eyes off of him. Even through the anxious feelings. You knew the fun had only just begun.

Pt.2 hehehehe Theo just LOVES munching on us in every au Istg, @amiableness had the best idea and I love watching it slowly come to life🥹 Next part maaaay contain some locker room fun for a little good luck 👀

Love my smut sluts, as always asks and requests are open💋

Divider pinned in my masterlist🌙

[rafedaddy01]

Rafe has been obsessed with his assistant y/n ass

And she knows it

He always looks at it and even "accidentally "brushed his hand across her butt

Of course he is happily married so nothing has happened between them

Until now

Y/n walks into his office late in the evening

Slowly taking of all of her clothes telling him:

" Please f my ass sir"

-

You’ve seen the way your bosses eyes occasionally drop down to your ass and the way he ‘accidentally’ brushes his hands against your behind whenever he can. You also know that he’s happily married and would never lay a finger on you himself, which is why you’re standing in his office late at night when everybody has already gone home.

“Y/n, it’s late. Why haven’t you gone home” Rafes eyes are glued onto his computer screen but immediately look up when you shut his door and lock it. “”Y/n?” He clears his throat as he eyes your body up and down, watching as you reach over and pull the blinds closed.

“Just needed one more thing for the night, sir” you step closer to his desk and slowly start pulling your dress down until your standing in only the black lingerie you put on this morning. “Will you fuck my ass, sir?” You flutter your little lashes as you watch Rafes cheeks blush up red.

He pushes his chair back from his desk, standing and walking closer to you, “since you asked so nicely”

“Thank you, sir” you smile as you turn around and wiggle your ass at him, looking behind your shoulder and enticing him further.

“My god” he says under his breath as his eyes fall from your face to the material wrapped tightly around your flesh.

He wasted no time reaching out and palming your ass, his fingers leaving indents as he squishes the skin before pulling his hand back and swatting you, watching it jiggle and loving the little yelp that escapes you. He holds your ass with one hand as the other reaches for his belt, undoing it and pulling it from the loops of his dress pants. You watch his every move as he grabs your wrists, pins them behind your back and ties his belt around them. He brings you to his desk and pushes you down onto it, your face presses against the cool metal and your breathing picks up as you hear the zipper of his pants being pulled down.

He pulls the little panties off your body and groans as he takes in your naked skin. “Please, sir” you wiggle your ass, inpatient and ready to take what he’s about to give to you.

He doesn’t say a word but you feel his fingers touch you. You hear him spit against your tight ring and feel it dribble down as he pushes a finger into you and you wince then moan as he continues stimulating you.

He continues warming you up, shoving a second finger alongside the first as he feels you relax under him. You’re already a moaning mess, your pussy pulsating around nothing as you grow wetter by the second at the thought of what’s to come.

He pulls his fingers out, pushing your legs wider with his knees as his hands play with your ass. Palming the flesh and slapping it just to hear you gasp and watch the flesh jiggle before his eyes.

He grips the base of his freed cock with one hand and taps his tip against your hole. You moan at the small sensation.

“Rafe” you breath out a moan “please, sir. I need it” you groan as you feel him start to slowly push his tip in.

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you what you fucking want” he grits as he feels your tightness start to envelope him, sucking him in.

He pushes all the way in, groaning at how tight you are. You moan his name and curses as he bottoms out and stays still for a minute to take it all in. “Good, you feel so fucking good” he chuckles breathlessly.

“Such a little slut. Coming into my office, Late at night and asking me to fuck your ass” he pulls back slowly only to slam forward with aggression.

You gasp at the new sensation. Arms reaching out for anything to grasp onto, only to be pulled back by his belt tightly wrapped around your wrists.

“Don’t try to run now” he snaps his hips again, more roughly this time.

“You wanted this” he pulls on the belt, tightening it further so your hands have no where to move.

“You asked for this” another harsh thrust as he picks up the pace.

You’re a babbling mess of thank yous and sirs and pleases. Your eyes permanently stuck in the back of your head as your mouth hangs out and drool spills out all over your bosses paperwork. “You feel so good” you moan out his name, tears spilling out your eyes as you thrash. The pleasure all too much.

His palm comes down against you ass, the sound of flesh on flesh echoes in the office as he lands another smack on the other side.

“Yeah? You like it” his voice is shakey and breathless as he continues putting in work, hips moving back and forth.

“Yes, oh god yes. I love it” you squeal. The mixture of pain and pleasure bringing you closer and closer to the edge.

“You want me to cum inside this tight little ass?” He lands another harsher smack against your ass.

The skin turning a dark red color from all the abuse it’s taken. You know it’ll be hard to sit down tomorrow, but you don’t care.

You felt the way his cock swelled up, the way it throbbed and alerted you he was already close to cumming.

You felt your own insides flutter and tighten, especially when Rafes fingers moved to toy with your clit.

“Holy shit, you’re so wet” he groaned as he felt the sticky juices that gathered against your thighs and dripped down onto his desk.

“Maybe I should fuck this sweet pussy next” his fingers pushed down onto your clit, circling it and loving the way your body and mouth reacted.

“Fuck! I’m gonna cum-“ your voice moaned and squeaked as your legs started to shake.

“There we go, baby. Cum for me” he soothed you as he continued to fuck you through it and his fingers flicked your pearl faster with each thrust he delivered.

You clenched harder around him and he choked and groaned as he couldn’t contain himself much longer, releasing every last drop into that sweet, juicy ass he stared and dreamed about every damn day.

Taglist

@f4ll-for-you @rafeysworldim19 @baby19sthings @sevenwivesofrafecameron @rxfecameronsslut @findapenny @r1vrsefx @spencerreidsrealgf @rafescokenostril @thievin-stealing @rafemotherfuckingcameron @dilvcv @starkeysheart @wearemadeofstardust0 @theoraekenslover @mema10 @writingroom21

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Cannibals [Chapter 3: Mist and Bricks]

Series summary: You are his sister, his lover, his betrothed despite everyone else’s protests; you have always belonged to Aemond and believe you always will. But on the night he returns from Storm’s End with horrifying news, the trajectories of your lives are irrevocably changed. Will the war of succession make your bond permanent, or destroy the twisted and fanatical love you share?

Chapter warnings: Language, a tiny bit of sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, dragons being weapons of mass destruction, King's Landing gets some visitors, Larys gets alarming news, Alicent gets an idea, Red gets a shock.

Word count: 7.2k

💙 All my writing can be found HERE! ❤️

Tagging: @themoonofthesun @chattylurker @moonfllowerr @ecstaticactus @mrs-starkgaryen, more in comments 🥰

🦇 Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🦇

There is a chilly steel-grey mist on Blackwater Bay, and another in your skull, your thoughts slow and muddled, the past bleeding into the present. It’s weeks later, the longest you’ve ever been away from Aemond, and the pebbles on the shore needle your shins through your velvet gown the color of cinnabar as you kneel to claw seashells from the muck. Helaena is here with you, and while you haven’t told her your plans for your next mosaic, she somehow knows what color shells to drop into your basket: dark green like Vhagar’s scales, shimmering white like Aemond’s hair. Sometimes there are still creatures hunkered inside, and Helaena can never bring herself to pry them out. She passes the doomed crabs and snails to you for a swift exhumation that you deliver with your bare hands, and then you wash the vacated shells in the surf. Mother and a flock of maids are playing with Jaehaera and Maelor farther down the beach. You can’t go near them, or Maelor will start screaming.

Grandsire comes plodding down the stone steps carved into the cliffside, carrying a plate laden with lemon cakes and slices of fresh bread slathered with butter and blackberry jam. “Helaena, you must eat,” he says.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Helaena, please.” And his voice is gentle in a way it has never been with you. “My gods, why are you wrist-deep in wet sand?”

“We’re collecting shells.”

Grandsire gives you a familiar look: disapproval, frustration. The he turns back to Helaena. “I can’t watch you disappear. You must eat something, I’m not leaving until you do.”

“You like blackberry jam,” you encourage her. But she flinches away when Grandsire offers her the plate, and suddenly you understand, you feel the thought as if it is your own. “It’s the color,” you tell him. “The jam, it’s like…” Like blood, like gore. Like the night Jaehaerys died.

“Oh.” Grandsire is quiet for a moment, remembering. “The lemon cakes, then.”

Helaena reluctantly rinses her hands in the seawater, takes a single lemon cake from the plate, and sits on a nearby rock to nibble on it, gazing blankly out over the inlet. You attended Jaehaerys’ funeral procession in her stead—an act of mercy, of penance, while Helaena spent that day sobbing in the Dragonpit, clinging to Dreamfyre, a pale blue century-old monster with infinite patience. The people of King’s Landing saw the dead prince, his head crudely stitched back onto his tiny body, and howled for vengeance. They burned white-haired effigies of Rhaenyra and Daemon. They gave rare autumn flowers to you and Mother. It’s always strange when you leave the Red Keep to interact with the smallfolk. They call you by your real name, something your family seldom does; they seem to believe you are righteous and wise. Perhaps they even pity you: no husband, no children, no dragon.

Mother has left Jaehaera and Maelor with the maids and is venturing closer. “Are there any new letters?” From Criston or Aemond, or even Daeron in the Reach. The Hightower army has been delayed there, cutting through the treasonous soldiers of House Rowan and House Caswell, Tessarion burning them alive in their armor.

“Ravens,” Helaena says thoughtfully from her rock, and no one knows why.

Grandsire shakes his head. No letters today. Butterwell, Stokeworth, and Rosby have bent the knee; the defiant lords of the Crownlands are being put to death. By now the Green forces will be marching on House Staunton at Rook’s Rest. When Aemond does write, you are not mentioned. With each passing day you find yourself thinking: Has he forgotten me? Does he truly love me? Perhaps this is not so irrational a question. Aemond has never used the word love to describe what you are to each other.

Grandsire frowns at you. You gaze mournfully back. He snaps: “And what’s wrong with you?”

Mother’s reply is hushed and sympathetic. “She’s lonely, Father.”

“Lonely?! She still has us here. Don’t we matter? No, I suppose not, she prefers arrogant fools who imperil the realm with their self-obsession. Perhaps she’d like us more if we wore silver wigs and eyepatches.”

Mother is distressed. “Father, please.”

He waves an irritated hand at you. “I better not find out you’ve been keeping the cats away from your chambers again.” Grandsire had a hundred cats brought to the Red Keep to do the tasks the dead ratcatchers left unattended.

“They scare my babies,” you say.

“Your vermin, you mean. Revolting creatures. Flying pestilence.”

You rise from the sand and pick up your basket, now full of shells. Your head is beginning to ache. Maester Orwyle removed your stitches this morning, but the wound in your chest still pains you more or less constantly, a gnawing sensation like an animal chewing on your ribcage.

“Where are you going?” Grandsire demands. You don’t answer him as you ascend the stone staircase, the waves growling behind you and gulls squawking in the foggy air.

In your chambers, you leave the basket of seashells on the floor and call for wine. The maids fetch it and you drink straight from the pitcher, staring at the little wooden figurines on your dresser until they turn blurry. Among them is Vermithor. You recall what Aegon said when he gave it to you years ago, when you were so stung by the dragon’s rejection: You might not have the real Bronze Fury, but you can keep this one.

Your bats are beginning to scrabble out of their roost and vanish through the window. As the sun sets and the room spins, you crawl into bed and lie there in the darkness clutching pillows, your pulse thudding just above your left eye. You doze in and out of consciousness. Aemond told you to think of him when you are here, and you do whether you want to or not: Aemond spilling red wine down your bare chest and then licking you clean; you straddling his lap and stroking him as he reads myths aloud to you in gloomy alcoves of the library, dust motes wheeling in the air, grinning victoriously when you make him lose his focus; the five game pieces racing around the wooden board, Aegon’s green snake, Helaena’s yellow butterfly, Aemond’s blue wolf, your red bat, Daeron’s purple shadowcat before he was sent away to Oldtown and the rest of you never played again.

Then something hits you, not like a vision but like knuckles that could crack teeth, and you are besieged by what Aemond is seeing in the Crownlands. There is flesh, horribly and ruinously burned, sheets of it sloughing off as Aemond peels away scraps of charred fabric, and the smell of it—like blackened pork, oily and stomach-turning—is in your nostrils, and you can feel the calamitous heat rising off the man who must be dying. You can feel Aemond’s terror, disbelief, desperation; you can feel his tears on the right side of your face.

Dragonfire??

The dreamscape abruptly disappears like a candle blown out. Your head throbs, your eyes are squeezed shut as you whimper into your pillows. Your fingertips go instinctively to the scar on your chest.

Who was burned? Criston? Gwayne?

But now the dire portents are here in your room, and they are real: the ringing of bells, smoke, shrieking, scorched flesh.

You open your eyes, and your bats are soaring back inside through the open window; but they have been turned to comets. They are on fire, squealing as their fur is singed off and the fragile membranes of their wings melted from their bones, herding around their roost as they try in vain to seek shelter inside. The dark blue velvet cover has been engulfed in flames.

“No!” you scream, bolting off the bed.

Your door is thrown open and Mother rushes in, dragging Jaehaera behind her. Helaena waits in the doorway holding little Maelor in her arms. He hasn’t seen you yet, but he is already wailing. The horror is back. When will it end?

“We have to go!” Mother shouts, grabbing your hand and pulling you away from your bats. You know you can’t save them, and yet you are compelled to. They are pieces of you, pieces of Aemond. They are burning to death in the house you built for them.

“What’s happening—?!” And then you hear the screeches of dragons, not Vhagar or Sunfyre or Dreamfyre or Tessarion. Through the window, you see an inferno bloom in the night sky. You get a firelit glimpse of a beast you do not recognize: dark, angular, very large and covered with jagged spines. People are screaming. Rooftops are ablaze.

A wild dragon? Claimed by who?

“We’ll go to the beach,” Mother says frantically. She’s thinking of the escape hatch in Aemond’s bedchamber, the only secret passageway in Maegor’s Holdfast. The king known as “the Cruel” wanted no spies or assassins in his walls. But one door was enough for Daemon’s executioners to kill Jaehaerys. “Helaena will try to get to Dreamfyre.”

But you won’t be able to fly away with the rest of them. Dreamfyre would sooner reduce you to ashes than let you touch her.

Mother knows this. She tells you, low and fierce, her coppery hair like glowing embers: “I won’t leave you. You and I will find another way out of King’s Landing.”

“You should escape on Dreamfyre if you have the chance.”

“Never,” she says. And then again: “Never.”

In the hallway, Grandsire has arrived, panicked and urging everyone towards Aemond’s bedchamber. He wheezes, breathless from his sprint through the castle: “I saw Syrax and Caraxes, and Vermax too I think, or maybe Moondancer, a small dragon…but who is the other one? It’s not Meleys. It’s a hideous creature, it looks deformed.”

“I don’t know,” Mother says. Hordes of yowling cats careen past your bare feet.

“Could Rhaenyra be finding new riders?” And Grandsire, a man who is afraid of very little, is petrified down to his bones by this.

I should have a dragon, you think, forlorn. I should be able to help fight this war. And instead I am worthless.

“I don’t know, Father,” Mother says again, and you follow her through the threshold and into Aemond’s abandoned bedchamber, illuminated only by the moonlight that streams in through the windows. You have not been in here since Jaehaerys died; the stone floor is still stained with his blood. Helaena begins sobbing, clutching Maelor closer to her chest. Downstairs, you can hear swords clanging and men groaning as they die.

You hurry to the hidden door and ram it with your shoulder, but as the passageway opens, you see red-orange torchlight approaching through the blackness like fire boiling up in the throat of a dragon. Rhaenyra’s soldiers are already here. You try to close the door, but now knights in armor are forcing their way inside the room. And Grandsire, who has never liked you, pulls you away from the breach and puts himself between you and the intruders.

“The hallway, back to the hallway!” he booms, giving you a shove, and that is the only place left to go. You, Mother, Jaehaera, Helaena, Maelor, and Grandsire flee from Aemond’s bloodstained bedchamber. But your captors have climbed the Grand Staircase—the place where you once waited for Aemond to return from Storm’s End, so convinced that he would not fail you—and now they are here.

Under the torches carried by her guards, Rhaenyra alternates between firelight and shadows. Daemon marches beside her, his face severe, his sword Dark Sister drawn. Mother pushes you, Jaehaera, and Helaena, still carrying Maelor, against the cold stone wall. Grandsire stands in front of Mother. Jace is walking behind Rhaenyra and Daemon, you notice, dressed in red and black, his cloak billowing behind him. The last time you saw Jace, you were smirking when Aemond shoved him off his feet at the last dinner King Viserys ever attended. Now you are trembling with thunderstruck terror.

Rhaenyra is supposed to be bedbound on Dragonstone. Daemon is supposed to be in the Riverlands.

Daemon points at you with the tip of his blade. “You should have that one executed,” he says to Rhaenyra. “Isn’t she Aemond’s whore?”

“They were never married,” Mother tells him, her dark eyes huge and reflecting the torchlight, her arm thrown in front of you.

“I didn’t say wife, I said whore.”

“Daemon,” Rhaenyra warns, and she studies you, Helaena, Grandsire, Mother. Her blue eyes are sharp like fractured glass, edges that glide effortlessly through arteries and veins; there is a queenlike composure in her face, but beneath that wrath, wrath, wrath. After a moment, she says to her guards: “Take the adults to the dungeons.”

Mother and Helaena are shouting and protesting, trying to stop the guards that rip Jaehaera and Maelor out of their grasps. Grandsire is attempting to negotiate. Rhaenyra and Daemon ignore them, continuing on down the hallway, taking possession of the rage-red castle where they first fell into their peculiar, destructive breed of love.

As he passes by, Jace glowers at you and you glare back, and when he reaches for the hilt of his sword you bare your teeth at him; but before Jace can draw his blade—to threaten you, to frighten you, to spill your blood the way Aemond spilled Luke’s—the guards have dragged you away.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your head is very bad now. The pain is almost impossible to think through; you are sick with it, retching into a wooden bucket until there is nothing left to expel. If Aemond was here, he would be holding you, murmuring to you in High Valyrian, pressing a cloth soaked with cold water to your forehead. But Mother is here instead, and she is doing the best she can.

It’s the next day, cold grey light tumbling in through cracks in the walls. You are imprisoned on the second level of the dungeons, reserved for highborn captives; you and Mother are in one cell, Helaena and Grandsire in another on the other side of the aisle. Helaena has been weeping constantly, worrying for her children. Grandsire and Mother try to console her as you lie pitifully on the floor, wishing the pain would knock you unconscious. You need Orwyle and his milk of the poppy. The guards have brought bread and water, but nothing else.

There is a creaking sound from several cells away, and then a slow shuffling accompanied by the tapping of a cane. Mother keeps one hand on your shoulder as she cranes her neck to see her visitor. Grandsire and Helaena move to the front of their cell, their fingers gripping the rusted iron bars.

Larys Strong appears, his hands resting on the handle his cane. Unlike Maegor’s Holdfast—the residence of the royal family—the other buildings of the Red Keep are rife with secret passageways, a latticework of corridors that one unfamiliar with their paths could get lost in forever. Surely Daemon and his confederates are in the process of searching them, but it is a task that could take a week.

“Lord Larys,” Mother says, relieved. “They have not found you.”

“Not yet, Your Grace,” he replies docilely. “Though I’m sure it will not take much longer.”

“Can you retrieve some milk of the poppy?” For you, she means.

“I will try.” Then he stalls, as if he does not wish to share what he has heard through his clandestine chain of whispers. “Something has happened at Rook’s Rest.”

Mother’s brow furrows. “Where?”

“The seat of House Staunton,” you tell her from where you lie on the floor, remembering it from the maps in Aemond’s bedchamber. He would tell you things, show you things, sometimes kindly, sometimes tauntingly, sometimes as he undressed you. He would quiz you and if you got an answer wrong, he would put your clothes back on.

“In the Crownlands?” Mother says to Larys, alarmed. “Is Aegon alright?”

Larys takes a moment to decide how to proceed. “The castle was captured without much difficulty, but a maester there must have gotten a raven out, because Dragonstone received word of the attack and was summoned to defend Rook’s Rest and retake it from the Greens. It is located very close to Dragonstone, and thus cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy.”

Larys pauses and looks at his audience. Grandsire asks: “So who answered the message?”

“It seems that Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Jacaerys were already preparing for an invasion of King’s Landing and were elsewhere,” Larys says. “The other dragon, the large brown one, is called Sheepstealer and is ridden by a peasant girl that Daemon found. There are rumors that he has grown somewhat…attached to her.”

Mother grimaces, tugging on the seven-pointed star necklace she never takes off. “He’s a beast.”

“The girl is a Targaryen bastard?” Grandsire says, confounded. “Whose? She’s not a child of Viserys, surely. Where the hell did she come from?”

Larys is apologetic. “I could not tell you, my lord. If I discover anything else concerning her origins, I shall share what I learn. She is known as Nettles.”

“Nettles?” Grandsire snorts.

Larys continues: “When the raven reached Dragonstone, Baela received the letter. It appears she was told that Sunfyre was the only dragon guarding Rook’s Rest at the time, and that Vhagar was away feeding. She must have thought she could best the king, or at least chase him away from the castle.”

“An understandable error,” Grandsire says, and you scowl at him between fruitless retches into your bucket. The thrumming in your skull is like blows from a hammer, rhythmic and disorienting. Your face is hot with fever; it radiates off of you in waves. Mother rubs your back—although somewhat cautiously, as if she is afraid that barbs might split through your skin to prick her—and offers you sips of water.

“Baela left Dragonstone, likely without permission. Rhaenys followed her on Meleys, but Moondancer was faster.”

“Meleys?” Mother says, startled. “Meleys was there too?”

Larys nods solemnly. “Aegon and Sunfyre attacked Moondancer and broke her neck high in the air. Baela perished when her dragon fell to the earth.”

“Daemon’s daughter,” Mother exhales, wondering what the retribution will be. “Jace’s betrothed.”

“And one of Rhaenys’ only two trueborn grandchildren,” Larys says. “When she arrived at Rook’s Rest and saw Moondancer’s carcass smoldering just outside the castle walls, she pursued the king before he could retreat. And Sunfyre…he was no match for a dragon as large as Meleys.”

“Aegon, he’s…?” Mother cannot bring herself to speak the words aloud. Tears gleam in her eyes. “Is he…is there no hope…?”

The ruined flesh, charred and raw, you remember from your horrifying glimpse into Aemond’s mind. It wasn’t Criston or Gwayne. It was Aegon.

“He was burned,” you whisper, and Mother stares at you.

“Aemond returned on Vhagar, and they slayed Rhaenys and her mount. But not before the king and his dragon were engulfed in Meleys’ flames.”

“He’s dead?” Grandsire says, emotion you’ve never heard before in his voice.

No, you think. Not yet.

“Aegon and Sunfyre are both gravely wounded,” Larys replies. “It is uncertain whether either will survive. The Blacks received the news just before their assault on King’s Landing.”

“Where is Aegon now?” Mother says.

“I’m not sure, Your Grace. He was still at Rook’s Rest last I heard, but they might move the king elsewhere to keep him hidden. I would imagine Aemond and Sir Criston Cole are requisitioning maesters from nearby houses to treat him.”

“Burns,” Mother sobs. “He must be suffering terribly, the pain…the disfigurement…”

Grandsire drums his fingers on the bars of his cell, his rings clinking against the rusted steel. His expression is remote, somber, resigned. “So we have two dragons capable of combat, one of which is young and small and pinned down by battles in the Reach, the other is on the far side of the Crownlands and trapped there while Aemond tries to keep our king alive. And Rhaenyra is here in the capital with Syrax, Caraxes, Vermax, and this new dragon Sheepstealer, larger than any of her others, and her faction seeks vengeance for not one but three royal deaths.”

In reply, Larys Strong only bows his head. Mother swipes tears from her cheeks and tucks your hair behind your ears as strands escape your braid.

“Well,” Grandsire sighs. “I believe we might be losing this war.”

There is the distant noise of a door’s hinges creaking, and Larys hobbles out of sight, retreating to the secret passageway he previously emerged from. A minute passes, and then footsteps echo down the corridor. Daemon strides into view, swinging Dark Sister in his right hand, and you are suddenly reminded so much of Aemond’s mannerisms that the absence of him guts you all over again, vital parts of you excavated like the organs of a slaughtered animal. Daemon is accompanied by several guards and a group of noblemen who you assume are members of Rhaenyra’s council. You recognize among them a tall man with short grey hair, Lord Bartimos Celtigar.

Daemon says: “Princess Helaena, the queen has taken your tiny, traitorous children to ward. Perhaps one day you will see them again. Perhaps not.” She gazes out from her cell vacantly, her face bloodless with shock and fear. Then Daemon turns to Grandsire. “Otto Hightower, you orchestrated an unlawful rebellion and therefore you will be put to death.”

Grandsire gapes at him. “What? When?”

“Oh, immediately.” Daemon steps back and the guards unlock the cell, seize Grandsire, knock him over and drag him wriggling on his belly into the corridor. Mother pleads for his life. Helaena shrieks and claws for him, trying to keep him with her. The guards fling her roughly away and slam the door of her cell shut before she can escape.

“No, no, do not mourn me!” Grandsire is bellowing as he is hauled away. “I am an old man, I have lived a good life, do not think of me, think of the living and what you can still do for them!”

“Father!” Mother wails, reaching through the bars of her cell though she knows she will never touch him again.

“I am ready to see your mother, Alicent,” Grandsire says; and then he is gone. The men of Rhaenyra’s council begin to file out of the dungeon.

“You followed us across the Narrow Sea, Lord Celtigar!” you shout after him, crawling across the floor and pressing your face against the bars of your cell. “House Targaryen saved you from the Doom, and now you rip it down from within by aiding a usurper. We will not forget your treason when the war is won. We will visit you on Claw Isle and bring with us fire and blood. And you will have no defenses. You are no dragonrider.”

“Neither are you, princess,” he says cooly, and leaves you in your prison.

Daemon is the only man still standing in the aisle. He peers down at you with shadowy deep-set eyes and twirls his Valyrian steel sword again. He grins, humorless, hungry, burning up inside with fury. “Perhaps I’ll be back soon.”

Mother yanks you away from the bars, and you can see what she’s thinking etched into the desperate lines of her face: How can I save her?

“I’m going to behead your father now,” Daemon tells Mother, then sweeps down the corridor. There is the sound of a heavy door closing when he reaches the end of the hall.

“Do not speak to them,” Mother hisses to you, and you are in too much pain to respond. Now you can hear men jeering out in the courtyard of the Red Keep. Daemon is listing Grandsire’s crimes. Crows are cawing.

He’s going to die too? you think dizzily. When does this end, how do we stop it?

The door at the end of the hallway opens again, and Mother stands and places herself in front of you; but it is not Daemon this time, relishing his chance to drag another Green to their death. It is Rhaenyra and Jace. The Blacks’ queen stops at your cell, her son a few paces behind her. He looks at you with heartbreak, with hatred, and of course he does; one of your brothers murdered Luke, the other killed Baela. And he does not believe you to be blameless like Helaena. You are a very different sort of woman.

“Alicent, your degenerate son’s insurrection is over,” Rhaenyra says. “I have taken the city and—”

“Jace needs to strengthen his claim,” Mother interrupts. Outside, men are cheering; Grandsire’s head has been struck from his shoulders. In her cell across the aisle, Helaena sinks to the floor and sobs quietly into her palms.

Rhaenyra studies Mother, incredulous. “What did you say?”

“There have always been people who doubted his parentage, as you well know,” Mother says, and you can see her hands are trembling; but her voice is steady. “And there are many who favor my line. They fear Daemon’s recklessness, and perhaps yours as well.”

“You speak so boldly for a woman who stands behind bars.”

Mother is unflinching. “Perhaps you imagine that you will kill every last Green, and all of our loyalists throughout the Seven Kingdoms, millions of people, and therefore you will have no use for bricks upon which to build a lasting peace. But I think that would be a mistake.”

“And you wish to help me?” Rhaenyra mocks.

“I wish to safeguard what is left of my family.”

The woman who calls herself queen considers this. Surely the same hope lives in her ribcage as well, the same catastrophic fear that it will prove impossible.

“One way or another, the war will be won,” Mother says. “And whichever side triumphs will have the other at their mercy.”

“I will have you at my mercy, yes.”

“Aemond and Vhagar are still out there. Underestimate them at your peril.”

“And what is your suggestion?” Rhaenyra demands. “To bolster Jace’s claim, to save your own skins?”

“Baela is gone and he is unspoken for. You once offered to unite our bloodlines by marrying Helaena to Jace. Perhaps if I had accepted that, I could have spared us this torment. I was wrong to dismiss your proposal so swiftly, Rhaenyra. I did not give you the respect you deserved. And I have reconsidered.”

Rhaenyra is puzzled. “Helaena is already married. Unless you have proof that Aegon is dead, which would be welcome.”

“No. I have another daughter.”

Both you and Jace begin to object at once; your mothers silence you with fearsome glares.

Rhaenyra is aghast; her sharp blue eyes dart to where you are slumped on the floor of your cell and then back to Mother. “This is a sickening insult.”

Mother seems calm, measured. It cannot be easy for her. “Willingly marrying my daughter to Jace is accepting his legitimacy. She is a Green, and very close in age to your son, and from what I have heard of Jace’s temperament I believe them to be well-matched.”

“I don’t,” Jace says.

Rhaenyra shakes her head in disbelief; but is there a ripple of uncertainty across her regal face? Yes, you think there is. “Aemond has already bedded her.”

“And who has said this?” Mother asks. “Daemon, who hates my family and has no mind for strategy or alliances? Rhaenys and the Sea Snake, who hungered for the Iron Throne all their lives and saw a chance for their descendants to possess it through Baela?”

Rhaenyra is looking at you again. “I’ve seen the way they watch each other. The way they move.” The dinner, she means. The night that Viserys died.

“She is a maiden,” Mother insists, but she gives you a transient sideways glance. Are you? “They had a flirtation, yes, as is so common for siblings of your foreign house, but nothing more. I would never have allowed fornication or the use of moon tea to disguise its consequences under my roof. They are grievous sins. You know me. You know my devotion to my faith.”

“She will submit to a maester’s examination to make sure?”

“Did you, Rhaenyra? Before you and Laenor Velaryon were wed?”

Rhaenyra raises an eyebrow. And you have the sense—vague and dreadful—that perhaps it is dawning upon her that taking something Aemond holds dear might have its advantages. “What do you want in return?”

“We have both lost innocent people,” Mother says. “There has been enough bloodshed. It must stop somewhere, or all the Targaryens will be dead and their dragons too, and this dynasty will vanish from the earth, and our ambitions will be for nothing. If you do indeed win the war, I want my surviving children and grandchildren spared. And my brother Gwayne, and Sir Criston Cole.”

“I cannot give you Aemond.”

“If you swear that you’ll pardon him, we shall do the same for Daemon if it is our armies that triumph.”

Now the hope is unmistakable on Rhaenyra’s face. “And my remaining sons will be allowed to live? All of them?” Even Daemon’s?

“Yes.”

She muses on this. “You make tempting promises, Alicent. But I don’t have any conviction that Aemond will heed you if Aegon dies and he is made regent until Maelor is grown. I don’t believe you can control him.”

“He’ll listen to his sister,” Mother swears. “He will not do anything that would bring her despair. And if she is married to Jace, she will come to love his family as her own. All the more so if they have children together.”

“She might not be trustworthy,” Rhaenyra says.

“She is of no threat to you. She is untrained with the sword, she rides no dragon. And you have her mother, sister, niece, and nephew held captive. She would not endanger us.”

“You have great confidence in her. Your hopes for survival are in her hands.”

“She is spirited, but she is clever, and she loves deeply and enduringly. She will do whatever is required to protect her own.” Now Mother’s voice breaks. “I want her sent away.”

“Mother, no—”

“Far from the war, far from Daemon,” she says, ignoring you.

Rhaenyra is nodding. “Somewhere secluded and peaceful…all the better for her to quickly give Jace an heir. The Riverlands, yes? Perhaps House Footly of Tumbleton.”

“No, not far enough. The Westerlands.”

“The North,” Rhaenyra counters.

“The Stormlands.”

“The Vale,” Rhaenyra says. “There will be no battles there, winter has already begun in the mountains and the roads are treacherous. She will be tucked away in obscurity until the war is won.”

“The Vale,” Mother agrees. She looks down at you and smiles, soft and sad and merciful. At last, after eighteen years, she has saved you.

Jace is whispering furiously to Rhaenyra, but she holds up a hand to stop him. He is exasperated. The supposed queen tells Alicent: “I shall think on this tonight.”

“She needs Maester Orwyle,” Mother says, kneeling beside you. “She is ill, she gets headaches. This place is bad for her. It’s the cold and the dampness. And the fear.”

“I’ll consider that,” Rhaenyra quips, and then she leaves, the hem of her black gown displacing dust on the floor of the aisle. Jace gives you one final glance—seething, appalled—and stalks after her. At the end of the hallway, he slams the heavy wooden door.

“I won’t do it,” you snarl, sick in body and soul. “I won’t, I won’t. I don’t care what you say.”

“We are in a fucking dungeon,” Mother says, grabbing and shaking you, and you’ve never heard her curse before. “Do you want to try to save your brothers’ lives? Or do you want to surrender to the destruction of our house? If you care for Aemond, as I know you do, you will give him a chance if he and Criston cannot win on the battlefield. You will earn Jace’s affection and convince him to spare us.”

You look at her, weak, stunned, at war with yourself. Jace can’t touch me. Only Aemond.

She asks you something; it takes great effort. “You are still…you haven’t…you’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

You hesitate. “In the literal sense.”

“In the…? Never mind, stop, I don’t want to hear any more.” Mother takes a deep breath. “Good. Then we haven’t lied to them. Jace might be able to tell. Sometimes there are…signs. Pain, blood.”

“He’s a bastard,” you hiss.

“He’s Rhaenyra’s son, and so he is a Targaryen and a dragonrider. And if Jace’s side wins, he will one day sit the Iron Throne. He can be proud, but no one says he is cruel. I don’t believe he would harm you. Your brothers are warriors, but you’ve never killed anyone.” Then she goes soft and hushed, and she cups your face with her gentle hands. “I know you’ve always thought you would marry Aemond.”

“Mother, I love him.”

“My darling, my brave girl, what you and Aemond have is…” She shakes her head, her large dark eyes grim and glistening. “It’s strange, and violent, and obsessive and profane and…and…unnatural.”

You are defiant. “If we had grown up in a true Targaryen court, we would have been expected to be this way. We would have married years ago, and no one would have condemned us for acting exactly like what we are. We aren’t First Men or Andals. We are the blood of the dragon.”

“It’s an affliction that brings nothing but sin and suffering.”

“You wed Aegon to Helaena!”

“And it has been a source of tremendous sorrow for them both,” Mother says, and now she is weeping again. “I should have stopped their marriage. But I was young, and I had already refused Rhaenyra’s offer of a match with Jace, and Viserys was so adamant, and I thought…maybe…maybe it’s not an offense to the gods. Maybe it’s just something I don’t understand. It was my husband’s custom, and so I deferred to him, as I had been taught to. But I was wrong. It’s too late for me to undo the pain I’ve caused Aegon and Helaena. It’s too late for me to mend Aemond’s eye or his soul. I can’t spare Daeron from the horrors of war. But I can still save you.”

“I belong with Aemond.” I belong to him.

“You don’t know better. You never had a choice.”

“I’m not you, Mother,” you say. “I’m not a Hightower or a Lannister or a Baratheon. I’m not like them, and I don’t want to be. I want to be Visenya.”

“You’re not going to be anyone if Daemon convinces Rhaenyra to have your head hacked off your shoulders.” Her vast eyes, dark like the mouth of a well, plead for you to understand. This is not a punishment; it is tenderness, it is compassion. “I would do anything to save you and Helaena and your brothers. Anything. You marrying Jace unites the realm. It provides a cornerstone around which to build a peaceful resolution. He will protect your kin. When the battles are past, we can negotiate a divided Westeros, or a line of succession, or exile to Essos or banishment to the Wall, or anything else that will preserve the lives of the people we love. And if Aemond can still win somehow…” She shrugs, and you know whatever affection she once had for Rhaenyra is dead now. “Then he can do whatever he wants with the Blacks who are left.”

I don’t want them to die. Aemond, Aegon, Criston, Daeron, Mother, Helaena, Jaehaera, Maelor.

Mother asks: “Will you do it?”

Aemond, Aemond, Aemond.

Again, desperately: “Will you do it?”

And you cannot look at her when you answer. “Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Maester Orwyle appears an hour later to dose you with enough milk of the poppy to kill the pain in your skull, and when you sleep it is deep and dark and dreamless. Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Jace arrive at first light, dreary grey dawn trickling into the dungeon. You know what she has decided. Both Daemon and Jace are scowling, and you think, somehow knowing that it is true: The more they try to dissuade her, the more convinced she is. She feels the need to remind them that she alone was Viserys’ heir, that she is a queen in her own right.

“Just marry him to Rhaena!” Daemon is ranting.

“Rhaena brings nothing to our cause that we do not have already. And she will always feel second to Baela. She knows Jace loved her sister. It is perverse.” Then Rhaenyra collects herself and asks Mother: “She consents?”

“She does.”

Rhaenyra turns to Jace. His reply is toneless. “I will do as you bid me to, Your Grace.”

“She will be in the keeping of House Corbray until the war is over,” Rhaenyra says, nodding to you. “They are an honorable but old and modest house, and of little strategic importance. No one beyond who is absolutely necessary will know where she is, for her own safety and that of the children she bears. Jace will fly her to Heart’s Home.”

House Corbray. You remember their banner, Aemond once taught it to you: three black ravens, three red hearts. You have a memory of being in the library with his lips on your throat, his fingers skating up the inside of your thigh, whispering for you to keep quiet as maesters stock books on the other side of the shelf.

“She cannot ride a dragon,” Mother says.

“Sure she can, if he puts her on Vermax.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Mother insists. “Dragons hate her. She cannot go near them. They will attack her, they will kill her. She and Jace will have to travel by ship.”

Rhaenyra is taken aback by this. Daemon scoffs: “What the fuck kind of Targaryen repels dragons?”

“The kind that will never be able to fly to battle against us,” Rhaenyra mutters, and you think: She is angry with him. He has done something, he has displeased her somehow. And you wonder about the girl who rides Sheepstealer.

Your eyes drift to Jace, you cannot stop them. He stares back from beneath dark curls, his gaze hard like the cold stony earth of the Vale, his fingers tapping on the hilt of his sword.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s the very first time.

You are at your vanity, and you are supposed to be getting ready for dinner: choosing your earrings and bracelets, combing out your hair before you braid it, a silver river that shimmers like moonlight in the mirror’s reflection. You have bathed, and steam still clings warm and dewy on your skin. You wear a silk robe the color of ripe cherries and nothing underneath it. Candles flicker, cool evening air breathes in through the windows…and your mind is wandering.

For years, you have felt episodic pangs of longing, an indistinct need, a deep untouchable hunger, and you have never found a way to satisfy it. It waxes like a moon growing full and then wanes into nothingness, but it always reappears again, and tonight you are feeling restless, occasionally shifting on the cushion of your chair, seeking the pressure that gives you a taste—and only a morsel, a nibble, a drag of the tongue—of what fulfillment might feel like. Lately, when you are like this, you find yourself thinking of Aemond. He has never spoken of it directly, but you have noticed the way his eye catches on your chest and your hips, how his hands linger when he grabs or shoves or embraces you. You can’t stop wondering what it would taste like to kiss him. You can’t stop imagining which positions he would fuck you in, remembering the lustful figures on the tapestries that hang from the walls of Aegon’s bedchamber.

Your hand settles in your lap, and there—over the glossy blood-colored silk of your robe—presses down tentatively. You sigh, you writhe, you picture Aemond forcing your thighs apart and gazing transfixed at the rare pieces of you he’s never seen.

How do I satiate this craving, how do I make it go away?

Your bedchamber door opens and Aemond stands in the threshold, black leather and silver hair. “Are you ready yet—?” Then his eye drops to where you snatch your hand out of your lap, not quickly enough to escape him noticing. There is a stretch of silence that seems very long. Then Aemond’s scarred forehead furrows and he asks: “What were you doing?”

You consider lies; they dangle in front of you by the dozen, so many ways to deflect or deny or even to disparage him, those prickly games of wordplay. But when you speak, it is not just the truth. It is an invitation. “Thinking of you.”

And Aemond steps into your bedchamber and shuts the door behind him. He crosses the room, kneels in front of you, reaches beneath your robe to hook his arms under your thighs and yanks you halfway out of the chair. You yelp in exhilarated shock as he buries his face between your legs, and then your fingers knot in his hair, and then you are pushing him closer, shaking, awestruck.

Is he really here? Is this finally happening?

You cannot stay quiet when the pinpoint ecstasy opens, blooms, drags you to places you never knew existed. It is something too powerful to be found in the world of mortals. It is bloodmagic, it is shade of the evening, a poison so sweet you’d let it ruin you.

Afterwards—collapsed and gasping on the stone floor, your robe open and your body laid bare for him, flesh that he has claimed irrevocably, bones he owns like a dragon or a blade—you say: “What was that?”

“You had a climax,” Aemond murmurs. “It’s easier for a man, but they are possible for women too.” He smooths your hair back from your face; it is unbound and wild, spilling all around you. You think vaguely: He wants me even when I don’t look like Visenya? He ghosts his thumb across your lips and then kisses you, and it is nothing but warmth, desire, the shared minerals your blood is built of, undying affinity like the celestial kinship of stars in the same constellation. “You can always ask me to take care of you, and I’ll do it. I’m the only one who is allowed to. No one else, not ever.”

This is no sacrifice. You have never wanted another man, and now you know you never will. “Teach me how to satisfy you,” you say, smiling. “I want to see you helpless too.”

Before you dress and leave your bedchamber, you erase as much of the evidence as you can, washing your skin clean and taming your hair into a tidy braid; but still, Mother frowns worriedly at you and Aemond all through dinner.

[stylespresleyhearted]

WON’T ANYBODY HELP US? WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Summary : the beginning of Benny Cross & his favorite nurse.

warnings: language, stereotypical 60’s attitudes, sickness/illness, references to lupus but not explicitly said, references to suicidal thoughts/wanting to give up blink and you miss it

“Your favorite patient is causin’ trouble again.”

Tania smacks her gum against the roof of her mouth as she passes by the occupied lunch table. There’s a loaded sandwich sitting in front of you - only two bites in but it seemed like your lunch would be cut early.

Wednesdays were usually your favorite day of the week but today had been nothing short of chaos every step of the way. The system had gone down multiple times and the added minutes were causing everyone to get grumpier than usual. It was only fifteen minutes ago that someone had walked to the check in desk and deemed you incompetent of doing your job. Sawyer had stepped in and allowed you reprieve for a quick lunch shortly after but now that was cut short as well.

Of course you didn’t have to go. But you weren’t sure what Tania meant by ‘causing trouble’ and it caused anxiety to swirl in the pit of your stomach.

Instead of throwing the sandwich back into the cooler you decided on bringing it along with you. It was too delicious to leave behind and by the time you got home you knew food would be the last thing on your mind. Your bed was already calling your name.

“Floor 3, Room 11A,” Sawyer supplied helpfully when you passed the help desk, figuring he would be in the same room as usual. The one furthest from the main area.

Grateful, you give her a smile and mouth a thank you.

Two flights of stairs and an endless hallway later you find yourself at his room door. Doctor Martin sits beside him on a stool, elevated taller than the other man although there’s actually a four inch difference. Now that you’re aware they aren’t killing one another it’s easy to take a step back and rest against the doorway; to take him in as is.

Benny was externally the most beautiful man you had ever laid eyes on. Golden hair always shining in the sun, fluffed enough to show he had run a brush through it but messy with strings of hair flat out to show he didn’t care too much what he looked like. Oil splattered his jeans and undershirt and over the corner chair you were able to see his jacket strewn over the back. His eyes caught in the sunlight streaming in through the one window in the room, blue eyes catching green and golden specks at certain angles.

Martin must have requested him to take his jacket off. That alone would have warranted a blow out but it seemed Benny had consented to take his colors off for once.

“Doc.” Dragged back from your thoughts by Benny turning his attention towards you, catching you when you were inspecting his jacket.

You smile big, happy to see him if anything.

“She isn’t a doctor here,” Martin says. From here you can see he’s pulling the stitches across Benny’s skin and bone with none of the tenderness required to avoid scarring. “She’s a nurse.”

It’s said like an insult but you decide against rising to the bait. Martin’s usually much kinder, he must be upset he was the one left caring for Benny.

“I can take it from here, Doctor Martin,” you offered, taking a few steps closer in hopes that he would hand over the needle. “I overheard something about a crash on the highway. I’m sure they’re going to require your assistance soon.”

“He was in last week for ripping the stitches on his left knuckles.” Martin throws both gloves into the medical compartment beside him. “He’s in today for - oh yeah, the same damn thing.”

“What’s your point?” It’s Benny who speaks up, the hand in your hold curling in anger and not pain.

Deciding that his knuckles are scarred enough as is - and the beginning of repairing his stitches had obviously been done with no care to healing skin - in an attempt to soothe you run a hand down his bicep.

Goosebumps rise in the wake of your touch.

“My point is, Mr. Cross, you’re taking us away from people who actually want to get better.” His ending question was left unsaid, lingering in the air between them all: Why bother getting help at all?

“Our job is to help the injured.” Protectiveness rears its head but it is a smarter move to play it smart, after all you’ll pay for any remarks or siding against him during rounds tomorrow. No doubt be assigned the patients with excessive vomiting or stomach problems to clean after. “No matter who it is, Doctor Martin.” Your smile is meant to ease the tension and you’ll be unaware if it worked until later.

His exit as he storms out the room doesn’t leave high hopes.

A few months into working here, after a handful of runs in with Benny when he’d gotten mouthy or passed off to different doctors for being temperamental you had asked why there always seemed to be conflict involving him and the personnel. Don’t like the way they grab me, he had replied and after having seen the way Martin had worked his stitches and the looks he got from every person in the waiting room you found it reason enough.

“You’re left handed,” you notice and his attention is brought from the window back to the hand you hold.

He shrugs, as if it never occurred to him what hand he used.

“My right is busted so I used my left.”

“So you’re ambidextrous?” He cocks an eyebrow and you smile despite yourself, explaining, “You can use both your right and left hands with the same amount of skill.”

“I know what ambidextrous means.” You would feel bad for assuming he didn’t if he cared but he doesn’t. It’s one of the reasons why he was always passed off to you - his aloofness and lack of care never offended you. Why would it? People are the way they are despite the way one feels. And in reality, his way of being was the reason you liked him. How must it feel to be so free? “Just don’t know why it matters so much what hand I use.”

It’s an honest point and you laugh, loud.

“It doesn’t. It’s an interesting fact to learn about someone though,” you shrug, noncommittal, but the smile begins to cause an ache in your cheeks. “Now I can say I know four things about you, Benny Cross.”

“Really?” He smirks. There’s a shift in the air as he goes from carelessly lax to confident in a second; never more sure of himself than when he was riding his bike or attempting to pull a girl apparently.

“Oh yeah, adding it to the list I keep plastered on my room wall. I’m a real special girl, you see, getting you to open up like this.”

“I’ll deny it. Say you injected me with some shit and it caused an allergic reaction.”

You laugh again, feeling lighter than you had all day after everything that had gone wrong. This was another thing people never got to know about Benny: the guy was funny. He was able to give it back as good as he could take it. Only thing was, when someone pushed he made sure to push harder.

Having redone the stitches Martin had made a mess of and happy with the outcome of his hand now, you gingerly clean the excess blood remaining before turning to shove everything into the disposable department. All the while Benny follows your every move.

This was why Sawyer didn’t like to care for him; she said she didn’t like his stare.

You couldn’t find it in you to mind it, he wasn’t anything like the guys on the street who would cat call and whistle when you went by. His eyes caused a warming sensation in any part of you they caught.

Having washed your hands, you return to his bed with the sandwich outstretched. He looks from the food and back to you but makes no move to take it, which you expected. “If you don’t take it it’s gonna go in the trash,” you admit, exaggerating your pout for a sadness effect. “Which would suck because it’s the best damn sandwich I’ve ever made.” But my lunch is over and I didn’t get to enjoy it because they told me you were here, left unsaid.

“Never known hospital food to be any good.” He accepts the sandwich from your hold but makes no move to eat it. He slides by, closer to you than when you had been stitching him up, and picks up his jacket. “Thanks, Doc.”

There’s a want in your belly, brewing, growing, anything to keep the conversation going but he’s getting ready to leave and you weren’t lying when you told Martin there was a crash on the highway. There was nothing left to say and that was the bad thing about being in Benny’s vicinity: he always left people wanting more. More of his freedom. Of his wildness. Left people scrambling for any scraps he gave.

Sometimes the weight on your shoulders feels so heavy your knees buckle and it’s only when he strolls in with an injury or another that you feel weightless. Young. Alive.

“I’d tell you to rub aloe on those knuckles but I know you won’t listen,” you mention it anyway in case he finds himself home with nothing to do or at a store and it strikes his mind.

“Don’t need none of that hippie oil shit.”

He fixes the collar on his jacket with his left while his right holds the sandwich that is now out of its container - stained, oily hands and all he moves to take a bite.

The bread pales in comparison to the lively pink of his mouth.

“Until next time, Benny,” you toss over your shoulder, taking your exit.

He has a last glimpse of the line of your jaw and the hair flip over your shoulder, the plump arch of your backside and the straight posture of your shoulders. “Bye, Doc.”

Saturdays are spent at the market on Merigold in downtown Chicago.

You aren’t always able to get the days off but when allowed, you spend your day walking the collection of set up shops with your sister and your two favorite people in the entire world: niece and nephew.

At only eight years old, Maddy already contained more motivation than half the adults you encountered on a day to day basis. She had declared her intentions to become a scientist and find life on another planet (because the world is too big it's not just us!) and as such took her schooling absolutely serious. She required no pestering to get out of bed or do her homework and most days she acted more adult than any actual adult you knew.

‘Annoying’ was her new favorite word and it’s used in response to any inconveniences she encounters in her young life. It had quickly become your sister's least favorite word and Maddy had earned herself a time out when she deemed her dad annoying for snoring.

Poor, sweet Jack was nothing like his loud-mouth, dreamer sister and more times than not he made your heart hurt. At only six years old he had already encountered the world’s cruelty. Earlier this summer your sister, Melissa, had to drive a few towns over and pull him from summer camp because he was getting bullied. He was a heavier kid than most his age and a big eater to top it.

To make him feel better you had dedicated that weekend to him completely: a sleepover spent building forts, reading his favorite comic books, and baking sweets.

“I told Daddy five bucks wasn’t a lot!” Maddy holds her money with a sullen pout and foot stomp to follow. She stands in front of an outdoor, singular bookshelf that contains coloring books, bedtime stories — and she must be looking at Space Cadet which is priced at 6.50.

Melissa shrugs, “You know the rule, Maddy. Five dollars is your allowance. How about instead you get this one?” Your sister picks up another book, this one from the lowest shelf, and priced a dollar lower right in Maddy’s price range.

Beside you Jack holds your hand with his right and picks his nose with his left.

“Mommy I have that one already!”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to step in and offer to complete the difference in price but you don’t want your sister to feel undermined so instead you focus on Jack and how he’s managed to get his entire, chubby pointer finger into his nostril.

“Excuse me, sir!” You dramatize to hear his giggles, a smile erupting even as he turns wide eyed. “And where are you thinkin’ of putting those boogies, huh?”

With a mischievous look that lets you know exactly what is coming he wipes his finger on the side of your jeans, attempting to run away after. He shrieks as you grab hold of him, wrapping both arms around his back and bringing him backwards.

“Oh, that’s it!” You playfully growl, blowing raspberries into his neck and eliciting more of his loud, wonderful giggles. Happy in this moment you allow yourself a few laughs as well, hugging him tighter as he struggles to get away.

Distinctly, engines rumbling break the busy bustle of the street, the people of the town stopping their shopping to stare and wait for what - or who - everyone is aware is coming. It’s a sound that could be heard at all hours of the day, whether it be caused by a guy or two or the whole gang of them. Leather jackets, denim jeans, cigarettes, and all.

As the thunderous roar of the engine increased in volume, the Vandals emerged from the end of the street - drunk and half-naked with the exception of only a few. It was a good thing you had a hold on Jack because you felt him tug to get free. No doubt to run to the bikers if his amazed

“Wow,” was anything to go by.

You make sure to clutch him tighter, more people crowding the sidewalks now to make room for the bikers taking the entirety of the street. It was only a year ago that there were only seven of them driving past the stores, and slowly, every weekend since there’d be new members joining them.

With a good grip on Jack’s shirt to make sure he can’t escape and no one can jostle him, you look up again, locking eyes with Benny. He’s already staring. Taking in all of you, with a beanie thrown over your head and worn down boots you squeezed into it because the new ones still hurt.

He’s effortlessly cool riding by. One hand on the handle and another on his lap; some may think he was trying to show off but the truth was he didn’t care too. He was riding right in front of you now. His blue eyes were shadowed in the gray of the weather, becoming lighter instead of brighter. The ring he wore glinted against the metal of his bike and he’d either gotten into a scuffle or had chosen to not do his hair today. There were pieces sticking in different directions and as he drove past you could see the back of his hair was flat.

He smiles at you, slowly, pink lips parting to reveal glistening, white teeth and a glint sparking in his eyes.

“Come on,” Melissa ushers Maddy away from the books, “no time to waste.”

“How annoying,” Maddy grumbles.

You bite your lip to hide your answering grin.

-

Tania calls on Sunday morning, begging you to cover her overnight shift because she’s come down with the flu.

It was 7 a.m. and there was no coffee or breakfast in your system but she genuinely sounded horrible over the line so you agreed.

“You’re pushing your body too hard,” your Ma said from her position by the stove, “it’s gonna flare up again. You just wait and see.”

“Ma,” you snap and hate yourself immediately after.

It isn’t her fault your body decides to fail you time and time again; most times after you spend weeks thinking you’ve somehow magically been cured. The doctors had already explained it didn’t appear to be a genetic disease and it certainly didn’t derive from your parents because when Melissa had been tested she was declared physically healthy.

There’s resentment clogging your chest and throat, yearning to yell about how it isn’t fair but it isn’t her fault either.

It isn’t anyone’s fault that you’re sick and they’re healthy.

Turns out your Ma is right. You should have seen it coming.

Three days letter no food can be kept down and there’s an ache running from your ankle to mid-thigh that has you crying when you try to leave your bed.

“I hav’ta go work,” you try to explain to your parents through the tears and fatigue and the pain as they ease you back into bed.

“Just rest now, honey,” your Ma is trying to soothe, combing stray hairs away from your face. There’s a funny look on her face.

Her chin is pulled tight and there is a wobble to her lip.

You aren’t sure if the pain is causing hallucinations.

“It isn’t fair,” you sob, allowing yourself to lose the battle of trying to stand so your father can relinquish his hold. “It isn’t fair, Dad. Jus’ wanna be able to … be.”

There isn’t another way you’re sure how to explain it. The ability to live was a privilege to all but taken for granted by so many. If sickness and ailment wasn’t something you dealt with you’re sure you would be as ignorant and ungrateful as any other healthy person.

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

One of them places the pill in your hand. When you swallow, your mother helps hold your head up to pour water in your mouth.

Useless. That’s what you are.

-

You are in bed for a week. Adjusting to the medication always proves to be a rollercoaster of events. Tired the first few days and sick to your stomach the next few.

The worst part comes after the pain stops. When the pills aren’t needed and you’re left with the shakes and the chills and a never ending migraine. No better than any druggie laid out on the streets.

“Dr. Howard would have given you a few more days off,” Sawyer says after the fifth time your hands cramp up while you’re typing.

It takes everything to not tell her where to shove it. Regardless of everything, she’s your friend and she cares. Having everyone hovering makes you aggy.

“I’m fine,” you insist.

She shrugs; sighs worriedly; walks away.

The past ten days were spent in bed. Well, seven of them were spent in bed and the last three had been spent holding onto your parents as they led you up and down the hall in an attempt to readjust to moving around. The restroom hadn’t been much of an issue as you were unable to consume much of any food or liquid. Everything was retained in your body and what wasn’t you had puked out.

Doctor Martin approaches, calling your name. “I need you to fill the questionnaire for a patient. He can’t spell and his reading isn’t great.”

Your hands are in fists on your lap. You look down, try to open them, shake, and close it again. The green monster knocks on your chest again, builds, bangs against your ribcage and twists your guts, anything in an attempt to free itself.

You focus on your breathing.

Doctor Martin calls your name again to pull your attention. “Is that going to be a problem?” He looks to your lap but your hands are in fists, hidden from sight.

It’s gonna hurt like hell but you refuse to let anyone else pity you.

“No,” you decide and take the clipboard from him.

-

Rationally you know it isn’t right or fair to hate anyone for being healthy. Sickness or suffering isn’t something you would wish upon anyone; not even your worst enemy.

I’d like to see Martin get a cramp though, you think bitterly. Nothing lasting or damaging. A leg cramp that has him sobbing and unable to stand for a couple of seconds. That’s it.

There had only been seven questions and four of them required simple answers but it didn’t seem to matter if one word was needed or forty. The paper looked like it had been scribbled on by a second grader with no motor skills and in your state the comparison wasn’t far off.

“If you’re incapable of legible penmanship I’m not sure what you’re doing here,” Martin had spewed in your face, anger in his eyes when he tossed the paper and demanded Sawyer redo the questionnaire. “Go home.” He dismissed you.

Asshole.

Home was the second to last place you wanted to be. Your mother was worried, hovering around you any minute of the day and while your father tried to be better he followed you into every room you entered and his footsteps could be made out five feet away from you, always hovering.

Space. Air. A damn break. That’s what you needed.

Walking around the streets at night probably wasn’t the brightest idea you had but you were too anxious and wired to sit still and any restaurant or store you entered ran the risk of running into someone you knew.

Tonight you’d take your chances with strangers lurking in the dark.

You’ve walked the same block four times, in an attempt to be somewhat safe, the one that has the most street lights when you hear it. Grumbling. Roaring. Headlights brighter than any lamp currently illuminating the street and working to blind you as you try to make out the figure riding.

It would either be your friend or it wouldn’t be.

The headlights beam brighter somehow, blinding you enough that you look away and try to squint the spots away from your eyes. When you open them again the rider is down the block and your vision is still distorted. You don’t bother to try to make out any features from this distance and focus on trying to lessen the disappointment swirling around inside.

You had wanted it to be him. You aren’t sure how but you know seeing him would improve the ending of your day. It might be his pretty, blue eyes and the crinkles that appeared when he smiled. Or maybe the smell of 3-in-1 men soap, engine oil, and something distinctly sandalwood and citrus that was uniquely him would be useful in relaxing you.

Overall, you think it’s his way of being that you need tonight. Someone who was so selfishly themself because they needed nothing from anyone around them. No thought to go into what to say or do next because there was nothing to happen besides what was going to happen.

Disappointment is still swirling when you hear it return. A thrumpty exhaust groan from deep within the machine from being pushed too hard, too quick, that you’re sure is currently reverberating the ground beneath you.

And then like an apparition (more like a wish come true) — Benny. You decide that you may be sick and days may be shit, with a huge emphasis on the last thirteen days, but God does not hate you after all.

The light from his bike creates shadows across his face, highlighting the golden beard and mustache but hiding the pink of his mouth. His eyes you’re unable to make out, unsure if they were happy or sad, mad or tired.

With his headlights hitting you directly however, he’s able to make out every feature of yours.

“Benny.” It’s just his name that escapes you, no greeting accompanying it, but you don’t bother to hide the relief in your tone and you’re sure your smile is blinding him like his lights are blinding you. If he wasn’t how he was and you weren’t already feeling raw with rejection and failure you would have hugged him.

“What’cha doin’ out so late?” He uses his leg against the sidewalk to lean his bike inward. Thigh muscles ripple underneath the tight denim of his jeans, illuminated greatly by the shadows cast by the headlights.

You shrug, unwilling to be honest. “I needed …” You’re not sure what you were going to answer so you stop and he allows you time to think. You had said you needed air but you take a deep breath and all the worries and stress of before continue on. You thought you needed space but you began to feel lonely and the last thing you want is for him to go away. There’s no correct answer it seems so you can do nothing but laugh, tilting your head towards the sky. You wish you were brave enough to scream at the stars or howl at the moon. “I’mma be honest, Benny - I’m not sure what I need. I’m just,” you exhale, “a mess tonight.” More than just tonight but you don’t want to scare him off either.

You know that if he asks what’s wrong you’re going to start crying. There’s an ache in your throat that is blocking any air entry and the sting in your eye isn’t from his lights and the shaking in your hand hasn’t gotten any better and if you tell him the truth he’s going to pity you like everyone else and now there’s a traitorous tea—

“Wanna go to a meetin’?”

You look up, wanting to be sure that you heard him correctly. There’s no joking lilt in his tone, only sincerity and the same hint of boredom always wavering in the background. Like if it would make zero difference to him what you decided. You remind yourself he’s not the type of guy to offer something for niceties.

He’s in the same position. Using his leg to lean closer to the pavement, one hand holding onto the left handle and his bike rumbling beneath him. He’s got his head cocked to the side, generously allowing you to feel wanted, like if it’s something he wants you to consider and not only reject.

But there’s another aspect to consider in all this: the only source of transportation currently is his bike.

Be careful, you can hear Ma say, you aren’t in any position to be careless, honey.

She’s right, your Dad would agree. It’s the hand you’ve been given.

Careful.

Careful.

All your life you’ve attempted to be as careful as you could be. You watched where you were walking because a fall could result in a knee that aches for days, not only a scrape. You rubbed the healing oils the neighbors down the street swore by, you took salt baths to help with inflammation, you took medication that was meant to help but it made your head pound and your hands shake and your stomach stick and every couple of weeks or month your body still rebelled, nerves inflamed and bones hurt and it was your worst enemy.

“Sure.”

If you fall from his bike, if he takes every red light and stop sign and a car rams into you — getting up won’t be as easy for you as it will for him. But you’re accepting his invitation nonetheless, taking his offered hand to help you swing a leg over. He grabs hold of both arms, instructing you to keep them around him. It’s exactly how you’ve read in a novel or watched in a Marlon Brando film.

The tremors consume your body and vibrate around him; you wipe the claminess of your palms on his T and hope he doesn’t mind.

“You’re shakin’.” He notices, revving the engine but staying still, as if waiting for you to change your mind.

“Benny?”

“Hmm.”

You rest your chin on his shoulder to pull his attention and it works; he turns his head to the side so he’s able to look in your eyes. The scruff around his jaw is long enough to rub against your lower chin. It tickles but you don’t move away, being able to look into the eye closest to you. He smells of cigarettes and motor oil, of fresh air from the farmland a few miles out and of gas.

He smells of open possibilities and freedom.

“Can we go fast?”

He turns forward, laughing as he kickstarts the bike into motion.

“That I can do. Hang on, Doc.” And he takes off.

True to his word, he never slows down, not once. The wind comes hard and fast and you’re not sure how any of the old ladies who ride with their men manage to keep their updo’s perfectly done. Hearing the roaring of the engine in the silent night, the rumble of the machinery while straddling the bike, the wind blowing across your face — it was close to therapeutic. There were no confinements of a car, the cage that had become your life falling away with every new upheaval on the speedometer, every one of your senses was assaulted and brought to life.

You finally understood Benny and the gang and why they fought to maintain their way of life. Freedom isn’t something you would be willing to give up either.

Much too sign he’s slowing down, approaching the bar. The place is in full swing. Everyone seems to have arrived before the pair of you. There’s several motorcycles parked out front and in the center, up front, you recognize the red bike belonging to their leader. Benny parks right beside it. You wonder if it’s a rank thing where the boys park their bike.

The wind stops; no more vibrations arising from between your legs. Benny kicks a leg out and turns his head slightly to catch sight of your movements, waiting for a reaction or to see if you’ll hop off.

If you’re being honest there’s no desire to stop.

“That was …” fun wouldn’t do the experience justice. “Exhilarating.” Freeing. “I felt like a bird.”

Benny hums, either in agreement or acknowledgment but he arches an eyebrow at you over his shoulder and his response causes you to laugh. Loud and inhibited, and once you begin it seems impossible to stop. The stress of the day fading away with the memories of the wind in your hair, hands wrapped tight around him, and every single burst of laughter that escapes you at his acceptance of your random sentence.

It felt good to be understood. It felt even better to feel invincible for once.

You use Benny’s shoulder for balance to get off his bike, releasing the last bits of laughter that escape and leaving only a wide smile that threatens to split your face in half as you stare into his eyes.

You aren’t sure how but you had known even earlier he’d bring an ease to the weight that had been resting on your shoulders and suddenly, you’re eternally grateful for him. For who he is and confounded that someone who had only come into your life because he kept getting injured could level your emotions so well without trying or knowing.

Any gratitude would only cause him confusion or discomfort so instead you choose to continue smiling.

He cocks an eyebrow, swinging his long leg around to stand up off his bike.

“I’ve got a good feeling about tonight, Benny,” a hand is thrown over his forearm and intertwined as he leads you to the bar.

Again, he only hums.

Turns out Benny’s a gentleman. Not that you were expecting him to not be, but if you’re honest you weren’t sure what to expect walking in.

How many times had you seen Vandals strut through the front doors of this bar, catcalling and roughhousing heard to the public before the door shut behind them. Once or twice you may have wondered why the visiting ladies exited pink and red in the face and adjusting their clothes.

But it isn’t like that for you. Benny holds the door open and stays a steady presence at your back. His friends holler and cheer, there’s some comments made under their breath and in his ear when they step up to congratulate him on what they assume is a new victory conquest. Eyes look you up and down and grin at him in approval but he has no response for them.

With his hand at the small of your back he leads you to an open table, going as far to pull the chair for you. From his position against the wall, you spot Johnny Davis — the leader. When you were in high school you used to babysit his daughters.

He dips his head in greeting.

The chatter in the room is so loud you can’t make out the song that’s playing.

“Benny?” He sits next to you, casual with both elbows on the table and manspreading so wide his knee bumps against yours. Benny leans forward to hear you better, close enough that you're able to notice for the first time he has freckles. One of the guys bumps into your chair, laughing, and you scoot closer. “I’m gonna need a drink.”

[temis-de-leon]

Please make sure to take care of yourself 🥺 Write whenever you feel like it and when you have the time but don't force yourself to write 😤 - Romance Anon

Crush hugging him because of a horror movie - 500 F.C.

Characters: Diavolo x gn!reader

Main Masterlist

500 followers masterlist

Requested by: Romance anon

A/N: Toni Colette, the woman that you are. And thank you Romance, for your never-ending patience <3

C/W: a bit suggestive there at the beginning, pinning, very vague description of Hereditary's ending

.

He would be lying if he said having you so close to him, practically sitting on his lap, while moaning a myriad of ‘oh my God’, ‘please, God’ and, his personal favourite, ‘Dia, Dia, Dia…!’ wasn’t affecting him in the slightest. It was, and heavily; he just wished it took place under different circumstances.

Mainly because he was low-key freaking out too, although not as much as you.

Having seen a fair number of sinners, he knew some mortal minds weren’t simple or kind, which made the darkness of life and the suffering of others a rather pleasurable affair for them. It was fascinating, apparently, a broadly studied aspect of human society, and not just one of many media genres, that propelled the pharmaceutical and therapeutic intervention businesses; a cause and a consequence, something that should’ve been avoided or couldn’t have been helped.

And yet, out of all horrors, you chose a demonic possession movie? Were you trying to tease him?

Paimon wasn’t even that bad once you got the chance to meet him properly! He was an erudite whose knowledge covered all the arts, philosophy and science. A friend of Lucifer’s, keen on reciprocity foremost and eager to start a conversation with anyone who offered him the same amount of time and interest as he did. Unfortunately, Diavolo had the tiny suspicion you wouldn’t be in the mood to meet the captivating demon, nor his demanding dromedary, after watching the disturbing movie, but you should really give it a try!

He could still understand you, though.

“Oh, dear” he said in a quiet breath as the boy on the screen slowly turned around and miraculously missed his mother crawling on the walls.

Your eyes, which had been previously peeking between your fingers, closed shut. You turned to press your face against his chest again and he deeply hoped your fear kept you from noticing the rapid beating of his heart and the way his hand closed around your waist to bring you closer. His cheeks burned, not bothering to hide an enamoured smile. There was no use in doing so when you were trying so hard to disappear from the world amongst the creases of his uniform.

Still, you had asked him to watch the film together and he would be more than damned if he disappointed you in such a trivial matter, so he forced himself to look at the screen intensely, even when a naked man loomed from the shadows and the boy had to run away for his life, tripping and falling and barely climbing to the attic on time.

“I have to say, MC” he mustered, eyes open wide as the woman (Annie?) violently banged her head against the trap door while Peter cried in desperation from the other side. “I can’t understand the appeal of watching this. When you said you wanted a movie night, I thought you’d choose something… tamer”

More romantic is what he wanted to say. Diavolo had hoped to understand love from a human standpoint and see what you liked in order to do the same. Rose petals and champagne by the fireplace? Or shopping and dining in the most expensive places in the Devildom? Dancing in the rain? Stargazing? As observant as he was, he had no clue whether you reciprocated his infatuation, so, sadly, he preferred having your full attention on him whenever he showed his feelings; and at that moment not even an emergency would’ve made you let go of his embrace. It's not like he would ever complain about that, anyway.

“I didn’t want to watch the movie alone” you finally whimpered, letting go only enough to look up at him. “And I figured if someone could make me feel protected it would be you”

Your glassy eyes vaguely reflected his speechless expression and, suddenly, he was aware of everything. The weight of your body against his, bringing warmth and comfort, the smell of your clothes and the softness of your skin; your scared pouting and embarrassed blushing. Not knowing what to do with it anymore, he let his free hand awkwardly drop over your calves and immediately almost imploded when you instinctively tucked even closer.

There was no noise for a blissful moment, save for the heavy breathing and the buzzing coming from the speakers, and Diavolo briefly asked himself if a horror movie was still a good background for a love confession.

Then, a wet sound; a sawing motion.

You slowly turned to the gigantic TV, impending doom in your expression quickly morphing into heavy distress when the mother appeared once more on the screen. Your appalled scream almost made him cover his ears before you hid your face in his chest one final time.

“OH MY GOD, DIA, OH MY GOD”

Diavolo just hoped Barbatos wouldn’t ask any questions in the morning.

.

.

Taglist: @ilovecandys2010 @ollieoven @kingofspadesdelusion @whimsybloom

[mattluvr]

dad!matt, a concept.

best read in dark mode ⏾

🧸 part ii — the labour. . .

ᡣ𐭩 october 22nd. 6am. exactly one day late, and yours and matt’s daughter is on the way.

you’re nervous, naturally, the mere sight of the soaked bedsheets from where your waters broke moments ago making your chest feel tight; it hadn’t really sunk in that you’d actually have to give birth eventually, the pain slowly creeping its way through your body planting reality in place. even more so when the first contraction grips you.

you move towards matt, seeking comfort in his hold as the pain ripples through you. “fuck, i didn’t think it would hurt this bad.” you mutter through gritted teeth, nails clamping onto matt’s shoulders.

he sighs, rubbing the small of your back in soft circles as his eyebrows draw together. he’s concerned, obviously, but the contraction passes quickly, and he seizes the opportunity to grab your hospital bag and pack you up into the car.

after you did your hair and makeup of course.

ᡣ𐭩 the journey to the hospital is more dangerous than the one from your labour scare a month ago; matt drives faster with only one hand on the wheel, the other clutched in yours as you use it to ground you through each contraction.

they’re more often and closer together, which you know from the endless pregnancy books you read is a telltale sign of your cervix dilating, and you silently start to pray this also means that the rest of pregnancy goes smoothly, complication free.

although, judging by the death grip matt has on your hand, you’re not sure whether you can rule out the prospect of your boyfriend fainting from pure stress.

he pulls into the hospital’s parking lot in a record time of 10 minutes, at least five speeding tickets with his name written all over them, but does not stop to give either of you time to breathe, a whirlwind as he rushes round to your side, hospital bag from the trunk already resting in the crook of his arm.

you laugh, accepting matt’s outstretched hand as you amble towards the entrance to the hospital. “i’ve never seen you move you fast.”

ᡣ𐭩 you and matt check in at reception, with only one contraction marring your words, and the midwives are quick to find you a room and gown.

you change in the bathroom, trying your very best to ignore how the contractions make you double over each time, the green pattern on the hospital gown making your eyes hurt alongside the baby. you settle down in the bed and your midwife introduces herself to you and matt as she hooks you up to a monitor, the name betty suiting her grey curls and soft smile perfectly.

although you like betty less when she tells you that you’re only 3cm dilated. out of 10. matt swears your expression could curdle milk in that moment and he chuckles, pressing a soft kiss to the top of your head.

“you’ve got to remember that each birth is different, so this could take a long time or a short time.” betty reassures you as she props the pillows up behind you. “you can help the labour pass by moving around. we can bring in a yoga ball if you’d like?”

matt answers for you anyways. “absolutely.”

ᡣ𐭩 betty comes in throughout the day to check in on you; she brings you the yoga ball at 8am when you finally dilate one centimetre, helping you lower down onto the contraption, with matt by your side the second a sliver of pain crosses your face.

he rubs those soft circles into your back, and you rest your head on his torso when you bounce up and down. which obviously makes matt laugh, a mindless comment about how this is a familiar sight passing his lips, causing you to glare in turn, claiming that he’s making your contractions worse. that shuts him up.

ᡣ𐭩 at 10am, you’re 6cm dilated, the yoga ball long abandoned in the corner of the room; you now find yourself on all fours on the hospital bed, rocking back and forth slowly. in your head it’s helping with the pain, but the real soother is matt’s constant presence next to you, the simple sound of his breathes calming you.

he’s already made the respective phone calls to his parents and brothers, nick audibly crying from joy over the phone whilst chris whooped and cheered.

“I’M GOING TO HAVE A NIECE BY THE END OF THE DAY!”

“would you calm the fuck down?” matt had hissed. “we’re in a hospital right now.”

“i wish they could see my death glare.” you had piped up, easing your rocking to look over at matt. he offers you an apologetic glance, hushing a see you later to the boys on the phone before hanging up.

you don’t even let matt apologise, babbling out words before your next contraction hits you. “can you call my mom?”

he doesn’t even hesitate. and that’s why you love him.

ᡣ𐭩 the next hour flies by, a centimetre passing every 20 minutes, marking you at 9cm dilated by 11am and crying from how badly it hurts.

the midwives have moved you back to a flat position, your legs now in stirrups to give them easier access for checkups. matt is crouched down by your side, pushing your hair out of your face as you blubber in agony.

“i don’t think i can do this, matt.”

“are you kidding me?” matt squeezes your hand, his expression soft as he moves forward to peck your forehead. “you are the strongest, prettiest, most powerful girl i know. i love you and this baby, and i know you can do this.”

the tears from that point onwards are mixed with joy, comforted by matt’s presence beside you.

ᡣ𐭩 at 11:30am, you’re ready to have your baby girl. biologically, maybe not mentally, your chest tightening as betty tells you with a soft smile that you’re now ready to start the process of pushing. but on the other hand, you’ve gone through at least 20 years worth of pain in the space of 5 hours and want nothing more than to get this baby out of you. so you reluctantly agree.

with matt’s hand clutched in yours, you lean forwards into each push, ungodly screams leaving your mouth in an attempt to cancel out the pain gripping you.

“good work, keep going!” betty spurs you on, her scrubs confined by an apron as she waits in anticipation. “the head’s almost there, a few more pushes!”

you exhale, turning to matt who gives you an encouraging nod despite his pale complexion, the boy about three minutes away from fainting. which almost pushes you on, now desperate to get your daughter out into the world before her dad passes out. you sit up on your elbows once more, vision blurred as you start the final stretch.

the head is out before you know it, and with one more weak push, the rest of your daughter is out into the world, sobs spilling out of your mouth as betty brings her up to nestle by you.

her lungs are full, both your cries mixed together in the thick atmosphere of the hospital room, matt’s own tears hidden as he leans over to observe his baby, shaky fingers reaching out to caress her skin.

he moves back to press another kiss to your forehead. “i told you you could do it.”

ᡣ𐭩 october 22nd, at 11:33am, your daughter arrives into the world, and you and matt’s lives are about to be changed in the best ways possible.

taglist. . .

( @aelinslegend, @mattslolita, @emely9274, @conspiracy-ash, @chrissturniolossidehoe, @mattbrainrot ) is open!

[girlsoutlate]

this is my new account, so i'm reposting my 1 piece of work, hope you enjoy!!

readers thoughts are in pink, ever so light implied john price x reader, light questionable behaviour from men (not 141)

thinking about subtle sarcastic reader, especially to the type of man she'd encounter while working in the army. being a civilian and a woman many on base just looked over her, or looked too intensely at certain parts of her. but after months of working she's found her place, she's now respected by those who surround her. but what happens when some higher ups come and visit?

working closely with the 141 was no easy task. going from mundane paperwork to the flurry of action from a mission was difficult for you to handle, let alone helping them. you'd grown closer to them though, no more bouts of shyness stopping you from being yourself. instead you'd grown in to steady workplace banter with all.

unfortunately today couldn't be one of those days as some ever so important higher ups were holding a meeting with the 141, and since you handle the majority of the paperwork you were so graciously invited to attend.

you wished you had a little bit more time to prepare for this. these were important people, who wouldn't be nervous? apart from soap who appeared with a shit-eating grin at your office door, gifting you another surprise meeting. or gaz who could charm any conversation his way a bit too easily, with suave compliments and easy-going humour. don't forget ghost who doesn't even need to look engaged because of his mask, or be expected to speak due to his... unique personality. oh and the captain has been to countless of these meetings, so he can't empathise with you either.

but, one thing you could all agree on is that meetings were incredibly boring. for two reasons mostly. either the attendees were so dense it seemed they hadn't stepped on planet earth before, let alone a military base. or the subject matter was so bland you all wondered why there needed to be a meeting in the first place.

as your heels tapped hastily along the hallway you wondered which it would be. arriving barely on time with a tight clutch on haphazardly organised documents and a cup of coffee you opened the door, and had an inkling it wouldn't be any. you were met with two male voices. one high, clipped and plummy, the other harsh and american.

"-- that's what i expected from someone of her-oh hello! nice to finally meet you" the man at the head of the table said. an older, short and stout man with thin wire-rimmed glasses and a black tailored suit. a typical english man in an authoritative position. "ah, sorry i was late you'll have to excuse me. i thought to bring my extra notes, i hope i didn't make you wait long." you replied. "not at all, my colleague mr sullivan and i were discussing stories from our base". your gaze flicked over to what must be the source of the american voice. perfectly gold hair stuck down with copious amounts of gel, paired with lightly tanned skin and a too white smile didn't make it hard to guess. "civilians eh?" the taller man began "don't know what's up with the ones here, especially the woman we were just talki-"

"right" prices deep gravely voice cut over the grating one "meeting should start we're all 'ere". murmurs of agreement filled the room, and so did glances between the 141 that you didn't pick upon. however you did notice they were unusually quiet though you brushed it off, they were probably tired. "gosh where are my manners" the man at the head of the table exclaimed "my name is mr buckton and i'll be leading this meeting." briskly taking a few steps towards you he shook your hand roughly. being polite you attempted to make eye contact, yet his eyes were still looking straight ahead? lingering only on your chest for a moment he then made eye contact with you, a wide grin crept on his face. "come, your seat is next to mine" he prompted, gesturing you to walk infront of him and take your seat. as you walked infront of him his eyes now travelled further south. a small grimace shared from gaz to soap went undetected by the three sitting at the top of the table. mr buckton at the head, you to his left and then the captain and ghost next to you. opposite was mr sullivan, with gaz then soap next to him. with you all seated the meeting began.

for once the meeting was actually worth being held. despite it not being anything too serious you did well, even with your nerves. you answered questions and expanded in the points of others. as you suggested plans of action mr buckton steadily kept his eyes on you, while mr sullivan constantly scribbled notes down. soon enough the meeting was a breeze. well for about twenty minutes. across from you, mr sullivan was very inquisitive about anything you said. asking you to back it up or to show proof. not thinking much of it you obliged. it was a little odd but you knew your stuff and why not show off infront of higher ups? however the sentiment was not shared with the rest of the 141. who even asked for evidence about evidence? they understood wanting clarification on certain things, but it was growing incessant now. you were capable of your job and they knew that - that's why you were there. price especially helped you in the growing awkwardness; his job had never been so easy with you working underneath him. gaz and soap constantly gave eachother questioning glances, not wanting to explicitly speak up if their captain didn't. ghost was pissed he couldn't hide his eyes rolling as well as his scowl behind his balaclava. although they were growing increasingly annoyed the meeting continued, with more ridiculous questions being asked. professionalism was continued with a grim expression for another twenty minutes or so. hardly.

until mr sullivan basically dislocated his back by stretching in his chair with an exaggerated yawn leaving his cavernous mouth. "thought you woulda brought coffee since you kept us waiting for so long, cant believe you didn't make me some fresh". with beady eyes on you he smiled lazily. oh he has to be joking you thought to yourself there's no way this guy is real. play them at their own game. "why would i make more? i've already got some for myself" you smiled sickly back at him back, one that gaz has used on you many times when he's late giving you a report.

the table fell unusually silent again, and that's when you noticed it. the crackling of unease filling the air. sharp eyes from the 141 darted from eachother to you, to mr sullivan and back again.

"don't be so mean, i'm literally a dying man" he snarkily replied, eyeing you coolly. "one can hope" ghost muttered under his breath.

"i have urgent needs that need to be taken care of, won't you help?". mr sullivan continued, a slimy smile displayed as he noted the effect his badly hidden innuendo had on you. you felt your cheeks warm. he smirked at this, finally affecting you after bugging you the whole bloody meeting. fuck impressing him he's an arsehole.

"well, i'm sure you'll be alright by yourself. seems it happens a lot." you said back, indifferent. as soon as that left your mouth a strange sharp bark that hastily turned in to a cough came from soap. all heads from the table whipped to look at him. "pardon me" he shakily said, quickly taking a sip of his drink, watery eyes not straying from the blank wall above ghosts head.

"let's get back on track hmm?" mr buckton suggested "so cheeky, must be that time of the month". he turned to you with an eyebrow raised with an impish grin.

what. what the actual fuck. not only was this unprofessional, but who even though if that? let alone say it out loud.

price coughed uncomfortably and turned away. gaz and ghost looked at eachother in disbelief. and soap was finding that wall even more interesting. surely it could not get any worse.

"oh you all know what women are like, don't pretend. especially when they're frustrated" mr buckton let out a giggle "you know from work". you actually spluttered, eyes wide with disbelief. the feeling of unease in the air was now a full jolt of electricity. just as you felt price boiling with anger you leaned forwards to mr buckton. if everyone on the table wasn't watching you, they certainly were now.

"tell me" you said. mr buckton looked at you shocked, mouth gaping open. "tell me what women are like. you know i've been so airheaded this last week i hardly know my left from my right!". just to amp it up a little you slowly crossed your arms just underneath your chest, accentuating it. "you've explained so much to me this meeting surely you could explain this?"

the 141's eyes grew to the size of saucers, there's no way these two would actually fall for this? right? at this point mr bucktons and mr sullivans jaws were practically falling off. the latter was sadly the quickest to start talking 'so, when women start-". a smart rap in the door interrupted. a male voice said seriously

"emergency call for you mr buckton".

"oh, oh you must excuse us. i have to end this meeting" mr buckton declared "i simply cant miss this". messily shuffling their papers together both men swiftly said their goodbyes to you all. with that they just about made it out the door without tripping over their own legs.

a second passed after the door banged shut before gaz burst out in howls of laughter, clutching his ribs, soon joined by soap who could barely look at the wall for any longer. ghost stared at the door muttering who knows what under his breath and the captain sat there with his gaze fixated on the table mortified. he turned his head to you apologising profusely and asking if you're okay.

you just nodded vaguely and replied "men"

all likes, reblogs and comments are so appreciated!! this is my first time writing something properly so i hope you enjoyed it

[fandom-means-family]

911 season 8B opening idea...

Buck helps Eddie pack up his stuff. They pack boxes, put away the kitchen supplies, the Playstation, the photos. And you can see they're both hurting. After the last box is closed, only the furniture still stands. "That's for the moving company," Eddie says and it's the first words we hear in the one minute packing montage.

They sit down on the couch and look ahead at the black TV screen. You see their reflections in it.

"I'm gonna - gonna miss that couch," Buck mutters.

"I'm gonna -" Eddie stops. He brings his hand up to his chest and clenches his jaw. Takes a deep breath to fight down the upcoming anxiety attack. "I'm gonna miss your lasagna."

The silence is heavy. Somewhere in the background, a clock is ticking. The phone rings.

They hear about Maddie.

----

In the hospital, Buck waits outside Maddie's room. Eddie's next to him, a deja-vu of the horrible day when Chim was attacked and Maddie abducted.

"I hate that you're leaving," Buck says. "But I get it. You don't wanna miss out and you gotta make sure he's safe. I get it. You're all he's got."

And Eddie just looks at him, but Buck is staring straight ahead and doesn't see the tears in Eddie's eyes.

----

"I gotta go or I'll miss my flight."

"I can drive you."

"It's okay. Stay with Maddie."

They hug.

"Just - just call me when you get there, okay?"

Eddie nods, chin still resting on Buck's shoulder.

----

Buck sits on the left of Maddie's bed, Chim's on the right, and Maddie exchanges one look with her husband and takes Buck's hand.

"How are you holding up Evan?"

"Don't worry about me."

"But I do. We do."

Buck sighs and rubs his face. It's all a bit much all at once. People keep leaving him. And he can't change it. He couldn't reach Tommy. He didn't try to change Eddie's mind. All he can ever do is watch as they go.

He shows her all the messages he sent to Tommy, marked as read.

"What if the universe is trying to tell me I'm just meant to stay alone?"

Maddie looks at Chim again, then back at Buck.

"That's not your fate. Evan, I know you. You never give up. If you have someone worth fighting for, you do that. You fight."

"You know," Chim adds, "a man barely wiser than yourself once told me that tomorrow isn't promised to anyone. So if you love him, tell him."

----

"Listen, I know you don't wanna hear it but I - I hate this. I just want - I don't know. God, I don't know what I want but I know it's not this. Please, just - just call me back."

---

Buck is in his car, speeding down the street way too fast considering the heavy rain. He sees sirens in the distance and a traffic jam sign. He gets closer. There's a car right at the exit of the highway. It's flipped onto the back, the driver must have hit the brakes too hard and lost control.

Buck passes the scene. He turns his head, trying to recognize any of the firefighters huddled around the car. That's when his eyes catch the scratch at the door of the overturned vehicle. He remembers the day it got there.

He slams the brakes.

----

Inside the car, a phone is lying with a cracked screen. A firefighter takes it.

"Hurry up!" someone yells.

"Someone get me a tourniquet!" another one shouts.

The unnamed firefighter looks down onto the phone screen. The screen is frozen.

1 voice mail from: Buck

----

"Sir, you cannot be here."

"No. No, I - I gotta - I gotta be there."

He points his shaky finger at the ambulance.

"Do you know that man?"

Buck can't speak.

Not far away, the sign for LAX stands tall above the highway. It would have been just one more exit.

----

The house is South Bedford Street is vacant and silent. The old clock is still on the wall, but it stands still. But there's still a light on in the living room. The only thing it illuminates is a couch.

[karmaholik]

Suguru enters into the classroom with a sleepy greeting and is met with two wide-eyed stares. It was the morning after he got back from a particularly irritating mission. Not only did it take longer than expected, but the curse he was dealing with was just plain annoying.

 

It would have been fun if Satoru was with him like he was supposed to be, but Yaga had separated them as a punishment. So they were sent on solo missions apart.

 

"What?" He asks slowly as they continue to stare at him. He looks down at his uniform. Nothing seemed out of place. It's not like he showed up to class without pants. Though, Satoru would probably have enjoyed that. 

"What the fuck happened?" Satoru exclaims as he shoots out of his chair, it clatters to the floor at the force. He's rounding his desk and coming right for Suguru. The black-haired boy can only watch Satoru with confusion etched into his features. 

"Where did it go?" Satoru gestures to him wildly, looking a little frantic. Suguru just stares at him. What the hell is he going on about?

"He means your hair, dumbass." Shoko says as her teeth clack against the sucker she rolls around in her mouth. 

Oh. He forgot about that. 

"Ah, the curse got a chunk of it. It was this ball with a bunch of razor blades on it. I just cut the rest off for it to be even." He hears a sharp intake of breath from Satoru. His hand unconsciously goes up to tugs at the ends that now fall around his ears. 

It was much shorter now. Suguru didn't mind it. Sure, he liked it longer, but this was fine, too. His showers would be a lot shorter now. 

"Shoko, use your RCT to fix his hair!" Satoru demands, pointing to Suguru as he looks expectantly at her. She doesn't even blink.

"That's not how that works, idiot." She says blandly. It wasn't a big deal. Except it seemed to be that way to Satoru, who looked absolutely devastated as his gaze fell to the shorter black tresses. 

"Satoru," he calls out softly as he steps closer to the other boy. They are nose to nose, and Suguru gives him a smile as he brings his hands up to cup Satoru's face lovingly.

"It's just hair. It will grow back." He tries to sound reassuring. Satoru blinks rapidly, and Suguru notices his eyes looking glassy. 'Aw,' he thinks. 'How adorable.'

"But I liked it long." His mouth wobbles a bit, and Suguru can't help but coo at him. It was honestly so cute how upset Satoru is over his hair. He'll grow it out again and keep it long since Satoru seemed to like it so much. 

Satoru runs a hand through Suguru's hair with a pout. With a laugh at the other boy's actions, Suguru starts leaning in for a kiss.

"I swear, if you guys kiss in front of me, I won't heal you the next time you fuck up. I'll let you suffer." Suguru doesn't heed her warning and leans forwards anyways to press a kiss to Satoru's pouty lips. Oh well, guess he'll suffer. 

[insidekatmind]

Best friends- Pope Heyward

Wearning: +18, smut, cheating,english is not my first language

The soft lights of the sunset paint the horizon in shades of orange and pink as you sit on your porch, a book open in your hands. The air is crisp, with a light breeze carrying the salty scent of the ocean. You're engrossed in your reading when you hear the familiar sound of hurried footsteps on the path leading to your house. You look up and see Pope, his expression troubled and his fists clenched at his sides.

“Can I come in?” he asks without preamble, his voice rougher than usual.

You set the book down next to you, concerned. “Of course, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. He climbs the porch steps, his movements quick and jittery. When he stops in front of you, you notice the flush on his cheeks and the slight tremor in his hands.

“It’s Cleo,” he says finally, crossing his arms over his chest as if trying to contain something too heavy to hold. “We had a fight. A bad one.”

You stand up, gesturing toward the door. “Come inside, let’s talk about it.”

He nods and follows you in, collapsing onto the couch in your living room. You bring him a glass of water, which he accepts with a small nod of thanks. He takes a sip in silence, then runs a hand through his hair—a gesture you know well. It’s his way of trying to calm himself down.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” you ask, sitting next to him, close enough to let him know you’re there for him but not so close as to invade his space.

He sighs, a deep and tired sound. “It started as something stupid, at least at first. We were talking about plans for the weekend, and I said I wanted to spend it with you guys, with the Pogues. She started saying we spend too much time together and that I should dedicate more time to just the two of us.”

You nod, trying to see both sides. “And what did you say?”

“That there’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with my friends. But then she got upset and said I never put her first.” He pauses, shaking his head. “It’s not true, but… I don’t know, maybe I messed up somewhere.”

You look at him with gentle understanding, seeing the weight he carries on his shoulders. “Pope, you know how much Cleo cares about you. But maybe she needs to feel more secure in your affection. Maybe your words made her think you don’t care enough.”

He lifts his gaze to meet yours, his dark eyes filled with frustration and pain. “But that’s not true. I do care, so much. I just… sometimes I don’t know how to show it.”

You place a hand on his arm, your touch light but reassuring. “You don’t have to have all the answers right away. Sometimes it’s just about listening to the other person and trying to understand them.”

He leans back against the couch, closing his eyes for a moment. “Why does everything have to be so complicated? I thought being with someone was supposed to be easier.”

You shake your head with a wistful smile. “Relationships are never easy, Pope. But if they’re worth it, you work to make them work.”

For a moment, silence fills the room, broken only by the sound of the waves in the distance. Then he leans slightly toward you, his gaze now softer but also more intense. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know? You’re always here for me, even when I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

Your heart beats a little faster at his words, but you try to stay calm. “That’s what friends are for, Pope.”

He offers a faint smile, a tired but genuine one. “You’re more than a friend to me, you know that?”

Your breath catches for a moment. “What do you mean?”

He moves closer, his face now only inches from yours. “I mean… I don’t know when it started, but lately, I can’t stop thinking about you. Every time I’m with Cleo, part of me just wants to be here, with you.”

His words leave you speechless. You search his eyes, trying to discern whether he’s confused or sincere. But there’s no doubt in his gaze, only honesty.

“Pope…” you start, but he cuts you off.

“I don’t want you to think I’m using you to get over Cleo. It’s not that. But tonight, when we fought, all I wanted was to come here. To be with you.”

Before you can respond, he leans in and presses his lips to yours. It’s a kiss that starts tentative, almost unsure, but as you respond, it deepens into something more intense, more passionate. His hands rest on your waist, pulling you closer, and for a moment, the world around you fades away.

When you finally pull apart, both of you breathless, he looks at you with a kind of reverence tinged with uncertainty. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

You did not let him finish because you have re-cut your lips with his. You sucked his lip whining moaning.

Pope lies you on the couch while he takes off your clothes and then takes off his.

Pope looks at you for a moment to confirm that you want to do it, and you nod.

You moaned at how big and long Pope’s dick was. He smiled and kissed you softly, then came in with a quick blow, making both of them groan.

"You’re tighter than I imagined," Pope muttered as he began to move.

You groaned and then caught your lips with him

As the impulses of Pope increased fucking you with force venting all his anger and all his passion that had at that moment.

You could only groan with force while your pussy held Pope’s cock tightly making him moan while he fucked you harder while he chewed your neck leaving spots and bruises but you didn’t care, you were enjoying and getting even more excited at the same time.

You scratched his back feeling how it was destroying your pussy and left big scratches behind his back but neither of them cared, too taken by the moment and how you were fucking so well.

"you’re fucking me so well" You whimpered and he growled as he felt your pussy tighten even more around his cock two more shots and made you come then follow you by wheel cumming inside.

"the best sex of my life" he murmured as he joined your lips with hers again.

Pope still had his dick inside you and you felt it was getting hard again and you moaned as you were watching and stroked his hair.

"Round two?" He whispered and you smiled nodding

[motherismotheringggg]

Hi ! Can you do one of Cooper? The reader was actress/actor. The reader was friends with Cooper and the reader sister knew that the reader was/had fan/crush on Cooper and the reader sister told Cooper that the reader had a crush on him?

finally yours 🩵

summary: see the request above, thank you to this lovely anon <3

type: fluff, fluff and more fluff

tags: kissing

author’s note: this was so sweet to write, man i love a lil fluff moment 😭

🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧

You and Cooper had met on a red carpet about a year ago, a night that clearly belonged to him. He was dazzlingly popular, sweeping nearly every category, and it felt like everyone wanted his time. Amid the flashing lights and applause, he held himself with a calm, gracious air, even as fans, journalists, and other celebrities flocked around him.

From afar, you couldn’t help but admire him, captivated by both his talent and his looks. Cooper was stunning in that classic way, with sharp cheekbones and a warm, inviting smile that lit up his face. His hazel eyes held a warmth that softened his otherwise chiseled features, making his charm and confidence feel magnetic.

When his eyes met yours, he rushed over, leaving you stunned. Did he mistake you for someone else? “Oh my god, Y/N, I’m a big fan,” he said, towering over you as he pulled you into an embrace. You were stunned; you’d become a bit of a sensation recently, with your latest movie creating major buzz, but for Cooper to call himself a fan truly shook you.

He continued to shower you in compliments, his words warm and sincere as he praised your work and told you how gorgeous you looked tonight. Before you could fully process it, he’d wrapped his arms around you again, his broad hands resting on your back and making you feel small and secure in his hold.

As he pulled back, still keeping you close, he shook his head in disbelief. “You’re incredible,” he said, his voice filled with admiration. Blushing, you managed to say, “Congratulations on tonight—you deserve it. You were brilliant in Monsters,” reaching out to squeeze his arm. You felt the defined muscles beneath his suit jacket, and your heart fluttered a bit.

His smile softened, and he pulled you in for another hug, his hands lingering slightly as if he didn’t want to let go. “Thank you,” he murmured, his voice low in your ear. “I’ll see you around tonight,” he added with a lingering smile.

Throughout the after-party, you kept running into each other, each interaction feeling warmer and more personal than the last. By the end of the night, he handed you his phone with a grin. “Let’s keep in touch,” he said, his eyes holding a hint of something more. You saved your number, feeling breathless as you handed his phone back.

————

A few years had passed since that unforgettable red carpet-meeting, and you and Cooper had become inseparable. Whether at events, concerts, or casual hangouts, your bond grew stronger with every shared experience. Fans adored seeing you together, dubbing you a “Hollywood dream duo,�� and when it was announced that you’d finally be starring in a project together, the internet erupted in excitement over your electric chemistry.

Filming had been underway for a month, and you and Cooper had grown closer than ever. Every long day on set was balanced by shared laughter, lingering glances, and the comfort of having someone who understood you completely. Cooper had a way of bringing out your best—both on-screen and off. He’d always linger near your trailer, insisting his lunch break was better spent in your company than anywhere else. There were late-night runs to the craft services tent, where you’d tease him for his snack choices, and stolen moments in between takes where your banter flowed effortlessly, leaving everyone around you grinning.

On this particular day, you’d invited your younger sister to visit the set, eager to share a piece of your world with her. Though only two years younger, she had a knack for noticing things most people missed and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind—a combination that often led to hilariously blunt observations or moments of piercing clarity.

She was lounging in your trailer, her legs propped up on the small table as she flipped idly through a magazine. “So this is where the magic happens?” she teased, glancing up with a smirk.

“Something like that,” you replied, rolling your eyes but smiling, finishing up your hair at the trailer vanity.

Your sister’s sharp gaze scanned the trailer like she was piecing together a puzzle. “It’s cozier than I expected. Guess I thought movie-star trailers were all champagne and crystal chandeliers.”

“You’ve been watching too much reality TV,” you said, shaking your head.

Before she could retort, a knock sounded on the door.

“Come in!” you called out.

The door swung open to reveal Cooper, his signature grin lighting up the space. “Heard your sister was here,” he said, stepping inside. “Thought I’d come and say hi.”

Your sister immediately straightened, her analytical gaze locking onto Cooper like a hawk sizing up its prey. You couldn’t help but chuckle internally; you knew this was her version of sizing him up.

“This is my sister Jade” you said, gesturing toward her. “And this is Cooper, my—”

“... absolute best friend in the entire world,” he finished for you, extending his hand toward her. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” your sister said, shaking his hand firmly. She tilted her head slightly, studying him with a look you recognized all too well—the “I’m figuring you out” look. “So, you’re the one who’s always monopolizing her time?”

“Guilty,” Cooper said with a laugh, his eyes flicking to yours with a playful glint.

“You’re lucky you’re charming,” she quipped, a small smirk playing on her lips as she went in for a hug.

You groaned. “Ignore her. She thinks she’s hilarious.”

“Because I am,” she shot back, not missing a beat.

The three of you quickly settled into a rhythm, with Cooper cracking jokes and your sister firing back witty retorts that had him chuckling. You chimed in with playful commentary, adding to the lively dynamic, it felt like a comedy routine. Still, your sister’s sharp eye didn’t miss the way Cooper leaned toward you when he laughed or how his gaze lingered on you just a little longer than necessary.

As the conversation flowed, Cooper’s natural warmth shone through, and your sister’s demeanor softened slightly. By the time he was called back to set, she was grinning as she watched him leave.

When the door shut behind him, the trailer fell into silence. You turned to your vanity to touch up your makeup, trying to ignore the goofy grin that had taken over your face.

“Okay, spill,” your sister said, breaking the quiet.

“Spill what?” you asked, feigning innocence.

She raised an eyebrow, leaning back in her seat. “So…that’s your boyfriend, or what?”

You whipped around, startled. “What? No! Cooper and I are just—”

“Absolute best friends?” she interrupted, folding her arms. “Please. I don’t know how you’ve convinced yourself of that, but the energy between you two? It’s practically a rom-com in real life. The banter, the looks, the body language—it’s all there.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to stop you. “And before you say I’m imagining things, let me remind you: I notice everything. You’re in love with him. Admit it.”

“I’m not—” you started, but the words faltered.

Your sister narrowed her eyes, her tone softening but still direct. “You can’t lie to me. He looks at you like you’re the only person in the room. And you hang on to his every single word he says.”

Her analysis hit like a punch to the chest. You turned back to the mirror, trying to collect your thoughts. “We’re just…really good friends,” you said quietly, though even you could hear the doubt in your voice.

“Sure,” she said, her tone laced with sarcasm. “And I’m just here for the free snacks.”

You sighed letting out a chuckle, your fingers fiddling with a makeup brush. The truth was, she wasn’t wrong. You had been yearning for Cooper for years, hiding your feelings behind the safety of friendship. The thought of losing him—or complicating what you had—had always kept you from saying anything.

Before you could respond, a knock on the door signaled it was time for you to head back to set. “Think Cooper could show me around while you’re busy?” your sister asked, her tone casual but her smirk anything but.

You hesitated for a moment before nodding. “Sure. But behave.”

“No promises,” she said with a wink as she followed you out.

————

Cooper led Jade around the set, his easygoing demeanor making even the chaotic environment feel inviting. He started with the soundstage, a cavernous space where cameras, lights, and crew buzzed with purpose. “This is where the magic happens—or, you know, where we fake it convincingly,” he quipped, pointing out the massive green screens and intricate camera rigs. He gestured to a detailed house facade, adding, “Looks sturdy, right? It’s just plywood. One strong gust, and it’s game over.”

From there, he showed her the wardrobe trailer, crammed with racks of costumes, and the prop room, a treasure trove of oddly specific items—everything from antique vases to fake food. Finally, they landed at the diner set, complete with retro booths, a jukebox, and gleaming countertops. “This one’s my favorite,” Cooper said as your sister slid into a booth, her eyes roaming over the immersive details. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember it’s not real.” She smirked at that, tapping the table thoughtfully. “Feels like it could be.” Cooper grinned, leaning in slightly, “That’s the goal.”

As they made their way back to your trailer, the air between Cooper and your sister felt easy and light. He paused just outside the door, hands tucked into his pockets, ready to say goodbye as she waited for you to wrap filming. There was a brief, comfortable silence before Jade tilted her head and asked, “So, how are you liking filming with my sister?”

Cooper’s face lit up instantly, and he didn’t hesitate. “Oh, she’s incredible,” he said, his voice full of sincerity. “She’s just… one of those people who makes everything better, you know? On set, off set—she’s so talented, so smart. And funny. Don’t even get me started on how funny she is.” His grin widened as he continued, “She has this way of making everyone feel comfortable, but she’s also so driven and sharp. Honestly, it’s kind of unfair that someone can be that amazing and still look as good as she does.” He chuckled, shaking his head, clearly caught up in his praise.

Your sister raised an eyebrow, smirking as she leaned against the trailer door. “So, when the movie wraps, is that when you guys are going to make your relationship public?”

Cooper froze for half a beat before laughing, the sound slightly louder and more nervous than usual. “What? No, no, we’re just friends,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, his cheeks tinting the faintest shade of pink. “Really good friends, that’s all.”

But Jade wasn’t buying it. She squinted at him, her knowing look cutting straight through his weak denial. As she turned to open the trailer door, she tossed over her shoulder, “There’s nothing worse than two idiots in love trying to convince everyone else they aren’t.”

Cooper stood there, stunned into silence, watching the door close behind her. His jaw slackened slightly as her words sank in. She knew. And worse—he knew she was right.

————

Later that night, the set had quieted down, and you found yourself back in Cooper’s trailer, sharing dinner like you always did. The meal was simple but comforting, and the air between you was familiar—comfortable, even—but there was a faint, unspoken tension that neither of you addressed outright. Still, it wasn’t enough to interrupt your usual banter about the day’s filming.

“Thanks again for showing my sister around,” you said after a pause, your fork idly poking at your plate. “She seemed like she had fun, which is rare for her. She’s usually not impressed by much.”

“She was sweet,” Cooper said, leaning back in his chair. “Actually, she said she really admires your work ethic. Like, lowkey, she thinks you’re kind of amazing….and she’s not wrong” His tone was easy, but something about the way he said it made your heart skip.

You froze for a split second, trying to keep your face neutral. “Yeah, well,” you began, forcing a laugh, “sometimes she likes to make people feel nervous for fun. She’s, uh, super analytical like that—loves seeing people squirm. It’s kind of her thing.”

As casually as ever, he got up and crossed to the small couch in the corner, motioning for you to join him. “She told me a lot about you, though,” he said, his voice softer now, carrying a weight that sent your stomach flipping.

Your heart dropped, a rush of panic hitting you square in the chest. You set your plate down and crossed your arms, trying to play it off. “Oh, God,” you said with an exaggerated groan. “What’d she say? Because honestly, sometimes she just talks to mess with people.”

Cooper smiled faintly, but his eyes didn’t waver. “She wasn’t messing with me,” he said, his tone more direct now, making it impossible for you to brush him off.

Your chest rose sharply, your breath caught in a mix of panic and anticipation. Cooper’s words hung in the air, so heavy yet so vulnerable. You slowly lowered yourself onto the couch next to him, trying to keep your movements calm even though your heart was racing wildly.

“She said… ‘there’s nothing worse than two fools in love,’” Cooper repeated, his lips curving into a small, almost shy smile as he reached for your hands. His touch was warm, his hands larger and stronger than yours, yet so gentle that it felt like a grounding force. “And if I’m being honest, I’m in love with you. I always have been, and I always will be.”

Your breath hitched, your heart thudding loudly in your ears. Cooper’s thumb lightly grazed over your knuckles as he continued, his voice unwavering despite the tenderness of his confession. “But she’s your sister, and she knows you better than I ever could. So if this isn’t something you want…” His words trailed off, his gaze searching yours for any sign of hesitation.

You took a deep breath, the air filling your lungs but failing to calm the storm inside. “Cooper,” you began, your voice trembling slightly, “I’ve loved you ever since you first said my name. And every day since then. You make every day wonderful, and even on my worst days, just hearing from you makes it all feel better—like the world isn’t as heavy.”

Finally, you looked up, meeting his gaze head-on. His eyes were warm and kind, full of something deeper than you’d ever dared to imagine. The way he smiled at you—like you were his whole world—made your chest ache in the best way.

“God,” he breathed, his voice filled with awe, “you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

And then he moved. The space between you disappeared as his lips found yours, crashing into you with a passion that left no room for doubt. For a fleeting second, you hesitated, the weight of the moment overwhelming. But then your instincts took over, and you melted into him.

The kiss was electric, a perfect mix of exhilaration and familiarity. It felt like a first kiss—tingling, new, and impossibly thrilling—but also like the culmination of a thousand unspoken moments, as though you’d been doing this forever.

Cooper’s hands moved to your waist, pulling you closer, his grip firm but protective. His large hands made you feel small, secure, and cherished all at once. Your hands found their way to his jaw and the back of his head, your fingers tangling in his hair as you pulled him deeper into the kiss. Time seemed to blur, the rest of the world falling away until there was only Cooper—his warmth, his touch, his love.

[spacetime1969]

Danny Fenton’s Field Trip to the Ghost Zone!

I have had the wonderful opportunity to write a fic inspired by the art of the wonderful @arisu-artnfics as part of @ecto-implosion. I ended up thinking it would be fun to bring in a trope from a completely different fandom, and write a Peter Parker Field Trip fic for Danny Fenton. Enjoy!

Chapter 4: Magic, Dragons, and Storms? Oh my!

Ao3 | First | Previous | Next

Technus’s voice sounded over the speaker. “Welcome to the Time Lost Lands, students! The home of Queen Dorathea and her subjects.”

“Woah is that a castle?” one of Dash’s classmates asked.

Dash looked out the window and sure enough, there was a massive medieval castle right out the window.

“Is that a dragon!” Dash couldn’t help his yell as he spotted a large winged reptile climbing out from behind the castle.

Manson just grinned at him. “Yep.”

The Dragon jumped from the tower and started flying towards them. Dash made a very manly noise of surprise. Definitely not a terrified squeal. (AN: This is a lie. He actually did a very good impression of a baby otter)

The Dragon was getting closer and closer, and everyone, other than the nerds, was getting progressively more freaked out. Fenton and his friends on the other hand didn’t even flinch as the massive mythical creature landed on top of the bus.

“WHO DARES TRESPASS ON MY... Oh, hello Lady Samantha. How are you this fine morning.” Halfway through its booming yell the dragon transformed into a woman with long blond hair who smiled at Manson.

“Hi Dora!” Manson smiled back. “Our class fell through a natural portal and we’re trying to get home. Think you can point us in the direction of the Far Frozen?”

“Well I can certainly give you directions, but I’m afraid they won’t be much help. The next stop on your journey is Box Ghost and Lunch Lady’s lair, which is currently only accessible through The Storm of Doom.” Dash could hear the capital letters in that name. He looked out into the Ghost Zone where the ghost was pointing and saw a patch of dark clouds. It didn’t look like much, but something about it scared him.

“Oh no, are they alright?” Fenton asked. He and his friends actually looked concerned.

Now Dash would admit that he wasn’t the best at math, but if those four were actually scared of something after how relaxed they had been at everything else in this dimension, then Dash should probably be just as scared. (AN: Dash made an error in his calculations, he should have been far more scared than he was)

“Last I heard from them they were preparing their lair for the storm. So I assume they are doing alright, but we won’t know for sure until the storm passes,” the ghost queen said.

“Speaking of which, that storm is heading this way!” Technus’s voice said over the bus speakers.

The other ghost, Dora, nodded. “Yes, I have been working to prepare the castle and move my citizens inside for the storm. You and yours are welcome to shelter with us Lady Sam.”

Manson and her friends share a look. “The last thing we want is to be stuck in The Storm of Doom.” Valarie said.

Fenton and Foley both nodded. “Yeah, the castle is probably one of the safest places to ride it out. I vote we take Dora up on her offer,” Fenton said.

“Hang on just a minute!” Mr. Lancer interrupted. “Since when were the four of you in charge!”

Foley shrugged. “Hey, Technus!” he said, turning to the front of the bus. “What are the odds on us surviving if we try and fly through The Storm of Doom?”

“My current calculations indicate a 5% chance of immediate death.”

Mr Lancer’s eyes widened. “Well that’s not too bad,” he managed to stammer out, but Technus kept going.

“A 30% chance of your classmates' blood boiling in their veins. A 24% chance of their brains freezing solid. A 4% chance of death by electrocution. A 10% chance of death by poisonous gasses. A 7% chance of spaghettification. A 9% chance of death by eldritch madness, 6% chance of Danny, Valarie, and I being the only survivors, 3% chance of you and Sam also surviving, and a 2% chance of more than half of your classmates surviving. The odds of everyone surviving is less than 0.01% and statistically insignificant, so I rounded it out.” Technus sounded way too cheerful to be discussing their, apparently very probable, deaths.

Mr. Lancer’s face had gotten paler and paler as the ghost spoke. He stumbled into his seat, Foley just smirking at him. “So, do you want to do that? Or do you want to spend the night in a very secure castle and not die a horrible death?”

“Besides,” Fenton held up a glowing green post-it note that he had gotten from... Dash had no idea where he had gotten it from, “time is apparently moving at a two to one ratio to earth right now, so every two hours we spend here only one is passing on earth. So we have plenty of time.” No one bothered to ask him how he knew that.

Mr Lancer just nodded and slumped farther into the bus seat.

Manson turned back to the ghost dragon lady floating outside the bus and smiled at her, bowing at the waist. “We humbly accept your offer of shelter, Queen Dorathea of the Time Lost Lands.”

The Ghost, Queen Dorathea, nodded back at Manson. “The Time Lost Lands do not forget those who helped us find our path to the future, you and yours will always be able to find shelter in our walls, Lady Samantha.”

The solemness that had fallen over the group hung for a moment, before Manson straightened and smiled at the ghost. “Thanks Dora, I really appreciate it!”

“Of course Sam! I’m always glad to have you stop by! Have your vehicle land in the field by the stables. It should be safe from the storm there.”

They did as ordered, and the bus came to a stop next to a stable with, were those unicorns? (Star would later inform him that they were actually alicorns.)

They all hopped out of the bus and looked around at the castle. It was even more impressive up close. The walls absolutely towered over them, and they made Dash feel very small.

Off to the side he could see Fenton and his friends talking to Mr. Lancer, but they were too quiet for him to hear what they were saying. He wasn’t gonna have to wait long to find out what they were talking about though, since Mr. Lancer called them all to gather around.

“Alright class. Miss Manson and Mr. Foley are going to go find out how long we will have to wait out the storm. In the meantime, I encourage you all to eat your lunches. If you were planning to buy lunch at the planetarium please raise your hand, Mr. Fenton has offered to hand out Fenton Sustenance Crackers™ to anyone without a pre-packed lunch.”

Dash felt his lunch money in his pocket and winced, he didn’t exactly want to take Fenton’s charity, but he had worked up quite the appetite since they had fallen into the Ghost Zone, so he raised his hand. Next to him, Kwan raised his hand too.

Fenton slowly made his way around the group and passed the crackers out. When he approached the two jocks Dash was surprised to see that they were literal crackers, like a saltine. For some reason he had been expecting more. Fenton smirked at him and split the cracker in half, handing one half to each of them. Dash stared at it.

“Is this really it?” he asked.

Fenton just smiled. “Yep, trust me, that’s all you’re gonna need.”

Dash shared a look with Kwan as Fenton continued onto the rest of the group. Kwan just shrugged at him and the two inspected the crackers they had been handed. It looked like a normal cracker, for the most part. Dash was pretty sure the slightly green hue was just the lighting, but he still hesitated.

Dash’s stomach rumbled and he shrugged. It was better than nothing. He tossed the cracker into his mouth.

It tasted strange, both citrusy and bland, while also tasting like absolutely nothing. The taste was nothing compared to what happened when he swallowed though. He could feel the cracker slide down his throat and into his stomach, and then expand.

“Oh that’s really weird,” Kwan said with a shudder.

“You get used to it!” Fenton yelled from across the field.

Dash shuddered, he really, really hoped he never did. He would give Fenton one thing though, the crackers certainly worked. His stomach felt like he had just eaten an entire 16” pizza by himself.

He joined the other students as they sat in the grass eating and talking. For a moment he forgot that they weren’t just hanging out on the football field back at Casper High. Manson and Foley returning with the green skinned ghost queen broke the illusion though.

The group hurried over to Fenton, and Valarie. Dash didn’t recognize what Valarie and Danny did, that the group were only avoiding breaking into a sprint to not cause a panic.

Dash was just close enough to over hear their whispered conversation.

“Danny we have bad news,” Manson said.

“Really bad news. The storm’s drifted further than expected. The Core is heading straight for us,” Foley sounded scared, and that scared Dash. The look on Fenton’s face pushed him from scared to terrified.

Fenton stood up from where he had been leaning against the bus, straightening and turning to the ghostly queen who had offered them shelter. “Queen Dorathea, how may I be of service to you and your people.”

The Queen bowed her head to Fenton. “Your friends have agreed to assist the royal mage in raising a shield around the castle. But I fear that without your power they will be unable to outlast the storm.” The queen made eye contact with Fenton “I ask for your aid in this, K-”

Fenton interrupted the queen. “Just Danny right now, Dora.” Fenton looked over at the rest of the class, who were obviously trying to listen in to their conversation. He made brief eye contact with Dash before turning back to Queen Dorathea. “But you will have my assistance in any way you require it.”

Fenton turned to Valerie. “Come on, let’s go let Lancer know what’s going on.” He turned back to the Ghost and bowed. “We'll be back soon.”

They hurried over to Mr. Lancer. Dash wasn’t close enough to hear what was said, but he could see the way Lancer tried to argue with Fenton only for him to stand firm. Eventually Lancer slumped and seemed to give permission.

Fenton grabbed his bag and made his way back to his friends and the queen. “Alright, let’s go. Val, you got things covered here?”

She nodded, before pulling Fenton and the others into a quick hug. Then they walked away, leaving the class whispering behind them.

There was no sun in the ghost zone but it certainly felt like it was setting as the green sky grew darker and the howling noise of the storm began to grow louder and louder.

Dash and the other A-Listers watched as the storm rolled over them, the clouds covering the sky completely. The clouds seemed to whisper to him and Dash couldn’t help but be drawn to them. He felt himself stand up and, not hearing his friends call his name, started walking away.

Val smacked him over the back of the head. Hard.

Dash felt dazed and confused. When had he stood up? Where had he been walking to?

“Yeah, don’t look at the storm. It’s not the weather you really have to be worried about.”

Instinctively Dash looked back up at the storm. Val smacked him again.

“Don’t look at it idiot. Got it?” Dash nodded rapidly. “Good. Now get back to your friends. You scared them.”

Dash looked back over his shoulder. They really did look terrified.

He quickly walks back to them. “Sorry guys, I don't know what happened.”

Paulina’s voice shook. “Don’t do that again.”

“You scared us man,” Kwan said. "It was like you couldn’t hear us.”

Dash almost looked back up at the whispering clouds again. But he caught himself, and looked down at the ground instead. “I don’t think I could.” He whispered.

They sat in silence, intentionally not looking at the storm.

There was a deep ring that echoed through the castle, and voices raised in a haunting chant. All around them a glowing green dome raised to block out the storm, the whispers in the storm becoming muffled and drowned out by the chanting.

“Look! up there!” Star said, pointing up to the castle walls. Dash followed her finger to where four figures were standing silhouetted against the bright green of the shield.

Three of the figures were holding their arms up to the sky, green wisps of magic trailing out from their hands and stretching out to the dome above them, pulsing in time with the chanting. The fourth figure had his hands on the shoulders of two of the others, their hair seeming to glow with the lighting.

“Is that Fenton and the others?” Star asked.

“Yep,” Valarie said. Dash jumped. He hadn't seen her walk up behind them. “Them and the royal mage.”

“Since when could they do magic?” Paulina asked.

“Sam and Tucker have been studying for a while. Danny too, but he doesn't have as much talent in it. He’s so powerful though that it doesn't matter much in the long run. He can just brute force a lot of things.”

She turned to look at them, making eye contact with Dash in particular. “You should all be grateful you haven't bothered them since freshman year. Sam could turn you into a frog and Danny could separate your soul from your body with just a word. As for Tucker… let’s just say that we’re all glad he stays focused on technomancy.”

Dash felt queasy. "Did you ever learn anything?” He asked, morbidly curious.

Valarie just shrugged. “It's not my specialty. I know some of the theory, but not much more than that.” She grinned and pulled a very big ray gun out of her purse. “Besides, I'm more of a gun gal anyway.”

Kwan squeaked and Dash barely kept himself from doing the same.

“How’d you get that to fit in your purse like that?” Star asked.

“There are some benefits to having magic friends.” Val grinned at them again, before sobering slightly and gesturing back towards the bus. “Now come on, we fixed up the bus so that people can sleep in it.”

Dash and the others followed her to the bus. The backs of the bench seats had been laid down flat and someone had found blankets and pillows from somewhere, turning the seats into makeshift cots.

“Claim a bed and get some sleep if you can. It's gonna be a long night.”

Dash had a hard time sleeping on the makeshift cot. Not necessarily because it was uncomfortable, but more because his mind was too full. The green glow and unending haunting chanting wasn’t helping either. Though it was definitely preferable to the alternative. The way he had almost walked off into the storm terrified him.

He got up from the bed and quietly made his way out of the bus.

Val was sitting outside on a wooden stool that had been pulled from somewhere. She had her gun balanced on her knees. and was staring up at where her friends were still chanting on the castle wall.

“How are you so calm?" he asked. “All of this is absolutely crazy, and yet you're so calm. How?”

Valarie just sat there for a long moment. “There's not much I can say other than 'you get used to it,'” she finally said. “Danny Sam and Tucker, they've been there since the very beginning, since the portal opened in his parents lab.” She glanced at him. “It's hard to keep up with the rest of them sometimes. They're all so in sync and I joined them so much later, but I'm nothing if not stubborn, so I keep up with them anyway.”

“So this whole time Fenton and the others have been befriending the ghosts and learning magic and and... I don't even know what else.”

Valerie's laugh was humorless. “Yeah you really don't know what else Dash. And I'm not going to tell you.”

“Why not!”

“Why would I Dash? Why would I tell you a secret that isn't even mine when you bullied Danny and ostracized me back in freshman year. Why do you think Dash?” Val shook her head. “It's not my place to tell people, and even if it was, you'd never be someone I'd tell anyway.”

Dash had nothing he could say in response.

Valerie turned back to watch the castle walls. “Go back to bed Dash.”

He did as told, but he didn't get much sleep that night.

[xx-projectsekai-au-concepts-xx]

Might sound like a crazy one but may I request MafuShizuRuiKasa? If that makes sense 😭

You've got it! Sorry this took so long, it was way too hard for me to come up with something, lol. I hope you enjoy it, though.

(It's a bit of a long one. Hope that's alright.)

Mafuyu Asahina and Rui Kamishiro are both merfolk- Mafuyu is a squid, and Rui is a jellyfish.

The two have known each other since they were small, and despite their very different personalities, they were much closer to each other than they were to most people. They balanced each other out- Rui would drag her into all his most recent shenanigans, and Mafuyu would talk him out of his more dangerous ideas.

One night, Rui swam up to her with his all too familiar wild grin, and Mafuyu immediately knew he had something up his sleeve. What she hadn't expected was for him to suggest that they swim up to the nearby shore, so that he could show her the sunrise.

Any merfolk going anywhere near the water's surface was strictly forbidden, especially during the day- humans were often hanging out at the beach, and it was incredibly dangerous for them to know that merfolk existed.

Mafuyu was against the idea at first, but Rui was able to convince her that there was nothing to worry about. He had visited the shore numerous times by himself, and he'd never seen a human swimming there so early. With that reassurance, Mafuyu allowed Rui to take her hand in his and lead her up to watch the sunrise.

Early that morning, before the sun was up, Shizuku Hinomori dragged her boyfriend, Tsukasa Tenma, down to the beach near their place. As the sun rose up from the horizon and signified a brand new day, Tsukasa collected seashells from the shoreline as Shizuku dove into the ocean for a morning swim.

Shizuku had swam in that water many times in her life, but she's never done it so early in the morning, and it may have been her new favorite thing ever. She loved the feeling of the icy cold water all around her as the sunlight slowly began to glisten across its surface, and being able to glance back and see Tsukasa gathering more seashells to scatter across their shared home never failed to bring a smile to her face.

She'd swam out a little further than usual, and while she could still see the shore from where she was, Shizuku thought it best to head on back to dry land, lest she get all turned around and lost. Before doing that, she dipped under the gentle waves, hoping to take one last good look at the world below for the morning.

And soon found herself face to face with a sea person. With another one not too far away.

The three were startled, and Shizuku breathed in the sea water from her shock. As the human swam back up to the surface to cough up the water, Rui grabbed Mafuyu and swam off as fast as he could.

Shizuku took some deep breaths before dripping back under the water to try and get another look at them. She caught only a glimpse of the two swimming away behind some rocks, deeper into the deep, dark ocean.

As she tried her hardest to wrap her head around what she'd just seen, she suddenly felt strong arms around her waist and Tsukasa's worried voice in her ears, asking if she was alright.

After Tsukasa pulled her back to the shore, Shizuku explained what had happened and what she had seen. He wasn't really sure if he believed her, and honestly, she wasn't sure if she believed what she thought she'd seen either, but they both agreed that it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye out. Maybe there really were sea people out there, somewhere in that deep ocean.

Rui and Mafuyu had no plans of returning to that shore anytime soon, not after being seen by a human, however briefly. But maybe, just maybe, the four could all see each other again someday...

[cerealbishh]

"When we head out to Whitefish, there won't be any turning back."

[monstersholygrail]

Vampire bf spooning you in the middle of the night, nuzzling into you so roughly that it causes you to slowly wake up. As soon as he senses you’re not completely asleep, his arms curl around you and he bury’s his face in your neck. Groggily you bare your throat to him, thinking he might be hungry.

But instead he simply whines and cuddles in closer. It’s only then that you notice he’s shivering. A soft “What’s wrong, darling?” croaks past your lips. He doesn’t respond, letting his actions speak louder as his hands slip under your shirt and brush along your soft stomach as if trying to steal up all your warmth. You hiss at his touch, his usually cold skin even colder for some reason. “You’re freezing,” you can’t help but exclaim the obvious.

Your vampire bf whimpers, nodding his head within the warm fold of your neck. “Need your warmth. Need your heat, baby please,” he says in a soft whine, one hand tugging at the seam of your shorts and giving you an idea of what he means.

As soon as you’ve pulled your panties down, he’s sliding himself between the warm supple flesh of your thighs. He hisses in the space of her neck, his body shuddering with pleasure.

Your lips part, feeling his throbbing cock push its way through your legs, so close to where you need him. His tip bumping up against your clit with every snap of his hips. Arousal pools within you till it drips onto his cock. Your bf growls, hips moving faster.

“Ah, fuck! More. Please,” you beg, baring your neck once again. Your hips tilt, craving the feeling of being filled by him.

“My heart, I could devour you whole and still crave more," he rumbles, his hips bucking to catch every drop of your essence on his length.

His hand tenderly cups the underside of your neck and brings it to his lips. You sense the heat of his breath and goosebumps rise along your arms a second before you feel the sharp prick of pleasure caused by his fangs. You shiver as he slowly sinks them all the way in.

The combination of his fangs inside you and the way he slows down the rocking of his hips causes your eyes to droop as you begin to drift back to sleep. His hand massages your plush thigh, gently shifting it back over his own, legs intertwining.

With your thighs open, your bf has easy access to slide his length inside your eager and dripping walls. You both moan as he pushes past your entrance, his girth carefully stretching your precious pussy as he takes his time stuffing you full of him. Bringing a delicious dull ache to the apex of your thighs.

He settles in once he’s buried his length to the hilt, your hips fitting together like two puzzle pieces. He relaxes against your body and wraps every limb that he can around you. Cocooning your being in his protective embrace. Making you feel exactly as treasured as you are.

“That’s better,” he slurs contently in an attempt to speak with his fangs in your neck. Soon after you start to feel his skin warming back up against your own. You smile softly, finally falling back asleep and happy you were able to help him.

Never finding out that Vampires have full control over their body temperature.

[sttoru]

⠀ 𝝑𝑒 ⠀⠀ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒. you show your husband some affection, thinking you two were alone - only to be interrupted by your son.

tags. dad!toji fushiguro x wife!female reader. fluff, suggestive. mentions of toji developing / having a dad bod. & reader having a mom bod. reader gets called ‘princess, mama (by gumi)’. baby gumi waking up bcs of a nightmare. excuse me - not beta read bcs i was half asleep when writing this rt_t

“tooooji,” you smile as you enter the kitchen. you’ve put megumi to bed - finally - and have the chance to spend some one-on-one time with your dear husband. both of you deserve the rest after a hard day of work.

toji has been putting the dishes back in their designated spots whilst you were away. the dark-haired man turns his head to the side once he feels a pair of arms wrap around his waist. a small grin tugs at his lips, “missed me, princess?”

you roll your eyes. even if years have passed since your marriage, toji has not stopped using that specific nickname for you. he loves calling you ‘princess’, because that’s what you’ll always be to him. in his eyes, at least.

“mhm,” you decide to indulge him. you bury your face into his broad back, feeling the muscles he’s worked so hard on obtaining. after megumi was born, toji did let himself go for a bit, but that is a good sign.

it means he’s content with his life - this peaceful life that he’s settled down for with no regrets. no more being reckless, no more battling for money; he’s now got a family to come back home to after all.

“is the little brat asleep?” toji asks while putting the last dish away. he’s visibly enjoying your warm hands that have slid under his shirt. your skin is so soft to the touch compared to his.

you chuckle and nod to his question. “gumi’s sleeping like a baby,” you rub your husband’s stomach gently, feeling the little bumps of his fading abs. you’re loving his new body - just as much as toji loves yours.

toji turns around to face you, desperately needing to return the favor. he can’t get enough of being with you. his rough hands grab your waist and bring you closer against his body, until your chests are nearly touching. he lowers his head to your neck, “that means i can show my wife how much i love her, yeah?”

you shiver at how toji’s voice turns from soft and gentle to sexual and husky. big hands find their place on your tummy, massaging the loose skin with its stretch marks. you can hear your husband’s breath hitch. “fuck,” toji swallows his spit, his fingers moving to grasp your hips.

toji loves how your hips got wider after you’ve given birth to your child. every change in your body, whether big or small, is completely welcomed by him. your body has blessed toji with a son he loves and he’ll forever be grateful for that fact. the least he can do is take his time to appreciate you.

“so beautiful,” toji sighs as he leaves soft pecks on your neck and throat. his fingers are working their way down to your thighs and ass—not leaving a single patch of skin untouched. his lips eventually find yours and you melt into his embrace.

it’s getting heated and the tension is palpable. toji’s about to lift you into his arms when you catch a glimpse of a short figure in the doorway. your eyes widen and you immediately detach your lips from your husband’s.

toji quickly catches on and sighs. he cocks his head to the left, the sight of his toddler standing at the doorway coming into view. “damn kid,” he whispers, nearly pouting because of the interruption. you playfully slap his bicep—a warning to fix his potty mouth in front of megumi.

“h-hey, gumi,” you say with an awkward giggle, walking towards the child. you fix your shirt in the meantime, straightening the material. you crouch down to megumi’s level and pat his head tenderly, “what happened? why are you out of bed?”

megumi stares up at you with teary eyes. he’s clenching onto his dog plushie, hugging the stuffed animal to his little body. you can easily guess that he’s scared—probably because of a nightmare. he’s been getting those more frequently.

though, instead of explaining himself, megumi searches for answers to something else. he points at his dad who’s leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. the toddler then looks back at you like he’s made some big discovery;

“mama papa kissing!”

you nearly choke on your spit. megumi’s a clever little boy and it shows through his advanced vocabulary. you’re surprised that he’s learnt what that meant already. you try to deny what your child said, “no, uhm, mama and papa were just hugging!”

toji snorts at your half assed excuse. he lazily walks over to you two, hands in his pockets. he bends forwards and looks megumi in the eyes with a huge smirk on his face. “yeah, we were. ‘n you totally ruined it,” he utters without any shame and menacingly sticks his tongue out at the little boy.

you hiss and lightly shove toji—he cannot take anything seriously. you’re trying your best to distract megumi’s attention from what he’s seen his parents do, to what his reason is for waking up.

“did you have a nightmare again?” you coo and pick your son up. he instantly snuggles up to you and presses his face against your chest in search of comfort. you smile and can conclude that your assumptions are right.

you pet megumi’s head whilst softly humming one of his favorite lullabies. toji watches your interaction with his son and his mood softens once more. he silently hugs you from behind—also wrapping an arm around megumi—turning it into a little family group hug.

“y’re all right, buddy,” toji mutters to megumi and the little boy sniffles in response, “mama ‘n papa ‘re right here.”

after a couple minutes, you carry megumi back to his room before putting him down in his bed. your husband stands next to you as you make sure your kid is tucked in properly.

megumi stares up at you with a sniff and you nearly melt at the adorable sight. you brush his bangs out of his eyes and kiss his forehead, wishing him a good night. the toddler nods and hugs his plushie to his chest again, still a bit shaken up from the nightmare. however, he’s doing a lot better after he got comforted by both his parents.

“sweet dreams, gumi,” you whisper and rub megumi’s cheeks with a fond smile on your lips. toji simply stares at you conversing with megumi—his face showing little to no emotion. though, from within, toji is absolutely in awe at your motherly personality. you’re the perfect mother.

megumi gets drowsy and tosses onto his side so he could be more comfortable. he struggles to open his eyes, but manages to look at toji. the little boy pouts and points another finger at his dad, this time drowsily warning him, “papa no kiss mama, ‘kay?”

that comment catches you off guard. you’re embarrassed by the fact that megumi still remembers what he’s seen in the kitchen. you try to clear your throat and explain yourself, but toji’s one step ahead of you. he silently mimics megumi’s words and rolls his eyes—

“yeah yeah, whatever. i won’t,” toji promises his son. the toddler clearly inherited your husband’s protectiveness. you chuckle at the playfulness between the two, enjoying the jokey banter the father-son duo have each time.

megumi huffs in victory and nods. he can sleep in peace now, knowing his dad won’t try anything funny with you. he closes his weary eyes and is asleep within just a few seconds.

you stretch your arms and sigh in content. you can’t help but chuckle once you notice how megumi’s fallen asleep with a tiny smile on his lips. you give the child one last forehead kiss before leaving the room in silence.

toji follows right behind you. now that his son is sound asleep, he doesn’t have to keep his promise. technically— he wasn’t planning to anyway.

“c’mere,” your husband mumbles and grabs your hand. he pulls you into a tight hug, hands instantly roaming your body which he admires so much. he plants his lips onto yours not a second later.

you smile into the kiss, finding it funny how toji couldn’t keep his (fake) promise for even one second. he would die if he actually couldn’t kiss you, and that isn’t even an exaggeration.

toji pulls back after a moment and smirks at you—those bedroom eyes of his very telling.

“so, where were we?”