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eiirisworkshop · 3 years

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The Fanfic Author's Guide to Metatext

(As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

Also available as a PDF here. This thing is 13,000 words. The PDF is recommended.

Intro: What is Metatext?

Metatext is everything we fanfic authors post along with our story that is not the story itself: title, tags, summary, author's notes, even the rating.

It is how we communicate to potential readers what they're signing themselves up for if they choose to read our story, how we let them make informed decisions regarding which fics they want to read, how we get their interest and, frequently, how they find our story in the first place. A lot of metatext acts as a consent mechanism for readers, it's the informed part of informed consent.

Since most of us who write fanfic also read it, we understand how important this is! But, for the most part, no one ever teaches us how to use metatext; we have to pick it up by osmosis. That makes it hard to learn how to use it well, we all suck at it when we first start out, and some of us may go years without learning particular conventions that seem obvious to others in our community. This creates frustration for everybody.

Enter this guide!

This is meant to be a sort of handbook for fic writers, particularly those of us who post on Archive of Our Own, laying out and explaining the established metatext conventions already in use in our community so we (and our readers!) are all on the same page. It will also provide some best-practices tips.

The point is to give all of us the tools to communicate with our audience as clearly and effectively as possible, so the people who want to read a story like ours can find it and recognize it as what they're looking for, those who don't want to read a story like ours can easily tell it's not their cup of tea and avoid it, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun—including us!

Now that we know what we're talking about, let's get on with the guide! The following content sections appear in the order one is expected to provide each kind of metatext when posting a fic on Ao3, but first….

Warning!

This is a guide for all authors on Ao3. As such, it mentions subject matter and kinds of fic that you personally might hate or find disgusting, but which are allowed under the Archive's terms of use. There are no graphic descriptions or harsh language in the guide itself, but it does acknowledge the existence of fic you may find distasteful and explains how to approach metatext for such fics.

Some sexual terminology is used in an academic context.

A note from the author:

This guide reflects the conventions of the English-language fanfiction community circa 2021. Conventions may differ in other language communities, and although many of our conventions have been in place for decades (praise be to our Star Trek loving foremothers) fanfiction now exists primarily in the realm of internet fandom where things tend to change rather quickly, so some conventions in this guide may die out while other new conventions, not covered in this guide, arise.

This is not official or in any way produced by the Archive of Our Own (Ao3), and though some actual site rules are mentioned, it is not a rulebook. Primarily, it is a descriptivist take on how the userbase uses metatext to communicate amongst ourselves, provided in the interest of making that communication easier and more transparent for everyone, especially newer users.

Contents

How To Use This Guide Ratings Archive Warnings Fandom Tags Category Relationship Tags Character Tags Additional Tags Titles Summaries Author's Notes Series and Chapters Parting Thoughts

How To Use This Guide

Well, read it. Or have it read to you.

This isn't a glossary, it's a handbook, and it's structured more like an academic paper or report, but there's lots and lots of examples in it!

Many of these examples are titles of real media and the names of characters from published media, or tags quoted directly from Ao3 complete with punctuation and formatting.

Some examples are more generic and use the names Alex, Max, Sam, Chris, Jamie, and Tori for demonstration purposes. In other generic examples, part of an example tag or phrase may be sectioned off with square brackets to show where in that tag or phrase you would put the appropriate information to complete it. This will look something like “Top [Character A]” where you would fill in a character's name.

This guide presumes that you know the basics of how to use Ao3, at least from the perspective of reading fic. If you don't, much of this guide may be difficult to understand and will be much less helpful to you, though not entirely useless.

Ratings

Most fanfic hosting sites provide ratings systems that work a lot like the ratings on movies and videogames.

Ao3's system has four ratings:

General

Teen

Mature

Explicit

These seem like they should be pretty self-explanatory, and the site's own official info pop-up (accessible by clicking the question mark next to the section prompt) gives brief, straightforward descriptions for each of them.

Even so, many writers have found ourselves staring at that dropdown list, thinking about what we've written, and wondering what's the right freaking rating for this? How do I know if it's appropriate for “general audiences” or if it needs to be teen and up? What's the difference between Mature and Explicit?

The best way to figure it out is often to think about your fic in comparison to mainstream media.

General is your average Disney or Dreamworks movie, Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon shows, video games like Mario, Kirby, and Pokemon.

There may be romance, but no sexual content or discussion. Scary things might happen and people might get hurt, but violence is non-graphic and usually mild. Adults may be shown drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, and some degree of intoxication may be shown (usually played for laughs and not focused on), but hard drug use is generally not shown or discussed. There is little to no foul language written out and what language there may be is mild, though harsher swears may be implied by narration. There are no explicit F-bombs or slurs.

Teen is more like a Marvel movie, most network television shows (things like The Office, Supernatural, or Grey's Anatomy), video games like Final Fantasy, Five Nights at Freddie's, and The Sims.

There might be some sex and sexual discussion, but nothing explicit is shown—things usually fade to black or are leftimplied. More intense danger, more severe injuries described in greater detail, and a higher level of violence may be present. Substance use may be discussed and intoxication shown, but main characters are unlikely to be shown doing hard drugs. Some swearing and other harsh language may be present, possibly including an F-bomb or two. In longer works, that might mean an F-bomb every few chapters.

Mature is, in American terms, an R-rated movie* like Deadpool, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Exorcist, and Schindler's List; certain shows from premium cable networks or streaming services like Game of Thrones, Shameless, Breaking Bad, and Black Sails; videogames like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, and The Witcher.

Sex may be shown and it might be fairly explicit, but it's not as detailed or graphic or as much the focus of the work as it would be if it were porn. Violence, danger, and bodily harm may be significant and fairly graphic. Most drug use is fair game. Swearing and harsh language may be extensive.

Explicit is, well, extremely explicit. This is full on porn, the hardcore horror movies, and snuff films.

Sex is highly detailed and graphic. Violence and injury is highly detailed and graphic. Drug use and its effects may be highly detailed and graphic. Swearing and harsh language may be extreme, including extensive use of violent slurs.

Please note that both Mature and Explicit fics are intended for adult audiences only, but that does not mean a teenaged writer isn't going to produce fics that should be rated M or E. Ratings should reflect the content of the fic, not the age of the author.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to choose any of these ratings; Ao3 has a “Not Rated” option, but for purposes of search results and some other functions, Not Rated fics are treated by the site as Explicit, just in case, which means they end up hidden from a significant portion of potential readers. It really is in your best interest as a writer who presumably wants people to see their stories, to select a rating. It helps readers judge if yours is the kind of story they want right now, too.

Rating a fic is a subjective decision, there is some grey area in between each level. If you're not quite sure where your fic falls, best practice is to go with the more restrictive rating.

*(Equivalent to an Australian M15+ or R18+, Canadian 14A, 18A or 18+, UK 15 or 18, German FSK 16 or FSK 18.)

Warnings

Ao3 uses a set of standard site-wide Archive Warnings to indicate that a work contains subject matter that falls into one or more of a few categories that some readers are likely to want to avoid. Even when posting elsewhere, it's courteous to include warnings of this sort.

These warnings are:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Major Character Death

Rape/Non-Con

Underage

Just like with the ratings, the site provides an info-pop up that explains what each warning is for. They're really exactly what it says on the tin: detailed descriptions of violence, injury, and gore; the death of a character central to canon or tothe story being told; non-consensual sex i.e. rape; and depictions of underage sex, which the site defines as under the age of 18 for humans—Ao3 doesn't care if your local age of consent or majority is lower than that.

In addition to the four standard warnings above, the warnings section has two other choices:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

These do not mean the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. “No Archive Warnings Apply” means that absolutely nothing in your fic falls into any of the four standard warning categories. “Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings” means that you the author are opting out of the warning system; your fic could potentially contain things that fall into any and all of the four standard warning categories.

There's nothing wrong with selecting Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings! It may mean that some readers will avoid your fic because they're not sure it's safe for them, and you might need to use more courtesy tags than you otherwise would (we'll talk about courtesy tags later), but that's okay! Opting out of the warning system can be a way to avoid spoilers,* and is also good for when you're just not sure if what you've written deserves one of the Archive warnings. In that case, the best practice is to select either the warning it might deserve or Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings, then provide additional information in other tags, the summary, or an initial author's note.

Unless you're opting out of using the warning system, select all the warnings that apply to your fic, if any of them do. So if a sixteen year old main character has consensual sex then gets killed in an accident that you've written out in excruciating detail, that fic gets three out of the four standard warnings: Underage, Major Character Death, and Graphic Depictions Of Violence.

*(Fandom etiquette generally favors thorough tagging and warning over avoiding spoilers. It doesn't ruin the experience of a story to have a general sense of what's going to happen. If it did, we wouldn't all keep reading so many “there was only one bed” fics.)

Fandom Tags

What fandom or fandoms is your fic for? You definitely know what you wrote it for, but that doesn't mean it's obvious what to tag it as.

Sometimes, it is obvious! You watched a movie that isn't based on anything, isn't part of a series, and doesn't have any spinoffs, tie-ins or anything else based on it. You wrote a fic set entirely within the world of this movie. You put this movie as the fandom for your fic. Or maybe you read a book and wrote a fic for it, and there is a movie based on the book, but the movie is really different and you definitely didn't use anything that's only in the movie. You put the book as the fandom for your fic.

All too often, though, it's not that clear.

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

In a situation where one piece of media has a spinoff, maybe several spinoffs, and you wrote a fic that includes things from more than one of them, you might want use the central work's “& related fandoms” tag. For example, the “Doctor Who & Related Fandoms” tag gets used for fics that include things from a combination of any era of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

And don't worry, from the reader-side of the site the broadest fandom tags are prioritized. The results page for an “all media types” or “& related fandoms” search includes works tagged with the more specific sub-tags for that fandom, the browse-by-fandom pages show the broadest tag for each fandom included, and putting a fandom into the search bar presumes the broadest tag for that fandom. A search for “Star Wars - All Media Types” will pull up work that only has a subtag for that fandom, like “The Mandalorian (TV).” You don't have to put every specific fandom subtag for people to find your fic.

If you wrote a fic for something that's an adaptation of an older work—especially an older work that's been adapted a lot, like Sherlock Holmes or The Three Musketeers—it can be hard to know how you should tag it. The best choice is to put the adaptation as the fandom, for instance “Sherlock (TV),” then, if you're also using aspects of the older source work that aren't in the adaptation, also put a broad fandom tag such as “Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms.” Do not tag it as being fic for the source work—in our Sherlock example that would be tagging it “Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle”—unless you are crossing over the source work and the adaptation. Otherwise, the specific fandom subtag for the source work ends up clogged with fic for the adaptation, which really is a different thing.

By the same token, fic for the source work shouldn't be tagged as being for the adaptation, or the adaptation's subtag will get clogged.

The same principle applies to fandoms that have been rebooted. Don't tag fic for the reboot as being for the original, or fic for the original as being for the reboot. Don't tag a fic as being for both unless the reboot and original are actually interacting. Use an “& related fandoms” tag for the original if your fic for the reboot includes some aspects of the original that weren't carried over but you haven't quite written a crossover between the two. Good examples of these situations can be seen with “Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)” vs. “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)” vs. “She-Ra: Princess Of Power (1985).”

Usually, this kind of mistagging as a related fandom happens when someone writes a fic for something that is or has a reboot, spinoff, or adaptation, but they're only familiar with one of the related pieces of media, and they mistakenly presume the fandoms are the same or interchangeable because they just don't know the difference. It's an honest mistake and it doesn't make you a bad or fake fan to not know, but it can be frustrating for readers who want fic for one thing and find the fandom tag full of fic for something else.

In order to avoid those kinds of issues, best practice is to assume fandoms are not interchangeable no matter how closely related they are, and to default to using a tag pair of the most-specific-possible sub-fandom tag + the broadest possible fandom tag when posting a fic you're not entirely sure about, for instance “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

The Marvel megafandom has its own particular tagging hell going on. Really digging into and trying to make sense of that entire situation would require its own guide, but we can go through some general tips.

There is a general “Marvel” fandom tag and tags for both “The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom” and “The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types.” Most of us who write Marvel fic are working with a cherry picked combination of canons from the MCU, various comics runs, both timelines of X-Men movies, and possibly several decades worth of cartoons. That's what these tags are for.

If your cherry picked Marvel fic is more X-Men than Avengers, go for the “X-Men - All Media Types” tag.

If you are primarily working with MCU canon, use the MCU specific tags rather than “all media types” and add specific tags for individual comics runs—like Earth 616 or the Fraction Hawkeye comics—if you know you're lifting particular details from the comics. If you're just filling in gaps in MCU canon with things that are nebulously “from the comics” don't worry about tagging for that, it's accepted standard practice in the fandom at this point, use a broader tag along with your MCU-specific tag if you want to.

Same general idea for primarily movie-verse X-Men fics. Use the movie-specific tags.

If your fic mostly draws from the comics, use the comics tags. If you're focusing on an individual run, show, or movie series rather than an ensemble or large swath of the megafranchise, tag for that and leave off the broader fandom tags.

Try your best to minimize the number of fandom tags on your Marvel work. Ideally, you can get it down to two or three. Even paring it down as much as you can you might still end up with about five. If you're in the double digits, take another look to see if all the fandom tags you've included are really necessary, or if some of them are redundant or only there to represent characters who are in the fic but that the fic doesn't focus on. Many readers tend to search Marvel fics by character or pairing tags, it's more important that you're thorough there. For the fandom tags it's more important that you're clear.

If you write real person fiction, you need to tag it as an RPF fandom. Fic about actors who are in a show together does not belong on the fandom tag for that show. There are separate RPF fandom tags for most shows and film franchises. Much like the adaptation/source and reboot/original situations discussed earlier, a fic should really only be tagged with both a franchise's RPF tag and its main tag if something happens like the actors—or director or writer!—falling into the fictional world or meeting their characters.

Of course, not all RPF is about actors. Most sports have RPF tags, there are RPF tags for politics from around the world and for various historical settings, the fandom tags for bands are generally presumed to be RPF tags, and there is a general Real Person Fiction tag.

In order to simplify things for readers, it's best practice to use the general Real Person Fiction tag in addition to your fandom-specific tag. You may even want to put “RPF” as a courtesy tag in the Additional Tags section, too. This is because Ao3 isn't currently set up to recognize RPF as the special flavor of fic that it is in the same way that the site recognizes crossovers as special, so it can be very difficult to either seek out or avoid RPF since it's scattered across hundreds of different fandom tags.

On the subject of crossovers—they can make fandom tagging even more daunting. Even for a crossover with lots of fandoms involved, though, you just have to follow the same guidelines as to tag a single-fandom work for each fandom in the crossover. The tricky part is figuring out if what you wrote is really a crossover, or just an AU informed by another fandom—we'll talk about that later.

There are some cases where it's really hard to figure out what fandom something belongs to, like if you wrote a fanfic of someone else's fanfic, theirs is an AU and yours is about their OC, not any of the characters from canon. What do you do?! Well, you do not tag it as being a fanfic for the same thing theirs was. Put the title of their fic (or name of their series) as the fandom for your fic, attributed to their Ao3 handle just like any other fandom is attributed to its author. Explain the situation in either the summary or the initial author's note. Also, ask the author's permission before posting something like this.

What if you wrote a story about your totally original D&D character? The fandom is still D&D, you want the “Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)” tag.

What if there's not a fandom tag on the Archive yet for what you wrote? Not a problem! You can type in a new one if you're the first person to post something for a particular fandom. Do make sure, though, that the fandom isn't just listed by a different name than you expect. Many works that aren't originally in English—including anime—are listed by their original language title or a direct translation first, and sometimes a franchise or series's official name might not be what you personally call it, for instance many people think of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series as The Golden Compass series, so it's best to double check.

What if you wrote an entirely new original story that's not based on anything? Excellent job, that takes a lot of work, but that probably doesn't belong on Ao3! The Archive is primarily meant as a repository for fannish content, but in a few particular circumstances things we'd consider Original Work may be appropriate content for the Archive as well. Double check the Archive's Terms of Service FAQ and gauge if what you wrote falls under the scope of what is allowed. If what you wrote really doesn't fit here, post it somewhere else or try to get it published if you feel like giving it a shot.

Category

What Ao3 means by category is “does this fic focus on sex or romance, and if so what combination of genders are involved in that sex or romance?”

The category options are:

F/F

F/M

Gen

M/M

Multi

Other

The F/F, F/M, and M/M categories are for stories focused on pairings of two women, a woman and a man, and two men, respectively. These refer to sexual and/or romantic pairings.

The Other category is for stories focused on (sexual and/or romantic) pairings where one or both partners are not strictly male or female, such as nonbinary individuals, people from cultures with gender systems that don't match to the Western man-woman system, and nonhuman characters for whom biological sex works differently or is nonexistent, including aliens, robots, and inanimate objects or abstract concepts. There are some problems with treating nonbinary humans, eldritch tentacle monsters, sexless androids, and wayward container ships as all the same category, but it's the system we currently have to work with. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Multi is for stories in which several (sexual and/or romantic) relationships are focused on or which focus on relationships with multiple partners, including cases of polyamory, serial monogamy, strings of hookups with different people, and orgies. A fic will also show as “Multi” if you, the author, have selected more than one category for the fic, even if none of those are the Multi category. Realistically, the Archive needs separate “Multiple Categories” and “Poly” options, but for now we have to work with this system in which the two are combined. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Gen is for stories that do not contain or are not focused on sex or romance. Romance may be present in a gen fic but it's going to be in the background. While rare, there is such a thing as a sexually explicit gen fic—solo masturbation which does not feature fantasizing about another character is explicit gen fic; a doctor character seeing a series of patients with sex-related medical needs following an orgy may qualify if the orgy is not shown and the doctor is being strictly professional—but such fic needs to be rated, otherwise tagged, and explained carefully in the summary and/or author's note.

Much like the warnings section, category is a “select all that apply” situation. Use your best judgement. For a fic about a polyamorous relationship among a group of women, it's entirely appropriate to tag it as both F/F and Multi. A poly fic with a combination of men and women in the relationship could be shown as both M/M and F/M, Multi, or all three. A fic that focuses equally on one brother and his husband and the other brother and his wife should be tagged both M/M and F/M, and could be tagged as Multi but you might decided not to just to be clear that there's no polyamory going on. If you wrote a fic about two characters who are both men in canon, but you wrote one of them as nonbinary, you could tag it M/M, Other, or both depending on what you feel is representative and respectful.

When dealing with trans characters, whether they're trans in canon or you're writing them as such, the category selection should match the character's gender. If there's a character who is a cis woman in canon, but who you're writing as a trans man, you categorize the fic based on his being a man. If there's a character who is a cis man in canon, but whom you're writing as a trans man, he is still a man and the fic should be categorized accordingly. When dealing with nonbinary characters the fic should really be classed as Other though, by convention, fics about characters who are not nonbinary in canon may be classed based on the character's canon gender as well or instead. When dealing with gender swapped characters—i.e. a canonically cis male superhero who you're writing as a cis woman—class the fic using the gender you wrote her with, not the gender he is in canon.

Most of the time, gen fics should not be categorized jointly with anything else because a fic should only be categorized based on the ships it focuses on, and a gen fic should not be focusing on a ship in the first place.*

*(One of the few circumstances in which it might make sense to class a fic as both gen and something else is when writing about Queerplatonic Relationships, but that is a judgement call and depends on the fic.)

Relationship Tags

The thing about relationship tagging that people most frequently misunderstand or just don't know is the difference between “Character A/Character B” and “Character A & Character B.”

Use a “/” for romantic or sexual relationships, such as spouses, people who are dating, hookups, and friends with benefits. Use “&” for platonic or familial relationships, such as friends, siblings, parents with their kids, coworkers, and deeply connected mortal enemies who are not tragically in love.

This is where we get the phrase “slash fic.” Originally, that meant any fic focused on a romantic paring, but since so much of the romantic fic being produced was about pairs of men, “slash fic” came to mean same-sex pairings, especially male same-sex pairings. Back in earlier days of fandom, pre-Ao3 and even pre-internet, there was a convention that when writing out a different-sex pairing, you did so in man/woman order, while same-sex pairings were done top/bottom. Some authors, especially those who have been in the fic community a long time, may still do this, but the convention has not been in consistent, active use for many years, so you don't have to worry about putting the names in the “correct” order. Part of why that died out is we, as a community, have gotten less strict and more nuanced in our understandings of sex and relationships, we're writing non-penetrative sex more than we used to, and we're writing multi-partner relationships and sex more than we used to, so strictly delineating “tops” and “bottoms” has gotten less important and less useful.

The convention currently in use on Ao3 is that the names go in alphabetical order for both “/” and “&” relationships. In most cases, the Archive uses the character's full name instead of a nickname or just a given name, like James "Bucky" Barnes instead of just Bucky or James. We'll talk more about conventions for how to input character names in the Characters section. The Archive will give you suggestions as you type—if one of them fits what you mean but is slightly different from how you were typing it, for instance it's in a different order, please use the tag suggested! Consistency in tags across users helps the site work more smoothly for everybody.

This is really not the place for ship nicknames like Puckleberry, Wolfstar, or Ineffable Wives. Use the characters' names.

Now that you know how to format the relationship tag to say what you mean, you have to figure out what relationships in your fic to tag for.

The answer is you tag the relationships that are important to the story you're telling, the ones you spend time and attention following, building up, and maybe even breaking down. Tagging for a ship is not a promise of a happy ending for that pair; you don't have to limit yourself to tagging only the end-game ships if you're telling a story that's more complicated than “they get together and live happily ever after.” That said, you should generally list the main ship—the one you focus on the most—first on the list, and that will usually be the end-game ship. You should also use Additional Tags, the summary, and author's notes to make it clear to readers if your fic does not end happily for a ship you've tagged. Otherwise readers will assume that a fic tagged as being about a ship will end well for that ship, because that's what usually happens, and they'll end up disappointed and hurt, possibly feeling tricked or lied to, when your fic doesn't end well for that ship

You don't have to, and honestly shouldn't, tag for every single relationship that shows up in your fic at all. A character's brief side fling mentioned in passing, or a relationship between two background characters should not be listed under the Relationship tag section. You can list them in the format “minor Character A/Character C” or “Character C/Character D – mentions of” in the Additional Tags section if you want to, or just tag “Minor or Background Relationship(s)” under either the Relationship tag section or in the Additional Tags section.

There are two main reasons to not tag all those minor relationships. The first is to streamline your tags, which makes them clearer and more readable, and therefore more useful. The second reason is because certain ships are far more common as minor or background relationships than as the focus of a work, so tagging all your non-focus focus ships leads to the tags for these less popular ships getting clogged with stories they appear in, but that are not about them. That is, of course, very frustrating for readers who really want to read stories that focus on these ships.

If your fic contains a major relationship between a canon character and an OC, reader-insert, or self-insert, tag it as such. The archive already has /Original Character, /Reader, /You, and /Me tags for most characters in most fandoms. If such a relationship tag isn't already in use, type it in yourself. There are OC/OC tags, too, some of which specify gender, some of which do not. All the relationship tags that include OCs stack the gender-specific versions of the tags under the nongendered ones. Use these tags as appropriate.

For group relationships, both polycules and multi-person friendships, you “/” or “&” all the names involved in alphabetical order, so Alex/Max/Sam are dating while Chris & Jamie & Tori are best friends. For a poly situation where not everyone is dating each other you should tag it something like “Alex/Max, Alex/Sam” because Alex is dating both Max and Sam, but Max and Sam are not romantically or sexually involved with each other. Use your judgement as to whether you still want to include the Alex/Max/Sam trio tag, and whether you should also use a “Sam & Max” friendship tag.

Generally, romantic “/” type relationships are emphasized over “&” type relationships in fic. It is more important that you tag your “/”s thoroughly and accurately than that you tag your “&”s at all. This is because readers are far more likely to either be looking for or be squicked by particular “/” relationships than they are “&” relationships. You can tag the same pair of characters as both / and & if both their romance and their friendship is important to the story, but a lot of people see this as redundant. If you're writing incest fic, use the / tag for the pair not the & tag and put a courtesy tag for “incest” in the Additional Tags section; this is how readers who do not want to see incestuous relationships avoid that material.

Queerplatonic Relationships, Ambiguous Relationships, Pre-Slash, and “Slash If You Squint” are all frequently listed with both the “/” and “&” forms of the pairing; use your best judgement as to whether one or the other or both is most appropriate for what you've written and clarify the nature of the relationship in your Additional Tags.

Overall, list your “/” tags first, then your “&” tags.

Character Tags

Tagging your characters is a lot like tagging your relationships. Who is your fic about? That's who you put in your character tags.

You don't have to and really should not tag every single background character who shows up for just a moment in the story, for pretty much the same reasons you shouldn't tag background relationships. We don't want to clog less commonly focused on characters' tags with stories they don't feature prominently in.

You do need to tag the characters included in your Relationship tags.

A character study type of fic might only have one character you need to tag for. Romantic one shots frequently only have two. Longfics and fics with big ensemble casts can easily end up with a dozen characters or more who really do deserve to be tagged for.

Put them in order of importance. This doesn't have to be strict hierarchal ranking, you can just arrange them into groups of “main characters,” “major supporting characters,” and “minor supporting characters.” Nobody less than a minor supporting character should be tagged. Even minor supporting characters show up for more than one line.

If everyone in the fic is genuinely at the same level of importance (which does happen, especially with small cast fics), then order doesn't really matter. You can arrange them by order of appearance or alphabetically by name if you want to be particularly neat about it.

Do tag your OCs! Some people love reading about OCs and want to be able to find them; some people can't stand OCs and want to avoid them at all costs; most people are fine with OCs sometimes, but might have to be in the mood for an OC-centric story or only be comfortable with OCs in certain contexts. Regardless, though, Character tags are here to tell readers who the story is about, and that includes new faces. Original Characters are characters and if they're important to the story, they deserve to be tagged for just like canon characters do.

There are tags for “Original Character(s),” “Original Male Character(s),” and “Original Female Character(s).” Use these tags! If you have OCs you're going to be using frequently in different stories, type up a character tag in the form “[OC's Name] – Original Character” and use that in addition to the generic OC tags.

Also tag “Reader,” “You,” or “Me” as a character if you've written a reader- or self-insert.

You can use the “Minor Characters” tag to wrap up everybody, both OC and canon, who doesn't warrant their own character tag. Remember, though, that this tag is also used to refer to minor canon characters who may not have their own official names.

Just like when tagging for relationships, the convention when tagging for characters is to use their full name. The suggestions the Archive gives you as you type will help you use the established way of referring to a given character.

Characters who go by more than one name usually have their two most used names listed together as one tag with the two names separated by a vertical bar like “Andy | Andromache of Scythia.” This also gets used sometimes for characters who have different names in an adaptation than in the source text, or a different name in the English-language localization of a work than in the original language. For character names from both real-world and fictional languages and cultures that put family or surname before the given name—like the real Japanese name Takeuchi Naoko or the made up Bajoran name Kira Nerys—that order is used when tagging, even if you wrote your fic putting the given name first.

Some characters' tags include the fandom they're from in parentheses after their name like “Connor (Detroit: Become Human).” This is mostly characters with ordinary given names like Connor and no canon surname, characters who have the same full name as a character in another fandom, such as Billy Flynn the lawyer from the musical Chicago and Billy Flynn the serial killer played by Tim Curry in Criminal Minds, and characters based on mythological, religious, or historical figures or named for common concepts such as Lucifer, Loki, Amethyst, Death, and Zero that make appearances in multiple fandoms.

Additional Tags

Additional Tags is one of the most complicated, and often the longest, section of metatext we find ourselves providing when we post fic. It's also the one that gives our readers the greatest volume of information.

That, of course, is what makes it so hard for us to do well.

It can help to break down Additional Tags into three main functions of tag: courtesy tags, descriptive tags, and personal tags.

Courtesy tags serve as extensions of the rating and warning systems. They can help clarify the rating, provide more information about the Archive Warnings you've used or chosen not to use, and give additional warnings to tell readers there are things in this fic that may be distasteful, upsetting, or triggering but that the Archive doesn't have a standard warning for.

Descriptive tags give the reader information about who's in this fic, what kind of things happen, what tropes are in play, and what the vibe is, as well as practical information about things like format and tense.

Personal tags tell the readers things about us, the author, our process, our relationship to our fic, and our thoughts at the time of posting.

It doesn't really matter what order you put these tags in, but it is best practice to try to clump them: courtesy tags all together so it's harder for a reader to miss an important one, ship-related info tags together, character-related info tags together, etc.

There are tons and tons of established tags on Ao3, and while it's totally fine, fun, and often necessary to make up your own tags, it's also important to use established tags that fit your fic. For one thing, using established tags makes life easier for the tag wranglers behind the scenes. Using a new tag you just made up that means the same thing as an established tag makes more work for the tag wranglers. We like the tag wranglers, they're all volunteers, and they're largely responsible for the search and sorting features being functional. Be kind to the tag wranglers.

For basically the same reasons, using established tags makes it easier for readers to find your fic. If a reader either searches by a tag or uses filters on another search to “Include” that tag, and you didn't use that tag, your fic will not show up for them even if what you wrote is exactly what they're looking for. Established tags can be searched by exactly the same way as you search by fandom or pairing, your off the cuff tags cannot.

Let's talk about some well-known established tags and common tag types, divvied up by main function.

Courtesy

A lot of courtesy tags are specific warnings like “Dubious Consent,” “Incest,” “Drug Use,” “Extremely Underage,” “Toxic Relationship,” and “Abuse.” Many of these have even more specific versions such as “Recreational Drug Use” and “Nonconsensual Drug Use,” or “Mildly Dubious Consent” and “Extremely Dubious Consent.”

Giving details about what, if any, drugs are used or mentioned, specifying what kinds of violence or bodily harm are discussed or depicted, details about age differences or power-imbalanced relationships between characters who date or have sex, discussion or depictions of suicide, severe or terminal illness, or mental health struggles is useful. It helps give readers a clear sense of what they'll encounter in your fic and decide if they're up for it.

One the most useful courtesy warning tags is “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” which basically means “there are things in this fic which are really screwed up and may be disturbing, read at your own risk, steer clear if you're not sure.” This tag—like all courtesy warnings, really—is a show of good faith, by using it you are being a responsible, and thoughtful member of the fanfic community by giving readers the power and necessary information to make their own informed decisions about what they are and are not comfortable reading.

Saying to “Heed the tags” is quite self-explanatory and, if used, should be the last or second to last tag so it's easy to spot. Remember, though, that “Heed the tags” isn't useful if your tags aren't thorough and clear.

“Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is one of only things that should ever go after “Heed the tags.” If you use this, your additional warnings need to go in the author's note at the very beginning of the fic, not the one at the end of the first chapter. If your additional warnings write up is going to be very long because it's highly detailed, then it can go at the bottom of the chapter with a note at the beginning indicating that the warnings are at the bottom. Some authors give an abbreviated or vague set of warnings in the initial note, then longer, highly detailed, spoilery warnings in the end note. It's best to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for readers to access warnings.

Tagging with “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” “Heed the tags,” or “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is not a substitute for thorough and appropriate courtesy tagging. These are extra reminders to readers to look closely at the other warnings you've given.

While most courtesy tags are warnings, some are assurances like “No Lesbians Die” or “It's Not As Bad As It Sounds.” A fic tagged for rape or dub-con may get a tag assuring that the consent issues are not between the characters in the main ship; or a fic with a premise that sounds likely to involve lack of consent but actually doesn't may get a tag that it's “NOT rape/non-con.” A tag like “Animal Death” may be immediately followed by a freeform tag assuring that the animal that dies is not the protagonist's beloved horse.

Descriptive

There are a few general kinds of descriptive tags including character-related, ship-related, temporal, relation-to-canon, trope-related, smut details, and technical specifications.

Many character- and ship-related tags simply expand on the Character and Relationship tags we've already talked about. This is usually the place to specify details about OCs and inserts, such as how a reader-insert is gendered.

When it comes to character-related tags, one of the most common types in use on Ao3 and in fandom at large is the bang-path. This is things like werewolf!Alex, trans!Max, top!Sam, kid!Jamie, and captain!Tori. Basically, a bang-path is a way of specifying a version of a character. We've been using this format for decades; it comes from the very first email systems used by universities in the earliest days of internet before the World Wide Web existed. It's especially useful for quickly and concisely explaining the roles of characters in an AU. Nowadays this is also one of the primary conventions for indicating who's top and who's bottom in a ship if that's information you feel the need to establish. The other current convention for indicating top/bottom is as non-bang-path character-related tags in the form “Top [Character A], Bottom [Character B].”

Other common sorts of character tags are things like “[Character A] Needs a Hug,” “Emotionally Constipated [Character B],” and “[Character C] is a Good Dad.”

Some character-related tags don't refer to a particular character by name, but tell readers something about what kinds of characters are in the fic. Usually, this indicates the minority status of characters and may indicate whether or not that minority status is canon, as in “Nonbinary Character,” “Canon Muslim Character,” “Deaf Character,” and “Canon Disabled Character.”

Down here in the tags is the place to put ship nicknames! This is also where to say things like “They're idiots your honor” or indicate that they're “Idiots in Love,” maybe both since “Idiots in Love” is an established searchable tag but “They're idiots your honor” isn't yet. If your fandom has catchphrases related to your ship, put that here if you want to.

If relevant, specify some things about the nature of relationships in your fic such as “Ambiguous Relationship,” “Queerplatonic Relationships,” “Polyamory,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Teacher-Student Relationship,” and so on. Not all fics need tags like these. Use your best judgement whether your current fic does.

Temporal tags indicate when your fic takes place. That can be things like “Pre-Canon” and “Post-Canon,” “Pre-War,” “Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “1996-1997 NHL season,” “Future Fic,” and so on. These tags may be in reference to temporal landmarks in canon, in the real world, or both depending on what's appropriate.

Some temporal tags do double duty by also being tags about the fic's relationship to canon. The Pre- and Post-Canon tags are like that.

Other relation-to-canon type tags are “Canon Compliant” for fics that fit completely inside the framework of canon without changing or contradicting anything, “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence” for fics that are compliant up to a certain point in canon, then veer off (maybe because you started writing the fic when the show was on season two but now it's at season four and you're not incorporating everything from the newer seasons, maybe a character died and you refuse to acknowledge that, maybe you just want to explore what might have happened if a particular scene had gone differently), and the various other Alternate Universe tags for everything from coffee shop AUs and updates to modern settings, to realities where everyone is a dragon or no one has their canon superpowers.

The established format for these tags is “Alternate Universe – [type],” but a few have irregular names as well, such as “Wingfic” for AUs in which characters who don't ordinarily have wings are written as having wings.

If you have written an AU, please tag clearly what it is! Make things easy on both the readers who are in the mood to read twenty royalty AUs in a row, the readers who are in the middle of finals week and the thought of their favorite characters suffering through exams in a college AU would destroy the last shred of their sanity but would enjoy watching those characters teach high school, and the readers who really just want to stick to the world of canon right now.

Admittedly, it can get a little confusing what AU tag or tags you need to describe what you've written since most of us have never had a fandom elder sit us down and explain what the AU tags mean. One common mix up is tagging things “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” when what's meant is “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence.” The misunderstanding here is usually reading “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” and thinking it means an alternate version of the canon universe that is set at the same time as the canon universe, but is different in some way. That's not how the tag is meant to be used, though.

The Modern Setting AU tag is specifically for fic set now (at approximately the same time period it was written), for media that's canonically set somewhere that is very much not the present of the real world. This can mean things set in the past (like Jane Austen), the future (like Star Trek), or a fantasy world entirely different from our own (like Lord of the Rings or Avatar: the Last Airbender). Fic for a canon that's set more or less “now” doesn't need the Modern Setting AU tag, even if the world of canon is different from our own. If you're removing those differences by putting fantasy or superhero characters in a world without magic or supersoldier serum, you might want the “Alternate Universe - No Powers” tag instead.

Some of the most fun descriptive tags are trope tags. This includes things like “Mutual Pining,” “Bed Sharing” for when your OTP gets to their hotel room to find There Was Only One Bed, “Fake Dating,” “Angst,” Fluff,” “Hurt/Comfort” and all its variants. Readers love tropes at least as much as we love writing them and want to be able to find their favorites. Everyone also has tropes they don't like and would rather avoid. Tagging them allows your fic to be filtered in and out by what major tropes you've used.

Explicit fics, and sometimes fics with less restrictive ratings, that contain sex usually have tags indicating details about the nature of the sexual encounter(s) portrayed and what sex acts are depicted. These are descriptive tags, but they also do double duty as courtesy tags. This is very much a situation in which tags are a consent mechanism; by thoroughly and clearly tagging your smut you are giving readers the chance to knowingly opt in or out of the experience you've written.

Most of the time, it's pretty easy to do basic tagging for sex acts—you know whether what you wrote shows Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, or Non-penetrative Sex. You probably know the names for different kinds of Oral Sex you may have included. You might not know what to call Frottage or Intercrural Sex, though, even if you understand the concept and included the act in your fic. Sometimes there are tags with rectangle-square type relationships (all Blow Jobs are Oral Sex, but not all Oral Sex is a Blow Job) and you're not sure if you should tag for both—you probably should. Sometimes there are tags for overlapping, closely related, or very similar acts or kinks and you're not sure which to tag—that one's more of judgement call; do your best to use the tags that most closely describe what you wrote.

Tag for the kinks at play, if any, so readers can find what they're into and avoid what they're not. Tag for what genitalia characters have if it's nonobvious, including if there's Non-Human Genitalia involved. Tag your A/B/O, your Pon Farr, and your Tentacles, including whether it's Consentacles or Tentacle Rape.

Technical specification tags give information about aspects of the fic other than its narrative content. Most things on Ao3 are prose fiction so that's assumed to be the default, so anything else needs to be specified in tags. That includes Poetry, Podfics, things in Script Format, and Art. If it is a podfic, you should tag with the approximate length in minutes (or hours). If a fic is Illustrated (it has both words and visual art) tag for that.

Tag if your fic is a crossover or fusion. The difference, if you're not sure, is that in a crossover, two (or more) entire worlds from different media meet, whereas in a fusion, some aspects of one world, like the cast of characters, are combined with aspects of another, like the setting or magic system.

If the team of paranormal investigators from one show get in contact with the cast of aliens from another show, that's a crossover and you need to have all the media you're drawing from up in the Fandom tags. If you've given the cast of Hamlet physical manifestations of their souls in the form of animal companions like the daemons from His Dark Materials but nothing else from His Dark Materials shows up, that's a fusion, the Fandom tag should be “Hamlet - Shakespeare,” and you need the “Alternate Universe - Daemons” tag. If you've given the members of a boy band elemental magic powers like in Avatar: the Last Airbender, that can be more of a judgement call depending how much from Avatar you've incorporated into your story. If absolutely no characters or specific settings from Avatar show up, it's probably a fusion. Either way, if the boyband exists in real life, it needs to be tagged as RPF.

Tag if your fic is a Reader-Insert or Self-Insert.

You might want to tag for whether your fic is written with POV First, Second, or Third Person, and if it's Past Tense or Present Tense (or Future Tense, though that's extremely uncommon). For POV First Person fics that are not self-inserts, or POV Third Person fics that are written in third person limited, you may want to tag which character's POV is being shown. Almost all POV Second Person fics are reader-insert, so if you've written one that isn't, you should tag for who the “you” is.

A fic is “POV Outsider” if the character through whom the story is being conveyed is outside the situation or not familiar with the characters and context a reader would generally know from canon. The waitress who doesn't know the guy who just sat down in her diner is a monster hunter, and the guy stuck in spaceport because some hotshot captain accidentally locked down the entire space station, are both potential narrators for POV Outsider stories.

Other technical specifications can be tags for things like OCtober and Kinktober or fic bingo games. Tagging something as a Ficlet, One Shot, or Drabble is a technical specification (we're not going to argue right now over what counts as a drabble). Tagging for genre, like Horror or Fantasy, is too.

It's also good to tag accessibility considerations like “Sreenreader Friendly,” but make sure your fic definitely meets the needs of a given kind of accessibility before tagging it.

Personal

Even among personal tags there are established tags! Things like “I'm Sorry,” “The Author Regrets Nothing,” “The Author Regrets Everything,” and “I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping” are common ones. Tags about us and our relationship to the fic, such as “My First Work In This Fandom,” “Author is Not Religious,” and “Trans Porn By A Trans Author,” can help readers gauge what to expect from our fic. Of course, you are not at all obligated to disclose any personal information for any reason when posting your fic.

The “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag is common, but probably overused. Tagging is hard; very few of us have a natural feel for it even with lots of practice. It's not a completely useless tag because it can indicate to readers that you've probably missed some things you should have tagged for, so they should be extra careful; but it can also turn into a crutch, an excuse to not try, and therefore a sign to readers they can't trust your tagging job. Just do your best, and leave off the self depreciation. If you're really concerned about the quality of your tagging, consider putting in an author's note asking readers to let you know if there are any tags you should add.

You might want to let readers know your fic is “Not Beta Read” or, if you're feeling a little cheekier than that, say “No Beta We Die Like Men” or its many fandom-specific variants like the “No Beta We Die Like Robins” frequently found among Batman fics and “No beta we die like Sunset Curve” among Julie and The Phantoms fic. Don't worry, the Archive recognizes all of these as meaning “Not Beta Read.”

The Archive can be inconsistent about whether it stacks specific variants of Additional Tags under the broadest version of the tag like it does with Fandom tags, so best practice is usually to use both. You can double check by trying to search by a variant tag (or clicking on someone else's use of the variant); if the results page says the broader or more common form of the tag, those stack.

There's no such thing as the right number of tags. Some people prefer more tags and more detail, while other people prefer fewer more streamlined tags, and different fics have different things that need to be tagged for. There is, however, such a thing as too many tags. A tagblock that takes up the entire screen, or more, can be unreadable, at which point they are no longer useful. Focus on the main points and don't try to tag for absolutely everything. Use the “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” strategy if your courtesy tags are what's getting out of hand.

Tag for as much as you feel is necessary for readers to find your fic and understand what they're getting into if they decide to open it up.

A little bit of redundancy in tags is not a sin. In fact, slight redundancy is usually preferable to vagueness. Clear communication in tags is a cardinal virtue. Remember that tags serve a purpose, they're primarily a tool for sorting and filtering, and (unlike on some other sites like tumblr) they work, so it's best to keep them informative and try to limit rambling in the tags. Ramble at length in your author's notes instead!

Titles

Picking a title can be one of the most daunting and frustrating parts of posting a fic. Sometimes we just know what to call our fics and it's a beautiful moment. Other times we stare at that little input box for what feels like an eternity.

The good news is there's really no wrong way to select a title. Titles can be long or short, poetic or straight to the point. Song lyrics, idioms, quotes from literature or from the fic itself can be good ways to go.

Single words or phrases with meanings that are representative of the fic can be great. A lot of times these are well known terms or are easy enough to figure out like Midnight or Morning Glow, but if you find yourself using something that not a lot of people know what it means, like Chiaroscuro (an art style that uses heavy shadow and strong contrast between light and dark), Kintsukuroi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold), or Clusivity (the grammatical term for differences in who is or isn't included in a group pronoun), you should define the term in either a subtitle, i.e. “Chiaroscuro: A Study In Contrast,” or at the beginning of the summary.

As a courtesy to other writers, especially in small fandoms, you may want to check to make sure there's not already another fic with the same title in the same fandom, but this is not required. In large fandoms, there's no point in even trying. After all, there are only so many puns to be made about the full moon and only so many verses to Hallelujah.

It may be common practice on other platforms to include information such as fandom or ship in the title of a fic, but on Ao3 nothing that is specified by tags belongs in the title unless your title happens to be the same as a tag because, for instance, you've straightforwardly titled your character study of Dean Winchester “Dean Winchester Character Study” and also responsibly tagged it as such.

Summaries

Yes, you really do need to put something down for the summary. It might only need to be a single sentence, but give the readers something to go off of.

The summary is there to serve two purposes: one, to catch the interest of potential readers, give them a taste of what's inside, and make them want to know more; and two, to give you a space to provide information or make comments that don't really fit in the tags but that you want readers to see before they open the fic.

We've already talked some about that second function. When you put an explanation of the title or clarification about tags in the summary, that's the purpose it's serving. You can also put notes to “Heed the tags” or instruct readers that there are additional warnings in the author's note here in the summary, rather than doing so in the tags.

The first function, the actual summarizing, can be very hard for some of us. It's basically the movie trailer for your fic, butwhat are you even supposed to say?

There are two main strategies as to how to approach this: the blurb, and the excerpt. Blurbs are like the synopses you at least used to see on the backs of published books, or the “Storyline” section on an IMDb page. Writing one is a matter of telling your readers who does what, under what circumstances.

Depending on the fic, one sentence can capture the whole thing: “Sam and Alex have sex on a train.” “Tori tries to rob a bank.” “If anybody had mentioned Max's new house was haunted, Jamie wouldn't have agreed to help with the move.”

Sometimes a blurb can be a question! “What happens when you lock a nuclear engineer in a closet with a sewing kit, a tennis ball, and half a bottle of Sprite?”

Of course, plenty of blurbs are more than one sentence. Their length can vary pretty significantly depending on the type and length of fic you're working with and how much detail you're trying to convey, but it shouldn't get to be more than a few short paragraphs. You're not retelling the entire fic here.

An excerpt is a portion of the fic copied out to serve as the summary. This, too, can vary in length from a line or two to several paragraphs, but shouldn't get too long. It should not be an entire scene unless that scene happens to be uncommonly short. It's important to select a portion of the fic that both indicates the who, what, and under what circumstances of the fic and is representative of the overall tone. Excerpts that are nothing but dialogue with no indication of who's talking are almost never a good choice. Portions that are sexually explicit or extremely violent are never ever a good choice—if it deserves content warnings, it belongs inside the fic, not on the results page.

Counterintuitively, some of the best excerpts won't even look like an excerpt to the reader if they don't contain dialogue. They seem like particularly literary blurbs until the reader reaches that part in the fic and realizes they recognize a section of narration.

Some of us have very strong preferences as to whether we write blurbs or use excerpts for our summaries. Some readers have very strong preferences as to which they find useful. Ultimately, there's no accounting for taste, but there are things we can do to limit the frustration for readers who prefer summaries of the opposite kind than we prefer to write, without increasing our own frustration or work load very much. Part of that is understanding what readers dislike about each type so we know what to mitigate.

Blurbs can seem dry, academic, and overly simplified. They don't automatically give the reader a sense of your writing style the way an excerpt does. They can also seem redundant, like they're just rehashing information already given in the tags, so the reader feels like they're being denied any more information without opening the fic.

Excerpts can seem lazy, like you, the author, don't care enough to bother writing a blurb, or pushy like you're telling the reader “just read the fic; I'm not going to give you the information you need to decide if you want to read or not, I'm shoving it in front of you and you just have to read it.” That effect gets worse if your tags aren't very informative or clear about what the plot is, if the excerpt is obviously just the first few lines or paragraphs of the fic, if the except is particularly long, or, worst of all, if all three are true at once.

A lot of the potential problems with blurbs can be minimized by having fun writing them! Make it punchy, give it some character, treat it like part of the story, not just a book report. A fic for a serialized show or podcast, for instance, could have a blurb written in the style of the show's “previously on” or the podcast's intro. Make sure the blurb gives the reader something they can't just get from the tags—like the personality of your writing, important context or characterization, or a sense of the shape of the story—but don't try to skimp on the tags to do it!

Really, the only way to minimize the potential problems with excerpts is to be very mindful in selecting them. Make sure the portion you've chosen conveys the who, what, and under what circumstances and isn't too long. You know the story; what seems clear and obvious from the excerpt to you might not be apparent to someone who doesn't already know what happens, so you might need to ask a friend to double check you.

The absolute best way to provide a summary that works for everybody is to combine both methods. It really isn't that hard to stick a brief excerpt before your blurb, or tack a couple lines of blurb after your excerpt, but it can make a world of difference for how useful and inviting your summary is to a particular reader. The convention for summaries that use both is excerpt first, then blurb.

If you're struggling to figure out a summary, or have been in the habit of not providing one, try not to stress over it. Anything is better than nothing. As long as you've written something for a summary, you've given the reader a little more to help them make their decision. What really isn't helpful, though, is saying “I'm bad at summaries” in your summary. It's a lot like the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag in that it's unnecessarily self depreciating, frequently comes across as an excuse not to try, and sometimes really is just an excuse. Unlike the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag, which has the tiny saving grace of warning readers you've probably missed something, saying you're bad at summaries has no utility at all, and may drive away a reader who thought your summary was quite good, but is uncomfortable with the negative attitude reflected by that statement. Summaries are hard. It's okay if you don't like your summary, but it's important for it to be there, and it's important to be kind to yourself about it. You're trying, that's what matters.

Author's Notes

Author's notes are the one place where we, the writers, directly address and initiate contact with our readers. We may also talk to them in the comments section, but that's different because they initiate that interaction while we reply, and comments are mostly one-on-one while in author's notes we're addressing everyone who ever reads our fic.

The very first note on a fic should contain any information, such as warnings or explanations, that a reader needs to see before they get to the body of the story, as well as anything like thanks to your beta, birthday wishes to a character, or general hellos and announcements you want readers to see before they get to the body of the story. On multi-chapter fics, notes at the beginning of chapters serve the same function for that chapter as the initial note on the fic does for the whole story, so you can do things like warn for Self-Harm on the two chapters out of thirty where it comes up, let everyone know your update schedule will be changing, or wish your readers a merry Christmas, if they celebrate it, on the chapter you posted on December 23rd but is set in mid-March.

Notes at the end of a fic or chapter are for things that don't need to be said or are not useful to a reader until after they've read the preceding content, such as translations for that handful of dialogue that's in Vulcan or Portuguese, or any parting greetings or announcements you want to give, like a thanks for reading or a reminder school is starting back so you won't be able to write as much. End notes are the best place to plug your social media to readers if you're inclined to do so, but remember that cannot include payment platforms like Patreon or Ko-fi.

As previously mentioned, warnings can go in end notes but that really should only be done when the warnings are particularly long, such that the length might cause a problem for readers who are already confident in their comfort level and would just want to scroll past the warning description. In that case, the additional warnings need to go in the note at the end of the first chapter, rather than at the end of the fic, if it's a multi-chapter fic; and you need to include an initial note telling readers that warnings/explanations of tags are at the bottom so they know to follow where the Archive tells them to see the end of the chapter/work for “more notes.”

When posting a new work, where the Preface section gives you the option to add notes “at the beginning” or “at the end” or both, if you check both boxes, it means notes at the beginning and end of the entire fic, not the beginning and end of the first chapter. For single-chapter fics this difference doesn't really matter, but for multi-chapter fics it matters a lot. In order to add notes to the beginning or end of the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic you have to first go through the entire process to post the new fic, then go in to Edit, Edit Chapter, and add the notes there.

Series and Chapters

Dealing with Series and Chapters is actually two different issues, but they're closely related and cause some of us mixups, especially when we're new to the site and its systems, so we're going to cover them together.

Series on Ao3 are for collecting up different stories that you've written that are associated with each other in some way. Chapters are for dividing up one story into parts, usually for pacing and to give yourself and your readers a chance to take breaks and breathe, rather than trying to get through the entire thing in a single marathon sitting (not that we won't still do that voluntarily, but it's nice to have rest points built in if we need them).

If your story would be one book if it was officially published, then it should be posted as a single fic—with multiple chapters if it's long or has more than one distinct part, like separate vignettes that all go together. If you later write a sequel to that fic, post it as a new fic and put them together in a series. It's exactly like chapters in a book and books in a series. Another way to think of this structure is like a TV show: different fics in the series are like different seasons of the show, with individual chapters being like episodes.

If you have several fics that all take place in the same AU but really aren't the same story those should go together as a series. If you wrote a story about a superhero team re-cast as school teachers, then wrote another story about different characters in the same school, that's this situation.

Series are also the best way to handle things like prompt games, bingos, or Kinktober, or collect up one shots and drabbles especially if your various fills, entries, and drabbles are for more than one fandom. If you put everything for a prompt game or bingo, or all your drabbles, together as one fic with a different chapter for each story, what ends up happening is that fic gets recognized by the Archive as a crossover when it isn't, so it gets excluded from the results pages for everyone who told the filters to Exclude Crossovers even though one of the stories you wrote is exactly what they're looking for; and that fic ends up with tons and tons of wildly varying and self-contradictory tags because it's actually carrying the tags for several entirely different, possibly unrelated stories, which also means it ends up getting excluded from results pages because, for instance, one out of your thirty-one Kinktober entries is about someone's NoTP.

Dividing these kinds of things up into multiple fic in a series makes it so much easier for readers to find what of your work they actually want to read.

If you've previously posted such things as a single fic, don't worry, it's a really common misunderstanding and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from reposting them separately. You may see traffic on them go up if you do!

Parting Thoughts

Metatext is ultimately all about communication, and in this context effective communication is a matter of responsibility and balance.

Ao3 is our archive. It's designed for us, the writers, to have the freedom to write and share whatever stories we want without having to worry that we'll wake up one day and find our writing has been deleted overnight without warning. That has happened too many times to so many in our community as other fanfic sites have died, been shut down, or caved to threats of legal action. Ao3 is dedicated to defending our legal right to create and share our stories. Part of the deal is that, in exchange for that freedom and protection, we take up the responsibility to communicate to readers what we're writing and who it's appropriate for.

We are each other's readers, and readers who don't write are still part of our community. We have a responsibility as members of this community to be respectful of others in our shared spaces. Ao3 is a shared space. The best way we have to show each other respect is to give one another the information needed to decide if a given fic is something we want to engage with or not, and then, in turn, to not engage with fic that isn't our cup of tea. As long as our fellow writer has been clear about what their fic is, they've done their part of the job. If we decided to look at the fic despite the information given and didn't like what we found, then that's on us.

Because metatext is how we put that vital information about our fics out in the community, it's important that our metatext is clear and easy to parse. The key to that is balance. Striking the balance between putting enough tags to give a complete picture and not putting too many tags that become an unreadable wall; the balance between the urge to be thorough and tag every character and the need to be restrained so those looking for fics actually about a certain character can find them; the balance between using established tags for clarity and ease and making up our own tags for specificity and fun.

Do your best, act in good faith, remember you're communicating with other people behind those usernames and kudos, and, most importantly, have fun with your writing!

#THE GUIDE #metatext #fandom meta #fandom etiquette #Eiiri made this

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whump-town · 4 years

Text

A Wonderful Life

Why. Does. This. Fic. Just. Keep. Going.

I swear, the next chapter is the LAST chapter. I mean it.

Warning: talk of a miscarriage

Part one. Part two. Part three.

Haley and Hotch were not the kind of couple that managed to get pregnant on accident. They tried for years, long before law school graduations, years with the district attorney, the academy, Seattle… Hotch was worming his way into a nice cozy profiling job when Haley got their first positive test. Dave was still around back then and he’d been overjoyed-- tripping over his own excitement at just the opportunity to see so much emotion out of his prodigy.

Two months later Dave was sleeping on the couch, the future ex-Mrs. Rossi in their bed, when he got the call. He’ll never forget how quickly Aaron worked to compartmentalize everything happening. Dave could hear him softly sniffling, rubbing at his face as he took back slip-ups. Brushing away any comfort Dave might try to provide. Considering the loss he just suffered as nothing-- not a baby, not even cells. Just a stupid, silly idea.

Haley stopped trying to getting him to grieve with her.

They stopped trying after that.

It’s entirely an accident. A slap to the face to the years they spent with their lives measured out on calendars, going to doctors, and throwing money at her uterus and his sperm to magically make them physically compatible. They had both grown desperate but in opposing ways.

He could not rest. Spent the nights tossing and turning.

Haley needed a child, wanted one with all her might. To love it and teach it all the best parts of the world. She wanted to see how something good and kind could come from the two of them. She held him close and imagined a child with his annoying curiosity and her stubborn streak. Of coming to greet him at the door and squint her eyes and inform him of the mischief his child has been into. So that he might spend hours telling that baby silly stories, catching them up way past bedtime having fallen asleep to his nth retelling of how they fell in love.

The announcement could not have come at a better time.

Haley had been at home when Jason Gideon made the call in Boston that would nearly kill her husband. She hadn’t felt it, no cosmic hand wrapping tightly around her heart to tell her that the other half of her soul, the only person she’s ever loved was in mortal peril. It had been Derek Morgan, standing numbly in an isolated hospital wing, watching her husband’s body be shocked back to life, having air forced into his lungs that had been her telling moment.

And there she was with the child she thought she might never have and a dying husband.

She put an expiration date on both their heads and waited. Prepared to bury her husband and lose the only part of him she has the ability to protect. But the days crawled by and she found herself listening to that little baby’s heartbeat, the same slow pace as Aaron’s. Neither died.

But Jack’s birth could only hold off Aaron’s inability to self-preserve minimally. He’d live to see his son’s birth and Haley was certain he’d get himself killed before Jack’s fifth birthday.

Jack’s developmental delays were a point of much dispute, having a lot to do with Hotch’s denial. Hotch had been the smallest in his class, in his age bracket until ninth grade-- spent years as skinny as a rail and not meeting healthy markers for children his age. Haley had, mercifully, bitten her tongue and hadn’t reminded him that why Jack is small and missing delays have nothing to do with why Hotch had. Jack isn’t being abused at home… he’s just autistic.

Their marriage, no matter how strongly they still loved each other, was going down the drain. The news of all this had been a cross of startling and... about as hard to miss as the broad side of a barn.

“Two is-- Two is a good age to get diagnosed.” Reid, like Emily and Morgan, mistook Hotch’s primary concern. Saw his disappointment, his unease and pinned it on Jack’s diagnosis. The autism. And Hotch had smiled, calmly allowing Reid a moment’s tangent to get out what he needs to say. To try and convince Hotch that autism isn’t the end of the world-- because Reid can’t handle it. If Hotch leaves, if Hotch disowns his own son-- the way Reid’s own father had not long after his own “off the books” diagnosis had been given-- he’s not sure he can handle that.

“Reid,” Hotch had softly, placed his hand on Reid’s arm. The faintest touch. “I love Jack. I’m-- I’m not the best father but…” He won’t leave. The autism he can handle, Jack’s always been Jack and that changes nothing but finally provides some answers. Some guidance where’d they had been left blind.

It felt like Hotch was never going to be given a second chance to prove himself wrong. They seemed to turn around and there George Foyet was. Knife in one hand leaving behind a zombified Hotch and Jack. They watched, unable to do anything to help. Jack wanted Hotch and only Hotch but it was like just seeing the boy physically hurt Hotch.

“He’s late.”

They all look forward to Wednesdays. The two hours that they have to just sit and relax-- to let Jack entertain them with his many interest and love for random things he finds on their desks to play with. So they don’t take too kindly to Hotch coming in late and stealing their Jack time.

Emily glances at the clock at the bottom of her computer screen and shakes her head. Her stomach sinks as she realizes that they’re not just late, they’re nearly forty-five minutes late. Hotch abides by a strict, self-imposed schedule one made of utmost importance by Jack’s own intermingled schedule. She rolls her eyes, though, at Morgan rather than admit that it scares her just a little.

“It’s been raining,” JJ reminds them confidently. “I’m sure they’re out catching frogs in the parking lot or looking for washed-up rocks.”

Frogs. Right, Jack loves frogs. He hates to hold them but thoroughly enjoys chasing them and watching his father squirm and fight to hold them. It is pretty funny though, Aaron Hotchner scrambling to keep a tiny frog in one of his hands. Ending up slightly mud-stained, disheveled all to wrangle a frog.

It’s… humanizing (cute but she wouldn’t be caught dead calling the likes of dumbass Aaron Hotchner “cute”).

Morgan yawns, stretching out his arms high above his head. “I’m sure we have nothing to worry about,” he shrugs, tampering off the end of his yawn with the back of his hand. It’s far more likely that they’re getting breakfast-- the two of them love muffins. It wouldn’t be the first time that Hotch has stopped to get breakfast. If that goes in their favor, he’ll probably bring them some too. That’s not to say they’re not walking down the hall right now, Hotch trying to be as patient as possible as Jack hops down the hall.

Besides, if there was anything to worry about Dave would have gotten a call. If not for the simplicity of one of Hotch’s stories-- some long-winded, exasperated thing about Jack weighing down his pockets with rocks, Jack having a bad morning and he’s not going to be in for a few more minutes because he had to clean oatmeal off of himself and kitchen floor. Then, at the very least, something.

Yet, they have only radio silence.

Which is good.

Probably.

“Any word from Monsieur Crabbyass this fine morning?”

David Rossi has always been fascinated with the relationship between Emily and everyone else on the team-- though his typical interest is in the utter insubordination that occurs so effortlessly and flawlessly between Hotch and Emily. Naturally, it’s on his mind. He can’t consider the week complete until they’ve both stormed into his office to whine about the other. It makes him reconsider why came back.

It’s for that fact that he knows this is going to crush her the most.

Morgan and Hotch go about like a match to a candle wick. Burning one another to the ground. Things between them don’t go unsaid. If there’s an issue they get to it and neither can walk away until their hands are clear.

JJ and Hotch make the perfect parental tag team. So much of what they do is hidden but the thoughtless, mechanical way the two work together is never taken for granted. If shit hits the fan, those two are who you want.

Garcia and Hotch may not get a lot of time but they know she’s his soft spot.

Reid and Hotch are the strangest carbon copy of one another venturing to having a little too much in common to nothing at all.

Emily and Hotch have far too much left unsaid. Tension and, what he believes, to be penance for the courses of action they have both taken. In her inability to trust the team, running from them and forcing Hotch to kill her to protect her. His distance from them, which she has always read as distrust and tinged with his ego. Neither are as simple as they prefer to pretend to perceive themselves to be.

Not as mysterious either.

Leaving him, standing on the catwalk watching her little joke hit the others with fond laughter. Monsieur Crabbyass. That’s a good one and Aaron is probably never going to hear it. Never clench his jaw and glare to the side, forcing himself not to react and admit that it’s actually kind of funny.

Dave watches over them for another moment, taking in their innocence. Emily still snickering at her own joke, Garcia and JJ both shaking their heads at her. Morgan shakes his head but there’s no hiding his own amused smirk.

“He’s not coming in.” Dave clears his throat, “there was an accident on the way here this morning.” He can’t even get out what he needs to say, they’re already trying to talk over him. “Jack alright,” he’s standing there, trying to get his piece out. “Jessica’s already made her way to the hospital, sitting with Jack. He’s hardly got a scratch.”

There’s general ease that settles them with the relief that Jack is fine.

“And Hotch?”

On life support.

Laying in the intensive care unit with defibrillator sticky pads on his chest, waiting for the next episode of tachycardia to have the nurses and doctors of the unit holding their breath. Wondering just how many more times his body can take them beating the shit out of it or if he’ll come back this time. How many more times can he toe that line before he can’t come back?

“I--” Derek is standing numbly at his desk. Arms limp at his side. “What are-- Is Jack-- Jack is alright? How? Can we-- Will they let us back-- back to see him? They have to let us back to see him, right?”

To see what?

That his body is laid out on a stretcher bare of blankets and pillows. Neck held still by a brace. Jaw titled back and pale, cracked lips stretched around an incubation tube. The hiss of which fills the small empty room. To see that he’s covered in crisp white bandages, wrapped delicately around the purple bruises up and down his ribs. His unstable, flail chest.

To see the x-rays?

To have a doctor stand and explain the damage, the history of Aaron Hotchner’s bones. Old cracks and improperly healed aches. By forty, it’s easy to assume that the ghosts of childhood have long since lost their grasp, but today they nearly cost him his life. A decade worth of cheap shots to his sides, his father’s angry tyrannical downpours wore down the bones.

When he hit the steering wheel, those old bones never stood a chance. They gave out on him.

And what of Jack?

It’s one thing to have those words written out “In the event of my death…” but those are just words to be said. Never meant to be used. Jessica doesn’t understand all of Jack’s charts. She won’t ask him what color his socks are and let him weigh his pants down with rocks and carry him when he gets tired. She won’t get muddy and slimy to chase down frogs. But Jack and everything he owns (aside from some silly knick-knacks and stupid things he thought better to go to Morgan or maybe Garcia) go to Jessica Brooks.

In the event of my death…

“If he’s still alive by the time that we get there… it’s unlikely that they let anyone aside from family back.”

They stand in the silence of that. Of the implication. Does a single one of them know how to do any of this without him? Morgan doesn’t want to be fucking Unit Chief. He got his taste, he’s done. And, the most surprising part is that the somber, truth omission of what they are all thinking comes from Emily Prentiss. Righting her shoulders like she’s standing in front of the nurses and defending them right now.

“But we are his family.”

#tw miscarriage #criminal minds #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fanfiction

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pressedinthepages · 4 years

Text

Shatter

Fandom: The Witcher

Pairing: Eskel/Reader (gender-neutral)

Rating: E

Masterlist

a/n: Reader Request: [Ok but smutty request gender neutral reader n Eskel where Eskel finds out by complete accident that reader v much have a Thing for being called “doll” n “doll face” and proceeds to make them beg to and fucks them right into the mattress? 👀] Ok so this was my first venture into the gender-neutral smut, so I hope that it’s not terrible! I really enjoyed writing this one, it was a lot of fun to do <3

As always, thanks to @sometimesiwrite for beta’ing and correcting every time that I accidentally typed ‘dool’ instead of ‘doll.’

(There is a link on my page where you can be added to my taglist :D)

Warnings: smut, ~mysterious vial of oil~, Eskel is The Best

Eskel discovers your preference of a certain nickname and uses it to the best of advantages.

It happens while you both are in the market. Eskel is a few steps away speaking with the armorer, while you admire the sweet smelling wares from a soapmaker. The soapmaker is situated right next to a jeweler, and she has attracted a couple of his own.

“See anything you like, doll?” The man’s low voice sends sparks down your spine, that endearing term loosening the ties around your brain and letting arousal pool lazily at your stomach. You glance over at Eskel and find him already staring at you, his nostrils flaring and his eyes dark. His chest rises as he breathes in deep through his nose and you watch his skin flush a pretty pink up the line of his neck.

Eskel politely leaves the armorer with a request to pick up his gear tomorrow. He moves to your side, wrapping his arm around your waist. His breath is hot on your ear as he pulls you gently away from the soapmaker once you’ve paid for a small block of sage soap. Once you are far enough away from prying ears he whispers, “Might I take you home, doll?”

Your knees threaten to buckle from under you at the husky tone of his voice, so raw and ready to have you beg for more. “Eskel, please…”

He chuckles and fits his hand with your own, intertwining his fingers and gently pulling you along the path towards your home. The journey feels insurmountably longer than usual, but that may just be due to the insistent thrumming of your own blood under the surface of your skin. And it also doesn’t help that Eskel keeps his hands on you the entire way back. They linger at the small of your back, move up to squeeze your shoulder, or cup the round of your ass.

Meanwhile, Eskel is swimming in his own headspace, surrounded by the ever-intensifying scent of your arousal swirling throughout the air. He can feel the beat of your heart in his ears and he just itches to have you quivering in pleasure beneath him. But he can be patient when he wants to be, he just needs to get you back through your door and you’re his.

You see the cottage, and you can count the steps that it will take you to cross the pasture and finally be able to quench the thirst that has been building since the market. 120 steps, you think, 120 steps and he’s mine.

And then the world spins on its axis as Eskel turns, quicker than you thought possible, sweeping you up into his arms. One arm supports your back and another is hooked under your knees and Eskel gives you this cheeky grin that bleeds with honey-sweet darkness. Before you can actually register what is happening he takes off in a dead sprint, bringing you to the threshold of your home and barely breaking a sweat.

You, on the other hand, have had the wind stolen from your lungs and you grasp desperately for the neck of his tunic, knocked speechless by the sudden display of raw power. Eskel spins with you still in his arms and pushes the door open with his back, walking slowly around the table until he reaches the bed.

“Would you like to play, doll?” Eskel lays you down carefully on the bed, bracketing himself above you and letting his breath tickle your cheek.

“F-fuck, Eskel, yes,” you gasp, writhing under the intensity of his gaze. Eskel sits back on his heels and drags his hands down your sides, quietly admiring how you’ve already begun to shatter under his touch.

Eskel shucks off his gambeson and throws his linen shirt over his head and onto the floor. His boots get kicked to the side and his trousers fall, leaving him bare and towering in all his glory before you. You watch him rifle through his pack for a moment before pulling out a delicate crystal bottle filled with a shiny oil. He prowls back to your feet and leans in, dragging his finger down the line of your sex over your clothes and you shudder and arch into him.

“Patience, little one,” he chides, pulling you to sit up so that he may remove your own tunic. Your nipples pebble as Eskel’s breath ghosts over them, his golden eyes glancing up with a quirk of his brow.

You lay back onto the bed and Eskel gently taps the outside of your thigh for you to lift your hips. You do, and Eskel fits his fingers into the band of your trousers before slowly pulling them down your legs, exposing your arousal to him. Your boots hit the floor with your pants and Eskel bends down to your belly, right over you. He breathes in deeply, indulgently, his cheeks turning pink as a low rumble tears through his chest.

He presses his lips tenderly against the soft skin of your stomach before climbing between your legs, pulling your thighs to rest around his hips. Your ankles hook at the small of his back and he turns the little bottle in his hands, pulling the stopper and setting it carefully onto the bedside table. Your eyes don’t leave his fingers as you watch him pour oil over them, leaving them slick and shining. Eskel drags it down your stomach and back around your weeping sex, aching and begging for anything he’ll give you.

You feel him work at your entrance, gently prodding his finger around before pushing in. Eskel twists and thrusts, keeping his eyes on your own and his ears tuned in to the sound of your heart beating in your chest. He slips a second finger in as his mouth latches around one of your nipples, and your head swims with the sensation. You thread your hand into his hair, letting the strands pool around your fingers as you grasp desperately for a tether to sanity.

You glance down and find Eskel’s own arousal hard and wanting against the crease of your hip and you whimper, wanting so deeply to reach out and touch and bring him pleasure too. But Eskel can read you like a book, and he lets your nipple go and almost growls, “No, doll. Not yet. Let me…”

Your head hits the pillow beneath you as Eskel slides a third finger in and crooks all three just so, finding your sweet spot deep inside as if it were made just for him. He slowly rubs back and forth over it, not seeking any specific end, but more building the trestles for him to dismantle over the course of the evening. His mouth finds your other nipple and you cry out wordlessly, thrusting up into his hand and his mouth and needing more.

“Eskel, gods, Eskel I-I’m ready, please,” you breathe and Eskel hums, looking down at his own fingers sliding in and out of you. He watches how your body latches onto him and holds him tight, trying so hard to keep even just his fingers as deep inside of you as possible. Eskel nods and pulls his fingers out, reaching for the bottle once more.

He pours a generous amount onto his cock and lines himself up, bracing his elbows on either side of your head. “Now,” Eskel rumbles, smiling down at you with his eyes blown dark, “what was it you wanted me to do?”

You flush, your hips rolling emptily as you feel the head of his length brush against your entrance. But he holds firm, keeping himself suspended just shy of you. “Eskel, p-please, I need you…”

“And you have me, darling,” Eskel grins, still not moving from where he hovers over you.

“Gods, Eskel, I-”

“Be specific, doll, or else you won’t get what you want.” Eskel tilts his head to the side and you swear to Melitele you decidedly do not shudder at the visual.

“I-” you take a deep breath, grounding yourself before opening your eyes and gazing into him with determination. “I would like you to put your cock inside of me and fuck me into this matress, please.”

Eskel groans at the filth that pours from your sweet lips and he can’t help but close the distance between you. He tastes the gasp on your mouth as he slowly pushes himself into you, he feels the keen that spills up from your throat in his bones. Eskel thrusts shallowly, pushing himself deeper and deeper each time. He finally bottoms out and feels your tight, wet heat surrounding him and it takes everything in him not to just spill then and there.

“Oh doll,” Eskel murmurs, his mouth agape and his lungs pulling in air as his fingers dig into the meat of your thighs, starting to thrust just a little bit quicker. “Fuck, you take me so well, sweet thing-”

Every slow drag of his cock is electrifying, sending lightwaves through your spine and down your every nerve. And then-gods, he leans down, pressing your legs further apart to make room for his chest between them and you feel him everywhere, you feel him so impossibly deep inside of you and in your breath and under your skin and you cry out, digging your nails into his shoulders as he finds a steady rhythm.

Eskel’s breath comes in hot gasps as the two of you thrust back and forth, your lips just barely brushing against one another as your climax builds and builds behind your eyelids. He has lost all of his carefully maintained control, his hips snapping relentlessly against yours and you feel like you are spinning without a course.

“C’mon, doll, I want your pleasure, I want to feel it, please-” Eskel gasps, and everything becomes so much more for a few heartbeats. You feel like you can hear your blood rushing in your ears and the tightening of your spine before there is nothing. A sweet release of a coil and you fall, your hips chasing Eskel’s every thrust, holding him so tight that he cries out in ecstasy.

And by the Gods, he doesn’t even just cry out. Eskel roars, primal and needy as his hips stutter before pushing so deep you can feel it in your soul. He gives you so much, his chest heaving as his eyes scrunch shut and his cock spills and spills deep inside of you. And then all at once he sags, flopping onto your chest just as you can start to really feel the extent of how far he has pushed you. And oh, fuck it feels good.

You card your fingers through his hair as he catches his breath and then carefully peels himself away from you. As his cock pulls out of you, you feel the evidence of his climax drip down onto the bed beneath you and you grimace at the emptiness you are now so acutely aware of. Eskel pushes himself back to his elbows and cups your cheek with one of his hands.

“Shh, doll, I’ve got you,” he whispers, stroking his thumb back and forth on the soft skin.

You smile, mussing his hair a bit. “I know, Eskel. You always do.”

Eskel kisses you softly, deeply, trying to press himself into your very bones. Then he stands, just for a moment, and comes back to you with a warm damp cloth and rubs it gently between your thighs. He kisses all over your skin, over your stomach and chest and up your arm to your neck, anywhere he can reach as he takes care of you.

“Come lay with me,” you whisper, reaching out to pull him to you.

Eskel offers you a smile so earnest it makes your heart ache and he chucks the cloth away. He climbs back into the bed and tosses a blanket over the two of you, pulling you against his chest. You listen to the slow, steady beat of his heart and the last thing that you remember before falling asleep is the feeling of Eskel’s lips pressing gently to the crown of your head and his hand gripping onto the crook of your hip, holding you fast to him.

#eskel x reader #gender neutral reader #smut

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weirdlyhornyforegos · 4 years

Text

Actor Mark x male reader

Anon: Hi, gosh i really love your fanfics they are s o g o o d. could you maybe write some male!reader x actor? where reader had been teasing google all day(and he was kind of into it) and then actor is like "grr no, mine thank you very much" and then they fuck or smthn?

MINORS DNI!! Possessive and jealous Actor is some good shit

Mark can be a jealous person at times. He can admit that. He tries to keep the jealousy to a minimum, but sometimes it’s hard.

Like today.

Seeing you tease and flirt with Google, and seeing the god damn robot flirt back when he very well knows you’re taken is where he draws the line.

He walks up behind you, wraps his arms around your waist and gives your cheek a kiss. You hum and keep talking to Google, used to the actor doing stuff like this.

Google hardly gives him a glance, but Mark glares at him so hard that the android has to take notice of him. He looks like he has swallowed a lemon.

“Good, fuck him.” Mark thinks. He glares at him as Google keeps up his conversation with you.

After some time, Google finally takes the fucking hint and leaves, leaving behind a confused you, as he had been even blunter than normal, almost ending the conversation out of nowhere.

You turn around in Mark’s arms, cupping his face.

“What was that all about?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” You give him an unimpressed look.

“Right.” You lean in for a kiss, which you intend to be brief, but Mark has other plan. He deepens the kiss, and soon you find yourself pressed against the wall.

You have to break away from the kiss to get some air, and with heavy breathing you watch Mark’s eyes roam all over you.

“What?” You ask. Mark doesn’t answer, instead backing off, grabbing your hand.

You let yourself be dragged to the nearest door, which turns out to be an office. You don’t even know who it belongs to, but you’re pushed down on your back on the couch occupying one side of the room. Mark quickly follows, leaning down to kiss you, bracketing you in. He rolls his hips forward, and you can suddenly feel how he’s half hard in his pants already, which causes you to draw in a sharp breath.

One of his hands move to rub against your front as the same time as he stops kissing you in favor of moving down to kissing your neck. You feel your dick already getting interested, and moan, bucking your hips up against Mark’s hand.

“I am going to make you feel so good that you forget about even just the idea of flirting with someone else.”

“Fuck, Mark, what flirting?” Mark growls and that sound goes straight to your dick.

“That fucking android.”

“Google?” At the mention of his name, Mark bites down hard on a spot of your neck, causing you to yelp. Your hands fly into his hair, trying to tug at him, but Mark isn’t moving away from the spot, now licking it over with broad strokes, as to soothe the sting of the bite.

“Mine. All mine.” You groan, knowing you’re in for it when Mark gets in a mood like this. It kinda had been your plan all along, but that you will never admit to him.

Seeing Mark get jealous and a little possessive does thing to you, like making your cock hard, and making it leak pre-cum where Mark is still rubbing it over your pants.

“Mark...” You whine, moving your hips up against his hand. Mark seems to tire of touching you like this, as just seconds later he’s unbuttoning your pants, and then they’re off, along with your underwear, shirt, socks, and shoes.

Mark’s hand wrap around your dick as two fingers appear at your lips.

“Suck.” You do as he says as he jerks you off. You try to do it as well as you can, but it’s kinda hard when Mark’s hand is moving up and down your cock, smearing out your pre-cum. His thumb swirls around your tip, and you try to mimic the motion with your tongue against his fingers.

He groans, and pulls the fingers out of your mouth. You whine, but soon stops as one finger trails down your cock, down to your balls, and right down to your hole.

Your breath hitches as one finger slowly enters you, stopping only when it’s fully inside.

Mark is still jerking you off, but he doesn’t move his finger inside you. You try to rock your hips down to make him do something with it, but you’re stopped by Mark letting go off your cock to hold you down.

“No, I decide when you get more.” You groan, but nod, stilling. Pleased with you doing as he says, Mark goes back to jerking you off, now also moving his finger slowly in and out of you. You clutch at the couch pillows, holding on as Mark does as he pleases.

Mark is being purposefully slow, and every time he feels you’re getting close to coming, he stops, letting you get away from the edge before he starts moving again.

One finger on your ass turns to two soon enough, and after some whining and begging form you, you have three of Mark’s fingers in your ass, his hand still stroking your cock in tandem with his fingers fucking into you.

You have to suck on Mark’s fingers a few more times, and he even uses some of your own pre-cum as lube.

“Maaarrkk....” You whine, trying to keep your hips still like he wants you to, but it’s hard. Mark laughs, grinning as his hand slows down and he thumbs at the head of your cock.

“Does someone want to come? Spill all over my hand?” You nod frantically, elated that it seems like Mark might indulge you and let you come. You have been so close to cumming so many times, it’s maddening.

Mark leans down, his fingers finding a new angle which makes you see stars as they press against your prostate, and his hand on your cock starts stroking again. You moan and Mark laughs, kissing along your collarbone.

“I’m the only one who gets to see and make you like this, understand?”

“Yes, Mark, ah, fuck!” Mark bites down at your shoulder, making you squirm even more.

“Good. Now what are you?” You know what he wants to hear.

“Yours! I’m all yours, no one elses.”

“Good, now come for me.” Mark says right in your ear, and then you are. You come with a cry of his name, vision almost going white with the intensity of your orgasm. Your body shakes, and you feel your cum shooting out and coating Mark’s hand and your stomach.

Panting, you come down from your orgasm to the feeling of Mark dragging his fingers trough the cum on your stomach, before his touch disappears completely.

Opening your eyes, not even realising you closed them in the first place, you’re met with the fantastic sight of Mark slowly stroking his cock, coating it with your cum as well as his own. He has taken his shirt off, but his pants and underwear is still on, just pushed down far enough so he can free his cock.

Stopping stroking his cock, Mark pushes at your legs so he can settle between them, his cock nudging against your hole.

“Mine.” He growls as he trusts in. The stretch is just outside of comfortable, but that soon changes as Mark starts to move, and sends pleasure sparking trough your body as he hits you prostate over, and over, and over again. Even though it hasn’t been long since you last came, it doesn’t take long for your dick to get interested in the proceedings, and soon you find yourself hard once more.

You tangle your hands in Mark’s hair as he leans down to kiss you, slowing down his trusts to do so. You whine and tug at his hair, you can feel Mark grin into the kiss. He stops kissing you, but doesn’t speed up, instead moving down to lick at one nipple. You groan, and tug at his hair again.

Mark grunts and leans back again, making you let go of his hair. He grips your hips as his own speeds up, hitting hard against your as. You clutch at the couch cushions and let out a load moan.

“You. Are. Mine.” Every word is punctuated with a thrust of his hips, making you move up on the couch and making you feel incredible.

A few more thrusts, and Mark’s hand wrap around your cock, jerking you off in time with his trusts.

Less than a minute later you’re coming again, spilling all over Mark’s hand, him not far behind. He stills, buried deep inside you as he comes, filling you up. Mark settles on top of you as you both breathe heavily, trying to catch your breath.

“Fuck, Mark....” Mark laughs, shifting so he can kiss your chest.

“I thought I already did? But if you are unsatisfied...” He trails kisses up your sternum as you laugh, and you pull him up into a proper kiss instead. You can feel Mark’s grin, and you roll your eyes when you break the kiss.

“Later, lets get dressed for now. I don’t want anyone to catch us like this.” Mark gets off you, giving you a once over.

“I certainly wouldn’t mind....” You make a face at Mark, throwing his shirt at him as he laughs again.

#actor Mark #actor!mark x reader #actor!mark #wkm actor!mark #wkm actor mark #actor mark x reader #reader insert #lemon #My writing #male!reader

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kurtstinypurse · 4 years

Text

with a shuddering gasp (klaine mini-fic)

the first of what may be a few “the way you said I love you” prompts - thanks for ‘em @porcelainandthehobbit!

this is just a vaguely au post-breakup, not necessarily how it happened in canon but. here we go!

It shouldn’t be any different from any other time they’ve done this.

Action-wise, it’s not - it’s still Kurt pressing him down into the mattress, Blaine’s face buried in a pillow, overheated, overstimulated, sweating-gasping-panting-reeling as Kurt fucks into him, hard and fast with a staggered rhythm Blaine can’t quite keep up with.

There’s never any eye contact once they get started, once Blaine’s stretched and once Kurt’s inside him. It’s always Blaine on his belly, hips lifted back up off the bed, Kurt on top of him, hands grasping at the sheets and bracketing Blaine’s head.

There are rarely any kisses, either - never on the mouth, only sometimes scattered down Kurt’s torso when Blaine’s headed to go down on him, only sometimes sucked and bitten onto Blaine’s hipbones, inner thighs, to be a hidden reminder for days after, until the next time.

It’s about the release, and that’s it, because they’re good at this: getting each other off, fitting their bodies together, being what each other needs in the bed, and that’s it.

Even at the worst, hardest, rockiest parts of their relationship, they had always had this - sex had never been something they struggled at once they figured it out, had always been a way to connect when they didn’t have the words to come back together, had always been a failsafe method of compatibility when everything else felt disjointed and off and wrong.

Blaine supposes that’s why they still do this, even two years after calling it off, after breaking up.

It’s not like they didn’t take the time to be apart, to really be broken up - they spent months with radio silence, giving Blaine the time to wrap his head around a life without the love of his, a new routine with one cup of coffee each morning, one glass of wine to unwind with at night, one side of the bed untouched.

But then Tina and Mike get married, and Blaine is there, and Kurt is there, and they avoid each other, but then the reception comes and they drink and they drink and they end up catching each other in the bathroom at the same time, and suddenly Blaine is pushing Kurt into the wall, and then he’s down on his knees, Kurt’s hands twisting in his hair, mouth around Kurt’s cock until Kurt is trembling with it.

He’s still not sure what came over him that night, but it quickly doesn’t matter - it opens a door and it opens a floodgate, and they keep doing it, texting one another late at night, drawing together and coming together and then parting again, easy as that.

For a while, it works.

It’s enough of a connection for Blaine to feel something, detached enough for him to not yearn and pine and ache for Kurt to stay, for Kurt to hold him after and bring him out the other end of what they’ve shared with soft kisses and hushed whispers and gentle touches.

It’s enough.

But tonight, it suddenly feels different, like instead of focusing on the fire building in his belly and the spark ready to ignite through his veins, Blaine’s unable to tear away his focus from the feeling of Kurt’s body surrounding him, just slightly bigger in a way that’s always made Blaine feel like he’s entirely being enveloped by Kurt, once so comforting and safe, now overwhelming and terrifying in its intensity and in its rightness.

Maybe it’s because he’s had a hard week, stressed out by longer rehearsals, by deadlines at work and the fact that he has little time for everything else.

Maybe it’s because he knows, in the back of his mind, that what would have been their anniversary is coming up, had Blaine only known how to keep them together, how to make it work.

Maybe it’s because this has been a ticking time bomb all along, and the things Blaine’s been repressing for so long have all bubbled up to the surface, come to a head, leaving him aching and wanting for only one thing, for only one person.

And then Kurt’s arms give out, shaking past the point of support, and he collapses fully on top of Blaine’s body, covering him and weighing him down in every inch and every fiber, and he’s breathing ragged and hot right into Blaine’s ear as he keeps fucking him, getting faster and more irregular now.

He knows Kurt is close, and Blaine is, too, desperate for the release only Kurt can allow him.

When Kurt comes, Blaine feels the pulsing heat inside of him, drawing the orgasm out of him, too, cutting through him like a knife all at once. It’s sharp and harsh and electric, but all Blaine truly knows, all Blaine can truly feel is Kurt’s mouth against his jawline, sucking wet, heavy kisses there, pulling them both through it.

It feels like before, if Blaine closes his eyes and leans into it enough and forgets enough, too.

When he’s finally able to breathe, it’s with a shuddering gasp, and it’s with words, too, ones he shouldn’t be saying, ones he shouldn’t be feeling, ones that shouldn’t be true, not anymore.

But they feel true, in his heart and his soul and in his bones, and he knows he could never take them back, wouldn’t take them back even if he were capable of it. It isn’t about the sex, about the orgasm he’s been given or the physicality of any of it. It’s about how he wants nothing more than to figure this out and figure himself out and be them again, do whatever he needs to do to make it happen.

It’s about how they wouldn’t be doing this, not really, if the feelings weren’t there all along.

Neither of them have ever been the type for sex without an emotional connection to it, after all.

When Blaine speaks, it feels like the truest moment they’ve had since they started all of this, and he feels so open and honest that he could fly.

And so, he says it again, a broken shell of a whisper, not caring about what might happen next.

“Fuck, I-I love you so much. I love you.”

Kurt whimpers, high and broken and right in Blaine’s ear, and Blaine can feel him trembling for a moment before he settles, relaxing so that they entirely melt into one another, tangled up and sweaty and sticky and floating, drifting, together.

And then Kurt’s hands shift up to find Blaine’s, palms folding over the backs of Blaine’s hands, fingers threading together and holding on tight, desperate, clinging like he’ll never let go again.

“I love you,” Kurt echoes, and it feels like the fog of the heartbreak and the silence and the in-between is finally clearing.

In a moment, Kurt will have to move, and he’ll have to pull out and throw the condom away and clean them up.

After that, they’ll have to talk - figure this out, figure out what they want and if they want the same things, figure out where to go from here and how to begin, or, rather, how to continue, how to evolve and to grow.

Speaking the love that they share into existence again won’t fix everything, and Blaine doesn’t expect it to.

But it’s a start, and the fact that he doesn’t feel afraid in the slightest, only settled, only solid - that counts for something.

It counts for a lot.

#this jsut rly came out of me and I dont know why #anyway #my fic #prompt game #klaine fanfiction #klaine fanfic #klaine fic #klaine #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #glee fanfiction #glee fanfic #glee fic #glee #reunion fic

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battle-of-alberta · 4 years

Photo

OCtober: Cal and Ed

It’s finally over. I’m sorry for the delay but stuff has been Happening. If there’s a tourism site that attracts you more to one city or the other, let me know.

Calgary | Edmonton

Below is some meta stuff about the ‘research’ (if you can even call it that, it was more of a vibe check) I did for re-doing the profiles. Read on, if it intrigues you. And I gotta mention there’s a bonus rabbit hole I went down for Calgary’s self-image that is. Well. A Lot.

Major Cities: Calgary and Edmonton

We made it team, the heart of the Battle of Alberta, the major city rivalry that defined generations. Calgary is the largest city in the province and the centre of southern Alberta, a young, fast-paced major city that oscillates wildly between boom and bust and is attracting both attention and employees from the traditional major cities in Canada. Edmonton is the capital of the province and the the most northern major city with a metro population of over one million on the continent, a little older and more blue collar, somewhat more stable economically, and quickly rising to meet the challenges presented by open data and sustainable urban planning. And, as we know, they've been antagonizing each other since the 19th century, but collaborating as well.

Website Round Up Premise

While I was revisiting these character profiles, I took a look at how cities represented themselves on their municipal sites and tourism sites rather than how cities were represented in the news or in stereotypes, as the latter already tend to live in the back of my head. I was interested to see who the target audiences for each city were, what they considered their strengths, and how much effort each city put into putting its own identity on display. I was also interested into what ideas sort of fed into any pre-existing confirmation bias I had about each city's personality as well as interested in what narratives might be used to counteract negative stereotypes.The first thing I tended to notice was the overall information architecture of each city's website. How easy were they to navigate? What kinds of information did they have? How did they organize it? How did they communicate that information?

Out and About

There's a sharp difference between the websites of major cities from other cities. They are very careful to separate the corporation of 'The City of' from the cities we might know, and therefore both websites have a much more business-like tone and more distance from their civic identities. This means no traditional "About" pages as other cities might have.

At the time I'm visiting, Edmonton's page has some ADORABLE art of a nuthatch that's making me very homesick. Calgary has a seasonally appropriate snowy skyline.

Calgary does have an "Our Organization" tab which describes the City as a corporation, and likewise Edmonton has a "City Government" tab that performs a similar function. Edmonton's is in alphabetical order which is only a little annoying and Calgary's reads like a very perfectly chunked business portfolio that doesn't... really say as much as it looks like it does, but it does get bonus points for vision/organization/accessibility.

I have never seen a more concise history of Calgary in my life. It's literally three bullet points and a couple of bracketing sentences, but it does do the job. Calgary is, more or less, what it says it is (although I do take slight issue with its self identification as a trading post - it may have functioned that way but that was not what it was founded for and in fact the trading companies gtfo'd asap in those early days). It goes on to paint a very good sketch of the city in as few lines as possible in the text, and there's a little video at the end that feels like it was voiced over in 1988 even though it's clearly not.

Edmonton's City government page is even vaguer. Let's make a more dynamic and resilient Edmonton shall we, the page suggests. Resilient against What Exactly, I wonder. Winter? The boom-bust? Calgary? who knows. The majority of the sub pages are even more mysterious and essentially paint the picture of a city. It's a normal city. Trust us. We do city things. Here is exactly how government works and how to raise and lower a flag. In Edmonton, which is, in fact, a city.

I'm begging you if you think Calvin is hokey and annoying please read the Our Culture page and see it's EXACTLY how I intended to portray him because it's eXACTLY what it's already like. "The Four C's of Our Culture" give me a break.

Edmonton offers me a picture of the skyline and says "City of Opportunity: City of You". I suppose this is true. I don't know what it means. I fear slightly for its intentions.

I keep seeing "Calgary: A great place to make a living, a great place to make a life" and it's like. Stop! I won't go! You can't make me! (and again the Strong and Resilient Calgary. these kids are always catching colds because they don't eat properly.)

Although Edmonton makes literally zero attempt to define itself (outside perhaps the official symbols page hidden under Facts and Figures), what strikes me is that it is portraying itself as a very future-oriented city, which, when I was growing up we really never were. We were an inward city constantly wishing we were somewhere else which is partially still true, and we were a city with such an intense nostalgia (that unlike Calgary we failed to really capitalize on) that grated roughly against a complete failure to preserve history. It does kind of make me glad that the city is looking towards the future and just like, acknowledging basic realities (like snow) and trying to involve people in urban planning more (and throughout the website the city LOOOOVES to share data which I also called, haha). There's also an adorable animation of the city road map in its strategic planning pages. It's interesting that for a city that leaves itself up to your own interpretation, it does have a LOT of information about itself collected and available.

Tourism

Oddly enough, neither city has substantially changed their tourism homepage to accommodate COVID-related staycation plans, although each does mention that many things may be closed or unavailable as a result of the pandemic.

CaLGARy, Be PaRT of THe EnERGy!!

I like how Edmonton's self-presentation is "original" and "we do things differently". It's like a Keep ___ Weird thing but in an understated self-assured way that makes me laugh a little. Like yeah, I guess we are kind of different, I guess we're just not used to seeing that as a good thing.

In the tourism guides there isn't much to say about Calgary's that isn't just "oh, classic Calgary" but I do think the fact that they have "quick facts" to explain what timezone it's in and what currency they use is adorable to say the least. also the title of the guide is CALGARY (and the canadian rockies) and that sums up Calgary pretty well, which I'll elaborate on more.

I actually can't find Edmonton's guide, if it has one, but that's ok. The website hits all the buttons that I would and I actually use exploreedmonton quite frequently because it has a nicer event calendar than the city website does, which is important in a place nicknamed Festival City. I really appreciate how things are organized by month/season and even down to "what's happening today/tomorrow/this week" because it makes planning trips for my visitors easy, so now you know my secret : ) I wish I could just beam this site directly into people's brains when they mention "oh yeah thats where the mall is" when I say I'm from Edmonton.

Interestingly enough it's Calgary's turn to be vague, which I can only assume is part of its "exactly what it says it is" charm. This desperation to find a shred of self-description outside of things to do and places to stay led me down a rabbit hole I will elaborate on in a moment that truly showed me I Knew Nothing about how deep Calgary's branding goes. Otherwise, the website is very practical and functions more like an answer to questions you had about the what and the how and less so the why.

Also, the "Locals" page on Calgary's site has tips on hosting friends and family from around the province safely during the pandemic which is kind of cute. Edmonton doesn't really have a local page (i guess because if we had a hashtag like #loveyyc we'd ruin it)

Bonus: The Rabbit Hole

I wondered why Calgary's tourism page, which I expected to be the most in your face description of the city possible, fell kind of flat. I learned this seems to be because tourists are not the target audience that Calgary wants to attract. It's companies and corporations, and they get their own page.

Boy oh boy do they get their own page

This led me down this frightening path of getting validation like being repeatedly punched in the face by what On Brand Calgary truly means and I'm frankly quite speechless about it - all I can say is that you need to see it for yourself.

The tourism site gestures to a Billion reasons why you should hold your next meeting in Calgary and here is where the self definition as Big City Energy and Western Hospitality starts kicking the tires and lighting the fires. Likewise with the media-oriented page. Suddenly stuff like the Calgary Bucket List starts popping up and I can't help but go hang on, why not suggest this to tourists?

"It's cowboy spirit, but also refined and cosmopolitan" [sighs into hands]

Suddenly all the "Calgarians love visitors! Calgarians love the outdoors!" stuff is spilling out like water from a dam here. "Where's Calgary?" [Link that reads FIND US].

Like i literally feel like the tourism side on the left is the Kids Menu, it's the corporate stuff on the right that I'm actually finding the type of information I want on. Eventually, I somehow make my way to Calgary's Destination Strategy which is trying to make Calgary a place that... well, people go. Like, internationally. Like the Olympics but MORE of that.

Then I find the Brand Evolution. Then I find Calgary's Economic Development site. The poetry about rocky mountain prairie skies and "where a handshake still means something" starts to reach its peak.

Then back through the tourism site I find the video. And the video makes me shake because it suggests the premise of The Powerpoint.

The Powerpoint. I cannot summarize the powerpoint in any meaningful way or how my emotions were a rollercoaster further and further up and down the longer i scrolled. Everything I know and suggest about Calgary seems to be unequivocally true, including the sense that Calgary as a person is the sort of person who makes powerpoints about his own identity crisis because that's precisely what this is.

And then I get to the part of the powerpoint that suggests I imagine what kind of person the city of Calgary might be (and implied: does that person think about anything other than the mountains???) THEY EVEN DID AN OCEAN PERSONALITY TEST FOR THE CITY I KID YOU NOT

Hi, City of Edmonton, hire me to take an OCEAN test for our fair city. I'm begging you.

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violetsmoak · 4 years

Note

Congrats on passing 200 followers! As for prompts, I’ve always been curious on what your take on a “Jason and Tim meet as kids (and eventually fall in love)” story would be like. Your writing has always brought me so much joy, so thank you for all that you do and share with us!

Summary: In which Jason’s instincts and Tim’s panic response are a little bit off.

Pairing: JayTim

Rating: PG

Author’s Note: Well, I don’t have my own headcanon for this because so many writers before me have done it so well, but I hopefully this fulfils your expectations!

This takes place at the end of Jason’s run as Robin. Jason is 15 and Tim is 12.

________________________________________________________________

Jason is being watched.

He knows this with the certainty of a kid who grew up on the street, and one who has worn the mantle of Robin for three years now. It’s pretty much impossible for him not to notice the sensation of eyes scrutinizing, and he’s been feeling variations of that for two weeks now.

And today I’m finally going to do something about it…

Gotham Public Library has provided him a manner of safe haven these past few months, when it’s too tense to go back to the manor and all of Bruce’s bullshit, and when he’d rather not spend another minute at school. He’s been letting himself get lost in his homework assignments and the occasional novel after school, and it’s close to peaceful.

Until the staring began.

To be fair, the kid doing it is trying not to be too obvious about it; he watches from out of the corner of his eyes and doesn’t let his attention linger for longer than a few seconds lest it become noticeable.

But there’s just something about that attention that sticks with Jason; it’s getting to the point where he imagines he feels it when he goes out on patrol, too.

More confounding is the kid’s knack for disappearing before Jason can get up the momentum to confront him. One-minute Jason will be surveying him, then he’ll look down to his book and back, and the kid will be gone.

It’s like he takes lessons from Batman when it comes to exits.

Jason doesn’t know anything about him, beyond the immediate facts: pale, black hair and very, very blue eyes. He’s young, the roundness of his face suggesting he’s younger than Jason, but he’s about two inches taller. Athletic, but in an understated way, his weight class far beneath Jason’s own in muscle alone.

The kid comes to the library alone, no friends of parents in sight. He wears clothes that are meant to look casual, but the brands are the same designer ones that Alfred purchases for Jason, meaning he’s got money. Sometimes he wears glasses—on those days Jason notices the staring more, as if the boy thinks having his eyes framed behind glass makes his interest less pervasive.

He’s also familiar in a way that Jason can’t place. If he didn’t know that no crook in Gotham would be so desperate as to employ a shrimp like this kid as anything other than maybe a drug runner, he’d figure he was under someone’s surveillance.

(His clothes are too nice, and those strange eyes not haunted enough to be a child of the streets like Jason.)

He always has a bunch of books he’s flipping through, or a tablet he’s working on; homework, from the look of the textbooks, but Jason’s caught sight of his reading selection on the Returns cart before leaving: digital photography, Zombie Survival Guide, histories of World War II codebreakers and varied biographies with no underlying theme.

It’s hard not to tap into all that Robin training to find out who his little stalker is; but he’s not paranoid, like Bruce, and there are more direct ways of doing it.

“So, the whole watchin’ me thing,” he says one day apropos of nothing and sits in a chair opposite the kid; this earns him a look that epitomizes ‘deer in the headlights’. “You got some kind of beef with me, or what?”

“What?” the boy squeaks.

“Every day the past two weeks, you sit at this table and pretend like you’re not starin’ at me—don’t say you don’t,” he adds when the kid opens his mouth to protest. “I know when I’m bein’ watched. Hazards of growin’ up in Crime Alley. So what do you want?”

He tries to come off as easy-going and joking, but with just the right edge of “if you’re fucking with me, I’ll end you” that Jason Wayne, adopted son of Brucie Wayne and former street kid would be expected to have. No point in breaking out the Robin voice or whup-ass.

“I—I was just—I wasn’t—you’re just—” the kid stammers, clearly having trouble formulating a response. Jason almost feels bad, but his suspicion about why he’s being watched by another kid with such intensity outweighs that.

He opens his mouth to remind the kid to breathe, when suddenly,

“Cute!” the boy blurts out, too loud for the library and earning a few irritated shh! noises from the study nooks in the corner. Jason barely hears those, his own brain trying to parse what the kid just said. “I mean, you. Are. Cute—I think you’re cute.”

And then his eyes bulge, and his cheeks darken, and he looks abruptly furious with himself.

Jason’s own cheeks begin to flame, his jaw-dropping a little in surprise.

Whatever I was expecting, that was not it.

He’s never been hit on by a guy before.

Well, not a guy in his own age bracket. He’s had plenty of come-ons from older, and often drunker, creeps.

“I’m sorry,” the poor kid gasps, and he’s snatching at his things, practically vibrating like he wants to rip out of his own skin in an effort to vanish. “I don’t know…shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, I’m just…”

The kid looks so ashamed that Jason instantly feels bad.

He’s not entirely sure how he feels about having a boy like him; the only attention he’s ever gotten like that has been from the opposite sex, and even that’s sparse. The only kids he comes in contact in his line of work is on his occasional trips with the Titans, and even they’re all older than him. Other than his first and only girlfriend, Rena—who had to leave Gotham when her dad got transferred to Star City—the girls at Jason’s school only show an interest in him when they think he might buy them things.

But, he’s also Robin.

And Robin’s supposed to inspire confidence in people. If there’s something about him—even just as regular civilian Jason Todd—seems approachable to this kid, then he’s got to be careful how he handles it.

Besides, he can’t help feeling a little bit flattered.

It takes him a moment to think of something that might ease some of the tension from the situation.

“Pizza,” he offers.

That makes the other boy freeze and stare at him. “What?”

That earns more shushing, and so Jason makes sure to keep his voice pitched low the next time he speaks.

“There’s a pizza place down the block from the library,” he says. “You can design your own with whatever toppings. I think they do vegan stuff, too. If that’s a thing you… Do you want to maybe…go there? And talk?”

He cringes inwardly.

Did that sound as lame to him as it did to me?

He always thought asking out a girl was hard to do, but he’s never given any thought to how it might feel with a guy.

Said guy’s jaw does drop at this, as if this too, is the last thing he expected.

“You don’t have to,” he rushes to say. “I mean…what I said before. It just—you surprised me, is all. And I—I should go.”

Almost before Jason can register, he’s completely packed up and across the library like he’s got Kid Flash on his trail.

Worried the kid might accidentally run into traffic in his haste, Jason hurries after him.

He finds him outside the stairs of the library, the contents of his rashly collected belongings spilled over the steps and muttering angrily at himself.

Without a second thought, Jason stoops down beside him and picks up the nearest notebook, holding it out to him. “Sorry if I freaked you out.”

“Don’t be—I’m clearly the one who fails at human interaction.”

“I’m Jason,” he offers.

“I know,” is the instant reply.

Jason’s soothing mood vanishes within the next second, once more replaced with cool suspicion as he straightens up. “Yeah? And how do you know that?”

The boy’s face whips up toward him and he makes an almost strangled sound, like he’s trying to choke himself from the inside.

“I don’t mean that like it sounded,” he rushes to say. “I’ve seen you before, is all. At Wayne events. My parents always get invited, and sometimes they make me come along, and…” He trails off, forces himself to breathe, and then offers Jason a wan smile and his hand. Surprisingly, for all his discomfort before, it doesn’t shake. “Hi. I’m Tim Drake.”

“Right,” Jason says slowly, accepting the hand warily.

Kid’s got a strong grip for someone so spindly.

That’s when it clicks for Jason, why the kid looks so familiar.

He has seen him before, hanging out with the other rich kids that always seem to flock together and circle the wagons at these things. Unlike them, he’s always seemed to be as uncomfortable at the parties as Jason was, and spent more time trailing behind his parents and shaking hands with people than with the kids his own age.

Maybe if I wasn’t spending so much time trying to figure out how to get out of those things early, we might have actually talked.

The explanation answers one question Jason had, but not the other.

“So, you’ve seen me at parties, and that made you decide to…what? Stalk me at the library?”

“No! No, I wasn’t—I happened to be in the library one day when you came in, and after that I just…kept…coming back,” Tim trails off, as if realizing he’s not making his case any better. He groans, pinching the bridge of his nose in a way Jason’s only ever seen Bruce do when he or Dick say or do something he can’t rationalize. “Look, it might come as a shock to you, but I’m not great with people. And you’re…” He gestures at Jason like that explains everything, “you.”

Clearly articulation isn’t a strong point, although Jason’s not sure if that’s an inborn characteristic or if Tim really is that flustered by him.

He kind of, really wants to find out.

Jason rubs at the back of his neck, trying to figure out what exactly he’s supposed to say to that, and then decides for both their sakes, he’ll let it slide. Instead, he says, “So, does that mean you’re in?”

Tim is taken off-guard. “Huh?”

“Pizza,” Jason repeats slowly. He jerks his thumb in the direction of the pizza parlor. “That way.”

That earns a stare, and then Tim’s blushing again. “I was serious before, you don’t have to—”

“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry. You look like you haven’t eaten since ever.”

“I have a fast metabolism.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do!”

“Whatever. Consider it my civic duty as the son of a billionaire philanthropist,” Jason replies with a roll of the eyes. “The getting you fed part. You’re paying for it yourself, since now I know you have money.”

“But—I—what?”

“That’s how it works, isn’t it?” Jason says. “Go for a first date, then decide if you want to actually date or just be friends? I’m not sure, is it the same thing with guys as girls? Either way, I think it works out for both of us.”

When Tim continues to look at him, uncomprehending, Jason wonders if somehow he’s completely misread the situation.

“Unless I really did mess you up before and you just said that thing about me for shits and giggles.” Which is kind of a letdown, he realizes, and discovers he really doesn’t want Tim to have some kind of ulterior motive. There’s too much of that kind of thing in his life already. “Though…that still leaves the question about what you thought was so fascinating about this ugly mug.”

He’s barely finished the sentence, but Tim is blurting, “That was it.”

Jason raises an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Tim says, clearing his throat. “You’re not ugly. And yes to pizza. There is no world where the answer to pizza is ever ‘no’.”

“Barring parallel worlds,” Jason offers.

“Barring those,” Tim agrees and swings his backpack over his shoulder. He shifts, a little awkward. “So, where is this place?”

“Just down this way. We should hurry if you don’t want to get stuck in the supper rush,” Jason says, unable to stop the grin breaking out on his face. They start down the street together, but Jason pauses. “Before we go, just one more question.”

Tim tenses. “…Yes?”

“You’re not one of those weirdos that puts pineapple on pizza, are you? Because, I mean, the stalking thing I could probably forgive, but that…”

“Please, do I look like a heathen? The only thing that touches my pizza is Canadian bacon, onions and artichoke hearts.”

The other boy adopts a scandalized expression; it’s the first one that has nothing to do with outright panic, and for that, Jason is glad.

He makes a face at the odd combination, and then shrugs. “Weird. Then again, I’ll try anything once, so why not?”

________________________________________________________________

Yes, Tim is taller than Jason here. Because poor Jay is still malnourished and Timmy had a relatively healthy upbringing. I’d say Jay is 4′6″ here (which is canon for before he died) and Tim’s about 4′8″. Because there’s not enough tiny Jason fics in the world. :P

Your feedback matters! I want to know what you think of my story, so feel free to leave kudos, a comment or as many of any emojis you want and let me know how you feel!

#jaytim #jason todd #tim drake #meet cute #childhood friends #awkward boys #fic prompts #writing requests #for anonymous #violet writes #violetsmoak #jason's been watched a lot longer than two weeks #he just doesn't realize it #dcu #batman #humor #flirting

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aggresivelyfriendly · 4 years

Text

Day 14: The Last Day

Hi guys! Here she is! The last of our quarantine fic as the world is opening up, whether it should or not. It’s short, but felt complete! Huge thanks to everyone who read and reblogged! A huge thanks for @dirtystyles and @emulateharry for the read throughs and cheerleading! I am sure there will be other little odds and ends-

Harry’s POV maybe...

Day 14: The One With The Loss

"Where the f ..." Elise felt frantic, she could not find her bracelet. Her grandmother had given it to her. She didn't care at this point if she had to leave everything else behind, but she couldn't leave that.

She'd been incredibly close to her grandma Rose. On Some hard days, Elsie would have said she was the only one who ever really loved her. When she was dying Elise had gone to the hospital as much as possible to sit with her, at first to play cards, and then to hold her hand, and finally to curl up next to her and cry. When grandma was still able to talk she'd told her to go in her jewelry box, the one that was packed from her room at the assisted living facility and find her opal bracelet.

They shared an October 21st birthday. Grandma Rose said she'd had the bracelet since her sweet sixteen. Elise was a little older than that when she got it, but the bracelet was priceless and irreplaceable at this point. Her random t shirts and even her books could stay, but not her bracelet.

She'd been packing for a couple hours at this point. She wasn't aware she had this much stuff, or that it was so spread out. She'd been pretty unemotional through the whole process, until she couldn't find her bracelet. Elise might have been crying inside before then, but she was really freaking out now.

It was the first time she had cried since the talk with Harry.

"Is that what you're so scared of?" He'd said.

She'd scoffed. That got her back up. "I'm not scared of anything."

"Are you kidding me?" He actually laughed at her. "You're scared of everything!"

"Fuck you Harry! You don't know how I feel."

"Of course I don't. It might actually kill you to talk about your feelings or be honest." His hands were crossed over his chest.

"Honest, feelings? Cuz you are the king of talking about real shit?" Her hands came off her hips and she was pointing. "All we do is play, or fuck. You may actually be a lost boy."

"I'm just trying to read your comfort level, love. That seems to be the depth of life you're willing to deal in. Gotta keep it light for poor Elise, or she will run away. I'm dont even know why I bother." He sighed. "If you liked spending time with me at all, without being entertained all the time, I would not have to lure you out of your room every damn day with some promise of food or comfort or sex. It's so damn hard to know you."

"How dare you!" She seethed. He'd insinuated she was shallow right? That's what that bullshit about depth implied. "I am not shallow. Or a damn child who needs to be bribed. Maybe if I had any idea what I was doing here, or why you were being so nice to me, I'd not be so damn afraid I'd need to hide. I don't know you either, and your intentions are even more obscure."

"What you're doing here? I was just trying to make sure you were ok, or safe. Take care of you. If you were unwell it would be my fault."

"Cmon Harry, we both know you could have got us tests and sent me packing ages ago. What little fantasy are we living out here?"

"Yours!" He shouted.

And the conversation got more intense from there.

"Where could I have?" Elise's cheeks were wet; she was nauseous. This day had already been too much. She'd just got her head in her palms to weep when strong hands came onto her shoulders.

"Baby, what's wrong?" Harry asked into her black hair before kissing it.

"I can't find my grandma's bracelet anywhere. She gave it to me when they told her she was running out of time." She turned a watery frown on him and he placed a kiss on the tip of her nose.

"Ok, well tell me what it looks like and I'll help you."

Elise described the delicate piece and they each set off to look. She was essentially tossing things out of her way adding to the mess. The room had already looked casually like a bomb went off, but she was a mess when she looked for things. She did notice Harry was orderly in his disarray.

"When'd you wear it last?"

"I don't wear it. I'm too afraid I'll break it." She told him, and he chuckled.

"If you say something about patterns or bad habits I will cut you." She mentioned.

He put his hands up in surrender. And they both laughed.

He had a point.

Elise was thinking about how their fight the night before had gone when Harry said. "Is this it?"

"Oh my god." Tears filled her eyes anew and ran down her cheeks. "Thank you! What would I do without you?" It was an honest question. It had only been fourteen days but she honestly couldn't imagine not knowing him, really knowing him, not about him, or speculating about him, or inferring about him, or projecting about him. Knowing him, underneath his clothes, under his skin.

"No need to find out!" He smoothed her hair and then gave her a smooch. "Now, can you grab whatever you need so we can pretend we hate that we have to be locked in a house together for an undefined time."

She giggled. "You don't hate that you are stuck in your house with me for who knows how long?"

"Are you going to let me turn up the heater and stay naked?" He picked up one of the boxes she'd put together.

"Not all of the time."

"Then some of the time?" He curled his tongue and poked it to the side of his mouth.

How was she supposed to say no to that. "Maybe."

"Then hurry." Kiss. "Up." Kiss. " we need to go play strip scrabble."

"Im not playing scrabble with you." She said for the umpteenth time.

"Strip monopoly?"

"No."

"Apples to apples?"

"How the hell.." she just laughed at his hugely dimpled smile. "How about we just go in your hot tub and drink margaritas naked."

"Deal!" He started tossing clothes wildly into bags. It was out of character except for his insatibility. "Hurry up! We have plans!"

"To have sex?" God he was sooo cute. "More sex." She clarified.

"Yea, aren't those very important?" He stepped into her space and planted his hands on her hips and his flag in her heart. He'd leaned in close, but didn't connect their lips.

She gulped and leaned up against his arms keeping her feet planted and away from his tempting lips. "Yes, very important."

"Yeah." He said and kissed her silly.

She'd never done it on that bed. Seemed funny to do it after it had been stripped and with the knowledge it would never happen again.

It could have went another way. Elise kept catching herself in moments and feeling grateful, that once Harry started talking, he really started talking.

The day before, when he shouted the truth about living out her own fantasy, she'd started to walk away. She couldn't handle the truth. It was at least half true, it was a wonderful two weeks of her life, and it looked like now it was over. Elise knew she couldn't handle going back to his place and fighting more, or worse facing silent treatment. Plus, if he had wanted her there, he still hadn't said that today or before. She was about to cross the threshold of the room. Harry muttered something about her walking away.

She stopped and turned. She only had to walk away if she wanted to be done.

"This has been a fantasy, of course it has. Like a dream come true. And I'm really scared. I have no idea why I'm here, not really, or what we are doing, or what..." she sucked in some oxygen. "Or what." She felt tears building in her eyes. "How you feel about me." She expected him to say something, but instead he just stood and stared at her, waiting for her to talk. "And what happens tomorrow."

"What?" It was the first thing he'd said during her rant.

"We' re almost done with friends." She whispered.

He was nodding. "We are. so?"

"You said." She swallowed. "Last week you said we should finish Friends, the you said we only had three more days to finish."

He was nodding. "I guess I did, but Elise, the end of friends, it doesn't mean the end of us. And I'll answer all the questions you have. If you want the answers. But, I'll be honest and say I have no idea how you feel about me, like the real me, too. It's why I held back so long."

"So long? It's only been two weeks."

"Pretty intense two weeks." He wiped her tears. "It felt like forever. I wanted to love you up by day five."

She giggled. "Me too."

"Ugh." He groaned. "All that missed opportunity." But they were both smiling. "New challenge: make up for lost time now."

She was shaking her head at his ridiculous eyebrows. "So, you like me?" She asked.

"At the risk of being really obvious, I like you, like really like you, maybe could be more." He tilted her chin up. "and you like me? Me me?"

Elise nodded then thought she had already been this brave. "More than like, I think."

He beamed. "Honestly Elise, when I first brought you home it was out of guilt and because it didn't initially occur to me to just get tests." He looked down. "I had Jeff do research, and we had to wait a few days, and by then, well, I really liked spending time with you."

"Me too." All these confession made her feel like a feather.

"And nothing happens tomorrow. It's not some scary end date, I'm not kicking you out at check out time." He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. "Honestly? I'd really like it if you stayed with me, for however long this lasts. We've already been exposed to each other.."

"You think?"

"Very exposed to each other." He laughed with her. "And then after, whenever that is. We talk about it. You can keep your place, or save the money."

"I could pay for groceries."

He sighed. "Ok, you can pay for groceries." He quirked a brow and the dimples that bracketed his mouth wanted to break free, they just needed her response. "Does that mean you'll stay?"

"I'll stay." The full wattage of his smile was really like A full moon on a clear night. He bridged the space between them and swooped her into his arms.

"Good, I'd miss you if you were gone."

"I'd miss you if I was gone too." She was honest, hopefully it would become a new habit.

"Then let's not let that happen." He kissed her then, and it was a piece of this tiny instance of forever she'd keep always, if they wound up married fifty years or broke up by pandemic's end.

"Can I tell you something really crazy?"!She asked with her ear pressed to his heart. She felt his body nod on her head. "I'm so glad you sneezed in my face."

"Yeah?" He asked. "I could do it again?" He offered, his body vibrating with his laugh.

"I'm good now thanks. But, I'm still glad it happened."

"Me too baby, me too."

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #quarantine fic #day fourteen #the one with the loss

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charlieknighte · 3 years

Text

a creature born / a fire set

Genfic - Background Samot/Samothes

Character Study - Family Angst - Found Family

3,512 words

A gift for BYZANTIUUM in the Secret Samol fandom exchange

content warnings: the horrors of war™, unhealthy family dynamics

Sometimes, as the son of gods runs with thieves and scoundrels, he thinks that it’s not so bad to have lost everything he once knew.

Sometimes, as Maelgwyn slogs down rows of army tents and lifts his face to his father’s volcano for the hundredth time that week, he feels as if this war is all he’s ever known.

The corner of Marielda that his army is situated in isn’t particularly pleasant, the flaming sea bracketing them in on three sides, the hot, moist air frizzing up Maelgwyn’s curls and bringing a never-ending sweat to his brow. Even at night, the sea never quite lets the city fall into darkness, sitting like a dim red horizon behind the cubes of bright yellow light cast by the army’s temporary lodgings. The sight used to be beautiful before it fell into monotony.

Tamsen, his second-in-command, follows close at Maelgwyn’s heels, her ever-present and barely concealed anger and contempt not much of a breath of fresh air. She doesn’t generally direct it at him, but he can feel it simmering in her speech as she reports the latest updates from the front-lines. She’s not one to sugarcoat things, not one to pretend the cost of this war is just numbers on a page. Sometimes Maelgwyn wonders if she hates his fathers for all of this. Sometimes he wonders if he can hate his fathers, but he knows that he could never bring himself to.

Do you love him? Samot had asked him the last time they spoke about Samothes, his tone of voice expectant, knowing the answer and only needing to present it to prove his point. When Maelgwyn was younger, he’d often worry that his fathers didn’t love each other anymore as they shook the house with their arguments. Now that he’s older, the truth that you can love someone and still hurt and hurt and hurt them makes him feel sick. Of course he loves him. Of course they both love him, and yet here they are.

As they grow close to Maelgwyn’s own tent, Tamsen reaches the end of her report and settles into gloomy silence. Maelgwyn tiredly asks, “Anything else, Tamsen?”

She snaps right back to professionalism. “There's been a scuffle between two lieutenants. Not the first time. Their captain wants you to have a word with the instigator.”

Maelgwyn blows his hair out of his face, half purposeful and half out of annoyance. It sticks to his forehead, and he has to swipe it out of the way instead, irritation mounting. He’d have much preferred to be able to continue to his bed in peace. “At what time?”

“Well, sir...” She stops in front of a tent and gestures. The path she’d taken him on must have been engineered to get this over with. Sometimes he nearly resents her efficiency. He suppresses a sigh and lifts the flap of the tent, stepping inside. It’s small, but not as cramped as a lower ranking officer’s bunk might be. At his intrusion, there’s some shuffling behind a curtain separating the beds from the cluttered, meagre living area.

“Lieutenant?” Maelgwyn asks, his voice stiff and formal and sounding like it comes from another person entirely.

There’s a groan and more shuffling, like someone turning over in bed. “What d’you want?”

Half-asleep, Maelgwyn guesses. And ill-mannered. “I heard about your run-in with your fellow lieutenant. Your captain sent me to have a word.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then an impassioned thrashing and indignant thump as the lieutenant gets out of bed. “Well, you can tell Thackeray that instead of snitching, next time he can come to me directly," he says vehemently, finally emerging from behind the curtain with a rumpled uniform he clearly only just threw on. "I'll kick his ass—" It takes him a remarkably short amount of time after recognizing Maelgwyn to gain a sense of composure and scramble into a salute. “I mean, I'll deal with him myself. Sir. Sorry.” He grimaces to himself for a moment before settling into a pleasantly blank expression.

Something about him stops Maelgwyn cold. He's barely even a teenager, but it’s not that—uncomfortably young troops are far too familiar around here. It’s just that he's so familiar. Brown skin and sharp eyes and curls cut according to Marieldan vogue, but too loose to be local. He looks more like a westerner. And something about his contemptuous self-assurance, even now that he’s being deferential—the shrewdness of his eyes—I'll kick his ass—somehow he jolts Maelgwyn back to his best times as a child, running through the streets of his village after his best friend, stolen pies in their sticky fingers, a similar sly gleam in her eye. Maelgwyn feels like all the wind has been knocked out of him at the intensity of the memory.

“What's your name?” he asks, mouth dry.

“Hitchcock, sir.” Underneath the formal tightness of his voice, he still sounds squirmy, like he’s expecting a punishment to be handed down any moment.

Maelgwyn sighs, rubs at his face. If only there was a way to phrase what he wonders without crossing a dozen lines. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

Hitchcock's carefully blank expression wrinkles a little bit, and he looks at Maelgwyn like he's grown an extra head. “Okay,” he says, clearly caught off-guard by the lack of formality or reprimands. Maelgwyn is still reeling. He wishes he could ask him if he knew a little girl in the plains, but he knows it’s impossible for him to have been alive back then. The unnatural length of his life is starting to catch up to him. The silence between them is beginning to drag on uncomfortably long. Hitchcock stares at him without any regard for etiquette. The intensity of his eyes is suddenly too much.

“As you were,” Maelgwyn says, self-conscious at having been seen in a moment of conflict. He backs up, floundering for the tent flap and stepping out before his grip on himself can start to slip. As he bursts out into the warm, muggy night haphazardly, Tamsen looks at him quizzically. He shakes his head to clear it and squares his shoulders again, as a general should. “Anything else to report?”

“Nothing, sir.” She cuts her eyes away from him, pretending not to have seen his moment of weakness.

“Then you’re dismissed for the night.”

Some nights, he almost regrets dismissing her. Those are the nights when he’s too heartsick to pretend that it doesn’t hurt when his soldiers’ laughter grows quiet as he passes them, when they keep their expressions stiff and serious around him as if they think that’s what he wants. They’re the nights that he wishes he could sit around a fire and trade war stories with someone without being afraid of revealing too much.

Maelgwyn quietly imagines that as Tamsen clicks her heels together sharply and salutes. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe her anger towards the gods would make her too bitter towards him if she knew. They turn together in opposite directions, Maelgwyn continuing down the rows of tents as they grow larger and more lavish. Contrarily, his tent is functionally plain and small, and not as cool and inviting as the lieutenant’s had been. Not the tent a son of Samothes would be given, if that was how he was known.

Some nights—those same nights that he wishes for a cup of ale and a warm fire among friends—he yearns for a place in a crowded bunk, hearing the muffled noises of other soldiers as they turn over in their creaky beds or grumble in their sleep. Tonight, he tries to put the thought out of his mind as he gets ready for bed. It’s too hurtful to dwell on. He doesn’t bother lighting a candle—his bedtime routine is so utilitarian he barely needs to do anything but strip off his uniform and fall into bed. Inside this tent, he has nothing, and usually it’s easier than the overwhelming number of fires outside waiting to be put out.

He sees Hitchcock again a few weeks later, in a lineup of officers waiting to be promoted by his hand. As he shook hands, pinned medals to chests and offered congratulations, most soldiers flinched, gazes unable to stay on his face for more than a moment. Their grips were limp and their thank yous rushed, too awed by his holy presence to keep it together. Maelgwyn feels like he should’ve gotten used to this by now.

Captain Hitchcock only looked up at him and grinned.

---

It’s odd, to have stumbled out of a university basement with a gauntlet affixed to his hand and not more than a handful of his memories of life. Most days Maelgwyn frantically spins in a daze of confusion, grasping at what memories he has, trying to cobble them back together into a sense of self and winding up frustrated when the pieces don’t fit as he feels they should. Other days—rarer than they should be, creeping up on him and overwhelming him with blissful surprise that he didn’t see coming—he feels steadier. Not quite good, but okay. He forgets his struggle to try to remember to be himself and just is. Those days feel like a fresh start.

That’s the benefit of forgetting the rest of his life—it feels almost as if this is all he’s ever known. Being dragged along on whirlwind heists, each disastrous and joyful, a spinning dance that at turns nauseates and delights him until he learns how to settle his stomach and feel consistent glee. A nervous thrill running through him as he pockets something that isn’t his and knows he’s gotten away with it. Running down alleyways after the Six—after his friends, his friends—heart thumping a dizzyingly fast tempo, feet aching, whoops rising from his throat unbidden but welcome. They always cut it close, and that’s part of the beauty of it—being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces and always engineering some way out. Always managing to find their way back to a safe place deep under the city, where they can share drinks and congratulatory hugs and sit on the floor sorting through their loot far into the night. On nights like these, Maelgwyn feels at peace.

Tonight’s take was excellent. They shake out their bags and pockets into a huge pile between the haphazardly arranged couches in the Six’s basement, voices still high and boisterous from adrenaline. Aubrey falls upon the pile first, snatching away a book of alchemy that one of the Hitchcocks swiped—specifically for her, undoubtedly. She scampers off to curl up in one of her favorite chairs, nose already buried deep between pages. Sige is next, scooping up a brick-sized tome Maelgwyn doubts anyone else would be able to lift or would care to spend hours poring through. Castille takes a little longer picking through the pile, finding the books on magical theory and Marieldan history and natural sciences that Maelgwyn’s come to know are her favorites. The Hitchcocks take more of an interest in finding drinks than books, which is about what he expected.

As Maelgwyn settles next to Castille, one of the twins presses a glass into his hand with a grin. It’s white wine. Maelgwyn doesn’t quite know why, but the lightness relieves him. He takes a generous chug, excited to slip into the giddy, warm chaos of the night that his friends always manage to create.

He’s long since settled into an arrangement to share Castille’s books—they have overlapping tastes, and what with their shared amnesia, a similar drive to brush up on the history they’ve forgotten. They settle into a comfortable quiet in their own corner as the rest of the Six shout out their discoveries as they find them, buzzing now from the excitement of getting their hands on knowledge that’s been untouched for what might be years, jealously hidden away by Samothes’s heavy hand.

Maelgwyn knows, objectively, that he is Samothes and Samot’s son. Castille had told him, pity clear on her face as she realized he didn’t remember. He knows, but it’s funny—he doesn’t feel like the son of a god, no matter how hard he tries. When he tries to think back to his past, he feels a sort of nausea at remembering something he’ll never be again and could never claw his way back to. The vastness of his forgotten past seems so threatening, like it hides horrible secrets he’d be better off not learning. It’s hard to put out of mind. At the very least, it contrasts with the lightness and joy of his life now, even when the spaces between it stretch long. He is happy here, welcome here, at times even able to put his fathers’ war out of mind.

That’s why his heart sinks when he realizes the first book he’s picked up is on exactly that— the war. The things Samothes writes about Samot… Maelgwyn could never imagine writing things like this about someone he loves. They make him ache to read, secondhand pain that’s filtered down from them despite how little he remembers of being their child. In Samothes's furious scripture decrying the boy-prince's rebellion, he can see through the anger to the deep sorrow of betrayal beneath. In even the cruelest of his propaganda against his husband, there’s reluctance, a sense that he’s holding himself back from showing the worst of Samot’s nature out of some remnant of respect. Maelgwyn knows in the depths of his mind that Samothes could strike much more cutting blows if he wanted, that there’s a cold cruelty in Samot he can’t quite remember the specifics of but used to feel like searing ice.

And yet… Samothes loves him. Even with rebellion. Even in a war.

There’s incredible tenderness to be found in his fathers’ writings, if one goes looking. Love letters, hundreds of them, thousands of them from the millenia they’ve been alive. Collected and annotated, dripping with endearments and genuine adoration. Even after reading about the violence they inflict on each other, their love letters beg the question—how could such a deep love have been lost completely? How could a fraction not have persisted, even after everything?

Do you love him? Samot asks expectantly, a dozen years and a thousand miles away.

Maelgwyn closes the book with a snap, hands clammy. He sits with it for a moment, letting the warm ruckus of his friends’ voices wash back over him and remind him where he is and who he isn’t. He sits until his hands feel more like his own again and then pushes the book back into Castille’s pile, trying to find something more innocuous in its place. He emerges with a guide to edible plants in southern Hieron. He traces his un-gauntleted fingers over its cover, far more pleasant memories sparking in the depths of his mind.

Some nights his grandfather would come to their house in the woods, and when he would step inside he would begin shouting so suddenly it shocked Maelgwyn. It would sound less like an argument and more like when one of Maelgwyn's fathers would lecture him, one-sided and allowing for little rebuttal. Eventually his grandfather would step back out, fuming. He would stare up at the sky and take a long breath, and when he looked back down at Maelgwyn he would always be smiling kindly. Why don’t we take a walk? he would say. Maelgwyn would be so relieved to get away from the arguing for even a few minutes that he would’ve gone anywhere with him.

His grandfather would walk Maelgwyn and his friends out to the forests and plains and creeks around their mansion, leading them through the terrain in a way that implied familiarity with every inch. He'd spend hours teaching them what berries to eat, what leaves to pick for tea. To remind you that I'm always here to look out for you, he told Maelgwyn cheerfully. It had helped—when Maelgwyn felt lonely, as he often did, he would wander out into the thick yard behind their house and immerse himself in the forest, feeling his grandfather's warm, comforting presence.

He realizes now that his grandfather is the continent itself, of course, and he had meant for Maelgwyn to seek his presence in a literal sense. It’s hard to feel him now, here, where Maelgwyn’s father has such power. The streets are densely packed with stone and metal and concrete, but still—bits of Samol still manage to peek through. The roots of trees forcing their way into the gaps between cobblestones, flowers determinedly poking up in the tiniest pockets of dirt, moss and lichen lightly dusting the roofs of houses. Nature always finds its way through no matter how hard Marielda works to keep it out, like a nagging parent. That’s one thing from his past Maelgwyn doesn’t mind holding onto.

It hits him that he’s going to have to give this book away when he’s done, and he’s seized by a creeping sorrow. It wouldn’t be fair for him to keep it—it’s merchandise, and more than that, it’ll likely fall into the hands of someone who could use the knowledge in its pages. But at the same time, he knows he’s the only person in the continent who could appreciate it for more than the simple guide it is. To him, it’s a piece of something—someone—he loves, wood pulp paper and plants distilled into dyes. Its weight in his hands is precious to him.

He sits, frozen and conflicted. Castille, oblivious, erupts in a flurry of laughter and gets up to help Aubrey lift a tome almost as big as her. Maelgwyn can’t move after her, left in a private bubble of confusion and trepidation that even noise can’t burst. One of the Hitchcocks flops down beside him in Castille’s place, already a little too drunk. Maelgwyn doesn’t think much of it until he realizes Hitchcock is looking at him. He feels a pang of fear that he’s being judged until he realizes there’s a sharp sort of curiosity in Hitchcock’s eyes, even as he lazily lets his head loll back against the couch.

Maelgwyn’s attachment to Castille is straightforward, but he doesn’t understand why Hitchcock is familiar to him. Some of the memories that try to surface when he looks at him seem to be from an impossibly long time ago, before Hitchcock was even supposed to be born. He remembers wildly tearing through the roads of his childhood with only mischief on his mind, hands grubby, curls untamed, chasing a girl with a mud-spattered dress who screamed far more wildly than him. Maelgwyn would probe him for possible connections if he wasn’t too nervous to reveal such an intimate memory, and if he trusted Hitchcock not to spin it for his own benefit. Crafty little worm, he thinks, his fondness soothing his anxiety once again.

Hitchcock suddenly sits forward, nearly tipping over unsteadily but catching his balance. He gestures at the book in Maelgwyn’s hands. “Take it," he says earnestly. Like he could read the hunger in Maelgwyn’s eyes.

Maelgwyn is taken aback. He stammers, and knows that tips Hitchcock off to the fact that he guessed correctly. “What? It's… it’s merchandise. You need it."

Hitchcock glances back at the rest of the Six, engrossed in cheering Aubrey on as she determinedly drags her gargantuan book up to a table. He leans in conspiratorially. There it is again—that familiar glimmer in his eye, the one that brings back the wild, free times of Maelgwyn’s childhood. "No, we don't. Not that badly. Take it."

Maelgwyn is breathless at the idea. Of course he’s stolen things before—many, many times during his tenure with the Six—but they were never for himself. It’s been so long since Maelgwyn owned something of his own, something that hadn’t been handed down to him by his parents or their followers, bearing a heavy burden of expectation or responsibility. Maelgwyn imagines dog-earing the book’s pages and writing notes in the margins and pressing flowers between chapters, leaving tangible marks of his existence all his own, and nearly bursts into tears.

He slips it into his jacket discreetly, the shiver like the one he’s learned to enjoy after a theft running through him. Hitchcock grins with infectious, mischievous glee, and Maelgwyn can’t help but laugh with him. “C’mon,” Hitchcock says, pulling him up by his hands. “Let’s dance.”

Maelgwyn lets himself be pulled, stumbling, to the center of the room, trepidation overwhelmed by excitement. The Six cheer for them as they start some partner dance Maelgwyn has no name for, Hitchcock whirling him around in dizzying circles until they’re both breathless with laughter, stumbling against each other as the rest of their friends find their own pairs and fill up the dance floor around them.

If Maelgwyn closes his eyes and lets himself melt into the moment, he can forget he was ever a god’s son, ever chosen to fight a war that wasn’t his, ever a historical figure before he was a person. He can wash those thoughts away with this life he’s built, no matter how temporary. This is all he’s known, and all he ever needs.

#friends at the table #marielda #maelgwyn #samot #samothes

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vero-magic · 5 years

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Top 10 Moments from this Women's World Cup?

Okay so I kinda just did TOP TEN HIGHLIGHTS of the 2019 WWC... because I didn’t just want it to be goals//matches//dribbles. I wanted it to be bigger than that.

Where do I even begin? Seesh! Okay you asked to go down this rabbit hole. I apologize to no one for how long this is.

[10.] Lucy Bronze v Norway (Defender, England)

Okay... So we shouldn’t be surprised that I put Lucy Bronze on this list. But her goal vs Norway was my personal goal of the tournament. The strike, the technicality, the pace, ugh. Beautiful stuff from a beautiful human being. I mean it was a rocket. This was such a statement win, not to mention the fantastic tournament that Lucy had as well as the rest of the Lionesses. She anchored the english backline despite being a RB up in the attack. I think Lucy is the engine of the team. (Tbh, I don’t like Houghton as a captain because she doesn’t command enough of a presence for me on the field) You know who does have a presence on the field? Lucy Tough Bronze. This goal proved that statement to be true.

[9.] Amel Majri (Defender, France)

Switching flanks to the LB position, let’s talk Amel. Majri had one of the strongest if not the strongest performances throughout the entire WWC. (If she gets left off of the Best XI, I will literally riot.) She was strong, creative, pushed forward and added to the attack, while still providing top-class defense. She was able to keep world class forwards and mids quiet for 90+ minutes game after game. She had insane stats for this WWC, listen to this and tell me it’s not crazy. She led the entire tournament (think about the strong teams of Germany, USA, Netherlands, etc.) leading into the Round of 16 // Q/F games in assists, chances created, crosses//successful crosses. She’s a left back. I’m sorry but I just have to point out how important she is to the French side. Her dynamic running and influence was//is crucial to their attacking play. (She did more than Gauvin and Thiney combined tbh.) But anyhoo, Amel Majri had a hell of a tournament and she is a hell of a player. That’s just the facts.

[8.] LGBTQ+ Visibility

I think this entire point can be summed up in one tweet.

The LGBTQ+ Community THRIVED this World Cup. And I was here for it.

[7.] France - La Marseillaise // Chile - Canción Nacional

I love nothing more than pride for our heritage and country. I promise that not all of these moments are about France either. (sorry! Mais allez les bleues am I right?) But after living in France for 19 months learning the culture, understanding the people, loving the language and the pride. I couldn’t help but put this on the list. France (the host nation) walked out onto the Parc des Prince field June 7th, it was all the pride of the host nation on display. It was incredible to experience and as you watched the players take in a sold out Parc des Prince and have 45,261 people scream-sing your nations anthem, chills. One of my personal favorite moments I got to experience throughout the games I went to. Similarity, I got chills when the Chile WNT sang their national anthem. For whatever stupid reason that FIFA was being shitty, it all got somewhat remedied when we heard La Rojas belt out Cación Nacional each and every game. Passion. Soul. Chills.

( Couldn’t find a video of these... :/ )

[6.] Oranje Legioe

Undoubtedly, the best fans throughout the entire WWC go to the Dutch. They went to Le Havre, Valenciennes, Reims, Rennes, and finally Lyon and they didn’t just go... No, they showed up with thousands upon thousands of supporters strong. You’ve got them all, old, young, kiddos, men, women, children, gay, straight, and even Lisa Evans in a dodgey Orange hat to support her gf. Even still you might be asking, “Sage, why do I love the Dutch Oranje so much?” Well dear tumblr user, because it wasn’t just about the fanbase that they brought to the France, rather it was the support they gave from home. Game after game, the Netherlands smashed viewing records by millions as the NEDWNT continued on to the final. Incredible support makes incredible football. #GrowTheGameTOGETHER

[5.] Erin Cuthbert’s Photo Tribute (Forward, Scotland)

I made a post about this earlier in the WWC. But this moment was incredible. Erin and Co are playing Argentina in their final WWC Group Stage game. It’s simple, win and they’re in. (Ultimately they would fall short after a powerful rally from La Albiceleste that stunned the world.) Anyhoo, Erin scores her first-ever WWC goal and pulls out a small photo and kisses it. Probably the most tender goal celly of the entire tourney tbh. The image was unclear but it was soon confirmed that it was a photo of a young Erin Cuthbert. Erin later said this:

[4.] Marta’s Speech (Forward, Brazil)

What a moment not only for the Brazilian fans but for fans across the globe. Marta after Brazil’s elimination to hosts France in the Round of 16, delivered a powerful speech. In it she stated, “There's not going to be a Formiga forever, there's not going to be a Marta forever, there's not going to be a Cristiane.” before inviting the youth of Brazil to give more and do more. This speech quickly, became a worldwide topic of interest. But you know who didn’t need to hear it? (Hint: Read #5 again.)

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[3.] Italy Women’s National Team

They first turned heads on first WWC game since 1991 against Australia. Upsetting the favorites 2-1 in an intense, exciting game. No one expected the Italians to do well versus the likes of Sam Kerr (c), De Vanna, Kellond-Knight, Foord, and Williams but, the Italians came back with a unique set of talent in Sara Gama (c), Bonansea, Giacinti, Girelli, and Galli that led their team not only to a shock upset against Aussies but to the Q/F. They played with heart, soul, and passion. They played an exciting game and displayed to the worst why they were there. (and ruined thousands of brackets in the process. RIP.) By far, one of my personal favorite teams to watch this entire tournament. Fantastic football. Let’s just put some up a beautful goal yeah?

[2.] Badass Goalkeeping

This WWC had no shortage of badass women, and it didn’t have a shortage of badass goalkeepers. I’m talking about Christiane Endler, Alyssa Naeher, Shimeng Peng, Hedvig Lindahl, Karen Bardsley, Vanina Correa, and Sari van Veenendaal among others. Each of these players came up with HUGE and critical saves and moments for their respective countries. Between the 4 Goddess (oops) Player of the Match awards went to keepers showcasing the power and punctuality of the art of goalkeeping. Sari van Veenendaal took home the coveted Golden Glove. 1/12th of awards from the tournament went to keepers and if you don’t think that is impressive just check out Tiane Endler’s performance against the United States in the Group Stage OR just check out this GK WWC Youtube Vid I found....

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[1.] USWNT

The USWNT proved to from the start that they came to play. With a whopping FIFA record setting 13-0 win versus Thailand the USA started the road to the final. But the road was not easy, they had to play Sweden, France, England and take down the Netherlands in the final. This year was filled with record breaking moments for the USWNT including adding a brand new 4th star to those jerseys. What I love about this team is not only the play (but in my opinion they did not play the most attractive football in the tournament (@Netherlands) nor did they play the most strategic (@Sweden) but they grinded out win, after win, after win all while being their dorky selves. Despite pressure to succeed from the ‘15 WWC, the nation, and backlash from the current US President... the United States proved to be made of diamonds and thrived under it all. We saw cellys, sipped some tea, and marveled at Megan. The USWNT won on every front.

End Tangent: This WWC was so successful and laid a great foundation for the 2023 WWC. This WWC broke records, united nations, and created a platform to advocate for equality. The level of play was tremendous and we saw that every nation is growing the game. It was exciting to see and it makes me very, very excited for what’s to come.

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pressedinthepages · 4 years

Text

Mångata

noun. the glimmering, roadlike reflection of moonlight on water.

Fandom: The Witcher

Pairing: Jaskier x Reader

Word Count: 2242

Rating: E

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24673801

Masterlist

Tags: @whitewolfandthefox (Add yourself to my taglist here!)

a/n: Late night skinny dipping in a lake could lead to something interesting...no one asked for this, but this is a fav trope of mine so i just hadddd to do it...send me requests of more pairings/tropes to write!!!

Warnings: shameless smut, sex, penetrative sex, female reader

The chill of the water on your feet sends a shiver up your spine and you curse aloud. You really do not want to have to do this, but you’re sweaty and dirty and aching, and this is the first body of water that you’ve seen in days. It’s a nice enough lake, surrounded by forest and drenched in light from the full moon overhead. The water is clear enough to see through to the bottom, but-

“Melitele’s tits, the water’s freezing!” Jaskier exclaims, probably loud enough to wake the dead. You bite your lip, dreading the idea of taking a full plunge. But you would rather gnaw your own foot off than deal with being this filthy for even one more day, so, with a resigned sigh, you begin to undo the buttons on your blouse.

The summer air is warm on your arms as you let the shirt slip to the ground behind you. Nevertheless, your fingers tremble a bit as they move to the ties at the waist of your skirt. You can tell that Jaskier is watching your every move, but you pretend not to notice as you step out of the skirt, the edges damp from the little bit of water seeping upwards.

As you are left in just a light chemise and underclothes, the light of the moon dancing along your skin, Jaskier takes in a deep breath before moving to his own trousers. You steel your nerves before swiftly removing the chemise, your nipples hardening under the faint breeze. Quickly, you continue your movements, removing your smallclothes and tossing them into the pile of your clothes.

You chance a small peek at Jaskier, and you find him staring at you, mouth agape and trousers only around his knees as he struggles to keep his balance. He rights himself and removes them, eyes never leaving your body. His gaze is like the sun, intense and radiant, and you feel the flames lick along your skin as they roam over your form.

His chemise is hanging askew, and as he pulls it over his head, your eyes float downward and notice that he is half-hard. You flush, heat pooling in your core with the knowledge of his desire. In a sudden burst of bravery, you begin to step forward, the water enveloping your legs as you glance over your shoulder and throw Jaskier a wink and a knowing smirk.

He throws a hand across his chest dramatically as you fully turn back to face him, the water now to your stomach. You slowly lower a bit further in, your body dipping below the surface, leaving only your head above the water. You rise once more, your breasts glistening as the moonlight dances along the beads of moisture dripping down your skin.

You crook a finger at him, calling out “You going to just stand there and gawk at me, or are you going to give me a hand?”

“Well, love, I was quite enjoying the show, but if you insist…” Jaskier strides forward, grimacing with every new inch of skin exposed to the sharp chill of the water.

You hold out a hand to him as he gets close, his fingers intertwining with yours. Warmth radiates from him, but you feel him shiver as you raise your free hand to his chest, lazily drifting your fingers across the dusting of hair. You raise your head, his eyes stealing your breath. They are the clearest blue, woven of moonlight and river water. He is looking at you as if you are his entire world, and you are confident that he truly believes that.

Jaskier steps closer, hands moving to your hips and his body pressing against you. You can feel his hardness at your thigh, hot and heavy. You tilt your head up and meet him, finally, for a kiss that is burning with the love and lust of the moment. You shift your leg, dragging his cock against your skin and Jaskier hums against your lips. You open your mouth and allow him to deepen the kiss, letting yourself get drunk on the taste of him.

Jaskier’s hands rove your body, dripping water that rinses you of the grime of traveling. You mirror his actions, feeling his skin grow softer under your touch. When you are satisfied with the rinse, you thread your fingers into his hair, the ends dampening a bit from your hands.

Jaskier pulls back to let you both catch your breath, but only for a moment. He moves to your neck, gently kissing down the line of your shoulder. His hands move to your breasts, softly kneading the tender flesh. His mouth moves lower, taking one of your nipples and sucking. You arch into his touch, eager for more. You feel him smirk against you, licking and tugging at a devastatingly slow pace.

“Jaskier...” you groan, low and sinful, “please-”

“Hmm, anything for you, my dear.” He adjusts, his mouth and hand switching places. He takes your other nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the sensitive peak. His other hand drifts lower and he nudges your legs open, just enough for him to run his fingers along your cunt. Your fingers tighten in his hair as you whimper, desperate to fall apart under his touch.

Suddenly, his teeth glance along your chest and send a bolt of heat straight to your core. You yank him back up, kissing him hard as you wind one of your legs around his waist. It’s sloppy and needy, both of you running on pure instinct to chase your pleasures. Jaskier’s fingers deftly run along your heat, circling around the bundle of nerves at the top.

You wrap yourself further around him, nestling your head into his neck and crying out as he holds you up by the waist. He whispers praises and prayers, quietly and only for you. Your walls flutter as he slowly pushes a finger inside of you. He moves lazily, only adding a second finger when you begin to grind down onto his palm. His thrusts gain momentum, your hips meeting him as he spreads you open and presses his palm against your clit. The water sloshes and swirls as you move, the chill of the water grounding you and allowing you to focus on the man before you.

You can feel the pleasure building, threatening to spill over when Jaskier abruptly stops and jumps back. You fall forward and he catches you and you can feel his heart beating out of control.

“What the ever-loving fuck was that???” he yelps, startled out of his arousal. You look down into the water and see…

A plant. With leaves.

You roll your eyes, gaining your footing and lightly pushing him backward towards the shoreline.

“Love, it was just a sprig of duckweed, relax,” you purr, soothing him as you run your hands down his arms. The muscles jump beneath your touch and his eyes soften. When the water is at your waist you step around him, pulling him to turn and watch as you walk back to the shore. The water cascades down your legs as you approach the edge of the lake, the warmth of the air embracing you once more.

The grass that lines the shore tickles and scratches lightly at your ankles as you spin, catching Jaskier’s gaze. It always baffles you that this man, who is so famously eloquent with words, could be struck speechless at just the sight of you. You bend to grab your skirt and you hear a soft hiss and the faint splashing of water and you look back to Jaskier, who is palming himself under the surface.

Your teeth catch your bottom lip as you move to lay the skirt out onto the ground. It’s already filthy, might as well make use of the soft fabric. You settle onto the ground, reclining onto your elbows and ever so slightly spreading your legs. Shifting your weight to one arm, you bring your other hand down to your core to resume where Jaskier left off. Your fingers circle your clit and you moan, spreading yourself under Jaskier’s watchful eyes.

Jaskier breathes your name before walking towards you, pulled by the spell of your arousal. You watch as he rises from the water, jealous of the moon as it dances and kisses along his skin. The water drips and tumbles from him, hanging on until it can no longer. His hand never leaves his cock, pumping slowly as he pads across the ground to rest at your feet.

He lowers to one knee, moving to lean over you as he kisses up your leg. Jaskier takes his time, content with the little gasps he pulls from you at every touch. He pulls your hand away as he places a chaste kiss to the peak of your core, the sweetness of the gesture contradicting the lust of the moment. He does not linger, moving up your stomach and between your breasts, leaving a trail of fire in his wake.

You move your arms to wind around his neck, pulling him to your lips. He adjusts, settling between your legs as you wrap them around his waist. He brackets his arms on either side of your head and you trail your hands back down his chest. The water is still cool under your fingers, and every so often you feel a bit drip from the ends of Jaskier’s hair onto your neck.

One of your hands grips his waist before the other wraps around his length, and you can feel the drip of his arousal onto the cleft of your cunt. The moan he lets into your mouth is warm and light, all sunshine and dripping with honey. You gently pull him to you, guiding him until he presses at your entrance.

You fall back, head resting among the grass and flowy fabric as Jaskier pushes forward, resting his forehead on yours and sheathing himself inside of you in one swift motion. You arch once more into his touch, impatient and trembling beneath him.

“Ah, fuck” he whispers as you dig your fingers against his ass, silently begging for more.

“Eloquent as always, dear,” you chuckle, the raspiness of your voice betraying your need to be sated.

Jaskier begins to move, just slight thrusts at first before deepening them, your hips canting up to meet his every move. You cannot hold back the whimpers that spill from your lips, pleading for him to fuck you.

He suddenly thrusts himself forward, capturing your lips in a bruising kiss and nipping at them as he pulls back. He pushes himself upwards, settling on his knees as he pushes your legs further apart.

From this angle, he hits that impossibly deep spot inside of you that makes you see stars and your cunt clenches around him. You try to set a faster pace, but Jaskier only smiles down at you as he continues thrusting lazily through your heat.

“Ah, ah,” he chuckles, “you are being very impatient tonight.”

“Well, if you weren’t so fucking stubborn I wouldn’t have to be,” you grate out as you keep trying to quicken the pace. Jaskier may be adamant, but he is not cruel. He speeds his thrusts ever so slightly, his hands running streaks of light across your legs. He moves to grasp your hips, his fingers holding you hard enough to bruise.

His movements suddenly become incredibly quick, hips snapping against you as you yell out to the sky. Every move hits that spot deep in your core and the fire in your belly builds and spreads through your body. Your hips move fast, sloppily meeting him before stilling, his cock pounding relentlessly into you. The dam breaks and spills, pleasure flooding your senses as you rock your hips, blindly grasping for any bit of Jaskier you can reach. Waves of light soar through you, burning their path along your skin.

Jaskier keeps moving, thrusting fast and deep within you as you climax. Your walls grip and flutter around him and he cries out, stilling within you and gripping your hips flush to him. His spend is hot and thick inside of you, and you can feel a bit drip out around the seal of his cock. Jaskier falls forward, resting his weight on you as you both come down from your pleasure.

As he finds himself once more, he slowly pulls out of you, more of his spend falling out of you as he rolls to lay beside you. You turn, gazing into his eyes and seeing nothing but pure happiness and adoration.

He wraps his arms around you, pulling you close as he whispers, “You know, this whole world is so beautiful. The sun, the moon, the stars, everything around us existing in perfect harmony. But you know what?”

You hum, brushing your nose against his.

“I love you more than I love this life, and I’d give it all up in half of a heartbeat if it meant spending even just one moment with you in my arms.”

He leans forward and kisses you, all sweetness and light, and you can feel the promise and dedication behind it. You could almost cry with the sentiment, and though you may not be so talented with turn of phrase, you pull back and say, with all of your might,

“I love you too.”

#jaskier x reader #smut #my fic #skinny dipping #a fav trope #fem!reader

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bifrostiron · 4 years

Text

Dalton Big Bang | Day 6: First NSFW Day

Magic in the Hamptons (Part 1)

It started with a dare.

More specifically, it started with a game of Gay Chicken prompted by a dare, one that rapidly got out of hand when Julian kissed Derek full on the mouth. Rather than pulling away, Derek had actually leaned into it, leading to an unexpectedly heated makeout session with a very wide-eyed, red-faced Logan watching from the other end of the couch.

“Uh,” Logan stammered as they pulled apart, lips glistening and a little swollen. Julian cocked an eyebrow at Derek, who was perhaps even more red than Logan, ducking his head hastily and rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Didn’t think you’d be getting a show, did you?” Julian quipped, grinning playfully over at Logan. His smile faded a little when the other boy shifted in his seat, and Julian realized that his discomfort might not be solely because of the absurdity of the situation.

Had he been of completely sound mind, Julian probably would have teased him, made some snarky comment about his year-long dry spell making him entirely too easy to rile up. But he’d been mixing increasingly elaborate fruity cocktails for the past two hours, and with it being several days into their annual summer vacation in the Hamptons, Julian was feeling particularly agreeable. So he took a bit of a risk.

Biting his lip gently, he took in the sight of Logan, from his slightly exposed chest, the top two buttons of his shirt falling open just under his collarbone, to his one leg tucked under him on the couch, shorts hugging his thighs just a little too tightly. His eyes flicked back to Logan’s face, and he hoped he wasn’t imagining the way those green eyes darkened under his gaze.

“You’re welcome to join us, if you’re that into it,” he’d said.

And Logan had.

He’d all but lunged across the couch at Julian, both of them landing on top of a very aggravated Derek, who yelped in protest as Logan’s mouth slammed against Julian’s, his hands fisting in the loose fabric of his T-shirt. Julian’s answering gasp gave way to a moan as Logan’s lips parted against his, tongue sliding across his bottom lip. Logan kissed him fiercely, almost possessively, and it was better than Julian could have imagined. He tangled his fingers in Logan’s hair, drawing him in closer.

“Excuse me,” Derek groaned from underneath them, and Julian grinned against Logan’s mouth.

“Don’t worry,” Julian said, adjusting position so he was now sprawled across Derek’s lap, one arm slung over his shoulders and the other still on Logan’s neck. He nodded between the two of them. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Logan’s eyes met Derek’s, and Julian’s grin widened. He’d never actually had a threesome before. He wasn’t opposed to it, although he definitely wouldn’t have ever expected his first one to go down between his two best friends on their summer vacation. Something told him it was probably a bad move to let this get any further, that it couldn’t possibly end well for any of them - but that impulse was shut down the moment Logan’s lips met Derek’s.

He was more hesitant this time, not pouncing on Derek like he had with Julian. But Derek leaned into it, eyes slipping shut, and Julian stared transfixed as his friends made out mere inches away from his face. He could feel Derek’s cock hardening against his thigh, and Julian laughed breathlessly, eyes still fixed on Logan’s mouth.

“You know,” he said, and they both glanced over at him, breaking apart just enough that they could breathe. “You two look pretty good together.”

Somehow, that seemed to be what brought Logan back to his senses. “Hold on,” he muttered, backing away from the others and settling in the middle of the couch, knees folded under him. “What is this? This—you guys are straight.”

Julian laughed. “I never said that.”

Logan’s mouth fell open.

“Oh,” he said quietly, and Julian suddenly wished he’d chosen to do this at a time when he wasn’t too drunk to properly discern the shift in Logan’s facial expression.

“I am,” Derek interrupted, raising the hand that wasn’t currently cupping Julian’s ass. Julian snorted.

“I’m getting mixed signals here, D,” he said with a smirk, grinding his hips down against Derek’s hardening cock for emphasis. Derek groaned.

“Jesus,” he hissed. “Okay, look, it’s been a while. What do you want from me?”

Julian was about to give Derek a taste of exactly what he wanted from him, but he stopped short when he caught Logan’s eyes. The taller boy had shifted, crawling back toward the pair of them with his hands bracketing Julian’s legs. Julian’s breath hitched as he took in the intense expression on Logan’s face. He was vaguely aware of Derek staring at them, but all Julian could focus on was Logan - Logan’s hand on his hip, Logan’s thighs straddling him, Logan’s breath ghosting over his face as he whispered, “Why didn’t you say something before?”

Julian had imagined a couple different scenarios for coming out to Logan over the years, but he’d never dreamed of anything quite like this.

He barely had the chance to choke out a response before Logan’s mouth was on his, firm and demanding. Julian’s lips parted involuntarily, his tongue darting out for a taste, and he was pleasantly surprised when Logan moaned into his mouth, long fingers tightening their grip on his waist.

“Fuck,” Derek muttered, and Julian grinned. He writhed against Derek’s lap, his own cock twitching at the feeling of Derek’s erection pressed into his ass. Derek tried and failed to hold back a moan. “Fuck, okay, so if we’re doing this—“

“Don’t overthink it,” Julian mumbled, turning his head to face Derek. Logan’s lips trailed down his neck, eliciting a low moan as he sucked gently on the sensitive skin below Julian’s jaw. Julian glanced up through his eyelashes, and Derek’s lips parted, breath coming in short gasps. “Just enjoy it.”

Julian watched him expectantly, grinning when he finally whispered, “Fuck it,” and dove down to capture Julian’s lips.

—

Things got a little out of hand after that.

They never really planned for it to happen again. They certainly hadn’t talked about it after, going their separate ways for the night before they even had a chance to get cleaned up. But when the next night inside during a thunderstorm ended with Julian bent over the arm of the couch, Logan’s cock in his mouth and Derek’s in his ass, he started to feel like maybe they all needed more of this. So he’d taken the lead, encouraging them both with sly glances as he climbed out of the pool, or “accidental” touches when they passed each other on the tennis courts.

Sometimes it worked a little too well.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was happening between them. Logan, it seemed, was more touch-starved than they’d realized, equally happy to be kissing Derek or Julian if it meant some kind of contact. Derek, on the other hand, still seemed pretty hesitant about the whole thing, fine with having his dick sucked or fucking Julian from behind as long as he could pretend it was a girl he was with. Julian didn’t mind. He still got the better end of the deal, even without considering Logan’s sudden interest in him.

Of course, when he came back from a morning run to find Logan and Derek on the couch shoving their tongues down each other’s throats, Julian wondered if perhaps he’d misjudged the situation.

The pair looked up at him with twin expressions of surprise and horror, and Julian had to bite back a laugh. His eyes widened, taking in the scene before him: Logan, sprawled out on the couch with his knees in the air, clutching the hem of Derek’s T-shirt; Derek, crouched over him with one hand on the arm of the couch and the other on Logan’s hip.

“You couldn’t wait for me to get back?” Julian joked, for lack of anything better to say.

Logan’s face paled, and he scrambled to sit up, straightening his rumpled clothes. Derek, on the other hand, looked remarkably composed, and only the light blush on his cheeks and the way he pointedly avoided eye contact with Logan indicated that he was at all embarrassed by the situation.

“Did you want to watch?” he shot back at Julian, who couldn’t decide if it sounded more like a joke or a challenge.

He decided to call Derek’s bluff, if only to see how far he’d take it. He set down his phone and keys on the bar counter, sauntering over to the chair across from them. Logan stared wide-eyed as he sat, elbows propped on his lap and fingers tented in front of him, looking between them expectantly.

Even then, Julian didn’t really think they would actually go for it. But Derek actually turned back to Logan, though he was still avoiding his gaze, eyes fixed on his lips instead. Logan gasped a little when Derek pressed their mouths together, kissing him hesitantly. He didn’t quite kiss back, but he didn’t back away either.

Derek’s hand crept up Logan’s side, his shirt lifting to expose newly tanned skin. Julian stared as Logan writhed against the couch cushions, leaning into the kiss with a soft moan.

Julian might have expected to feel jealous, seeing the boy he loved kissing someone else. But this felt different. He was here this time, not just as a wistful onlooker, but an active participant. And even now, while he was across the room watching them go at it, he had some degree of confidence that Logan would want him, too, if he decided to join in.

Of course, there was always the chance that he was wrong, that this would blow up in all their faces. But he didn’t particularly want to think about that right now.

Logan’s hands found their way to Derek’s sides, pushing his shirt up. His fingers roamed over his lower back, his hips, his chest, desperate for contact. Derek squirmed a little under Logan’s touch, but he leaned into it, settling in Logan’s lap and grinding their hips together.

All the while, Julian stared, his pants growing tighter. They did look good together, these two, even with their awkward fumbling and the fact that Logan still didn’t seem entirely comfortable having an audience. He thought about asking to join in, but he was enjoying himself just fine, anticipation building as he watched Logan tug Derek’s shirt off over his head, pushing him back against the opposite arm so that Logan was the one on top. Julian watched intently as Logan kissed down Derek’s chest, sucking little marks into his bare skin. His hands held firmly on Derek’s hips, thumbs teasing at his waistband while he sucked hard at a spot just below Derek’s hipbone.

“Jesus Christ,” Derek muttered, fingernails digging into the couch cushions.

Logan glanced over at Julian, breathing hard. His lips quirked up in a small smile when he caught Julian’s fierce gaze. “You gonna tap in now?”

Julian grinned. “I don’t know, looks like you’ve got things handled pretty well.”

“Don’t mind him,” Derek choked out. “He just doesn’t want to look undignified.”

Logan shot him a glare. “I don’t mind,” he grumbled, and as if for emphasis, he jerked Derek’s shorts down over his hips without bothering to unbutton them.

Up until now, Julian had been the one giving the most when it came to oral. At times he’d felt like Logan and Derek were just passing him back and forth, fucking him in turns for their own benefit, which might be annoying if he weren’t so turned on by the idea. But now, Logan took the lead, and Julian decided he was more than happy to be upstaged.

Because holy shit. The intensity Logan brought to everything else they’d done was even more apparent now, when he took Derek’s cock into his mouth with a low moan, his fist curled around the base. He didn’t attempt to take all of him in, but he worked the shaft with practiced ease, long fingers flexing in time with the movement of his jaw. Derek threw his head back with a loud moan, which Logan echoed, swallowing him down just a little further.

Julian wasn’t aware he was moving until he was already on his knees, all but crawling across the floor to get to them. Logan saw him out of the corner of his eye, and he adjusted position, allowing Julian room to brace himself with one arm on the couch. The other, he used to nudge Logan’s hand away, waiting until he’d released all but the head of Derek’s cock before replacing Logan’s fingers with his tongue.

The noise Derek made when their mouths slid over him in tandem went straight to Julian’s cock. If he wasn’t fully hard before, he certainly was now, and he moaned softly in frustration as he reached for his groin. He didn’t even bother with his shorts, instead palming himself roughly through the fabric and grinding his hips against the friction. Logan’s eyes flickered to his, mirroring Julian’s own needy desperation, and they both licked up Derek’s shaft until their tongues met in the middle, mouths sliding together fiercely.

“Hey,” Derek whined, canting his hips in midair when his cock fell from between their lips. “I was close, come on—“

Julian drew back, a line of saliva still clinging to his bottom lip. His tongue darted out to tease the tip, and Logan watched him intently as he swallowed Derek down, opening his throat to take him all the way. His eyes watered a little, but he pressed on, burying his face in Derek’s crotch.

“Fuck,” Derek gasped, hips jerking involuntarily against Julian’s mouth. Julian sucked hard, tongue lathing over the shaft as he swallowed around him, taking him in deeper. Derek thrust into his mouth with a broken shout, and Julian felt it when he came hard, spilling down his throat.

He pulled back slowly, releasing Derek’s spit-slick cock from his mouth and turning to face Logan. His eyes were still on Julian, pupils blown and lids hooded with arousal. Before Julian even had the chance to smile up at him, Logan grabbed hold of his shirt collar, dragging him up onto the couch to bring their mouths together in a bruising kiss. Julian clambered over Derek’s legs, settling in awkwardly between them without breaking contact with Logan’s lips. Derek grumbled something from his side of the couch, but Julian wasn’t listening, his attention focused entirely on Logan’s hands at his waistband.

“Let me—“ he tried to say, but Logan cut him off by sliding his tongue in Julian’s mouth.

After an agonizing moment, Julian’s pants fell open and long fingers wrapped around his cock. Logan was good with his hands, frequently able to bring Julian right to the edge with just a few strokes. Julian rolled his hips in time with the motion of his hand, straddling Logan’s lap and grinding against him. Logan’s movements stuttered, and Julian realized he was close as well. He felt a smug sense of satisfaction at having this effect on Logan without even touching him. But Logan clearly wanted more, and Julian was happy to give it to him.

Julian leaned into Logan’s touch, his arms draping over the taller boy’s shoulders. Their mouths moved together, hot and wet and wanting, gasping for breath every so often before diving back in for more. Logan moaned hungrily against him, gripping his cock tighter and working him hard under his shorts. Julian was momentarily grateful that he hadn’t bothered with underwear, until Logan’s thumb swirled over the head of his cock and he lost all capacity for coherent thought.

He broke apart from Logan’s lips, panting for breath, and Logan dived immediately to mouth at Julian’s neck. He knew the effect that had on Julian, had done this enough times by now to know what would push him over the edge. Julian was barely able to choke out a warning before he came with a full-body shudder, spilling over both of their laps.

Logan’s teeth sank into the crook of Julian’s shoulder, and Julian knew he wasn’t far behind. He spread his legs, gripping Logan’s lap with his thighs and rolling his hips against the bulge in his pants. Logan didn’t even bother undressing, just held Julian tightly with one hand on his ass and one on his lower back, grinding roughly against him while sucking a sizable hickey into his neck. His hips stuttered once, twice, three times before he stilled with a muffled groan, fingers pressing into Julian’s skin.

They sat like that for a moment, arms wrapped around each other, catching their breath as they came down from the high. Julian paused, allowing himself one precious moment to revel in the feeling of Logan’s arms around him, his lips still pressed to Julian’s neck. He’d have to come back to reality in a second, face the fact that this was only a temporary fixation brought on by their isolation and boredom - but just for that moment, he could pretend it was something real.

When his mind cleared, Julian remembered Derek, still sprawled at the end of the couch with his legs awkwardly akimbo on either side of him and Logan. He snuck a glance to the side and caught him staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“Enjoy the show?” Julian said, plastering on a playful smirk and hesitantly untangling himself from Logan.

Derek shook his head a little to snap himself out of it. “Not enough to go again,” he mumbled, swinging his legs off the couch as soon as Julian was out of the way. He got to his feet, crouching down to retrieve his shorts.

“I’m first for the shower,” Logan grumbled, shifting awkwardly in his seat. Julian snickered.

“Make a bit of a mess, there, huh Wright?”

Logan rolled his eyes, ignoring the derisive use of his last name. “Not like you’re much better,” he pointed out, nodding to Julian.

Julian glanced down at his T-shirt, which was now sporting a pretty sizable cum stain over most of the front. He stared for a moment before tugging the shirt over his head and tossing it on the floor.

“It’s hot, anyway,” he shrugged, turning towards the patio doors. “I’ll be in the pool.”

#daltonfic #daltonbigbang2020 #stuart trio #im warning yall this is FILTHY #sorry mom :/#fanfic #hamptons verse

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etherealwaifgoddess · 4 years

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Maybe I Am? - Chpt.4

Characters: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes

Summary: Steve frets over his growing interest Bucky and decides to take things to the ~next level~. Master list HERE.

Content Warning: Some truly fantastic blow jobs. Steve being neurotic about what this means for him.

Word Count: 3.5k

Author’s Note: Hello lovelies! I’m really excited so many of you are enjoying this fic so far. I don’t know why, but I just got super invested in these characters from the start even though it’s one of my shorter fics. I was literally screeching to my best friend on daily basis while writing this LOL. So thank you for all the sweet feedback and likes and reblogs. Ya’ll make my day! XOXO - Ash

Chapter Four

They fell into a rhythm faster than either one had really expected. They text periodically throughout their days, just silly things they’d found or something about their day they wanted to laugh about or bemoan together. Thanks to Steve being able to adjust his schedule and Bucky working a basic 9-5, they were able to meet up on Friday nights for a date night and typically one other weeknight when they were both free. Sundays became their farmers market day, when they could wander around the busy market in the warm summer sun and drink entirely too many iced coffees. Despite the routine, labels were never used or brought up. Neither man quite sure how to define what they were doing. They were happy with their little routine, neither of them looking to shake things up, but there had been a few times where after weeks of second base, they both wondered when it might be time for more. Steve was terrified of finding his limit and wasn’t willing to risk what they had. Bucky was terrified of pushing Steve too fast and had bitten his tongue a few times when in the heat of the moment he had almost begged to taste Steve’s cock.

It had been over a month of swapping hand jobs and what Steve had learned was called frottage, thank you Google. Steve figured if he didn’t try to mix things up soon he’d never really know where his limit lied. And with how quickly his feelings for Bucky were developing he needed to start figuring things out fast. He was going to be in a world of pain if and when he reached the limit of what he was sexually interested in. Steve had been in rough shape when Peggy left him but the idea of leaving Bucky seemed a thousand times worse already.

Steve finally gathered the nerve to turn on his privacy mode search and look up tips on blow jobs. What he got was a horrific amount of bad porn and women's magazine articles. Most were absolute trash but he did find a few good tips. Though in the end, Steve figured he’d just have to assume what felt good being done to him would most likely feel good for Bucky. As long as he didn’t puke the second it was in his mouth, he was going to consider whatever happened progress. The idea didn’t seem too terrible in theory but Steve’s nerves were still running wild.

They were curled up on Steve’s sofa, Bucky tracing the lines of Steve’s muscles along his chest and stomach. The movie had ended a few minutes before but neither man was willing to move just yet. Steve took a breath and decided it was do or die time. Bucky deserved someone who wasn’t trapped on second base forever. “Hey, Buck.” Steve said quietly, waiting for Bucky to look up at him, “Would it be okay if I sucked your dick? I think I could.”

Bucky took a moment to replay Steve’s words in his head. Nope, still sounded the same. What in the actual fuck?! “Steve, honey, you don’t have to do that if you’re not ready.” Bucky assured him, “I’m so happy with you, with us. Don’t feel like you have to do this unless you really want to.”

Steve sighed, half tempted to take the way out Bucky had offered him. “No, I want to. I do. I just… I’m worried. What happens if I don’t like doing it? If I can’t do it.”

“Then you can’t, Stevie. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’d ever expect it from you. Hell, my ex probably only did it twice in the year we were together.”

“What?” that caught Steve’s attention, “Why?”

Bucky huffed a laugh, “Not all gay guys enjoy sucking cock. And Brock was an asshole, so who knows the real reason. I don’t really believe what he used to say. He, uh, he said a lot of things just to be hurtful.”

“I’m sorry, baby.” Steve kissed Bucky softly, wondering how bad his ex really was. He never really talked about it and Steve worried it was worse than Bucky let on. “I do want to try it with you though. You don’t have to reciprocate or anything, I just need to know if I can do this. For me. I’m still trying to figure things out and I need to know.”

“Okay, we can try. And for the record,” he added with a smirk, “I love giving head.”

The sound Steve made at Bucky’s declaration was barely more than a high pitched whine and Bucky cackled like Satan himself with delight.

“Come here you.” Steve cajoled him, pulling Bucky close to resume their kisses. Steve waited until Bucky was making the soft little moans he’d come to know so well. The sign that he was getting impatient and needy for Steve to get him off. Steve loved how easy it was to bring him to that point. Steve pulled back, giving Bucky’s still clothed dick a squeeze before he slipped down onto the floor between Bucky’s legs. Resting on his knees, he helped Bucky get his pants and underwear off, another pair of those silky boxers Bucky seemed to favor that made Steve want to rut up against the silky material like a madman. They had done that once a few weeks earlier. Steve had been completely naked and Bucky in only his silky boxers, they had rutted against one another through the fabric until both their orgasms had snuck up on them before they could help themselves. It had been a little embarrassing but mostly wonderful.

Steve teased Bucky’s shaft a little, trying to work up his courage now that he was down there. Bucky’s hair was blessedly well trimmed and Steve realized he probably should have afforded the same courtesy for Bucky. He made a mental note to take care of that before the next time. If there would be a next time. A small bead of precome formed on the tip and Steve jumped on the opportunity. Leaning forward Steve lapped at the drip of liquid, waiting to see if he could get past the taste. He’d never minded going down on women but he worried a man would be just too different. To his surprise, it wasn’t awful. Not exactly something he would crave, but the bitter tang on his tongue was manageable. Encouraged, Steve braced his palms on Bucky’s hips and tentatively lowered his mouth around Bucky’s dick.

Bucky wanted to weep at the sight of Steve licking the little bead of precome off the tip of his cock. His beautiful blonde adonis settled so easily between his legs was a sight to behold. When Steve took the head into his mouth Bucky fought to stay still, letting Steve take his time and figure things out. Though much to his delight Steve figured it out pretty quickly. He barely got half the way down Bucky’s shaft with the first few eager bobs of his head but it was enough to have Bucky trembling beneath him. Steve looked up through his impossibly long lashes and Bucky about lost it. He threaded his fingers through Steve’s thick blonde hair, giving him a soft smile of adoration. Steve resumed his tentative sucking, testing how far down he could go comfortably, too afraid of gagging himself and ruining the moment. The more he bobbed the more confident he grew, carefully hollowing his cheeks to increase the suction around Bucky’s dick. He started lapping his tongue along the underside too, reveling in the way Bucky completely lost his composure when he did that.

There was something powerful being able to bring Bucky to a babbling mess with a few swipes of his tongue. Giving head was nothing like Steve had feared it would be. It was better than he could have expected and he found that the things he’d always loved about going down on a woman, he loved about going down on Bucky. The trembling thighs bracketing his head, the deep earthy scent of being at someone’s core, the trust it took for someone to let him do this, even the way curly short hairs tickled his nose when he pressed in deep. Steve felt himself getting worked up as he continued and he reached down for a moment to push his growing erection down with the heel of his hand. He wondered briefly if maybe next time he could multitask enough to get himself off while going down on Bucky. Because there was damn well going to be a next time at this rate.

Bucky knew he wasn’t going to last as long as he’d wanted to as soon as Steve started experimenting with his tongue. He wanted to give Steve as much warning as he could but all that he could come up with was filthy praise. “God, Stevie,” he panted out, half delirious, “That’s so good, honey. God just like that, yeah. Oh god you’re so good at that. Driving me wild, honey.”

Steve made a muffled happy noise at the praise and the vibrations in his throat went straight to Bucky’s dick. He keened, trying to hold back his eminent release. “Stevie.” he pleaded, “Stevie wait. I’m gonna. Shit honey, I can’t… I’m gonna.”

Steve was undeterred knowing what was, quite literally, coming next. He took Bucky in as deep as he could, figuring that would be easiest, and gave one last burst of intense suction until Bucky was coming down his throat, hot and fast. It was startling but after he got past the initial shock it was over before he could really mind. Steve pulled back once Bucky finished, settling back to sit on his heels with a smug grin on his face. Bucky, on the other hand, looked positively wrecked.

“Jesus God, honey.” Bucky finally rasped out in disbelief. “That was…” he shook his head, “That was perfection.”

“I did okay?” Steve forced himself to ask, needing to ensure he really had done an at least passable job. He was still a little breathless, his dick half chubbed in his pants and growing as he took in Bucky’s post orgasmic glow.

“Better than okay. You were amazing.” Bucky reached out and took both of Steve’s hands in his, needing to ensure he was alright. “Are you okay though? Really? That wasn’t too much or anything? You really didn’t have to swallow.”

“It was fine,” Steve answered truthfully, “I loved seeing you so blissed out like that, knowing I was the one making you feel that way. And swallowing was over before I could really process it, so no big deal.”

“You are one in a fucking million, Steve Rogers.” Bucky shifted forward so he could kiss his man, so overwhelmed with affection for him. He pulled him up after a few heated kisses, wanting to feel those solid muscles crowding him in. Bucky raised an eyebrow as Steve leaned himself up and onto Bucky. “Um,” he tried not to chuckle, “It seems like someone really did enjoy himself.”

Steve blushed lightly, hiding his face in the curve of Bucky’s neck, “Mhm. I, uh, I enjoyed it quite a bit.”

At that Bucky did let out a short cackle, raining kisses down on Steve’s blushing face, “You’re a fucking gem. God, I…” Bucky cut himself off with a sharp cough. “A real fucking gem, honey.” He added somewhat lamely.

Steve was oblivious to Bucky’s misstep, practically preening under the affection and praise, still teetering on the edge of full arousal. He would have been more than happy to continue skirting that edge, Bucky’s hand rubbing against him lightly while they necked like teenagers. But Bucky was not going to pass up the opportunity to get Steve’s cock in his mouth at last. He wasn’t exaggerating when he’d bragged he loved sucking cock. He truly did. Every part of it, too. And because of his enthusiasm he’d had plenty of practice over the years. Bucky was thankful for that practice, too, because even after the newness of Steve had started to wear off, he was still convinced Steve had the absolute most beautiful cock he’d ever seen. It was like going from the minors to the big leagues, he mused happily.

“Hey, honey.” he crooned in between kisses, “Can I return the favor?”

“Hm?” Steve murmured, confused.

“I’ve been dying to get your cock in my mouth for weeks. Please? Let me return the favor?”

Steve’s choked off moan was answer enough but he forced out his words, “Yeah. God, yeah, Buck. But only if you want to.”

“Oh I want to. Believe me. I’d have to be crazy not to want you.”

Steve huffed a light laugh as Bucky drug the waistband of his pants and boxer briefs down, moving himself down the length of Steve’s body in the process. He was fully hard and the head slapped against the hard V shaped plane of his lower stomach, leaving a trail of precome where it landed.

Bucky had his mouth around the head of Steve’s cock seconds after tossing his clothes to the side. He wasn’t about to waste any time and he wanted to make sure this was a blow job Steve would never forget. He pulled out all his best tricks, alternating suction and speed, letting his hands knead at Steve’s balls while his mouth deep throated him like a champ, even running his nails along Steve’s inner thighs while dragging just the slightest hint of bottom teeth along the underside of his cock. Steve was barely coherent after the last one and Bucky wondered if anyone had ever played with Steve’s ass before. His whole body shook fiercely when Bucky’s hands would glance over his taint and brush over the curve of his ass right behind it. Bucky was tempted, so tempted, and while he was still worried about freaking Steve out, if he played his cards right Steve was in for one hell of a treat.

Bucky started his exploration slow, keeping his mouth busy with a steady holding pattern of torture. Enough that Steve was still making those gorgeous little noises in the back of his throat, but not enough that he was in danger of coming. It gave him enough time to sneak his index finger along Steve’s taint and then slip between his ass cheeks for a quick flick.

Steve’s whole body jerked when the pad of Bucky’s finger ghosted over his surprisingly sensitive hole. It was unexpected but felt too good for him to object. Steve knew if he spoke up Bucky would stop, but in the heat of the moment he wanted to ride it out to see where things went. He trusted Bucky wouldn’t push him too hard too fast, so he just focused on trying to stay in his seat and not choking the poor beautiful man between his legs with an unintended thrust.

Bucky wanted to cheer at Steve’s reaction and it emboldened him to keep exploring. He let the tip of his finger flutter against Steve’s hole as he continued to suck his shaft down as deep as he comfortably could. He cupped Steve’s balls with his other hand, adding that sensation to the mix as well with stellar results.

“Shit,” Steve keened, “Buck, baby, shitshitshit. I’m gonna…”

Bucky just nodded as he bobbed his head, fully aware of where Steve was at and what he needed to do to take him over the edge. Pressing firmly with the tip of his finger he pushed ever so slightly into Steve’s hole, not enough to breach that tight ring of muscle inside but enough to be felt. Steve was writhing and then Bucky wiggled his finger, just gently, while hollowing out his cheeks and giving Steve’s balls a squeeze.

Steve shattered.

It was too much all at once and he came with a broken sob as his body shook almost violently. He had no control over his limbs or his voice as great sobbing moans broke free from his chest. His body trembled even after his orgasm began to fade and Bucky clamored up onto the sofa next to him. Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve from the side, tugging him close and holding on to him tightly. It took a long minute for Steve to compose himself and for the world to really come back into to focus for him. But when he finally did, it was to Bucky holding him, rubbing soothing circles on his back with one hand, and whispering sweet nonsense in his ear. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so protected and cherished. Tears prickled at his eyes and he didn’t dare speak until he was certain he could trust his voice.

Bucky noticed as Steve became more aware of himself, but he pretended to ignore the little tears that welled in the corners of the other man’s eyes. Steve sniffed harshly, letting out a long woosh of a breath. “That was….” he trailed off, at a loss for adequate words.

Bucky grinned and pressed a kiss to Steve’s cheek, cuddling in a little. “Told ya I love giving head.”

“You’re like the fucking king of it. My knees are still all tingly.”

“Aww, honey. It wasn’t too much, was it? I know we didn’t talk about ass play yet but I figured a little tease wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m glad we didn’t.” Steve admitted quietly, “I probably would have psyched myself out of it. And it was… okay? Good?”

“Thank you, for trusting me like that. We should talk about it, though. Figure out what you’re willing to try, and go at a pace you’re comfortable with. It can be so good, honey, you got no idea.”

“Oh, I got a little bit of an idea.” Steve laughed.

Bucky chuckled with him, “Yeah, I guess you did. I won’t rush you though, promise. We can take as long as you need.”

“I don’t-” Steve started and stopped with a frown, “I don’t know how long that’ll be, Buck. I’m sorry. I want to be better for you but I’m still a little scared.”

Bucky’s heart was bursting at Steve’s admission. “I know, and it’s okay. We’ll go at your pace. And I’m not asking you to bottom for me. I prefer that myself, actually.”

Steve groaned a little imagining Bucky coming apart underneath him while he fucked the smaller man into the mattress. He was getting ahead of himself but it was a damn nice image. “We’ll get there.” Steve promised to him, as much as to himself.

They stayed curled up for a little longer until the air conditioning proved too strong and they both pulled their pants back up over goosebumped legs. Bucky begged off after that, to both of their disappointments. It was late and reasonably they both needed sleep but still, Bucky knew it wouldn’t be long until one of them cracked and they started spending the night together.

Steve looked around his apartment after Bucky headed out, painfully aware of how empty and silent it was. Part of him wished he’d asked Bucky to stay. Not that he could have, he didn’t have overnight stuff with him, but Steve hated going to bed alone after such a nice evening. That had been the hardest part of adapting to life post-Peggy, sleeping alone again. She had never been much of a cuddler, much to Steve’s disappointment, but she at least warmed the other side of his too big bed.

As Steve curled up in still too big bed, he worried that things with Bucky were all going to be over in a blink. That things were destined to become just a distant memory of the time Steve had tried something different for a while. His heart ached thinking about it. But what was the alternative? He and Bucky actually made it work? He would come out as gay? Bi? To all his friends and coworkers? Explain that no he hadn’t lost his mind, it really just took him thirty years of life to realize he liked men. Would he and Bucky slowly merge their things until they were practically living together? Would his early class day alarm drive Bucky crazy three days a week? Would he bring flowers home after exasperating Bucky over something silly like forgetting to fold his clothes or leaving dishes in the sink? Would Bucky save him a warm plate of dinner on the nights he had to work late? Steve’s mind swam with possibilities he’d never really let himself consider before. He knew it was foolish to dream, that this was a nice fantasy but he’d soon have to get back to real life, as much as it pained him. Still, despite the warnings he gave himself, Steve drifted off to sleep with the dreams of early morning cuddles and quiet late night conversations in his mind.

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #stucky #stucky fanfic #stucky fanfiction #idiots in love #lots of smut

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frizz22 · 5 years

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Witch’s Mark

Anon tumblr prompt: Zelda signs the book and her first time is with Faustus in the woods right after. Thanks for the prompt! Read on ao3

Notes: Faustus only a few years older than Zelda.

She considered making Faustus wait.

It’d been impossible for Zelda to be his first, being underage and having to wait to give herself to the Dark Lord first. She certainly hadn’t expected him to wait for her to come of age either. Which meant, well, she should balance the scales by taking some other witch or warlock to bed first. She wasn’t his first, so he shouldn’t be hers.

As the magic and lust swirled inside her after she signed, though, Zelda looked up and found Faustus watching her far more intensely than the situation warranted. It sent a spike a heat straight through her.

She could make him wait. She could. But Zelda didn’t want to. She wanted him. And she’d never been one to deny herself the things she wanted most.

Which was why, after the ceremony was over and the adults filtered away, after her siblings were properly distracted by their friends, Zelda let Faustus pull her aside. And then deeper into the woods still.

Only once the sounds of everyone else faded did Faustus stop and release her hand.

Looking around her with careful neutrality, Zelda arched an unimpressed brow. “And what are we doing here?” She drawled, twirling a curl around her finger.

“I have to make sure you’re truly a witch now.” He teased, drawing a finger down the length of her spine.

Zelda suppressed a shiver and did her best to appear unaffected. “You’re not convinced? My name is in the book, same as yours. Or,” magic crackled visibly at her fingertips, “do you need another kind of demonstration?”

Humming as he circled her, Faustus’ eyes swept over her hungrily. “I need another kind of visual verification. All witches have a mark, your mouth can lie,” his thumb brushed her lower lip and was gone before she could react, “but your body can’t.” He delivered the last few words in a sultry voice that had heat pooling in her lower abdomen.

And oh, how right he was, her body betrayed her when she was around him every single time. Leaning into his light touches only to give little lurches when he backed away quickly. There was no need for teasing anymore, though, all their unspoken promises could finally be fulfilled.

Despite the fact that they were free to do as they pleased, Zelda wanted to play his game. Wanted Faustus to think he was winning up until the end when she turned the tables on him and left him stunned.

So, she turned coquettishly and swept her hair over one shoulder so he could reach her zipper. “If you insist.” She sighed, managing a mildly bored tone.

Faustus stepped up behind her with a dark chuckle and it sent thrills through her. “Oh, I do, Zelda. I really,” he fell silent, he’d lowered her zipper down to her hips and apparently gotten lost in the sight of her bare back. “I really do insist.” He finished, voice harsher than before and pride swelled inside her at how he lost control from such an innocent piece of skin.

Stepping away from him, Zelda let the dress slip to the ground. “Is this enough?” She asked coyly, not facing him or looking at him yet.

And it was as if she could feel the heat of his gaze, how it eagerly traced her newly exposed skin. “Not quite enough.” Faustus growled, his fingertips brushing along the edge of her bra, tickling the skin just above the clasp.

“Oh,” Zelda breathed, trying to sound innocent as she reached behind her and unhooked the material and let that fall away as well. “And now?” She teased, finally peeking over her shoulder at Faustus and nearly losing her carefully crafted demeanor at the lust in his eyes.

A sinful smile spread Faustus’ lips and he shook his head, hands now coming down to bracket her hips. “Almost there, dearest.” His pinky slipped underneath the elastic of her underwear and Zelda almost ended their game right there and jumped him.

But the wait only increased the pleasure. So, she hooked her thumbs through the fabric and lowered her final piece of clothing, bending only at the waist to give Faustus a good look at what he was getting.

He inhaled sharply behind her and Zelda smirked, and the other girls had told her she’d disappoint the well-versed Faustus Blackwood. It appeared they were wrong.

Flinging her underwear away, Zelda finally turned to face him. “I believe I’m ready for your inspection, Mr. Blackwood.” She intoned huskily, holding her arms out to the side slightly. Faustus’ breathing came in quicker bursts as he stared at her, and Zelda could see a slight tenting in his pants. When he didn’t move, Zelda licked her lips and cocked her head. “Faustus? I was under the impression this was an official inspection. If you’re not up to the task I can certainly go find someone who is willing.”

The comment had Faustus snapping to, and there was a dark, possessive glint in his eye that had more heat pooling in Zelda’s core. Taking several slow predatory steps towards her, Faustus’ eyes roved over her. “You could go find someone else.” He murmured, stopping only an inch from her. “But I have a feeling you’d be unsatisfied with another’s inspection.”

Huffing, Zelda rolled her eyes. “That’s hard to tell, especially since you’ve yet to start yours.”

He grinned wickedly at her. “And what makes you think I haven’t started?” Faustus purred in her ear, still not touching her. “A visual inspection is first.” Pulling back, Faustus slowly circled her, occasionally instructing Zelda to lift an arm, turn this way, or that. And how was she so worked up when he hadn’t even touched her yet? How was it his gaze and voice were enough to arouse her so?

Not entirely unaware of her reaction, Faustus stopped in front of her and smirked. “Hmm, no mark. Must not be a witch.”

Zelda shrugged slightly. “If that’s what you call a thorough inspection...” She tsked and shook her head. “I feel sorry for anyone facing trial where they must prove themselves.” And how he didn’t see the pounding of her heart through her chest, Zelda wasn’t sure. But she was sure if one thing, she was playing the game right. Faustus shifted slightly, his hand going to his pants to adjust though his eyes never left her. He was enjoying this foreplay as much as she was.

“Good thing I have failsafes in place.” And before Zelda could make some quip back, his hands were tracing over her skin, following the same path his eyes had taken. And just when Zelda thought she might crack and beg for more; Faustus replaced his hands with his mouth and repeated the entire process. And if his mouth lingered on her inner thighs, her breasts, her neck and had her panting... well, could she really be blamed after so much build up?

He finished his search by sealing his mouth over hers, his hands gripping her hips hard and pressing her against his now very evident need. As he explored her mouth with his tongue, Zelda allowed herself to touch him for the first time. Her hands skating up his chest, around his neck and into his hair, scraping and tugging lightly as their mouths moved.

A growl of pleasure and approval sounded in the back of Faustus throat and Zelda pushed against him harder, wanting more.

A moment later, though, Faustus broke the kiss, trailing his mouth down her neck and then back up to her ear. “I think I found your mark.” He murmured, hand ghosting along her ribs, back down to her hip and then further down still.

“Did you now?” And her voice was pitched higher than she’d like, a little too breathless, but he’d finally sunk a finger into her aching core, and it’d been all she could do not to moan. She refused to give his ego the boost.

As if he knew she was holding back, Faustus added another finger and planted lazy kisses along her chest and neck, his tempo matching that of his fingers, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

While Zelda enjoyed being played with, it’d been all she was allowed before her baptism, they were past that now. She didn’t want a gentle Faustus, had pleasured herself enough nights at the thought of rough and fast sex with the warlock that this wasn’t anywhere near what she wanted.

When she tilted her hips to encourage him to increase his pace, Faustus gave her a feral grin and took her nipple into his mouth, sucking, nibbling and licking in the most delicious manner as he finally picked up the speed of his hand.

Back arching, Zelda moaned out his name, grasping at him, nails digging in before dragging along the back of his shirt. Faustus groaned in response, switching his mouth to her other breast, his thumb coming up to work her clit at the same time.

“Finally,” Zelda gasped, biting her lip hard.

A chuckle rumbled against her chest and Faustus released her nipple with a wet pop. “Is this what you’ve wanted, Zelda?” His eyes were nearly black with lust and she panted from his efforts and the sight of him getting worked up over her.

Always impertinent, though, Zelda huffed. “I expected a bit more... passion.” She settled on the word, arching a brow at the warlock whose hand was still pumping inside her.

Eyebrows flying up, Faustus grinned at her hungrily. “That so?” Trying to hum in a nonchalant manner, Zelda managed a one shouldered shrug. “I can manage that.” He stole a bruising kiss from her lips before suddenly he was on his knees, his mouth aligned with her core. Before Zelda could even shudder at the sight of him between her legs, he circled his tongue teasingly around her clit before sucking it hard into his mouth as he added a third finger inside her and started to thrust faster, harder.

A litany of curses flew from Zelda as pleasure built in her rapidly and she had to cling to his shoulders to remain upright.

This, this was what she’d imagined... and then some. She came with the Dark Lord and Faustus’ name falling from her lips and Faustus continued to work her until she practically went limp. Chest heaving, Faustus guided Zelda gently to the ground.

Pulling away, Faustus licked his fingers clean and then kissed his way back up her body before slipping his tongue into her mouth so she could taste herself.

An obscene sound emanated from the back of her throat and Zelda dove her tongue into his mouth, taking control of the kiss so she could explore and find every trace of herself that remained.

Faustus’ hard length pressing against her thigh had Zelda breaking the kiss and sliding a hand down to stroke him through his pants.

Grunting, Faustus pressed his face into her neck and muttered curses as she continued to work. A smirk tugged her lips and Zelda snapped the fingers on her free hand and suddenly Faustus was as naked as she was. Taking advantage of his surprise at his loss of clothes, Zelda rolled them and straddled him, still pumping her hand along his length.

“Is this what you’ve wanted, Faustus?” She asked, repeating his question from earlier with a light mocking tone. His hands clamped onto her hips, nails biting into the flesh there, and he nodded; too lost to play games anymore. Smiling wickedly, Zelda shifted so she was aligned with him and slid her entrance along his cock, teasing him and coating him in her juices at the same time.

“Satan, Zelda.” He groaned, bucking his hips to try and hurry her along.

And seeing the oh so proper Faustus Blackwood come undone by her was the most glorious thing Zelda had ever witnessed. But she didn’t want to wait, while teasing him was incredible, she knew she’d have plenty of time for that later. Now, now she just wanted him inside her.

With a final teasing swipe, Zelda sank onto him, sheathing his cock to the hilt. She was still sensitive enough that she almost came from that alone, but she ground her teeth and held back; she wanted them to come together and from how Faustus was praising her and her tight, wet cunt, she wouldn’t have to hold out long.

She waited a moment, letting the sensation sink in, there hadn’t been any of the pain the older girls had tried to scare her with; slight discomfort, but that had been quickly overwhelmed but much more pleasurable feelings.

Leaning forward to rest her hands on Faustus’ chest, Zelda started to move, slowly at first, getting the hang of the movement and then faster as she stopped thinking and let her body take over.

Faustus allowed her to ride him for roughly a minute, his eyes simply watching her as she rose and fell over him again and again, and then he snaked an arm around her waist and sat up, clutching her tightly to him while she kept moving.

He kissed her hard, the hand not wrapped around her snuck between them and pinched her clit, rolling it between his fingers and Zelda’s back arched against him. Her head fell back as she tightened around him, grinding tight circles as she rode out another orgasm. Faustus flipped them before she’d finished and started to pound into her with abandon, Zelda moaned again, her climax lengthening at his efforts and he came inside her. Hips snapping forward a few more times as he slowed before he collapsed half on top of her. She wrapped her arms around him, keeping him in place as she ran her hands through his hair and up and down his back, a smile on her face as she caught her breath.

She’d been warned partnering with others could be a bit disappointing, no one being able to know your body as well as you... but Faustus, he had a road map to her. And Zelda found she wanted to show him all the backroads too.

After some time, Faustus pulled out of her and rolled onto his side.

Assuming they were done, Zelda shifted to get up and clean herself off before disappearing. His hand catching her arm and tugging her into him had Zelda smothering a smile as she curled into his side and rested her head on his chest. The older girls had told her he’d want nothing to do with her after, that Faustus wanted her cherry and nothing more, Zelda hadn’t cared one way or another she was getting what she wanted regardless; but it was another victory over them, this intimacy and cuddling after sex. Faustus’ voice recaptured her attention and drew Zelda out of her internal gloating.

“Satan, Zelda, if I didn’t know for a fact you were a virgin before tonight,” he sighed contentedly. “You’re incredible.” He murmured, languidly trailing his fingers up and down her bare back.

Unsure how to respond without sounding like a cock-struck amateur, Zelda hummed and kissed up his neck, along his jaw and then captured his mouth in a slow, but intense kiss. Breaking, they smiled at one another and settled back down, her head on his shoulder.

“So, where was it?” She asked, tipping her chin so she could look at Faustus without lifting her head.

Brow furrowing, Faustus frowned. “Where was what?”

A smile tugged her mouth and Zelda laughed. “My witch’s mark,” she reminded him of the thin excuse he’d supplied for undressing her.

Faustus laughed too and held her more tightly against him. “Well, you see, I seem to have forgotten.” He stated, eyes glittering. “I’ll just have to search again. Though, I seem to recall it was somewhere down here.” He pulled her so she was laying mostly on top of him and kissed her soundly, a hand roaming lower and lower until it brushed against her lower lips. It didn’t go further though, giving her some time to recover, his hand drifted back up to hold her closer.

Shaking her head, Zelda smiled into the kiss as she adjusted her position slightly so she could explore his skin as well. She wasn’t the only one with a witch’s mark in need of finding.

#caos #Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #Zelda Spellman #faustus blackwood #zelda x faustus #spellwood #academyspellwood #mentions of #hilda spellman #edward spellman #writing prompt #fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 #AO3 fanfic #ao3fic

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