#this one totally doesn't count as whump

[buddierecs]

jealous!eddie diaz buddie fics

all of these are general audience, teen and up or not rated (no smut) make sure to kudos/comment on these amazing works :)

hold the line (to my heart) by: erotes "eddie diaz is not jealous. it is entirely normal to be annoyed that his best friend is busy flirting in the middle of a crisis. obviously." word count: 7k important tags: 911 lone star characters, oblivous!eddie diaz, getting together counting pulses by: tinyydancerr "eddie diaz’s life is going great. he’s in therapy, he’s got a great girlfriend, a great kid, his friend is getting married to the woman of his dreams, and his best friend just came out to him. now his best friend is dating their new friend. things are going great. he promises." word count: 63k important tags: buck/tommy, eddie diaz has ocd, catholic guilt, pining, buckley-diaz family, co-parenting, slow burn hey now, hey now by: fallingthorns "after returning to the 118, eddie becomes a full-time paramedic and ravi becomes buck's partner. eddie absolutely doesn't feel anything about that, not at all." word count: 10k important tags: 5+1 things, fluff, pining, humour, getting together, love confessions i used to call you my best friend (way back before you were my everything) by: snowyroads "in which eddie is so in love with his best friend but that’s totally normal. oh, and hen’s tired of his shit." word count: 5.3k important tags: sexuality crisis, pining, fluff, getting together, sexual tension my heart aches with love for you by: farfromthstars "eddie and marisol run into buck and tommy on a date. eddie is not jealous." word count: 1.7k important tags: feelings realisation, pre-relationship, pining advice wanted by: cairparavels "eddie diaz takes to reddit to figure out why he hates his best friend’s new boyfriend so much." word count: 8k important tags: social media, reddit, misunderstandings, tommy kinard bashing, idiots in love, fluff, angst, humour, mutual pining, getting together good luck, babe by: hattalove "sometimes, when you've had a bad week, all you want is a romantic evening out with your wife over terrible pizza, and what you get instead is some kind of intricate gay ritual happening two tables away from you." word count: 2.1k important tags: outsider pov, social media, twitter you're the one by: smilingbuckley "chimney pretends to be buck’s boyfriend to get a guy to back off. eddie doesn't like it." word count: 2.5k important tags: crack, fake dating, platonic kissing, pre-relationship, first kiss, love confessions, fluff, angst tryna find my way back to you (cause i'm needing a little bit of love) by: mumucow_xD "when buck joins the 126 team for a whole month and eddie didn't expect it to awake something in him" word count: 45k important tags: whump, minor angst, feelings realisation, drunken confessions pining from the passenger seat by: orphan_account "eddie pines from the passenger seat" word count: 5.4k important tags: pining, soft!buddie, getting together, first kiss baby i can ease the ache (let me give your heart a break) by: youdrewstarsaroundmyscars118 "buck wants to date natalia, eddie wants to die, chimney and maddie are very good at motivational speeches and buck is not as oblivious as people make him out to be." word count: 4.6k important tags: possessive!eddie diaz, first kiss, love confessions, getting together plus or minus by: elvensorceress "taylor is offered a job across the country and asks buck to go with her. buck has to figure out if he wants to start over or if he has a reason to stay right where he is." word count: 10k important tags: idiots in love, oblivious, getting together, soft!buddie, love confessions, mutual pining waiting on a distant feeling by: justhockey "five times eddie thought he was homophobic, and the one time he realised he was just jealous." word count: 5.9k important tags: 5+1 things, idiots in love, getting together, oblivious!eddie diaz, mutual pining, fluff, angst

[do-androids-dream-ao3acc]

I was going into the BuckTommy AO3 tag again, this time not to find out about whump, but about fix-its. So, you wanna come along?

Right now, nominally, we got 5,589 works tagged Evan "Buck" Buckley/Tommy Kinard. I don't count them all as genuine, because we all know what happened, so minus the tag Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, which are currently 860, that leaves us with 4,729 works. Also, if you want to filter, some of the fics hide it a bit better by using the Buck/Tommy tag, but also things like Pre-Relationship Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz or Pre-Buddie. I found 40 fic in total using these tags, which would leave us at 4,689 works. There are also some minor tags you might want to filter if you're picky, like Eddie Diaz and Evan "Buck" Buckley are family, Eddie Diaz Loves Evan "Buck" Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley Loves Eddie Diaz, Tommy Kinard Bashing (which makes our numbers -10!) and lots more. Look out for those if you're trying to get the real deal.

Let's say we're not that super picky and leave it at 4,729 works. 225 of those use the tag "fix-it". Now, people have of course used the tag since April, simply to do some episode fix-its, so it basically doesn't tell us much. Therefore, I scrolled up to November, which counts for minus 29 fics that were done before the on-screen breakup. The majority of fix-it fics, currently 196, were done ONLY in November. Not bad at all! 81 of those are rated T, 80 are G. Explicit and mature are 28 resp. 24 of them. 12 are not rated at all, they seem quite normal to me, but just be aware.

All in all, I think our little community has found a way to cope. And this is only AO3, and I know people have written break-up / make-up fics for BuckTommy way before November. Those should be interesting to compare! (I've not read one, I'm afraid)

Shout out to all of you (and me, hehe) for all your work!

[ailesswhumptober]

Badge pickup time!!!

If you are legible for any of the badges, feel free to fill out this form and the mods will hand deliver your shiny little badges which you can display on your blog, your AO3, or just keep them to yourself to look at! Every badge was designed and drawn by our beloved mod @radios-arcade just for you guys.

Full list of the badges can be found here or below the cut, in case you're unsure which ones you've earned.

Total Achievement: completing every day of whumptober! Can be done with a mix of alt and 'true' prompts. It doesn't matter how many pieces you've done, as long as you've filled 31 prompts from 31 different days.

Total Achievement Plus: Completing every day of whumptober + alts. Unlike Total Achievement, this means completing a prompt from every day of the true list, PLUS every alt prompt. Difficulty: high. Reward: a little badge!

It Takes A Village: For collaborating with one or more friends/mutuals during the run of your AI-less Whumptober projects.

Homebrew Suffering: For those that make exclusively OC whump, nothing else.

Culture Connaisseur: For creators who whump in over five different fandoms. OCs can be included as a separate fandom, but all OCs will be collectively counted as 'one' different fandom per person.

Weekday Warrior: Warrior of the weekday. For our people who only do the prompt of one day a week for the whole month. For example, only doing Tuesday prompts.

Favorite Punching Bag: A special badge for those that whump one character and one only the whole month. You chose favorites <3

One is Just Enough: For those that only completed one prompt for the entire month. You deserve flowers too.

[3-2-whump]

It's Not Over, Is It?

Dear Readers,

By the time you read this, the Eternal series will be over. Thank you so much for sticking around and seeing this crazy ride through to the end, and enjoying my baby that I have worked on dedicatedly for more than a year and a half (not counting the previous attempts which stretch back all the way to high school) ❤️ you all have been amazing and I have loved loved LOVED hearing from each and every one of you as you went through Eternal with me.

Of course, just because it’s over, doesn't mean I'll be done with this story forever!

I have a sequel in the works that I've been steadily slogging through for several months now, consulting my ever-amazing beta readers @whumped-by-glitter and @generic-whumperz as well as other notables of the whump community. I'm not sure yet when that's going to start, but probably expect an Eternal Sequel sometime in the spring of next year. And if you want to be on the tag list or not, please let me know. I will say the sequel will be less of the whump, more of the whump aftermath as we focus nearly entirely on a recovery arc, so if that's not your thing, I totally get it if you'd like to be taken off the tag list for the sequel. (Otherwise I’m gonna use the same tag list I used for Eternal.)

Sequel aside, I will also be writing and/or drawing more backstories, drabbles, and tidbits within this story between that time, just because my brain has not totally closed the door on this part of the story. For those extra bits, I'll keep the tag list the same.

So as you see, it is far from over! Hope to hear from you soon!

Le Tag List: @kabie-whump @rainydaywhump @whumped-by-glitter @skittles-the-whumpee @generic-whumperz

@bamber344 @there-will-always-be-blood @morning-star-whump @a-la-whump @watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees

@defire

[befuddled-calico-whump]

thoughts on villain whump?

I absolutely love villain whump. When a character has done truly terrible things and thinks they deserve all the hurt and the torment they get, but someone, sometimes even a total stranger, still insists that 'no one deserves this' and tries to help them? Hhhhhhhhhh

Or maybe, even with all of their crimes, the villain doesn't believe they deserve the pain they're put through. They acknowledge their whumper is taking things too far, but what can they do about it? Who would help them?

Villain whump can be hard to write. In my opinion, villain whump should meet at least one of the following criteria:

1. Whumpee is directly antagonistic to the main characters; getting in the way of their goals or deliberately sabotaging or trying to hurt them.

What makes this so good: whumpee struggling with immense guilt brought on by being helped by someone they've hurt in the past; Enemies-to-Friends; conflicting morals/goals; gut-wrenching epiphanies of "what have I done?"; small, whispered "you shouldn't have saved me"s

2. Whumpee is a villain by societal standards: caretaker/other characters wouldn't necessarily be wrong for leaving the villain or turning them in for the sake of their own safety.

What makes this so good: whumpee unable to turn anywhere for help; whumpee actively on the run from police/other law enforcement; despair when the public seems to revel in their pain; actions being misinterpreted even when they try to do the right thing; quiet "why did you save me"s and "don't you realize who I am"s

3. Whumpee's morals are skewed in some way. (ie. they've hurt people for selfish reasons and have no regrets.)

What makes this so good: conflicted caretakers; warring morality; "why would you do that"s and "you should've left me if you know what's good for you"s; complicated recoveries and relationships; insistent "you didn't deserve it"s;

As for my own characters, I don't think I have any whumpees who fit the "innocent victim" mold. I definitely prefer writing characters with complicated pasts, values, and morals, because I enjoy how it colors their perspectives. (Not that there's anything wrong with purely innocent whumpees, and I've definitely seen plenty that I loved as characters, I just don't write many of them)

That being said, Cerus is my only "true villain" whumpee (aka, a character who fits all three of my personal criteria). Technically Uriah counts, but he didn't start out with whumpee intentions sooo

[dangerpronebuddie]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @tizniz thank you darling 🥰🩵

How many works do you have on ao3?

17! Soon to be 18 (hopefully).

What's your total ao3 word count?

78,569 words

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently 9-1-1 and previously one or two chapters on a Sherlock fic my sibling started YEARS ago.

Top 5 fics by kudos:

1. Lost Control And Rang Your Bell

2. To The Core (I Love You)

3. What Breathing Feels Like

4. Baby, I'm Never Gonna Leave You

5. Our Shoulders Touch, There's A Moment

Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I try to get every single one 🥰

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Yet to be published 😉. Published though, probably Baby, I'm Never Gonna Leave You. It's not angsty per se, it's more ominous.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I try for happy endings always (it's the Jane Austen in me), but I'd say the fic with the happiest ending would be The Pain Is UnBEARable. Friends to fiances 😁!

Do you get hate on fics?

Once? I really don't know if it was hate or just frustration? I mean, it was an open ending so just... ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ sorry?

Do you write smut?

I'm trying! I posted my first one last week 😁: And Every New Boy That You Meet (He Doesn't Know The Real Surprise) (part 2 is in progress)

Craziest crossover?

Haven't written any.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

God, I hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think so?

Have you co-written a fic before?

Once. The Sherlock one my sibling wrote. They put me as co-author but the majority is theirs.

All time favorite ship?

Buddie! They have altered my brain chemistry.

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

There's a wip I keep going back to that I have a love/hate relationship with. The scenes and the lines and the descriptions are some of the best I think I've ever written. But the premise is iffy at best. We'll see. If I can get a solid enough plot and if Buck gives me an explanation for what the hell he does in that fic, I might finish it.

What are your writing strengths?

Hmmm... I've been told a lot of my fics feel like episodes and the characters' voices are pretty good. So I guess the pacing of my fics? (Which shocks me because I really suck at pacing my original works).

What are your writing weaknesses?

Description. I just don't do the long and beautiful descriptions or the super detailed whump scenes very well. It takes practice, but it seems to be a talent I just don't have.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I like it, but I don't do it very much. I don't want people to tell me I'm an idiot for getting something wrong.

First fandom you wrote in?

Sherlock.

Favorite fic you've written?

My beloved Hildy fic. I treasure it. It freaking flopped but it is my baby. I love the entire Danger Prone Diaz series so far, but They Say She's Gone To Far (This Time) was so much fun.

Tags: @lover-of-mine @monsterrae1 @loveyouanyway @steadfastsaturnsrings @ronordmann @daffi-990 @wikiangela @thekristen999 @bidisasterevankinard @kitteneddiediaz @actuallyitsellie @hippolotamus @diazsdimples @exhuastedpigeon @spagheddiediaz @theotherbuckley @wildlife4life @fortheloveofbuddie and anyone else who wants to! 🥰🩷 (if I missed you I'm sorry)

[rosieblogstuff]

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

44 😲 in my main AO3 account. 2 others in my older account = 46!

I didn't realize I had that many things!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

270,883

3. What fandoms do you write for?

All 44 of those works in my main AO3 are MacGyver 2016. One is a crossover with The Rookie. The other two at Star Trek TOS and Star Wars fics.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Table + Flashlight + IEDs

Mac + (Wilderness + Training + Survival) + Jack

Lost Causes

Lake + Stick + Fever

4 Times the LAPD Didn’t Pull Jack Over + 1 Time They Did 

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to! I often respond to a chapter's comments when I post the next chapter of a longfic. And sometimes I just space on it and respond a year later when I notice I failed to respond.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh definitely my X-ray + Penny flashfic, Bad Penny. Most of the comments are variations on HOW DARE YOU!!!

There are a couple other flashfics with pretty ambiguous endings, too.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That's a hard one. Most of my fics have a happy or at least comforty ending. Maybe... uhh.... Electricity + Combustion ? which I literally labeled "whump with a fluffy ending". I also have two Jack Lives fics so that's always a happy situation at the end...

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven't. A few weird comments but I mostly scratch my head and ignore them. Anybody who hates on my fics will be getting a very long and nasty reply, followed by their comment being deleted.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope, no smutty fanfics here. I did have a romance I posted for another fandom awhile back (and never finished), and I've written fade-to-black stuff in my orig fic novels.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Just one! My Macgyver 2016+The Rookie cops-vs-spies crossover, in which some LAPD officers keep coming across a black GTO involved in shenangains around LA: 4 Times the LAPD Didn’t Pull Jack Over + 1 Time They Did

It's probably the funniest thing I've ever written, and the ending is one of my very favorites. Also possibly the only gen fic ever posted in The Rookie fandom, although I don't look over there much.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes. Somebody stole all my completed fics from FF.net last year. There was a big Tumblr post about some site full of stolen fics, and sure enough, there mine were. I asked to have them remove, got not reply. I haven't posted anything to FF.net since then.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I'm aware of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, but not for a long time. I used to frequently co-write fics in my first fandom.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I'm going to go with Washington State Ferry M/V Wenatchee. Who doesn't love a good ferry boat? It's an irconic style, fun if you're walking on, handy if you need to drive on, saves you hours of driving around Puget Sound by land. Also just a very nice-looking ship.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Ugh, wow. I have a couple dozen things I kinda like but might never finish. My favorite, and least likely because I've made the least progress on it, is a MacGyver fic about Patti having plotted out her revenge better, and tring to fuck over the team by having listed Jack as her replacement... which of course gives him access to high-level secrets like Oversight's identity. Much drama ensues.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Ramping a story up. Characters. Make a story fully story-shaped.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Endings. 😫

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Hmmm I don't think I've ever needed to. Like most things in writing, I'm not against it in theory, but it can be done well or badly.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Anne McCaffrey's Pern, back in the paper fanzine days. Prior to joining AO3 in like 2019, I had 0 fanfics posted on the internet but a few in zines listed on Ebay. 😂

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

This is IMPOSSIBLE to answer. I could answer it differently every day for the next couple weeks. Anything I already mentions plus a couple more!

[comfortlesshurt]

October 2024 Plans!

Now feels like a great time to say wow, I really didn't plan for this burst of inspiration from back in... June? to go on this long. Anyway, I'm here to say it is still here. Still Voltron, still primarily Keith. Still really stuck on that series idea.

I thought editing was going to go well last month, but I got started and was not feeling it. So now it's more of a "when it gets done" goal. To hold myself accountable, I'm still gonna include the remaining list of fics to be edited on these monthly goal posts. At least I'll have to look the work I'm avoiding directly in the eye on a regular basis as I procrastinate by writing.

General goals:

Newly published WC: 11,928/3,000

Have VLD WC surpass Spider-Man: 63,314/100,258

2024 total published WC: 54,677/50,000

LTS(LTFH):

If you didn't see my quick lil post about it, I'm getting burned out on this! So I'm giving myself a month off. I'm allowed to add to these fics if I feel like it, but there is no daily or monthly word count goal for October.

Fic 4: work on figuring out the timeline

All fics: use the downtime this month to work on chapter titles & flesh out outlines

Change the whole damn series name this late into drafting

Oneshots:

Bingo fic (I promised this AGES AGO, so this has GOT to be the month I finally deliver istg)

Oneshots or ficlets, whatever this month's inspiration tells me to do

Editing:

Flu: title change, style update

on the run: deadass don't remember this one, so we'll see

5 Times Lance Doesn't Matter +1 Time He Finally Does

Smiling 'cause you're used to it (a house that's always haunted)

Chemicals, chemicals in my brain (where'd you go, where'd you go anyway?)

Nowhere to call home (so I'll pack and run away)

5 Times Peter Struggled with Spider Metabolism, +1 Time Tony Helped: possible style update

Whump Bingo: major edit--these were barely edited in the first place, oops

Anywhere but Here: style update

Sick Days

Take the worst situation (make a worse situation)

We are the reckless (we are the wild youth)

Cocktails and Consequences: content edit since I barely drank before I wrote this and didn't research alcohol at all

Sickdays 5.0 Day 7: Temperature: title

See me here (meet me here)

And it hits between the eyes on this side

Sickdays 2.0 Day 2 & 5: Sick at a Party & Gently Tinged with Red: title, brainstorm for a closing chapter

Sickdays Day 5: Rapid Onset: title

Impressions

Sickdays 4.0 Day 1: The Oblivious Partner: title

Sickdays 4.0 Day 7: Chain Reaction: title

Sickdays 5.0 Day 6: Public Illness: title

I've got you stuck on my mind (and it's driving me crazy)

Days locked in a haze (trying to forget you)

Sickdays Day 6: Public Illness: title

I want to know who you are (I want to know who you were)

Will you stay with me for another day? (I don't want to be alone in this state)

I'm keeping you at bay (and I'm lonely)

Sickdays 5.0 Day 3: Caretaking Focus: title

Weightless (only wait for a fall)

Hiding It

I feel strange

Bullies and Bailing: possible content edit because I just don't like this one at all

Made a Mess

Season Three

Oh god

I'm not saying I told you so...

Sickdays 5.0 Day 4: Not the Norm: title and possible content edit because I HATE this fic with a burning passion

Accident

Don't ruin this

Rapid Onset

No Right Side: content edit because I don't like how this came out

Frostbite

Happily Ever After

Wes

Touch of the skin brings trembles and shivers

Favorite Outfit

Sleepless folks watching light grow (through their early morning windows)

Origins

Ember

Peace

Road Trip

+2 anon works

Longer term:

October 2024 - light month! doing whatever I feel like, but probably some oneshots or ficlets.

November 2024 - unofficial NaNoWriMo (fuck AI).

December 2024 - finish rough draft for LTS(LTFH) fics 1 & 2.

January 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 1 & 2 major content/continuity edit. Technical edit for fic 1 & begin posting depending on how long edits take.

February 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 3 (drafting) & 4 (outline and early drafting).

March 2025 - LTS(LTFH) fic 3 & 4 drafting.

[atotalpitch]

Ohhh I have a headcanon question (...again, lol). If the Bellas were to read fanfiction, what would be their go-to tag be?? (eg. found family, enemies to lovers, hurt/no comfort etc)

ooo i like this one! ty for asking (once again /pos) . this basically turned into a list of every au to exist but. whatever. they like aus okay.

Beca: tbh i feel like she would intentionally find the worst (i, by no means, intend to offend anyone with that) smut fics and laugh at them. on the other hand, her inner teen angst would probably take over and she'd read awfully angsty stuff. like Whump / dd:dne level shit. but also found family fluff?? depends on the day. her top tags are probably Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Enemies to Lovers (even though she'd never admit to any of them willingly)

Chloe: Fake Dating AU (with no further explanation, sorry). mostly she doesn't necessarily search for specific tags, just scrolls through an entire fandom/ship/character tag and reads whatever's interesting enough. deep deep down she does have a thing for Vampire AUs. lord knows why. also maybe kinda Slowburn?? she absolutely will sit down and read fifty chapters of insanely gut wrenching heart break and then sob over it for days even if it has a happy ending. Aubrey: Canon Divergent AU. or just AUs in general (childhood friends, soulmates.. yk whatever there is) i think. she likes to see authors put their own twists into what actually happened. also maybe because her favourite ships and characters always get ruined by whoever's behind the actual media,,, but that's like. totally unrelated. Stacie: High School AU. do you guys see the vision here?? because i don't know how to explain it in coherent words. but she's all for the teen drama. (later in life) on very random occasions she also reads Family Fluff because it reminds her of Bella and she loves Bella. Amy: she finds the most disturbing, explicit tags known to mankind. Improper Use Of Eyesocket? Creating a New Hole? Watersports? yeah. those. and worse. nobody knows how she's even able to read them. Emily: Found Family, Fluff, Light Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort (which she often mistakes for hurt/no comfort and regrets it for months after). she LOVES fluff and all the mushy gushy stuff. but also kinda similarly to Chloe, she can get lost in an intense Slowburn for a while. and cry about it after she finishes. Flo: she absolutely reads Smut. dirty mf. if not smut then probably Found Family as well (seems to be a common theme with them all). Firefighter AUs are also high up on her list for some reason?? i mean i don't blame her Cynthia Rose: i feel like if i went with how her character is (sadly) portrayed in the movies, then Lesbian Sex would be the obvious answer. but i feel like she'd be more of a Marriage / Wedding kinda girl. she's in love with the idea of making a huge deal out of it to show everyone how much you care about someone and spending your life with them. Lilly: can she read?? does she know the concept of fanfiction??? questions that will forever go unanswered. no, but seriously though she'd read the most odd-yet-normal shit (eg. Fluff with a side of Murder) Ashley: Childhood Friends to Lovers, i don't know how to elaborate further. she just gives off that vibe. if we go deeper into her search history though there are some very intense Hurt/Comfort fics from her early to late teens Jessica: she's absolutely one of those crazy readers who will love the most desperate Whump fics ever on one day, then completely flip to Tooth Rotting Fluff on the other. it very much depends on her mood, mental wellbeing and whether she's angry at the world or not. most of the time not. so she just reads Fluff like 24/7, not that she'd tell anyone. (except Ashley, but that doesn't even count) this was kind of a difficult one because i blacked out the second i tried to think about what tags are out there, but i hope it was up to expectations 🫡

[rollerskatinglizard]

20 questions for fan creators

Thanks for tagging me, @rhea314!

How many works do you have on ao3? 112 fics!

What’s your total Ao3 word count? 1,360,000, holy smokes.

What fandoms do you create for? Motorcity and Homestuck!

Top 5 Works by Kudos: Top fic is Diamonds for Princes, then comes Heredity and Blackmail (even though I didn't finish it), What it takes to satisfy a Turk, shadows spreading where you stand, and Chilton 2.0.

Do you respond to comments? All except for cowritten fics sometimes! All the rest, I may answer two years late but I WILL RESPOND!!

What is the work you’ve made with the angstiest ending? Probably the first of my whump shortfics! Here's to major character death, babyyyy

What’s the work you’ve made with the happiest ending? I try to write most of my fics with happy endings, but honestly I have no idea which one is the happy-EST. Maybe Shadows spreading where you stand? Or In the Lost Age Where the Jewels Hide!

Do you get hate on your works? Nope!

Do you create smut? Hell yes I do! Happy pornographer here.

Craziest crossover? I'm pretty sure the only crossover that might be termed "crazy" is Taking the Helm, with Motorcity characters in a Homestuck setting (as trolls).

Have you ever had a work stolen? Not that I'm aware of, fortunately.

Have you ever had a work inspired by your works? Yes!! A number of awesome people have drawn art from my fics or made podfics of them, and there've been one or two inspired fics. <3

Have you co-recorded/co-written/co-vidded before? I have three wonderful cowriters who I click very well with! Cowriting is a very different process from writing alone, and I enjoy it a lot.

All time favorite ship? Right now, Mike Chilton/Chuck.

What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? Honestly I'm beset with doubt about many of my wips at all times... ToT Maybe my (non)soulmates fic.

What are your podficcing/writing/vidding strengths? I'm getting better at humor! My action scenes are fairly gripping, when I bother to write one, and my porn is hot or cute or both.

What are your podficcing/writing/vidding weaknesses? I almost never describe settings, I don't vary my sentence structure or paragraph beginnings enough, my fics tend to be light on plot, and my writing is neither lyrical nor vivid and visceral. It's, like... workmanlike. It gets the job done, that's it.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language? Depends! If it's just a brief bit in a fic, totally, go for it, but if there are long chunks written in a different language (one I undoubtedly don't speak), that irritates me for multiple reasons. (I found Lolita's narrator incredibly irritating and full of himself for his habit of constantly dropping in long quotes in other languages.) If you're doing it because that's the language they'd be speaking, but your POV character doesn't understand, you can convey the annoyance of that just as well with skillful writing, and if the POV does understand... just translate.

First fandom you podficced/wrote in/vidded? Oh man, an age ago I started and didn't finish a number of Slayers fics, and then Gundam Wing.

Favorite work you’ve made? I... I can't pick just one! I still adore my naga fic hold you down until you're amazed, and Ace Up the Sleeve, and my (second) werewolf gangbang fic A Gregarious Species, and then there's my king/knight fic All Manner of Indignities...

No, wait. My fav fic of all is the short one where the Burners end up messing with the Duke: Spite, that great motivator. XD Even now, it makes me giggle.

Uhhh I tag @aishitara and @aspenonthecoast, and anyone else if you're around and feel like it!

[buddierecs]

5+1 things buddie fics

all mature rating!!! make sure to kudos/comment on these amazing works :)

a thousand ways to say i hate you by: morganofthefairies "five times eddie buys taylor fuck-you flowers, and one time he doesn't need to." word count: 8k important tags: language of flowers, taylor kelly, ana flores, awkward dates, double dates, jealous!eddie diaz, petty!eddie diaz, pining 5 times buck wears eddie's clothes (+1 time eddie wears buck's) by: coupe_de_foudre “is that my hoodie?” “i was cold.” he states, as though he didn’t totally have to go into eddie’s bedroom and dig through his closet just to get a hoodie. “it’s soft.” buck adds, bringing the material of the hood up to stroke along his cheek." word count: 4k important tags: pining, developing relationship, domestic fluff, first kiss, implied sexual content, making out, friends to lovers, sharing clothes maybe love won't let you down by: siblysleaves "five times eddie watches buck leave, and the one time he goes after him" word count: 15k important tags: mutual pining, angst with a happy ending, friends to lovers, getting together, love confessions with a smile and some hope by: iriswests "five times buck wakes up before eddie, and one time eddie wakes up before buck" word count: 6.5k important tags: established relationship, domestic fluff no one has to know what we do by: youdrewstarsaroundmyscars118 "five times the firefam find out about buck and eddie accidentally and one time it’s on purpose." word count: 4.1k important tags: secret relationship, relationship reveal, family feels do you ever long for true love from me by: smilingbuckley "5 times eddie gives buck clothes to borrow + 1 time he takes them off." word count: 5.3k important tags: whump, sharing clothes, hurt!evan buckley, sick!evan buckley, pre-relationship, first kiss, fluff, hurt/comfort, implied sexual content baby, you look happier (you do) by: frxm_theashes "five times eddie sees buck happy with someone else, and one time he realizes that buck is happy with him (and that, maybe, eddie is allowed to be happy with buck too). word count: 19k important tags: temporary buck/tommy, jealous!eddie diaz, catholic guilt, internalised homophobia, pining, getting together, making out what if i fall in love backward? by: redridingstiles "five times buck and eddie saved each other by pretending to be together and the one time christopher helps" word count: 9.8k important tags: fake dating, best friends, christopher diaz is a national treasure, protective!evan buckley, teasing, homophobia this is for my mother by: chika_lohaine "5 times buck was christopher's mom and the one time he wasn't." word count: 29k important tags: emotional hurt/comfort, grief/mourning, evan buckley acting as christoper diaz's parent, ableism, panic attacks, pining

platonic co-parents don't kiss like we do by: thelikesofus "5 times other people see buck and eddie kiss + 1 time they really mean it." word count: 7.1k important tags: kissing, forehead kisses, pov outsider, first kiss, getting together, fluff, supportive team, pda, protective!evan buckley got nothing but love for you (fall more in love everyday) by: smilingbuckley "5 times buck and eddie are almost caught + 1 time they are" word count: 6k important tags: secret relationship, hiding, mild sexual content, first dates, dorks in love, light angst, emotional hurt/comfort

[staydandy]

Island (2022-2023) - 아일랜드 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : Evil took its first step to destroy the world. On the mysterious Jeju Island, Ban, a mix of human and monster; Won Mi Ho, the one in the center of fate; and Johan, the one who exercises God's power, come together. A strange, yet captivating, action-packed exorcism fantasy in which they fight evil, share the fate of saving the world, and defy their own. (P1: MDL, P2: MDL)

Whumpee : Ban/Van played by Kim Nam Gil (left) • Johan / Kang Chan Hyuk played by Cha Eun Woo (right)

Country : 🇰🇷 South Korea Genres : Action, Thriller, Horror, Fantasy

Notes : This is a Full Whump List for both Parts 1 & 2 (it was seriously wholly unnecessary for them to split it into 2 parts) • Adapted from the webtoon "Island" (아일랜드) written by Yoon In Wan (윤인완) and illustrated by Yang Kyung Il (양경일). • Ban is almost an immortal being - he has the ability to self-heal. I did not include moments when Ban heals immediately & doesn't show pain; like it didn't even remotely bother him .. I don't really count stuff like that as whump ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Episodes on List : 6 Total Episodes : 12 (6 per Part)

*Spoilers below*

Part 1 : 04 : Johan is strangled … Ban is tied up, the restraints burn him … Johan is choked

05 : … continued from previous ep. ... Choked … Ban stabs his own arm

06 : Johan is thrown against a wall … Ban is hit by a fireball, choked against a wall … collapses, coughs up blood.. passes out … Johan is stabbed ( ? or rather, punched through his stomach), thrown against a wall, coughing up blood

Part 2 : 04 : Ban is in a fight, spits blood.. stabbed in the back

05 : Johan is in a fight; coughs up blood, choked … found, hanging pierced through the chest on a broken piece of steel, bleeding heavily, passes out

06 : Bandaged, on a ventilator, nightmare of being beat in the fight … Ban is stabbed … (YAS!! I've been waiting for some bad-ass Johan!! Go get 'em!) Johan, still heavily bandaged, joins the fight, gains new wounds throughout … Ban forces his way through a magical barrier that continuously hurts/burns him … stabbed through the chest … killed/destroyed by the magical barrier successfully being built … Johan now wears a hearing aid after his hearing was damaged during the fight

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump

[sissytobitch10seconds]

My Two Worlds, Colliding

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows Summary: A necessary question for Kuwei brings Jesper down a conversational path he really doesn't like, which results in him locked in a room with nothing but the guard's clothing that he stole from the Ice Court. Several years later, his pack makes it up to him. Warnings: A/B/O dynamics, estrus cycles, polyamory, implied past abuse, mental distress, Jesper Fahey whump, masturbation, smut, and implications of mpreg Word Count: 18,609 Ship(s): Jesper Fahey/Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa/Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck

Archive link!

A/N: So I want to be clear here: There is no rape or non/con in this. The angst comes from Jesper's heat mind not having what it needs because they're stranded in the middle of the ocean. That's where the angst comes from, not total bodily harm like a lot of other ABO fics. If this still isn't your thing then I totally understand but for those of you that are interested: Welcome! I hope you guys have some happy reading and love this pack just as much as I do. Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

My Two Worlds, Colliding

A Grishaverse: Six of Crows Fanfiction

A Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa/Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck/Kaz Brekker Fanfiction

By Sissytobitch10seconds

The first time that Jesper boarded the Ferolind he was the only omega on the crew.

That wasn’t really surprising seeing as they were leaving to Fjerda around the spring. While suppressants were common in Kerch, unlike places like the Wandering Isles where birth control was basically unheard of, they had adverse affects on omegas. They had been made to give the influence of pregnancy hormones on the body to try and convince either gender that had an estrus that they didn’t need to do it. There was a slightly different tincture for alphas than for omegas because the responses that their body gave to each herb was slightly different, but they basically did the same thing.

When taking suppressants, which was a requirement in the Barrel, they often made omegas sick. Barrel Bosses very rarely gave mated couples time off and it was considered bad form to have an estrus room for anything other than emergencies in gang hide outs. If an omega when into heat without a mate to defend them from other alphas or betas, then it was possible they could become pregnant or mated without their consent and that business was much too messy. The sickness made omegas sluggish and slightly queasy, so during the time that their estrus would normally be happening, they were put on easier work to make sure that they didn’t feral.

Jesper was getting his suppressants from Novyi Zem, though. He got his mail from the University District where it was stashed in a PO box by a beta that he was supposed to be making sure didn’t get hurt by the other gangs. He felt a bit bad about scamming the poor boy, but he liked being able to keep in touch with his father without having to explain everything that had happened to him. Colm would send a yearly supply of the suppressants that Jesper had used since he had first begun to have his heats at fourteen-years-old. 

The plants in the tincture that he used were only able to grow in Novyi Zem and that made them extremely expensive to ship across the seas to a tiny island nation like Kerch. The mercher wives got to have the suppressants that didn’t make them ill, but no one without a contact in the country got to have the smoother experiences when living in the Barrel.

The difference in his contraception compared to the other omegas in the Crow Club along with his relationship to Kaz made it a shoe-in that he would be along for the ride, as well as the only omega to board.

He knew everyone that they were working with, with the exception of Matthias, so he wasn’t scared. They would be able to smell the underlying estrus when it came but he knew that none of them would try to make a move on him. If they did, then Kaz would understand it he blew a hole into one or two hands.

---

The second time that Jesper boarded the Ferolind, he was one of two omegas.

They had just finished the Ice Court heist, including pushing their way through a team of Druskelle and an entire army that had their own tanks. The ship was whirling as quickly as it could away from the harbor and into the safety of neutral waters. They would be lost amongst the rolling waves and deep black of the sky, an anonymous ship full of anonymous people.

Nina was wandering towards the prow of the ship now, her eyes blown wide with the jurda parem that she had taken so that they could get through the crowd that had been threatening them. Jesper still felt guilty for not being the one to take the drug so that she could be spared that life of misery. He wondered only briefly if he should take the rest from Kuwei so that he could draw it from her body since she was so much more useful to Kaz than he was.

The thought was purged from his mind when he was reminded how useless he was. Kaz informed him that he was the one that had let it slip that they were going to be leaving Kerch and when. If he had taken the rest of the drug then he wouldn’t have been able to help Nina, he probably just would have died on the spot. There was nothing that he could do. Wylan had said it best, they didn’t need a sharpshooter for many of the jobs that they were doing.

He came to sit down on the steps that led up to the steering wheel and stared at the mast as it shook with the wind, held tight by the ropes that Specht was checking. He watched Kaz approach Kuwei, his dark eyes glancing the boy up and down. “Are we going to have to worry about you trying to seduce the crew?”

“Are you asking me if I’m going to have an estrus?” Kuwei asked, wrinkling his nose at the implication.

“Yes,” Kaz rasped. Sometimes it was hard to believe that Kaz had the same body and hormonal changes that the rest of them did. Jesper couldn’t even see in his mind’s eye overcome with want and begging to knot someone. Well, maybe he actually could. It would be less like begging and more like demanding with those tricky hands unlocking whoever he chose to spend his rut with. 

Just the thought of it made his cheeks heat up and slick dribble out from his folds. He pressed his hands to his legs and then shrank in on himself as he drove the mental images out. He stretched up into the sky so that the cool sea air could rid himself of the warmth, not that it seemed to be working very well.

“I have a permanent suppressant,” Kuwei said. He rolled up his sleeve and pointed to a scar about as long as his finger on his forearm.

“Permanent?” Kaz asked, raising his brow like he didn’t believe a word of what the boy had said.

“Yes. It’s something that my father made before he even began working on the parem. It made it easier for him to take me with him so that he could be sure that I was protected,” he explained with a small shrug. His Kerch was lilted and awkward, especially since Nina wasn’t there to translate for them. “I will not go into heat for five years or until it is removed.”

“That would be so convenient,” Jesper groaned, allowing his head to roll back so that he was staring up at the stars. His cheeks felt heated and he was beginning to get slightly sweaty, which should have been helped by the cool air around him. He shrugged off his jacket and left it next to him for only a moment before he grabbed the material between his fingers. He brushed his fingertips over the cuff a couple of times to feel the velvety texture of the garment that he had stolen. He didn’t know how he had managed to get away with it all, being both Zemini and an omega without a scentblocker, but now all he could think about was how wonderful it would be if he had the uniforms that Kaz, Wylan, and Matthias had been wearing too.

Suddenly, he felt something long and hard hit his leg. His head snapped up from where he was staring down at the silver trim on the jacket and he locked eyes with none of other than the alpha that he had just been thinking about. “Jesper,” Kaz almost snarled. His coffee-dark eyes were flickering with an emotion that Jesper was too tired to place. The adrenaline must have been wearing off, he always felt exhausted an hour or two after a firefight.

“What?” he asked, almost sleepily.

“Go downstairs and find one of the rooms. Lock yourself in and then slide the key under the door. When the time comes, we’ll let you out,” he said. He was speaking in short bursts, like he had to push the words out from between his teeth instead of explaining it like he was speaking to a child as he normally did.

“Why would I do that?” he snorted. He didn’t want to go into the berth of the ship where it would be hot and stuffy. Though the more he thought about it, a lot of the rooms also contained extra fabric meant to mend sails and some blankets in case they got cold during the night. He could find his extra clothing and then some of the blankets to bring them back up to the deck where everyone else was.

Almost as soon as that thought passed through his mind, he realized why he was being banished. “Oh,” he whimpered. “I took my suppressants before we left Ketterdam like I always do, I should be set for the season.”

Matthias walked over to him now, moving awkwardly like he wasn’t sure whether or not he belonged there. “Did they give you anything when you were processed through the prison?”

Jesper and Inej had both had to go separate ways from the others when they were being processed because they were the only two members of the crew that hadn’t been alphas. Jesper had gone with a single other omega, and then Inej had been in the group with the most people out of the three. Since they had been alone, he hadn’t thought anything of the way that he had been treated. He had nothing to compare it to and none of them had really had time to talk about how their experiences getting checked into the Ice Court had been.

“I guess so, but I thought that was something to keep us from feraling or de-mate us or something,” he explained. There were tinctures for that in Kerch, usually used by sex workers who had a customer that was too close to their estrus or thought that ownership would pass to them if they feigned a mistake.

“It was something to clear your system of all drugs that you might have taken. In Fjerda, we do not believe that anyone should stop the process of their estrus for any reason. We believe that it is a blessing from Djel and thus should always be used,” Nina explained as she drifted back over to where they were. She looked like a goddess, moving fluidly and gracefully thanks to the drug coursing through her system. They all knew that she wouldn’t be like that for long.

Her pupil-blown gaze drifted over the rest of them and then she let out a little sigh, “None of the rest of us got the reversal drug. I think that they were coming to us later in the rounds.”

“They never anticipated us making an escape,” Wylan nodded in understanding.

“I-I have to go,” Jesper mumbled as he tugged himself up onto his feet. He grasped the uniform in his hands for a moment longer before he left the heavy jacket where it was. He didn’t want to send any of the alphas into their rut and scenting it so that it no longer smelled like the guard he had stolen it from would definitely do that to them.

He ducked down into the stairs that led into the hold of the ship and headed toward the room that he had slept in when they were coming to Fjerda. He didn’t have time to go through the rest of the rooms so that he could find clothing and other such items to make a nest, he had to get locked away so that the others could be far away from him. It would be an absolute disaster if he ended up launching them all into their estrus despite their attempts to keep that from happening. It was just another way that his being there was destroying everything Kaz had so carefully worked to protect.

Jesper shut the door behind him and then locked it before he poked the key through the hole up at the top that let in fresh air. He knew when he was back in the right state of mind they would give it back to him and he would be free to leave. He heard the metal tinkle as it hit the ground, and then the shuffling of someone picking it up. He wasn’t able to smell who it was, they had to have thick clothing over their scent glands for him to not be able to pick anything up when he was already so deeply in his pre-heat.

It was a wonder that he hadn’t already gotten the urge to nest, though he supposed that was partially the fault of the grand escape that they had just made from the most secure prison in the entire world. Just the thought of the nest that he had been planning when he was back up on the deck rushed through him like the worst impulse he had ever had. Jesper had wanted to do a lot of things in his life, most of which would have been very bad for him and hurt him greatly, but this wasn’t one of them. A nest would protect and comfort him during his heat, would keep him safe from the people that had just wanted to hurt him. It would make his pack so wonderfully comfortable, enough that they may forgive him for not being a good omega for them.

He turned around and surveyed what he was going to be working with. There was a hammock strung from the top of the room like every sleeping chamber except for the captain’s quarters, which had a bed so that Kaz could get in and out of it easier. There was a massive barrel full of water so that he could stay hydrated during his heat and then a container of dried foods. They had provided him with things that would keep him alive, which made his instinctive hind brain preen.

However, there was nothing soft or even remotely made out of fabric. Part of him was aware that the preparation for his heat was last-minute, something that none of them had seen coming and thus couldn’t really prepare for, but it hurt him to know that. Did his pack not think that he could make them a good nest? Did they not want him to make them safe? None of the others were omegas, there was no one that could make a nest better than he could. It was in his nature, it was what he was supposed to do as the lowest ranking member of the pack.

His mind was becoming too swamped with the need for skin-to-skin touch for him to think about it rationally for very long. He was so hot and so uncomfortable. His smalls were already sticking to his body with the amount of slick that was dripping from his folds. The entire room was already flooded with the scent of brandy and rich brown bread, his scent.

Jesper walked over to the hammock and then began to strip out of his clothing. There was a single blanket and pillow inside, both of them containing ties that would keep them to the apparatus if they hit difficult seas. He undid the ties and then shoved the items into the places where they actually belonged before he tucked the clothing into the nest.

The smell of the beta that he had taken the uniform from back in the Ice Court was still clinging to the heavy clothing. It was wool, scratchy and uncomfortable, and it smelled like bitter melon. He didn’t like the way it smelled, it was a stranger’s scent mixed with his own. It reminded him too much of what he had done and the danger that they had just been in. He couldn’t wash them either, he had to save his water for drinking.

So instead he lumped up the clothing and then shoved it into the corner furthest away from where his head would be while he was sleeping. He got up into the hammock and laid back against it, his long legs barely fitting in the folded fabric at the other end. It felt almost like a nest, to have the soft yet sturdy material wrapped around him the way that it was. He needed the scents of the people that he loved to join in with his own, he needed to have something more to pad up the walls and make it softer. The material was almost abrasive against his skin as he began to heat with fever.

“Please,” he whimpered. He only then realized that his cunt was aching with the need for something inside of it. His legs were already sticky with his slick and his knees were beginning to chafe since they didn’t have the lubricant that everything else did.

The omega let his eyes slip shut and then ran his hands down his body to make sure that everything was there. He was remembering the way that it had felt to have Wylan touch him when they were getting their gear on properly, the callouses that he had at the tips of his fingers and along his forefinger from writing and playing instruments. None of the other alphas had touched him that way, they had never wanted to.

The thought was enough to distress him again. He didn’t want to spend his entire heat upset, but that seemed to be the way that things were turning on. Jesper let out a low breath and then led his fingers down to his dripping wet cunt. He only had the self control to run the tips of his fingers down his folds, which sent a shiver up his spine, once before he delved between them to find his opening.

The edge of his vagina ached like nothing ever had before. He was quivering, gaping and open with the need to have something inside of him. He would have settled for fingers or even the scent of someone on the little wooden dildo he had back home. He just wanted something, anything, to fill the gaping black maw that had opened up in his belly and was simply begging for the presence of another person on him.

Jesper couldn’t wait much longer after he had started playing with himself. He let out a small whimper and then dove his fingers further inside of his body so that they were buried up to the knuckle. Somehow, it still wasn’t enough. His hind brain knew that it was only him, that there wasn’t someone there to take his place and tell him how good he was, how wanted and treasured and beloved he was.

If he were any more sober, he would have laughed at the realization that he had switched from Zemini and Kaelish pet names to the Kerch ones that Wylan and Kaz were so fond of. In Novyi Zem, pet names were usually animal related. That was why his mother had called him little rabbit and he had called his first ever girlfriend ‘mare’. In Kerch, the worth of a person was associated to if they were valuable enough to be in a pack or mated to someone. It was a high compliment to be called one of those things, which was part of the reason that he was so confused about why Inej was offended at being called an investment. It was a standard dating compliment, from what Jesper had been able to pick up during his previous daliances.

His brain was too immersed in his head to really have any coherent thoughts, he was lost in the empty pleasure of fucking himself. His own fingers were long and calloused from years of farm and gunwork, nothing like what an omega’s hands should have looked like in the Kerch traditions. They reached so far inside of him that he could almost ignore that fact, though. The tip of his middle finger was pressing to the edge of his cervix the same way that the tip of a cock would if he was being bred. That idea sent a shiver through his body, a moan to his lips, and a gush of slick out from between his legs.

Quickly, his mind began to drift to the pack that he had left up on the prow of the boat. He knew that Kaz called them his Crows, but to Jesper they were his pack. They were more than a flock of birds that defended each other and whispered the secrets of the world into their leader’s ear. They were a family made through the bonds of scent and time. Right now, he desperately wanted them all to be crowded around him with their hands on his body. They would soothe the ache that he was suffering from, lull him into the pace that he craved so desperately. 

He imagined the soft way that Kaz’s hands would feel after being tucked into gloves for years and years, the places that he could reach with his delicate fingers. He imagined how Matthias would grasp him like he was something breakable and fragile instead of taller than any alpha and farm-lanky. He imagined the way that Wylan would kiss up and down his mating gland while playing with Jesper’s clit, cock buried in him but still. He iamgined the way that Nina would hold him down and mewl directly into his ear as she fucked him as hard as she wanted, playing with his orgasm using her powers through his pelvis. He imagined how Inej would hold him after all was said and done, feeding him bits of fruit and bread so that he could keep his strength up.

He had thought that the imagined fantasies would have helped quell the thirst for intimacy, for people that he couldn’t have. Instead it just reminded him that he was so dreadfully alone that he thought he might die. He didn’t even have their scents wrapped around him in his nest, there was nothing but the rough material of the hammock and the foul smell of the alpha he didn’t know in the corner.

“I’ll be good, please, please, please,” Jesper cried out before he realized what he was doing. The only reason that his pack would have withheld their scents from him if he was in heat was if he was bad, he knew that. If he was good, if he had contributed to the pack and actually made people safer, then they would have given him pieces of their clothing so that he would feel less alone when he was in the midsts of his estrus. He would have done that for them, because he loved them and they made him feel safe. Apparently, they didn’t feel the same way towards him because he was lacking in any of the comforts his mother had promised he would get when he found his own pack.

Jesper slowly pulled his fingers from his cunt and then stumbled towards the door. He had to get closer to the others, he had to smell his pack and know that they hadn’t left them. If he was truly bad then they might have abandoned him, wouldn’t they? His alphas and beta were out there, somewhere without him.

“Please! I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he nearly screamed as he tried to get his voice to carry through the door. He didn’t know where they were, he could only barely smell them. It felt like a memory instead of the remnants of them on clothing like he wanted. He needed them close to him, inside of him, taking care of him. He didn’t want to be bad, he wanted to be loved, even if he didn’t deserve it.

His tricky fingers, still slick with his own juices, moved to the door. He could feel the wood grain bending to his fingers and warping as he tried to get through. He pressed them apart so that they smoothed under his hand and shoved some of the heavy material to the side. He was closer to his alphas and beta than he had been since he had been locked in his room. He would get to them and he would prove that he could be good. He’d get all of his own nesting materials, get all of the food that they needed, absolutely everything. He would present himself to them and show that he was perfect for mating and breeding, that he would give them whatever they wanted and needed.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to focus on his task for very long. He felt so empty, so horny. It felt like he had been on the verge of an orgasm for days now and there was no hope that he would actually reach that top. He couldn’t focus on the tiny particles in the wood, on pulling them apart so that there was a big enough hole that he could escape through. His only hope was to beg until someone came back and got him.

“Please, please, please!” he whimpered. He leaned heavily against the wall while his hand closest to the door continued to drag down the wood over and over again. It was as if some feral part of his mind had decided that if he just kept at it enough, then he would be able to get through and he could do all that he hoped.

The other hand traveled down to his slicked folds. He slipped three fingers home where they belonged, buried to the last knuckle inside of his sweet cunt. He kept his palm pressed to his clit and then began to rut down against himself. There should have been another pair of hips there, a pelvis for him to grind against while a cock buried itself next to his cervix. He was also supposed to have several sets of hands all over him and a pair of teeth or two in his neck and wrist. It was all supposed to be different, this wasn’t what was his first heat with a mate-pack was supposed to look like.

It felt so wrong and awful when the cord in his belly finally snapped and he felt himself release with a massive gush of fluids. They were coating his hand up to the wrist like he had his entire hand inside of himself. He knew that even if he managed to stretch his cunt out that much that it wouldn’t soothe the ache of hurt. He needed a knot, a real knot attached to an alpha. He could make due with a beta as long as it was his sweet Inej, but he didn’t think that she wanted him.

Not when he had almost gotten her killed and not when she had already had to deal with omegas begging her for a knot. He couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, to hear him mewling into the door and crying out for her and the people that she loved. He didn’t want to hurt her, he wanted her and her heart to be close to him.

“I’ll be good, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he wailed. He was still so wound up, and not in the fun way. He had played around with other members of the college and the Dregs since he had come to Ketterdam and was no longer cousins with everyone that was around his age and reasonably nearby. He had practiced orgasm control, gone almost four hours while edging himself in front of an alpha with a leaking cock and a knot just waiting to pound him. It had left him with the best orgasm of his life. 

He had also experimented with multiple orgasms at a time, working himself over the edge at least twelve times before he was so overstimulated he felt like he was going to vomit and quivering. This was nothing like that had been. Back then, he had a couple of minutes for his beta to get their cock hard before they had started again. He had asked for it and known when it was coming, and that he would have been able to say that he wanted to stop at any point. He would have been sated if they had as well, stringy and happy and loose. This was nothing like that. He was going to remain as tightly wound as a new piece of rope until he passed out from his fever.

His entire body was so hot that he was sweating, which left him sticky. He didn’t want to be sticky. He wanted Wylan to call him a good boy while cleaning him off, kissing the hickies that Kaz had left in his wake. Then Nina and Matthias would come in with food that Inej had helped them make. He didn’t know where she would want to be in their house when they went into estrus, but he hoped she would take care of him.

None of his mates were here. It was only then that he reminded himself that they weren’t even courting him. Nina and Matthias were courting each other, as much as one could court another person while trying to break out of prison and smuggle a human across international waters, that was. Wylan and Inej had already hit it off and Jesper was half convinced that Inej and Kaz had mated and just forgotten to tell anyone. That meant that no one was courting Jesper.

He supposed that he should have already known that. No one had brought him anything soft for his nest or anything shiny to wear so that people would know who he belonged to. No one had even tried to figure out a food he liked so he could have more energy for them.

“Please, I’ll be good, I promise I can be good,” Jesper called as he collapsed against the door. It seemed almost fitting that he would start crying then, seeing as he was already coated with his own fluids. He was dripping slick down his legs as he plunged his fingers in and out of his cunt to try and simulate what it would be like to have a knot in him, satiating the need that was eating him from the inside out. Sweat rolled down his chest and back in disgusting rivulets. The only solace that he got was the cool of the wood that he was pressed against.

It felt almost poetic for his entire life, to find comfort in the very thing that was keeping him from what would really help him.

---

He didn’t know when he had fallen asleep, but he woke feeling even worse than he had when he first got into his heat. His fingers were still buried in his aching cunt and his entire body was sticky. He knew that he had had a forced cold spell, brought on when his body was too hot and exhausted to go on instead of having been knotted and filled with enough cum that he had to process it before he took more.

Jesper felt like shit internally too. He dragged himself over to the barrel of water after removing his fingers from his folds. He didn’t even bother trying to wipe them off on any of the fabric items in the room. The clothing that he had stolen from a strange, unknown alpha didn’t deserve his slick and the hammock was the closest thing that he had to a nest.

He dipped his hands down into the water and brought it to his face so that he could drink, long and languid. The water felt like heaven as it slid down his throat and quenched the thirst that his body was shaking with. He had lost so much water through the slick, sweat, and tears. He should have been given water during his cold spell, but he had slept most of the way through it.

Already, he could feel the heat beginning to return to him. It was burning just underneath his skin, waiting for the moment that it could rise to the surface and completely overwhelm him. He had to make sure that he ate and drank enough to last him through another hot spell, or else he would get heatsick. 

That wasn’t an option, even if it wasn’t really his fault.

He had hurt Inej by spilling where they were going and why, giving Pekka the ability to sabotage their ship. Then he had fucked so many little things up when they were in the Ice Court and trying to do their job. He was already burdening the whole crew by having to go through his heat when they were dealing with so many other things. He couldn’t burden them by feraling or getting heat sick, not when that usually took a month or more of careful attendance to return from.

He collapsed down next to the barrel after he had consumed enough water that his stomach felt uncomfortably full. He was barely sated on it, though, because it was cool when the rest of him was so warm. He grabbed the box of rations and then pried it open to see what had been left for him. 

There was a bag full of dried apples, sealed properly so that they wouldn’t rot. There was also a pack of ship’s biscuits wrapped in the paper that they had been purchased in. The only thing that looked remotely appetizing was the little packet of beef jerky that Specht had packed for himself.

Tears welled in his eyes as he realized that the only person who had thought to bring meat was now having to share it with the oblivious, stupid omega who couldn’t think a single hour in the future. Jesper knew that he had to eat a balanced diet when he was in his heat because otherwise he would end up getting very sick, but that didn’t change the way that he felt. He knew that Specht had known exactly what to pack for their voyage because of his time in the navy, so he knew that the jerky had come from him alone. 

He ripped open the package and then stuck the first stick of dried meat into the side of his mouth. He gnawed on it enough to get it to break and then took the chunk further into the mouth. By the time that he had shredded it enough to swallow, his jaw ached with the force of it. He forced down the entire portion of it, though, and then several of the dried apple slices. He’d had enough water that he didn’t want to risk soaking the ship’s biscuit in it until the next time that he had a cold spell.

Jesper yanked himself up from the ground and walked back over to the corner with the door. He could see the mark that he had made in the door, perfectly shaped to his palm and long fingers while being about half an inch thick. Couldn’t the others tell how badly he wanted them? They wouldn’t even have to fuck the heat out of him, they could just sit at the edge of his nest and let him know that he was safe, that he wasn’t alone.

He knew that was selfish, though. None of the alphas that he was interested in deserved an omega like him, one that didn’t know his place and could’t provide properly. He screwed everything up even when he had been directly told by the leader of his pack what he was meant to do. Jesper slowly sank down to the same place by the door and tried not to think about how sore his clit was from his first session.

By the time that his second heat wave hit, he felt sick again.

His skin felt so sensitive that he was half worried that it would begin to peel off if someone did actually touch him, but at the same time he needed the physicality of being touched more than he had ever needed something before. He could almost feel the phantom hands pulling at his arms and long, dexterous digits replacing his own fingers to fuck him to the point of an orgasm that would finally, actually leave him satiated.

No such thing came. He leaned against the door and continued to keen for the alphas and beta that he knew were just on the other side, walking around the ship in an area where he couldn’t reach. He wanted them by his side, to comfort him, and yet they were still somehow so far away from him.

---

When Jesper woke up from his second cold spell, he was somewhere else. Everything was different than it had been when he had gone to sleep. Instead of laying naked on the cool wooden floor of his room in the ship, he was resting on a table in a room he barely knew. He was also wearing a pair of pants that he hadn’t recalled even being in his room when he had passed out.

“What’s going on?” he whimpered, though he wasn’t entirely sure what language he was speaking in. His brain was so muddled with thoughts of where he was and what had happened that he couldn’t figure out what the words meant and how they felt o his tongue. He didn’t think that it mattered much anyway, not when he finally had a pair of arms wrapped around his waist.

“You’re alright, omega,” Nina’s voice was calming as she breathed it across his neck. He could feel the way that her body was quivering with the force of her withdrawals against his back.

He then realized that they were in the sick room, the same place that he had gotten Inej stranded in when their entire journey began. The walls were barren, as they were in the rest of the ship, and they were on a flat table that was bolted to the floor so that it wouldn’t rock with the waves. Nina was laying with her back against the wall and both of her arms wrapped around Jesper to keep him close to her, her nose tucked into the crook of his neck where his mating gland was. She smelled sick, the maple syrup and powdered sugar of her scent souring with the illness.

The sickness of an alpha was one way that could quell an omega’s heat no matter how far they had been into an estrus. If the person that they were meant to spend that time with took ill, then it was expected that it wasn’t a good time to conceive and carry a child so the body would begin to drown out the hormones it would have otherwise been pumping out. It only took Jesper a moment to realize that was why he was with Nina in the first place. They were trying to drown out his heat by having him be around a sick alpha, because none of them actually wanted to deal with him when he was like that.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly, wiggling in her arms. She increased the intensity of the hold that she had on his waist, forcing him to still. He let out a little whimper when he picked up on the sudden spike in the sourness of her scent, “Alpha.”

She then suddenly pushed him to the side and bent over the edge of the table, vomiting into the bucket that was next to it. There was already a swirling mess of yellow-green bile in the bottom, which meant that she had been sick for a lot longer than Jesper had been in his cold spell.

Despite his heat subsiding for the present time because of his proximity to a sick alpha, he was still stuck in that hind-brain that was all base instinct and no rational thought. He leaned forward and brushed his hand over her neck so that he could old back her hair while she heaved. He began to purr softly, the sound emitting low and resonate from his chest so that it filled the entire cabin with the soothing tones. He had never really taken care of someone when they were sick, but he had seen what his mother had done when his father had overworked himself in their fields.

He had apparently done something wrong because Nina wasn’t responding to him like his father had responded to his mother. Jesper was brushing his hands over her skin to soothe the fever burrowed under there, the same thing he had wanted her to do to him only a couple hours prior. As soon as she had finished gagging, she turned to him with a feral panic and then growled.

Jesper skittered quickly off the edge of the table so that he was standing in the center of the room. He whimpered and then crooned for her to show that he didn’t want to do her any harm, he was calling for love and affection.

She let out a low huff and then collapsed down onto the bed. It only took a moment more before the door open and Matthias entered. He had a pale white cloth around his mouth and nose so that he wouldn’t be able to smell Jesper. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he whimpered, scared that the courting partner of the alpha that he had just tried to soothe was going to hurt him somehow.

“Come,” Matthias said shortly. One of his large hands wrapped around Jesper’s arm just hard enough that he couldn’t squirm away and escape. They walked through the halls of the ship again until Jesper was once again stuck in the room he had been in before.

“I don’t want to go in there, please don’t make me,” he was nearly begging. The further away he got from Nina, the more he could feel the slick beginning to well in his folds and leak out into the pants that they had dressed him in. “Just let me stay in the same room as Nina, I promise that I won’t hurt her or even touch her. I can-I can just be out in the hall, I don’t want to be alone again.”

For a split second, only a flash of a moment, Jespre swore that the alpha was going to give into him. He would be around part of his pack and it would soothe the ache of his heat so that he could have some respite from the emptiness. He wouldn’t be full, but he wouldn’t be stranded in the void of nothingness. Then Matthias changed back to the sure footed solider that Jesper had come to know and love. That felt like the biggest betrayal that the alpha could have managed, changing into the very thing that Jesper wanted to remove what would help him.

 “This is for your own good,” the alpha said as he guided Jesper through the door and then sat him down. He slid the door shut the wrong way and then the sound of metal against metal sounded through the hallway. The omega then realized that they had gotten him out of his by taking the hinges off his door so that they could get to him without the key. That meant that if they really wanted him, then there was a way that they could get to him.

His pack didn’t want him, they didn’t want him to nest and they didn’t want him to be comfortable. They valued Nina over him, over the emptiness and panic that was overwhelming him.

Jesper sank down to the ground so that his forehead was pressed to the edge of the door, trying to smell at least a tiny bit of the heavy, fresh pine scent that was rolling off Matthias. The tears streaking down his face didn’t last nearly as long as the full-chested sobs because he was so dehydrated that his body couldn’t make any more for him to cry. The only thing that he could create was sorrow, deep and overwhelming.

---

Jesper’s heat lasted three more cycles of hot-and-cold. It was completely unbearable and by the time that he finally came out of it, feeling weak and unsteady on his feet, he was so sore that he wanted to cry again. His cunt felt like he had spent the last several days soaking wet from the rain but he knew that it was all from his own slick. His entire body was sticky with fluids and his stomach literally ached with the need for food, like it had started digesting itself.

He slowly rose to his feet and then stumbled over to the barrel in the corner. He had only managed to drink about half of it, which wasn’t as much water as he should have taken in given that he had also been crying. He dipped his hands in and drank long and slow so that he could staunch the hunger without filling up. When he had taken his fill, he began to run wet hands over his body to remove the dried sweat and slick from his back and between his legs.

He had already gone through the food that had been left for him. During his third cold spell he had been so miserable that he hadn’t wanted to eat. He had tricked himself into consuming something, at the very least, that he had taken a ship’s biscuit and broken it on the floor. He had then put a piece into his mouth and let it turn to mush before it had slipped down his throat without him noticing. He had done that with at least three of the tasteless crackers so that he could keep his strength up.

Now he was coherent enough to know that he had to actually eat something, but he had no appetite and just wanted to sleep for longer. That wasn’t an option, not when they weren’t quite done with the job that they were on and he had to apologize for what he had done.

Guilt and shame burned together in Jesper’s gut as he began to search for some bit of clothing from the Druskelle uniform that he could wear until he got to the room that had been his before his heat. He had burdened the people that he was traveling with and embarrassed himself horribly. He had cried out for Kaz and Inej, whom he had hurt with his loose lips. He had asked for Nina and Matthias when they were both suffering from horrible physical and mental trauma. He had asked for Wylan when the two of them barely knew each other, when Wylan could have any pretty omega that he wanted in the class that he belonged in. 

No one had come from him and when they had, it had been to try and help Nina through the worst of her sickness. The sickness that she was suffering through because Jesper had been too cowardly to take the parem himself and save the one useful Grisha that they were traveling with.

“Hello?” Jesper called when he walked over to the door. He had put on the trousers, leaving his smalls behind, of the Druskelle uniform. He had also buttoned the white shirt up so that the marks he had left with his own nails on his chest were hidden from view.

“Jesper?” Inej’s voice cut through the mess of his head and settled him down. The guilt then surged up and felt like it was dragging him down into a black void he would never escape from.

“Mind letting me out? I kind of want to be in my own clothes,” he tried to keep his tone light.

“Of course, let me go get the key from Kaz,” she said. She whirled around fast enough that her long black braid wrapped around her waist while she went. Jesper wished that he could have her hair in his hand, running through his long fingers as he took in the scent of wildflowers radiating from her. He wanted any kind of comfort from his pack, though he had to remind himself quickly that they weren’t really his pack.

If they were even courting as they got closer to being anything other than friends, then they would have provided him with clothing to change into and nesting materials. He knew that there had to be something in the ship other than his singular hammock and the clothing the had stolen from another alpha. If they were really a pack then they wouldn’t have wanted him to have anything that smelled like someone other than them.

Jesper tried not to think about that too hard as he waited for Inej to return. She opened the door and then stepped to the side so that he could walk past her. He was glad that he had washed before he had called for someone because the moment that he stepped out of his heat room, he was aware of how densely his smell was concentrated there. He would have carried it with him like the world’s worst flag if he hadn’t cleaned the sweat and slick from his skin.

“We’re going to be up on the deck when you’re ready. Take your time,” she said kindly as she hurried down the hall to get away from him. 

He tried not to take it personally. He knew that she had been around more estruses than she had ever wanted to, especially onces that weren’t her own. That was primarily what pleasure houses were used for in the spring. If the sex worker was an alpha or an omega then they would be rented out to the highest bidder for the duration of their estrus, but if they were a beta like Inej then they would have to continue to work like normal. Sometimes a client would go into their estrus while visiting the pleasure house and then they would stay there until their next cold spell, and a lot of times that ended up being blamed on the beta themself.

Jesper walked down to the room where his things were stashed and then shed the clothing that still reeked of the other alpha. He shuffled it down into a corner so that it could be dealt with later as he searched through the duffle. He pulled on the soft material of his spare pair of smalls and then a pair of trousers before he shucked those off. The skirt that he had packed was an accident, the same color and pattern as another set of trousers that would have been a better idea. He was glad that he had brought it now because it was softer than any of his other clothing and thus going to be a lot more comfortable to wear.

The skirt sat low on his hips as he worked on getting the buttons done over his front. He hadn’t realized that he had damaged himself so badly in his attempt to keep himself from getting sick of feraling, but the marks were the proof all over his dark skin. Once his shirt was in place, he moved onto picking out a vest that would go with it.

He stayed in his room for a little longer than he needed to as he worked on getting his hair back to some semblance of order after a two or three days of laying with it unprotected. His bonnet had been in his hammock, unreachable and without him even being able to ask for it in the rush to get him into the heat room.

When he finally got up the nerve to travel up to the dock, he could feel his hands shaking slightly. He tried to soothe his nerves by resting his thumbs on the pearl handles of his revolvers, reminding himself that he could defend himself so it didn’t matter that no alpha had come to care for him during his heat. He would find his own food and drink some more water after he got brought up to speed by the others.

---

It was as if his ancestors were punishing him for not doing what they had wanted from him. He had never believed the myths and stories that his mother had told him about the ghosts of those who had died long before them following them to protect them. He had never believed anything about Djel, Ghezen, or the Saints either. Something about the plan going wrong again was making him edge ever-closer to being a true believer, however.

When they had traveled on the schooner to the island to trade, his entire system had felt off kilter. He figured that it was just because he had been through one of the worst heats of his entire life and hadn’t yet recovered. They were running low on rations so everything that they had to eat sounded revolting to Jesper’s already shit appetite. He hadn’t been able to eat or sleep well in the last two days that it took them to pull into port, which left him weak.

He was sure that was the reason that the Squallers had been able to take Inej. If he hadn’t gone through his heat like an idiot, then he would have been strong enough to make the shot that would have returned her to them. Now he had gotten her lost and hurt again, which was the exact opposite of what he had meant to do. He wanted to protect her and make sure that she felt loved, that was his job as the bottom ranking member of their pack.

Knowing that it was mostly his fault that Inej had gotten taken when Van Eck had double crossed them, he did whatever Kaz asked him to. Kaz was the leader of their pseudo-pack and their gang, so it only made sense that the hind brain that had been wounded in his heat was going to bend over backwards to make him happy.

He did the patrols that he was asked to do. He stayed quiet when it was clear that his quips weren’t helping anything. He told Wylan to back down when the alphas started baring their teeth at each other. He even pawned off his beloved revolvers when he was loosing too much to keep Smeet at the table. He went to visit his father even though the shame of how much of a disappoint he was as a son was drowning out those same feelings towards his gender. He comforted Alys with another omega’s scent when she got upset after they had removed her from her den and nest. He sat on the roof for what felt like hours when they were doing the trade off. 

He refused to make a nest, even after they had gotten Inej back. He wasn’t going to make something that made his pack happy when it was clear that none of them even wanted him. He wasn’t the kind of omega that people desired outside of a quick fuck. He was too much of a hassle, too much of a chore for anyone to accept.

By the time that they all ended up in his father’s hotel room after they lost their position in Black Veil and needed another place to hide out, the urge to do it had completely overwhelmed him. He had heard of omegas nesting when they were upset about something or thought that they were in danger, it was the same base instinct that made them do it when they were in heat or pregnant.

So much had happened in so little time that his brain could barely process it, so it made sense that someone with as little impulse control as himself would bend to it eventually. He found one of the bedrooms that had a reasonably large bed and then stripped the sheets from the top. His nest wouldn’t be safe if it was out in the open, not when he was surrounded by the kinds of dangers that swooped down from the sky.

Jesper knelt on the ground in front of the bed and then laid down flat on the floor. He removed his jacket and used it to wipe the dust from the floor so that it was relatively clean, and then shed the clothing item into the corner to be forgotten. He wiggled underneath the frame of the bed with a sheet so that he had something to cover the floor. He stayed underneath the frame as he pulled one of the smaller blankets in so that he could use it to cushion the hard corner of the wall. The biggest blanket was used to block out the main entrance so that the only way to exit his new nest was through the baseboard.

He was just barely adjusting the pillows so that they were in the most comfortable position when he heard a knock on the door. He turned his head towards the wood despite not being able to see it from his vantage point. “Jesper, we need to talk,” Kaz’s dark rasp sounded through his bones.

He needed to finish his nest, but at the same time, his alpha had asked him to do something. Kaz clearly didn’t think he was worthy of being in the pack if he wasn’t even allowed to do something like make a nest for them all. He wasn’t sure that he could fit all six of them underneath the frame of the bed anyway.

Jesper slowly wiggled out from where he had been hidden in his nest and then followed the others up the steep stairs to the bell tower where Kaz explained the rest of the plan. They had already changed their plan so many times as more and more things kept being revealed to them, no one was sure that this would actually work.

He tried to stay quiet, he knew that he was only being included because he had a half-good chance at being able to guard them while they were doing the actual important work. Kaz likely would have chosen someone that had more talent and experience than him if he was able to go to the Dregs and have his pick. Jesper was who he was stuck with, who he had originally trusted until Jesper had ruined it all.

That was when the fight had started. Jesper hadn’t even been aware of what was spilling from his lips until they were snarling at each other. He knew that he wanted to get back down to the safety of his nest, away from the people who hadn’t even cared about him enough to check on him when he was heat-stricken and begging for them. “With the way that you’re treating me, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had forgotten that I was an omega! You don’t trust me, you obviously don’t want me in your pack even if I was the bottom ranking member before,” he shouted. He could feel his hackles raising as his mind got closer to that feral place that would leave him as broken, damaged goods for the rest of his life.

Kaz opened his mouth to say something and then blinked, like he was finally realizing what his supposed best friend had said. “What do you mean we’re not treating you like an omega? Your gender has nothing to do with your rank in the pack. We’re not in Fjerda.”

“No, not like that. I’m the only omega in the pack and I’m at the bottom,” he shook his head. The confirmation that someone else thought they were a pack instead of just a band of misfits almost made it worse.

Despite how much he wanted to appear strong in front of these people that had already been far more resilient than him, tears began to collect on his lash line. He ducked his head down and away so that they wouldn’t be able to see as easily, also exposing his neck to them. It was a way for his hind brain to check if they wanted him, though his logical brain already knew that wasn’t the case.

“Jesper, what’s going on with you?” Inej asked, her hand reaching out to catch his own. “You’ve never acted this way before and we’ve been a pack for almost two years now. I suppose we do have more people and that means that we have to rediscover the pack dynamics but we’re not going to shove you out or anything.”

“None of you want me,” he gasped out around a sob. She was so kind and so soft when she spoke to him, like she was handling something fragile and loveable instead of the person that had gotten her hurt more times than he could count. She shouldn’t have been giving him more chances, none of them should have. He as a fuck up and a disaster. The fact that they were standing in the bell tower to the hotel room Kaz had had to rent for his father was proof enough of that.

“I want you,” Wylan piped up. His face then flushed a very dark shade of red and he kicked at the ground with the toe of his shoe. “I wanted to be able to court you nice and proper. My mother always taught me that the first courting gift should be something really nice and pricy to show that you have the money to support your future partner. I was planning on going into town and getting you something Zemini made, like a necklace or a new ring, so that you could see I was able to provide for you. I wasn’t really planning on the whole ‘my father running away with all the money’ thing.”

Jesper looked up at the alpha, dragging his hand over his cheeks to try and rid them of the tears still streaking down his face. He let out a little hiccup before he said, “I… if you wanted me then why did you make me suffer through my heat like that?”

“We were trying to protect you,” Kaz rasped, his eyes dark and protective. The entire room was beginning to smell like leather and book binding, his distinctive scent that he usually hid with lavender oil.

“Protect me? I was stuck in a room with nothing to nest with other than a hammock and a uniform that smelled like an alpha I didn’t even know the name of!” Jesper shouted. The anger that had come with getting so close to being feral exploded out of him all at once. He didn’t want to be shouting at these people, not when he cherished that as deeply and strongly as he did. “I begged for you to come to me and help me, I wanted you there to tell me that I was good and that I was safe. But I got nothing. I had no nest and no pack.”

“I… I didn’t even think about the nesting,” Nina whispered as she dragged a hand over her face. She was technically the only person that knew exactly what would happen to an omega that was left without a nest and the best way to take care of someone in estrus. It was a required class taken by all Grisha when they went through puberty during their training at the Little Palace.

“We tried to care for you,” Matthias said as he reached for Jesper’s hand. The omega stood still long enough for their palms to slide together and then nearly collapsed into the alpha. Matthias was the only person that was big enough to make Jesper feel small, which was part of the reason that he had fallen so hard so fast. “I was the one that had the idea of bringing you to Nina when she started getting sick. I didn’t think that the withdrawals were going to be as bad as they were, and I wanted to protect you both. Taking you away from her was one of the hardest things I have ever done, believe me when I say that.”

“It made me feel unwanted, like I wasn’t actually a member of our pack,” Jesper whispered as he hid his face away. “I didn’t have a nest, Matthias.”

“I know, I know,” he whispered. “You handled what we put you through so well. Next time, please yell at me right after so that I can fix it sooner.”

“Next time?” Jesper asked. He took a step back and wiped at the remaining tears on his face. He felt much better than he had before, the proximity and affirmation that he was part of the pack and that they regretted their actions stifling the urge to feral for his own protection.

It was Matthias’ turn to blush and duck his head, which he did. Nina was grinning at him like a wolf when he said, “If you will allow me to.”

“I will. Which means that I should probably tell you that I have a half made nest downstairs under one of the beds,” Jesper waved his hand vaguely towards the door.

“Under the beds?” Inej gasped. She would have known better than anyone else what it meant when an omega hid their nest in the back of a closet or under a bed. Usually it was because the nest would be destroyed, or the omega thought that it would, if it was able to be reached by the mate or the rest of the pack.

“I almost couldn’t protect Nina when she was getting attacked by the khergud. They can fly, so it’s better to have the nest hidden,” he explained with a half shrug. While he had made the nest under the bed as a half attempt to hide it from his pack, who he had been under the impression of not wanting him to nest at all, it was mostly because that was a safer place for them to be.

“That’s really sweet,” she purred as she took his hand and the brought them closer together. She took the inside of his wrist and rubbed it against her own so that their scents mingled together. It was something that was commonly done in Ravka as a way of officially courting without being part of a pack or mated yet, since money and items for gifts were hard to get there.

Jesper eagerly leaned into the touch, practically melting at all of the attention that he was getting. He let out a low sigh as he finally explained, “I didn’t want to feral. That’s why I didn’t tell you guys about what had happened to me or ask for help nesting at Black Veil. It also felt like everything was more important than what I had gone through. I hadn’t gotten heat sick and I hadn’t feraled, so it was fine.”

“Jesper, what do you think being heat sick is?” Kaz asked. The alpha was still standing reasonably far away from them as he spoke, but he was leaning towards the omega. His scent wrapped around the building so thick that not even the open windows of the bell tower could help it escape.

“It’s when an omega has to be nursed back to health because of how dehydrated and malnourished they are,” he explained with a half shrug. “You guys provided me with food and water.”

“We gave you what we could find. It wasn’t the best,” Inej sighed.

“I would have liked to give you some waffles, I know you prefer the cinnamon rolls we get though,” Nina winked. She hadn’t let go of his hand yet and Jesper mostly didn’t want her to.

Kaz shook his head, “Given that you grew up in a place that had healthy packs or at least family and friends to take care of an omega, I can understand how you would think that’s what heat sickness is. In a place like the Barrel, it means that not only is the omega suffering from dehydration and malnourishment, but they are also on the edge of feraling. It means that they were treated so badly during their heat or neglected when they needed comfort from their pack, that they’re almost not a person anymore.”

“Oh,” Jesper whispered, his eyes flickering down to his shoes again.

“Next time you feel that way, come to me immediately. Sickness and injury cannot be helped in our line of work, they cannot be avoided. That doesn’t mean you have to suffer through that kind of thing without the support of your pack,” Kaz instructed.

It would have been hard to ignore the way that he had said that even if Jesper hadn’t had such strong ties to the alpha. Kaz was the leader of their pack and his boss, so it wasn’t like he could ignore what he said practically either. The command was the most caring thing that Kaz had done for him in a long time. Jesper was well aware that he had overreacted and assumed a lot of things about his heat, but when he was in that kind of base instinct state of mind there wasn’t much else that he could do.

He felt so much more stable and loved than he had before, even though he hadn’t told them the other half. He was fine with them assuming that he had wanted the comfort of his pack scent near him or a nest when he was in heat. They didn’t need to know that he was so in love with them that he needed them the same way that he needed air. Wylan wanting to court him was enough for him in that moment. It made him feel more like a person, like someone had tugged his soul back down into his body and then sewed his feet back into his soles.

The difficulty of their life was that none of them could finish talking about what as left unsaid. They couldn’t bask in the fact that they were a pack in everything other than bites, they had to move onto the next thing immediately. Jan Van Eck and Pekka Rollins were still trying to kill them, and they had several Ravkans coming to talk to them.

---

---

Four years had passed since Jesper had his first heat around the five people that he adored more than he knew one person was capable of loving. He still remembered the pain of abandonment that he had gone through during the nights late in the spring when the ocean air poured into his room in just the right way. He was able to remind himself that it wasn’t the case any longer when he woke fully and could smell the items that the others had given him.

Jesper would reassure and calm himself by touching the items one-by-one. First he would pick up the one that smelled the closest, the scarf that Wylan had worn while he was composing the piece he used as his most recent courting gift for Jesper. Then came the soft wool coat that Kaz had worn when working in the Silver Six, just abrasive enough to remind Jesper properly of the alpha. Then was the huge linen skirt that Nin had rubbed all over her neck and wrists before she had hidden it under Jesper’s pillow. Then the shirt that Matthias had worked out in, cotton and stiff from underuse but so perfectly him. The last one was the one that smelled the least, the hair ribbons that Inej had worn for a week straight before she had left on her most recent voyage.

As he neared a heat that he had not taken suppressants for, those were the items that he carefully packed into the bag resting on the edge of his bed. 

A lot of his life had changed in the four years since he had pulled off the most impressive job in his entire life. He and Wylan were still courting, they both agreed that they wanted to take it slow so that they could work out who they were as people. Wylan was working with the Merchant Counsel to actually better the world and use their vast wealth for something other than being greedy bastards. Jesper was taking some classes at the university and working with some of the leftover Grisha in the city so that he could develop his powers, which had helped quell the urge to have an adrenaline dump every other day.

He still worked with Kaz, though it was a lot more of a partnership than it had been before. Given that he had been able to spend his vast amount of wealth won after their defeat of Jan Van Eck to pay off his debts, he no longer had to be a member of the Dregs. He worked with them whenever making something didn’t get rid of that feeling, but he never stepped into the gambling dens of East Stave. He was also able to tell Kaz no whenever he didn’t actually want a job because the credit he owed him was non-existant.

He still spent a lot of time with the alphas and beta, even if they dynamic had significantly changed since they had all worked together for the Ice Court heist. 

Inej was often off at sea, though she redocked for six months out of the year. Estrus season on a boat was apparently absolute Hell since they would all be sick and grouchy from the suppressants, on top of there not being that many ships to ransack during that month. During the winter it was too dangerous for her to continue her voyages and she found the same problem, where people were too holed up in their own homes to be doing the work she wanted to stop.

Nina and Matthias took trips out to Fjerda whenever they thought that they could get away with it. Apparently they were trying to stop the indoctrination of more people like Matthias into the druskelle, sponsored by the Ravkan government. Whenever they thought that it was too dangerous or too risky to return, they worked with a charity sponsored by Wylan and some other members of the Merchant Councel to help Grisha and indentures find their way in Kerch. It meant that they were around a lot, usually deciding to crash in the big apartment that they all lived in together.

While the estate now belonged to Wylan, apparently there were too many memories of what had happened to him when he was a child for him to feel comfortable living there full time. He had given rights to it over to his mother, who had turned it into a wonderful place for them to visit when they were holding parties or ohad guests. When they weren’t doing that, they stayed in a smaller home that had been custom built for them.

There was a massive bedroom that could fit the entire pack for when they needed to nest and feel safe. There were smaller rooms with tiny bathrooms for each of them along the same floor. It also had three offices, one for Wylan, Kaz, and Nina and Matthias respectively. It was also where Jesper’s workshop was held. The entire place was decorated with a mix of the styles from where they had originally come from so that they all felt safe and warm when they were there.

That was where Jesper currently was. He usually slept there, though he tailed some of the others to their personal haunts from time to time when he wanted to go on a date with them. They had all been sort of courting each other, but a lot of the lines had been blurred. It wasn’t every pack that had the kind of relationship that they did, so it was hard to figure out what was the unbreakable bond from saving each other’s lives and what was actual romantic interest. He was also struggling significantly with the difference in courting rituals from the different cultures that they had all come from.

Back in Novyi Zem, it was common for both the partners in a relationship to give the other gifts without a specific gender having to go first. Gifts were often things that were made by hand to show that it had taken them a lot of time and could be clothing, scented items, or food. In Ravka, apparently the gifts were closer to dates because money was so scarce that it was hard for them to buy something for their perspective partner, but again there were no gender lines. In Fjerda the first gift apparently had to be food or a pelt to show that the partner would be a good worker in a relationship, given in front of other observing parties. The gender lines were also hard with an alpha at the top, giving to either a beta or an omega, and the omega only ever receiving a gift. In Kerch, the first gift was expected to be jewelry and it was very uncommon for it to be anything other than a newly bought item. Gender lines tended to be looser, but they were still considered as long as they went along with the status of the person in society.

They were working it out though, Jesper was sure of that. He had been so sure that he had written out a letter and sent it to each of his courting partners to tell them his plan. Now that it was all in action, he was almost too scared to see it truly to fruition.

He slowly reassured himself that it was going to be okay, no matter what the reality of the situation ended up being in the end. He knew that he was strong and that he could handle anything that the world or his courting partners through at him. If they decided not to show up, it wouldn’t be a reflection on him as a person or an omega but instead something that they had to work through within themselves.

He was surprised how much that one singular heat that he had experienced colored the rest of his relationship with sex and his heats, however. He had heard of people having bad heats, but it had always been a blip that they tried to avoid when they were having another estrus. It was never anything that was nearly as bad as what Jesper had gone through nor did it have affects for as long as his was affecting him.

Once he had gotten everything carefully packed into his bag, he went over the box of scent blockers that Kaz had left on the windowseat the night before. He usually tucked them away in his room so that he could use them without the others stealing his private supply, since he was able to get ones that were higher quality than what was sold in the shops. He had gotten distracted by Nina, who was by far the most distracting person to ever walk the face of the earth, and had left them.

Jesper peeled one out of the packaging and then placed it over his scent gland. He did the same to the one on his wrist so that the smell of open fields and jurda was hidden from anyone near him. He knew that he was very close to his heat and it would be dangerous for him to be out in the street when he was in that state, but it was the best thing that he could think of.

He had to find somewhere that was actually safe. Too many of their business partners, who may one day turn into business enemies, knew that they lived there. He had to go to one of the apartments that they had squirreled away in the depths of the city, one of the ones that only they knew about.

The smell of lavender flooded his senses so intensely that he had to fight not to gag. Jesper wasn’t quite sure how Kaz managed to have that scent right next to his neck every single day that they worked without getting sick from it. It was only when he remembered that since he was close to his heat his ollifactory senses would be higher that he realized how the alpha managed it.

He packed a couple more things into his bag, a sealed flask of water and one of the scones that Nina had made for breakfast that morning, before he slipped out into the streets. He shut and locked the door behind him so that no one would be able to tell that anything was amiss. The only people that should have been coming back to their home was his pack and courting panrters. Kuwei was still in Ravka with his new pack, who was teaching him what it meant to be a Grisha and Shu, so he wouldn’t be coming. That left only the people that Jesper wanted to be following him instead of going into the house.

He had sent letters ahead of himself when he found that he was unable to tell them with his words. He knew, after all they had showed and proved to him, that the worst they could tell him was no. Still, he found it almost impossible to actually shove those words past his lips and into the air when they were cuddling in their protective nest in the big bedroom. When the alphas and beta got home, if they were going to come for him then they should only stop for a few minutes to pick up what they wanted to bring to him before they left. That meant that things needed to look like they were supposed to so that they could be sure that he had left by himself instead of being taken. The last thing he wanted was for them to be panicking because of a misunderstanding when they were going to spend an estrus together.

Jesper wasn’t even sure that the runners had been able to get the letters to the right people, given that they were spread all over the city and had quite a few enemies that were after them. He had to hope that the alphas and beta who owned his heart were safe enough that they were able to receive the letters that he sent them. He had also written them in code so that if they were somehow intercepted, anyone other than his pack wouldn’t be able to figure out where he was.

The worry that was plaguing Jesper’s mind was enough that he didn’t notice the throngs of people out in the street. Spring was always a stressful season for everyone because they were all on edge as their neared their own estrus or their partner’s estrus. That meant that everyone was in their own heads and no one paid any mind to a lanky Zemini boy heading through the streets like he was on a mission.

He went down into the tunnel underneath the city and then emerged in a different district. He went down a series of curving and confusing streets until he reached the canal, where he boarded a boat. He only stayed on for about ten minutes before he got off in front of a charming little house. 

It was a single story tall and the wood on the outside was painted a chipper yellow. The roof was in the finest state of repair, just as the rooves on the houses surrounding it were. The windows were covered in a neat trim and frosted so that while they would let light in, it was nearly impossible to see into them. The front door was securely locked with a padlock from the inside, so Jesper had to do the trick that Kaz had taught them all when they had decided that it was going to be used as one of their shared safe houses.

He slipped through the front door as soon as he got it open and then redid all of the locks. By the time that he had gotten to the porch, he had already begun to feel the slick seeping into his smalls. He knew that he had been pushing it when he was packing things, but he for sure didn’t want to be around anyone that wasn’t trusted mate-pack in the state he was in now.

Jesper slipped up the stairs to the upper bedroom. The house was sparsely decorated with only the base furniture that they would need, no rugs or wall hangings. It wasn’t a place that he would want to stay in for very long but it was a place that felt very safe when he was as vulnerable as he was currently.

He went to the attic where the second set of deadbolt locks were. He unlocked them and then entered so that he was faced with the big mattress spread out on the ground. The sheet wrapped around it still had the large blood stain on it from the last time that they had used this location, when Kaz had taken a couple of bad stab wounds to his side. The alpha had recovered quickly and most of the blood had actually come from his nose, but it was still unsightly when his nest was about to be right there.

Jesper set his pack carefully against one of the taller walls and then got to work. The first thing that he did was remove the scent blockers from his neck and wrist. He didn’t know anyone that smelled like lavender and it was the pure extract, something that didn’t carry the headiness of human underneath it. He settled the blockers down on top of his pack to be dealt with later or to fall down onto the floor and be forgotten. He smelled more like himself, like fresh air and jurda, which meant that it as time to make his nest.

He knelt down beside the mattress and slipped his fingers underneath the sheet so that he could pull it up. He didn’t bother folding the ruined cloth, instead wadding it into a huge ball and tucking it as far back into the corner as he could. He replaced the sheet with another one that was in the corner. There was so much bedding in the attic that he could hardly believe it, even though he knew that when they used that house they sequestered themselves that far up during the night because it was the safest place.

Once the mattress had another sheet on top of it, he worked on getting the walls of his nest up. He didn’t have any of the stiff wool blankets that a lot of rich omegas got so that they could have a properly constructed nest. Instead he just had thick winter quilts that were almost a perfect square. He used four of them to make his walls, rolling them into logs so that they would be firmer when people were going to lay on them. After they were pressed as far as they could go in the circle on top of the mattress, he moved onto the next job.

He got several of the smaller blankets out so that he could cover the ugly, rough material. He noticed that a lot of them smelled like the people that had used them last, which was enough to make him purr with happiness. The placement of the pillows was the most important part to him because it was going to show that he knew how the rest of the pack slept. Matthias was always in the middle because he was the tallest, so there was a single flat pillow there especially for him. Nina liked to spread out, so she got the long body pillow that she could spread down her back. Kaz got a pillow for his leg and his head on the other side, so he could be far away from them but still in the nest. Jesper himself got two pillows right next to each other so they would fold over his face. Wylan got three pillows stacked on top of each other so that he was almost sitting up when he slept. Inej was the trickiest because they slept in the same bed the least out of the entire pack, but he eventually settled on giving her a fluffy pillow with little embroidered leaves on the outside.

He finished the last of the nest with the rest of the blankets. He only got out so that he could retrieve the soft items from his pack that smelled like them. He left the foodstuffs that he had picked up before he left the house next to the nest so he could grab them when he was too heat-stricken to think about getting out of his nest.

This was the first heat that he was going to go through without suppressants since the one that he had endured by accident on the boat. He was already doing better now than he had been before. He had known that it was coming and had mentally prepared himself for that. He had a nest filled with soft, comfortable things and the scents of his pack. Despite all of that, he had to repeat to himself over and over again that it was all going to be okay, that they would find him and come for him as soon as they could.

Jesper was unable to ignore the pang of arousal that fluttered through his system when he was finally laying down in his nest. He had been able to ignore it very easily when he ws getting the preparations ready, but he had cut it too close to the line. He was already in the depths of his heat and he had only just barely gotten to the safe house to make his nest.

He rubbed his legs together to give some stimulation to his already swollen cunt. His smalls were soaked through with slick and it was beginning to pool in his trousers. Almost as soon as he realized that he was aroused enough for that to happen, he realized how much he wanted all of that off of him.

His fingers scrambled to the fastenings on the front of his pants in his desperation to get them off. He ended up popping the button off with his powers so that he could shove the material down his leg. It was like taking a breath of fresh air to have his skin finally free of the rough material of denim. He tossed his pants over the side of the nest, disgusted by their texture and refusing to have them in his nest. He then set to work on removing his smalls before he moved to his vest and shirt.

While he was working on the thousands of buttons that he had thought were a good idea when he was getting dressed that morning, he slipped his other and between his legs. He traced the tips of his fingers through his folds once and then shuddered when he felt the pleasure that it shocked throughout his entire pelvis in a huge sweeping motion of pleasure.

He dove the two fingers inside of him and then rocked down into himself. Once again, he was reminded of how much better it would be to have a heavy cock or a knot inside of him instead of his own fingers, but he was relishing in how deeply he could reach. He refused to move even a knuckle out of place and instead began to rock his hips in an upward and downward motion. 

The buttons of his shirt finally released him and he had to remove his fingers from his cunt just long enough to get them all the way off of his body. They were both softer than his pants had been, and not nearly as soaked as his smalls, so he allowed them to stay in the nest for the time being.

He knew that he had people coming for him, that there was an alpha just a couple streets away that was barreling towards their rut. He knew that they were coming for him, but it was almost making it worse. All he could remember as he plunged his fingers in and out of his dripping wet cunt was the desperation that he had when he was on the boat. They had been even closer to him back then, so close that they would have been able to smell him without being affected by the pheromones that he was letting off. He had been so close to them and they hadn’t come to him, so what meant that they were going to come to him this time? He was alone again, and so empty that it physically hurt.

Jesper was so deeply entrenched in his heat that he could barely think about what was happening around him. He tossed his head back against the pillows he had laid out specifically for him and crooned with want, with the desire to bring the alphas and beta closer to him. He needed them around him, inside of him, becoming him in every way that they could. 

Despite the fact that he was calling for comfort, he didn’t react or show any signs towards the door when meal began to creak against itself. The heavy wood scraped on the floor as Matthias quickly stumbled into the little santuary that Jesper had made for himself. “I tried to get here as quickly as I could but I had to stop by the Wraith to get something for you,” he explained.

The smell of pine and sea salt flooded into the room and joined in with his own. He didn’t want it to completely drown out the other scents in his nest because he had nothing else from Inej, but he was so glad that there was another physical body from his pack finally there with him in the room. “Alpha, alpha, please,” Jesper whimpered. 

He flipped over so that he was on his knees with his shoulders supporting his upper half, which pushed his face down into the mattress. He hadn’t removed his fingers from him, though they had slipped down to the first knuckle so that he had the arm space to manuever him around. As soon as he was in that position, he plunged his fingers back into himself to try and soothe the emptiness that was filling his gut.

He heard a step on the floor and then felt a small dip on the mattress. “Do you want me to get in the nest with you, omega?”

Jesper turned his head and then looked at Matthias to determine what he wanted. He let out a breathless, “Clothes off, first.”

The alpha immediately did as he was told. He removed his shirt and shed it down onto the edge of the mattress that wasn’t covered with nest just in case Jesper wanted it. His bright blue eyes were already blown black with the rut that he was going through thanks to the pheromones that Jesper’s body was putting out. He removed his pants and smalls at the same time, which allowed his massive cock to flop out of its constraints and up against his belly.

Jesper mewled desperately when he saw the size and girth of the alpha. He knew that it would fill him so wonderfully, so beautifully that he would never feel that empty again.

“Is it okay for me to do this?” Matthias asked. His large, calloused hands were brushing over Jesper’s hips like he was scared that the other Crow was going to disappear if he was too harsh.

“I want you, I want you, I want you,” he whimpered. He wiggled his hips to try and entice the alpha further without having to use his words in a more eloquent way.

The alpha growled darkly and then wrenched Jesper’s long fingers out of his cunt. He let the omega’s hand drop down onto the bed without caring that they were still covered in slick and he was now thrown off of his balance. He didn’t mind it, though, not when he knew that he was about to be taken care of in the way that he had desperately wanted for what felt like an eon. He just let his body tumble down into the bed and kept his slicked fingers carefully to himself so that he could use it for something later, as well as to keep it from messing up his perfect nest.

Matthias grasped both of Jesper’s hips with his wide, calloused hands. He used that to bring the omega back just a few inches, while moving his own body forward so that the head of his cock brushed against the slicked folds of the other. Jesper whimpered and began to beg, “Please, please, alpha! I need you so badly, Matthias, please, I need you. It hurts, I want you to make it feel better.”

That snapped any patience that the alpha had been clinging to, and he pushed the head of his cock through the omega’s opening with one swift movement. He waited for Jesper to adjust for only a moment before he pressed forward so that he was buried to the hilt. The omega groaned, long and loud, as he pressed his face down into the bed. He could feel the member throb inside of him as his cunt quivered around the member. He had been working himself up to the threshold of an orgasm so long around his distress that he was already orgasming from only being entered. He felt so good, so full, like he had finally done something correct once in his life.

“So good, good boy,” Matthias praised as his big hands began to trail up Jesper’s body. When he reached the omega’s shoulders, he leaned around so that they were pressed flush together and then wrapped his other arm around Jesper’s hips. He used the hold to flip them over and then flung himself down onto the mattress. Jesper whined as it caused the cock inside of him to pull out and then press back in.

There were hands pushing and pulling at his body to change his position so that he was sitting up, his body now basking in the cool air of the attic instead of pressed to another fever-flushed body. He looked down at the alpha and preened when he noticed the way that Matthias’ pupils were blown with rut, a rut that he had caused. “Ride me,” the alpha growled, his hands once again finding the place where they belonged on Jesper’s hips.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” he mumbled around the haze of his heat. He placed one hand behind himself on Matthias’ thigh so that he could stabilize and then began to dramatically lift himself up into the air. Every time that only the mushroom head of Matthias’ cock was inside of himself, he would drop back down so that he took the entire member back into his body all at once. When his thighs began to shake with the weakness of his body from the heat, Matthias helped him so that they could keep up their rhythm.

Jesper whimpered when he felt the swell of the knot already catching on the rim of his entrance. He had never wanted anything in his life more than he wanted the knot buried as deep as it would go inside of him. “Mate me, breed me, please alpha. I’ll be so good to you, a good mother to your pups. I wanna be so pregnant with your pups that people don’t even have to look for our mark,” he begged. The words were pouring from a deep part of his mind that he hadn’t strayed to since his last heat. They were words none of them would really mean, children were dangerous in their line of work and a big commitment, but it spoke to the most base level of their instincts.

“Can’t mate you yet,” Matthias growled. He was matching the omega’s movements with a jut of his own hips so that he could leave his knot inside of his courting partner for as long as possible each time.

“Why not? Please,” he whimpered. “Aren’t I good? I’ll be good for you, please, please, please.”

Matthias reached up and wiped away the tears that were slowly working their way down his face. He had opened his mouth to say something but clenched his teeth together suddenly to growl. He replaced his hands where they belonged on Jesper’s hips and then snarled as his orgasm wracked his body and he knotted the omega firmly.

Jesper threw his head back and howled with pleasure as his second orgasm finally wracked through him. He had experienced knot orgasms before, he loved being knotted almost as much as he liked being worked to orgasm with something literally stuck inside of him. It was something far different to experience when he was in heat though, the feeling almost making him white out as his entire body quivered with the feeling.

The door to the attic opened and the other four people that they had been waiting for burst through the door, almost tumbling down into a pile in their hurry to get inside. “Shit, we’re late, aren’t we?” Nina asked as a pretty pout covered her face.

“You came,” Jesper beamed when his eyes flickered over them all and he realized that they were really there.

“Of course we did, beloved,” Kaz replied as if it should have been obvious. He pushed his way to the front of the group and that was when Jesper noticed that he had something in his arms. He had to turn his torso without moving his hips too far so that he wouldn’t tug at the knot in his cunt. He was curious about what was happening, but he was also very aware of all the sounds of discomfort that Matthias made when he moved too far.

As he turned, he saw that they all had something in their arms. Nina carried a big pastry box over to the side of the bed where Jesper had brought the snack that he had forgotten to eat and then placed it down. “I got your favorites, the cinnamon rolls,” she beamed. “I couldn’t find any fruits when I was out but Inej said that she was willing to run out and get some during your heat.”

“You’re not going to join us?” Jesper asked. The longer that he was in his cold spell, the more the fog of his heat lifted off his mind. He had known that it was an option, that she wouldn’t want to be around the estrus given everything that had happened to her, but he still wanted her scent in his nest.

“Not this time, not when they’re all going to be extra protective of you,” Inej shook her head. She set down the jug of water that she had brought and then turned towards him. “But I am going to mate you, as soon as everyone else has. They already marked me and I marked them,” she explained as she revealed the freshly healed scars on the curve of her neck. Jesper let out an involuntary whimper as it felt like his teeth and neck were almost itching to mark her and look exactly as she did.

Kaz’s dark rasp sounded from the other side of the bed as he set down whatever he had brought. “No one gets to mark you before I do, Jesper, that’s why she’s waiting,” he explained. “I am the pack’s alpha and no one gets to mark our omega before I sink my teeth into that pretty neck of yours. Even if Matthias couldn’t want to get his cock into your begging cunt,” his gloved fingers ran down Jesper’s front to where his entrance was puffy with knot.

He whimpered and then shivered as it brought another aftershock of his orgasm throughout his body. “I wanna be mated so bad,” he whimpered. He didn’t notice that the tears returned until he felt soft leather gloves tracing the ridges of his cheeks to get rid of the water.

“Be patient, pet, you will be,” he replied. 

They continued to set things up around the attic until everything was perfect. They had a good stock of water and sweet things with Inej promising that she was going to bring them actual food while staying in the rest of the house. She would check on them and spend time with them during cold spells but would not participate during the actual estrus. Jesper eventually got tired enough that he and Matthias moved so that they were laying down sideways in the nest, with Jesper still turning and tilting his head so that he could see what the others were doing.

When he finally figured out what Kaz had brought with him, he began to purr so loudly that the house practically rumbled with it. The alpha was standing carefully above the bed while attaching something to a hook that Jesper hadn’t even noticed was there. When he was finished, he spread out the dark material so that the tulle covered the nest in a sweeping canopy. It was exactly what he had said he wanted when he had gotten a little too tipsy one night, long before he had even considered what he had wanted when it came to a mate.

---

Jesper’s second hot spell came after they had all moved into the nest. He had been dozing against Matthias because the first round of his heat had taken a lot out of him. The alpha’s knot had gone down after ten minutes, which left him with about another hour before he got unstoppably horny again. He would have an actual cold spell after a couple more sessions, but the knot-related one was always a nice reprieve.

He woke with a whimper and then brought his long fingers down to his cunt. His slick was mixing with the pearly white cum that was dripping from his opening and down onto the bed. “Alpha,” he crooned, just to get the attention of someone so that they would fuck him again.

“I’m here, treasure,” Kaz replied with the dark husk that he always did. It resonated through Jesper’s shoulder so that he felt like his entire body was affected by it. The omega startled a little when he felt bare, dextrous hands tracing up and down the lean length of his hip, traveling over the sculpted muscles of his stomach. He spread his legs on instinct when he felt his hand being moved away from between his legs. He didn’t really mind that the little pleasure he had been receiving was stolen from him because he would much rather have someone else between his legs. “Tell me what you need, pretty omega,” Kaz nearly commanded.

“I need you,” he breathed. “I need you knot in my cunt and your teeth in my neck.”

“Who am I to deny you?” the alpha chuckled. He shifted them so that Jesper was laying on his back and he was on his hands and knees. Kaz nudged Jesper’s legs apart with his good knee and then shifted them closer together. “You’re so wonderful like this, spread out and already stuffed with cum from our mate. You’re going to be so good for me, aren’t you? Especially when I knot you so hard there’s no way you won’t become fat and pregnant with my pups. Such a good boy,” Kaz murmured.

It was exactly the kind of talk that Jesper had imagined when he was locked in the hold of the ship with nothing other than his own mind to keep him company. He whimpered and threw his head back to expose his neck. He turned to the side so that his mating gland was most prominent and then let his scent flood the room. The other alphas woke then, but preoccupied themselves with each other while Kaz attended to their omega. They would all be marked and mated by the time that the heat was over.

Kaz leaned down with one hand between his legs and the other on one side of Jesper’s head. He used the hand on his cock to guide the head to Jesper’s hole before he pressed in, steady and easy. He wasn’t as long or as wide as Matthias had been since penises tended to be proportional, but his member had a curve to it that hit something wonderful in Jesper. “Alpha! Saints, you feel so so so good,” he babbled as he was once again stuffed full.

“Good little bitch, taking it so well. You’re my fucking slut, you know that? No one else can touch you unless I tell them that they can,” Kaz snarled, now fully enraptured in his rut. He began to pound into the omega so hard that for a moment, Jesper was worried about whether or not his knee was going to be able to support him at that angle.

The thoughts were driven from his mind with a thrust forward that managed to reach all the way up to his cervix. He cried out and threw his head back against the pillows many especially for him as he was overcome with another orgasm. He could barely pay attention to what was going on around him as he felt teeth scrape against his mating gland only once before the flimsy skin there was finally broken and he was left with the bite mark he had wanted so desperately for years.

By the time that he came back to himself, he realized that he had also been knotted and the scents surrounding him in his nest had turned his brain to pudding. He purred quietly as he felt Kaz lapping against the mark that he had left, as well as another bite mark that hadn’t been there when he had whited out. He turned his head to the side and blinked blearily as he realized that it was Matthias’ since he had his turn before Kaz had shown up.

In his haze of happiness, he bit Matthias back and then did the same to Kaz, which earned him another rush of cum into his eagerly waiting cunt.

---

The heat continued just as he had wanted it to. Nina fucked him up against the wall and then bit him early before they orgasms, keeping her teeth in his neck the entire time that she did so. Wylan fucked him gently and tenderly during the longest of his cold spells and they marked each other while crying and overwhelmed by pleasure. Inej got them out of the nest and down into the bathroom so that they could clean off the blood, sweat, slick, and cum that they were now covered in. She bit Jesper when he was wrapped in a fluffy blanket and holding a bowl of the curry she had made to keep him happily fed.

[ladyvader23]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by the lovely @fanfictasia and @the-real-azalea-scroggs and this seems fun, so here we go!

1. How many works do you have on A03?

24, though I have some on ff.net that aren't posted on AO3 from the very early days

2. What's your total A03 word count?

850,878 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mainly Star Wars, though I've dabbled in FFXIV recently.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Missing and Presumed Dead

Darth Vader Goes to Therapy

Just One Wish

Darth Vader Goes to School

Unexpected Truths (just like the title, I did not expect this one to be in the top 5 and I have questions)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to. I read and love every single comment I get, please don't get me wrong, comments absolutely FUEL me, but responding?? I have so much anxiety, it used to take me HOURS to respond to them all. Eventually it got to be so much on my emotional health that I decided it would be better to channel that into writing more for people to enjoy, so...that's what I do now. Again, comments fuel me, and I love you all, and I read every single comment and even have a lil' scrapbook of comments that I go back to whenever I'm feeling down about my writing, so I hope this doesn't give off the wrong impression...

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Easily Fracture. If you've read it, there's no explanation needed here. If you haven't...let's just say someone gets turned into a rug, among many other horrible things...

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Uh...most of my fics have a happy ending of some sort. Some you just have to wade through more angst and whump to get to the happy ending than others. I think Missing and Presumed Dead had an ending I thought was perfect for it, as did Darth Vader Goes to Therapy. Both were happy endings AND endings that I thought were perfect for the story that was told.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I write for Star Wars. Yeah, I've gotten hate XD. Thankfully, it's rare. Usually people get upset with my interpretations because "iTs NoT cAnOn!" I really just don't care, so I just laugh and move on. Like if you wanted canon, why are you reading fanfic?? Probably the craziest though was when someone went on one of the biggest Tumblr blogs in the SW fandom and used my Darth Vader Goes to Therapy fic to support their argument that the Jedi were evil or whatever (idk, I wasn't part of the argument) and beyond the fact that it's wild to go into a fandom canon-based argument with super out of context quotes from a fanfiction to support your argument, but to do it with a fic that I 100% wrote as a COMEDY is just. Wow. I was suddenly flooded with so much hate from a bunch of people who had never read my fic, thought it was a seriously written piece of literature, and assumed I agreed with everything the person said and I didn't even know until I went to the post and had to defend myself...every once in a while someone will not see that defense and will message me more hate. Like it's a crack fic. Granted, I DID do research on real therapy practices because I didn't want to make a joke out of therapy, but everything else was 100% a joke. I'm really glad people love it (so do I!) and resonate with it, but it's not canon. I don't think the person intended for me to get so much hate, so I definitely don't blame them, but it was a lot.

9. Do you write smut?

Um. Ahem. I may or may not have a private stash from like. Deleted scenes in fics that had romance in them back when I wrote those. That I will. Definitely. Never publish. Don't worry about it. >>

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yes! Though I've only done a few. I think the only one on AO3 was the crossover with The Last of Us, done before the TV adaption.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Sort of. There was that scare a few years ago when everyone thought a random website had stolen everyone's fics, but it turned out it wasn't that exactly. AO3 isn't available everywhere, so there are sites that are just set up to mirror whatever is on AO3 so that people can read fics on that site, and it happened to be one of those sites. Oh boy, though, did they get a lot of hate mail before it got clarified. Then there was that time I had someone write a fanfic that they said they wrote with a similar concept to my ff.net story Second Chances, but then one of their friends was like "this is a rip off" so they asked me to read it before they posted it to make sure they hadn't ripped it off. Except...it was almost 90% word for word....so uh. I didn't give my blessing and I don't think it ever got posted lol.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I've had fics translated into Russian, Chinese, Korean and French. My most common requests for translation are Russian and Chinese. I've never actively tried to get something translated, it's just whoever asks me for permission.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! (I'm keeping Aza's answer for this part since it's true) There's the memorable Great April Flood, which was basically a dozen of Star Wars writers gathering together to do a massive round robin with tumblr asks prompt fills (those three sentence fics, if anyone remembers) in order to flood our side of tumblr on April Fools in 2020.

I also did an Inuyasha fanfic with my cousin when I was a teenager, and I didn't technically co-write it, but I did heavily work with a specific character for my Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden series with my best friend in high school as well.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I mean, I'm pretty open to whatever. I think I've written Luke with like....5 or 6 different people depending on the story?? But if I had to choose, I guess I'm pretty consistently Percybeth, so I guess them???

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The Assassins Blade. Like it was a great story....but omg. I got so much harassment about the most random things, sometimes on every. single. chapter. it just wore me down and I just don't write romance-centric fics anymore, which is sad because I DO like writing romance.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Finding the comedy in even the darkest moment. Taking a horrific situation and really just letting the characters feel the emotions of the moment, letting them bask in the consequences of either their actions or the actions of others.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Well, anyone who has ever edited my stuff will probably say "too many redundant sentences" and you know what? They're right. Fluff-centric scenes are difficult, as well. I also will disappear for months on end when I'm just. In a weird funk. Which I still kind of am in at the moment, but I'm actively trying to break through it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I don't really have an opinion on this one.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

First one I wrote for: Final Fantasy X, but my mom wouldn't let me publish because it was the days of the internet when all parents thought their child was going to be kidnapped if they did anything other than look at the internet. It was bad though, so I'm not sad I didn't publish.

First one I published: Inuyasha. I published behind my mom's back, and got in trouble when she found out, but then she looked at everyone's comments and figured out that I was not, in fact, overly in danger of being kidnapped, so she let it go.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Darth Vader Goes to Therapy. I will never be that funny ever again. I achieved my peak comedy with that fic. But a very close second is Missing and Presumed Dead, and sometimes, depending on the day, that one is my favorite and DVGTT is a close second.

This was fun! Tagging @sunshinechildskywalker @25centsoda and @zoryany but definitely don't feel like you have to!

[godsdefect]

9kay take my headconshjm. it's so hot outside. I'm eleting. I'm melting. I feel like an old man how the hell do I do things on this sight without looking like an idiot

ALSO I WRITE FANFICTION. GIVE ME WHUMP IDEAS. GIVE ME ANGST IDEAS. GIVE ME ANY IDEAS. I'LL WRITE THEM. I'LL WRITE THEM FOR YOU!!!!!!!!! I HAVE NOTHING TO DO!!!!!!!!

SORRY FOR PUTTING A THIRD WALL OF TEXT HERE BUT I'M SHAKING IN MY BOOTS WHAT IF THIS DOESN'T COMPRESS AND IT JUST CLOGS UP THE TAGS????? GUYS IM 𝘊𝘏𝘖𝘒𝘌𝘚 𝘖𝘕 𝘛𝘌𝘈𝘙𝘚 I DOTN WANT TO BE ANNOYING 𝘌𝘟𝘗𝘓𝘖𝘋𝘌𝘚 𝘈𝘕𝘋 𝘛𝘌𝘈𝘙-𝘐𝘕𝘍𝘜𝘚𝘌𝘋 𝘎𝘖𝘙𝘌 𝘍𝘓𝘐𝘌𝘚 𝘌𝘝𝘌𝘙𝘠𝘞𝘏𝘌𝘙𝘌

- Trauma. The shit that he went through wasn't going to let him live the rest of his life peacefully, and a constant reminder of his trauma was the tremor he gained in his hands. Along with the tremor, little aches and pains would form in places like his back, legs, hands, just really anywhere and it would bug him to no end. His hand writing would change as well as his art style, but eventually he'd learn to navigate around it. The tremor would obviously worsen with anxiety attacks and nightmares. Speaking of nightmares, he would be embarrassed to admit he still has them pretty regularly, and he'd need about an hour to properly calm down after having one.

- He's a doodler. Usually his surroundings fall victim to being sloppily sketched into his case book or stranger's passing faces, but he takes a particular liking to drawing flowers. He likes the way the petals unfold, and this is totally not giving me an excuse to say that his favorite flower is starfighter lilies.

- Cole has a slight ick for needles. It won't freak him out too much if he has to hold a syringe or look at one, but for him to see one and knows it's going in him always makes his arms go stiff and look the other way. The pinch of it always makes him want to grit his teeth together. Syrettes especially freak him out.

- Malewife. He loves doing tasks around the house, especially doing dishes or doing laundry with his favorite outfits in them. He's found that he enjoys much simpler jobs or assignments outside of work hours due to how complex and stressful his job as a detective can be, along with cleaning and how it helps clear up his head after a long day.

- Favorite food. When people ask him if he has a favorite food he always writes off the question with a “I don't have one” because he doesn't like giving out personal info, he wants a thick emotional wall between most people in his life that he thinks keeps him safe. But I've deemed that this man has to have a simple but interesting choice of favorite food, and I've decided that to be waffles. Connected to his childhood, hard to mess up, and tasty with a few simple ingredients. He appreciates the recognizable flavor with such a humble breakfast meal, also likes them with nearly gross amounts of syrup and strawberries. No other fruit than strawberries or he can't look at them the same when they're on his plate.

- Love language is gift giving and physical touch, if coexisting in the same room doing your own thing can count as a love language, too, then count that in. Explanation on gift giving, he doesn't like directly giving the gift to his partner with the item in his hands, moreover just leaving it somwhere subtle until his partner finds it and gets surprised by something sweet. Even little things like a neat trinket he found he would bring home, maybe leave it on the nightstand of his partner's as a little way to say ‘this reminded me of you’. Explaining the physical touch thing, it has to be a certain degree of it. Touch that just confirms that someone's there, not too attention catching but just there. Also, the thing about just coexisting in the same room, it has to be somewhere he considers a safe space. His office, for example, is very very sacred to him, and when he lets someone in there to dawdle it's more of like a declaration of trust. The presence of the other would definitely soothe him and he'd stay silent, but it's still a huge milestone in the relationship he would have with someone, whether friend or romantic partner.

- How he sleeps. Usually Cole is so wound up tight that half the time if he has the whole day to sleep he'll only take a light nap before trying to do something productive around the house, although he could have the place bleached and scrubbed down twice and he would still clean it again if he had time. He generally loathes feeling lazy or unproductive to the point that he works himself into oblivion, driving to spouts of burnout/autistic burnout and general uninspiration. When things like that come around, his body moreover forces him to do things like sleep in, which is usually the only time he's ever brushed shoulders with REM sleep. Okay moving onto sleeping habits, he would definitely be a light sleeper and find himself drooling onto his pillow obnoxiously often. When he goes into deeper dozes you could throttle him and he wouldn't even feel it in his dreams. It's silly but it's a lighter side to how hellish it is for him to get some real rest.

- Cole's stance on religion. He used to be religious, but that was only when he was a kid. By the time he was a teen he just couldn't grasp that there was some big man in the sky looking down on them, it felt impossible to connect to Christianity in any kind of way. White noise was only ever heard when he asked God about something, and the first and last time he ever went to a priest about something like that he was told that he had done something wrong and that God was punishing him for it. This would obviously break Cole's heart as a young boy, but no matter how hard he tried he'd never be able to force God to acknowledge him. So he'd just give up. Religion after that would be kind of a sensitive topic for him, but he'd still say he was Christian in fear of being berated. His stance on firmly not being religious would further solidify when he was fighting in the war and as a last resort would pray to God to save his men only to see them get killed and think ‘no loving god would do this to his creation’.

- Cole gets really bad homesickness. Ever since he got home from the war leaving home would never be the same for him, especially now that he practically sees his home office as a refuge. Leaving home for work or anything like that wouldn't bother him the slightest, but being away from something he holds so near and dear to his heart for a few days would make him feel like he constantly needs to puke or that the air is unnecassarily suffocating.

- Cole is a silent crier. He will actually just sit on the edge of his bed and stare into nothing until he either wills the tears away or they just fall down his face. He’d probably just scrub them off with his sleeves and sniffle a bit before shaking himself out of it and distracting himself with work or liquor – maybe even a task around the house. He was raised thinking that the “boys don’t cry” stuff was real n all, which is really unfortunate, I feel like he would need to catch a break sooner or later or else he’ll have a breakdown at the slightest inconvenience.

[prodigal-explorer]

evening star - sanders sides fanfiction - i

(let me know if you want to be on the tag list!)

next part

word count: 2.3k

(cw -> whump, unsympathetic!patton, implied abuse, implied codependent relationship, blood)

summary: a prologue. roman is acting strange, and janus doesn't know why. and when roman exposes certain ulterior motives that patton has in order to keep janus and remus on their toes, janus can't help but wonder what kind of situation he's in.

---

Despite all of the sides being the exact same age, Janus had always subconsciously seen Roman as young. 

It was in his personality, when he viewed the world with a child-like obliviousness, unwilling to let go of his play-pretend fantasies of good and bad, heroes and villains. Dark and light. He carried himself with an immature bravado, as if he didn’t know of all that was in the world that could burden him. It was likely that he truly didn’t. 

It was in his voice, and his speech. Roman’s voice was high-pitched, and he regularly spoke in a fake accent to try and sound different from the others. Roman loved to be different. He adored attention, and being the one in the center, or the spotlight. 

It was in his appearance, especially his eyes. They shined with innocence and unshakeable determination that one couldn’t help but admire when they witnessed it. Janus always found himself stuck looking into those eyes whenever he was engaged in an argument with Roman, and when he did, he felt like he was going back in time, looking at a child Creativity, announcing that he was the best, and that nobody and nothing could bring him down as his eyes glittered with hope and self-assurance. 

Which made it all the more haunting when Janus searched for any sign of that in Roman’s eyes now, and was met with a cloudy, resigned dullness. 

“Darling,” Janus said, the typical smooth drawl of his voice making way for something softer. “What’s happened to you?” 

He carefully brought a hand to Roman’s cheek, noticing that the creative side’s skin was glistening with sweat. Roman flinched away the second Janus’ finger made contact with his cheek, and Janus pulled his hand back immediately. 

Roman broke eye contact, staring down at the floor as if his life depended on it as he quickly held out a cube-shaped cardboard box. 

“Patton wanted me to give this to you,” he mumbled, his voice devoid of volume, and his accent. It didn’t even sound like Roman, and Janus wondered if Virgil was playing a trick on him, dressed up in Roman’s clothes to fool him. 

But that wasn’t possible. 

Roman’s skin was tanned by the sunny Imagination while Virgil was white as snow. Roman was also only an inch or two taller than Janus, while Virgil was over a head taller. 

Still, even that would make more sense than what was happening now. 

Roman seemed like a totally different person. 

“Please,” Roman whispered, cutting the silence, “Take it. He really wants you to have it.” 

Janus blinked and took the box with an increased urgency, worried by Roman’s tone. He stared down at the box and then back at Roman. 

“What’s inside?” he asked. 

Roman shook his head. It was highly probable that he didn’t know. Janus, overtaken by curiosity, opened the package nimbly and neatly. Inside was a small card, and a tin filled to the very top with cookies. Janus picked up the note, a little confused by the kind gesture. Patton regularly baked a lot of treats and shared them with the other sides, but this courtesy was not often extended to Janus or Remus. 

Janus started to read the note. 

“I hope you like the cookies! Puppy and I made these together, and we even added a special secret ingredient! Make sure to share with Remus, and don’t eat too many at once! Love, Happy Pappy Patton.” 

Janus stared back at the tin. Then, he looked at Roman. 

“Who’s Puppy?” he asked, “If this is his idea of a nickname, he needs to come to you for advice, because that’s just sad. Did Patton get a new pet or something?” 

Roman flinched and took a step back quite quickly. As if a word in one of Janus’ sentences had spurred him to action. He shook his head again. 

“Uh…Roman, what’s gotten into you?” Janus asked carefully, “You’re acting really weird. You can talk to me if you want. Is everything okay?” 

“Everything’s okay,” Roman said, looking back up towards Janus with the most obscenely fake smile the deceitful side had ever seen, “I mean- actually- can I give you a hug?” 

Well, that was weird. Roman loved physical contact, but it was rare that he initiated it with Janus. In this strange state, though, Janus couldn’t quite find it in him to decline. He nodded. Roman looked around the hallway, as if he was afraid someone might see, and then, he slowly and carefully hugged Janus, barely putting any pressure on him as he rested his head on Janus’ shoulder. It felt nice, a rather comforting position. Janus relaxed into the hug. 

“Janus,” Roman whispered, and his voice carried a strange desperation to it that made Janus’ heart rate pick up all over again. 

“What? What’s up, darling?” Janus whispered back, because that just felt like the right thing to do. 

“Please,” Roman’s voice was almost inaudible. “Don’t eat the cookies.” 

Roman pulled away the second he finished speaking, and he walked away briskly, so fast that Janus didn’t even have time to ask any questions. He just stared as Roman disappeared down the hallway, his shoulders tensed up in a way that made him look almost guilty. 

Then, Janus looked down at the cookies. One secret ingredient. 

He picked up a cookie and broke it in half, inspecting the inside to see if there was something like marshmallows or butterscotch chips mixed in. There was nothing like that. Only caramel brown cookie and dark brown milk chocolate chips. 

Janus had always been more of a white chocolate person. But cookies were cookies. 

He inspected it further, trying to figure out what had made Roman sound so afraid when he told him not to eat the cookies. It was strange to see Roman afraid of anything, as he fancied himself the bravest side. That certainly wasn’t far from the truth. Roman fought monsters and protected the people he loved without a second thought. 

Janus started squishing part of the cookie between his fingers. It was soft, contrasting the crunchy outside, and Janus wondered if Patton perhaps used softened butter instead of melted butter. Not that he was an expert on the science of baking. That was a question for Logan. 

Humming quietly in thought, Janus continued to knead the piece of cookie between his finger and his thumb, and that was when a sharp pain in his finger caused him to drop the piece onto the floor. He cried out and stared at his finger, bewildered as he started to see blood trickle down it. 

As he looked closer, Janus saw a small bit of something hard lodged into his fingertip. Gingerly, he pulled it out, not wanting to accidentally cause damage. And when he held it to the light, that was when Janus saw it. 

A shard of glass, that no doubt, had to have come from the cookie. 

A shard of glass that, had Janus consumed it, could have been painful, possibly even dangerous. 

A chill ran through Janus’ body as he put the shard into the box and shut it. So that was the secret ingredient. But that was only one question answered. At this moment in time, Janus had multiple. 

Why would Patton put glass in cookies? 

Why would Patton purposefully try to hurt Janus and Remus? 

How did Roman know about it? 

Did this have to do with how strange Roman was acting? 

Janus stewed in thought as he carried the box into the dark mindscape, throwing the entire thing into the trash can. Remus sauntered into the area only seconds later, catching a glimpse of what Janus was doing. He walked over and snatched the note from the box, reading it over. 

“Cookies?” Remus asked with a snort, “Does he think we’re stupid?” 

“I thought Patton was Morality,” Janus muttered through gritted teeth, “I can’t believe he would try something like this. He almost had us eating glass, Remus.” 

Remus shrugged, grinning maniacally. 

“I’ve eaten worse,” he pointed out, looking at the note. “Goddamn, he is obsessed with calling him that.” 

“Calling who what?” Janus asked, looking at the note over Remus’ shoulder. “Oh, yeah. Puppy. That is a weird nickname. Wait, do you know who it is?” 

“Yeah,” Remus said, “Every time I pop into the light mindscape to play around with Virgil or mess with Logan, Patton and Roman are always together, doing something. Patton keeps on calling Roman “Puppy”. I think it’s weird as hell, at least, for a light side. They don’t do weird things that often.” 

“So…Puppy is Roman,” Janus mumbled, “That would explain it. Roman was actually the one who brought the cookies. He told me not to eat them. I think if he hadn’t told me, I would have been none the wiser. He…basically saved us from a lot of pain. He was acting so strange too.” 

“So Roman tried to get us to eat glass too?” Remus guessed, “And then chickened out at the last second? Yeah. That sounds like Roman, alright. Why are you saying he was acting strange?” 

“No, I’m saying I…I don’t think he ever wanted us to eat it,” Janus tried to explain, “He was sweating like crazy, and he sounded terrified. I just don’t get what’s going on. He couldn’t even look at me for longer than a few seconds, and…at one point, when I was talking to him, he flinched. Like- I was going to hurt him.” 

Remus blinked and slowly nodded. 

“Okay, yeah, doesn’t sound like Roman. I’ve never seen him flinch at anything a day in his life,” Remus said, “What did you say?” 

“I don’t know, it was something about the nickname,” Janus said, “I think I asked him about if Patton had gotten a pet or something, it wasn’t anything threatening.” 

“Well, that’s confusing,” Remus muttered, rolling his eyes, “Roman’s always confusing, though. Maybe you should talk to him.” 

“Why me?” Janus asked, “Maybe you should talk to him.” 

Remus laughed. “He would never listen to me,” he scoffed, “Roman’s in his world and I’m in mine. Polar opposites, remember?” 

“I dunno, Remus,” Janus shrugged, “I think you two are more alike than you think. You’re both brave, and you’re both annoying as fuck.” 

“Ouch,” Remus drawled sarcastically, “Also, what are we gonna do about these cookies? Should we make poison scones in retaliation?” 

“Retaliation is a waste of time,” Janus said, “And I want to figure out what’s going on with Roman before moving on to anything else. If you won’t talk to him, then I will.” 

“Great,” Remus said, digging through the trash and picking up a cookie. “I’m gonna go feed this to a squirrel and watch it die.” 

“Have fun, be back before dinner,” Janus called out as Remus left, sighing to himself when he was alone. 

Being the side of deceit and self-preservation, Janus was usually great at confrontation. He was able to keep a level head in an argument, and he knew how to play dirty to get exactly what he wanted. But this felt different. He wasn’t confronting somebody as a means to an end. He wasn’t trying to get something out of anybody, not even simple satisfaction. 

And this was Roman. The side that Janus had a soft spot for. It didn’t stop him from manipulating Roman, the poor thing was just too easy. But Janus found himself thinking about Roman at night, when it was just him and the dark. Roman’s smile, his laugh. His grandiose gestures. 

The creative side was cute. And despite Janus’ love for drama and emotional turmoil, he didn’t want to see anything bad happening to the side, something that would hurt him physically, or stay with him forever. Roman was annoying, but he was a good guy. He didn’t deserve something like that. 

That thought was what spurred Janus to his feet, and he didn’t look back as he walked out of the dark mindscape and towards Roman’s room. He figured Roman would likely be here, showering for an obscenely long time or singing karaoke. 

But when he walked through the door, Janus noticed two things. 

Firstly, Roman’s room was completely trashed. 

There was a strange dimness to it that wasn’t typical. Roman’s room was the second brightest in the entire mindscape, the brightest being Patton’s. Roman insisted on specific lighting to take the perfect selfies. Usually, Roman’s things were lined up in a messy but specific pattern, a system that only he understood. But his trophies and trinkets were either knocked over to the floor, or tilted on their sides chaotically. The bed was messy, which wasn’t new. Roman wasn’t much of a rebel, but he despised the idea of making his bed when it would just be messed up the next night anyway. Janus was glad at least that that was normal. 

But there was one more detail about the room that made Janus’ stomach twist. A large bloodstain on the carpet in the middle of the floor. It had dried and crusted, and Janus assumed that it was at least a few days old, but the smell of oxidized blood took over the entire room, replacing its usual scent of pine wood and fancy perfume. It almost made Janus gag. 

He was almost sure that the blood was Roman’s. The blood of the creatures in the Imagination were different colors, usually blue and glittery. Roman was sensitive when it came to blood, and he got dizzy or fainted whenever he saw it. Changing the color and quality of the blood in the Imagination fixed the problem quickly. 

But this blood wasn’t blue or sparkly. It was hauntingly crimson, and real. Something very bad had happened in this room, and it wasn’t recently either. 

The second thing Janus noticed about the room was that Roman wasn’t anywhere in it. Not yet, at least. Janus tensed up as he heard footsteps come towards the room, and a chattering voice that was distinctly not Roman’s. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. All he could do now was hold his breath and wait.