#trying to write shorter things & be less precious about them too

[sankttealeaf]

20 from the kiss ask for gale and rue pweeesse

hehe thank u bunny :3

KISS PROMPT LIST - SEND ME A NUMBER & SHIP

20: a kiss on a scar

the dark urge x gale // 430 words

They often find themselves laying with one another at night, wide awake with nothing but time as the rest of their companions sleep soundly around them. 

Rue’s second favourite place in the world has to be in Gale’s arms. Her first is him in her arms, though she’ll never admit it to him. She rests her head on his chest, enjoying the gentle thud thud thud of his heartbeat. Soothing. Relaxing. Helps to remind her they’re both still alive.

Her fingers trace along the tip of the orb, slowly and purposefully as if she’s committing it to memory. It cuts through his skin, filling the space it leaves with deep purple. A permanent reminder, even long after it will disappear. She pities him.

“At least it’s pretty,” Rue whispers, coming down to the circular pattern of it now and letting her finger loop around and around. “It’s always the prettiest things that are out to kill you.” 

He laughs softly at that, tucking some of her hair behind her ear. “I never expected that kind of wisdom to come from you.”

“I like to keep you on your toes.” A gentle smile. A quick kiss to the palm of his hand. Rue looks back at the mark of the orb. “Does it hurt right now?” 

“A little. It’s like a constant dull ache. I can block it out when we’re on the road but now with nothing to occupy my mind I can feel it,” Gale admits, taking a hold of her hand, the one over his chest. 

“I think I know of a way to fix it,” Rue says, a mischevious look on her face as she leans towards him. A soft kiss is pressed in the centre of the orb and she looks at him with a grin. “Did that help?” 

Gale hums in thought for a moment before nodding. “I do believe it did. Though I may need another to fully confirm it.” 

She laughs quietly, bringing her lips back towards it again and again until she’s travelled up his neck, across his jaw and onto his cheek. Gale’s face flushes a deep red as she smiles down at him, eyebrow raised.

“Better?”

“Absolutely.” His arms wrap around her as they settle in properly for the night, a quick kiss to the scar across her own cheek. “Wake me if you need me.”

“I promise.” She rests her head in the crook of his neck, hand over his chest where the orb lies. Her eyes fall shut and for once she hopes to have a restful night.

[jarofstyles]

Illicit 6

Hello... It's gonna get crazy soon so enjoy the calm before the storm :) hehe. It's a shorter update but it's important <3

Illicit Masterlist

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WC- 2.5k

warnings- mention of stalking

---------

Harry was waiting on the text from Brant. 

Katherine had insisted she would end the contract, but it had been silent for two days. He was angry, this was taking too long. Harry wasn’t known for his patience and rightfully so, he was running out- If he hadn’t been already. He wanted to take Y/N public. This farce needed to end.

She had been less than pleased with him after finding out he hadn’t stopped fucking her once he noticed Katherine, but she also sort of understood him. She knew he was trying to get this contract to be ended because he really wanted to be with her alone, keep it from running the remainder of the course but she was also concerned.

This woman had to be unhinged. To break and enter into a home, it was showing desperation and Y/N didn’t like it one bit. She seemed to see what Harry didn’t. A woman who had what she wanted taken away from her. Something that she only saw possible with Harry’s help, for whatever reason. Y/N knew there were dozens of other successful businessmen in the circle she hung out in, but she also knew Harry was the best of the best. The top dog. She wouldn’t even just say that because she loved him- it was a straight fact. Harry was one of the richest men from one of the richest families, an elite in the circles of higher society, and he was someone who got a lot of attention despite trying to stay under the radar. 

So why Katherine set her sights on one of the most privacy seeking men in the lineup? Neither one of them had a clue. The only thing Y/N could manage was that she wanted to be the one that changed him. That was laughable considering Harry was the most stubborn and sure of himself person she knew- an Y/N had met a lot of people. 

One of the things Harry liked most about Y/N is she had no desire to change him. As cliche as it sounded, she liked him for him. She was aware of his grouchy disposition, knew he would never stand for his employees or disrespect, knew he was blunt and could be cruel. But he had a soft underbelly that no one else got to see besides her. She watched him silently, anonymously donating thousands and thousands to charities. He was kind to children, kneeling to get to their level and speaking to them in a soft tone, like little adults. He paid for some of his employees' children to go to college, albeit through a scholarship that was entirely funded by him. They’d never know he did it by himself, because he didn’t want praise. He didn’t do anything for public acceptance. 

The man treated her like a goddess. A princess. The most precious thing to him. Something in him switched when he looked at her, the cold, bored look, the stoicness turning to a melty fondness in his irises. His tone softened, his strong grip loosening to a gentle caress as he held her hand in his own and did his signature kiss to her knuckles before pressing the back of her hand to his cheek. He’d done it the night they’d met, claiming infatuation at first sight that had turned into love fairly quickly. 

People around them that knew, Harry’s actual friends and his housekeeper at the lake had expressed shock at how he had been around her. While he was definitely looser and more pleasant around them, Y/N’s treatment had caught them off guard. There was no doubt in any of their minds that he had found The One. 

Y/N found it interesting to watch the switch. To see him sitting there on a business video call with his immaculate posture, his brows slightly furrowed and jaw tense as his hands sat folded in front of him. He was working from home today, wearing black pinstriped trousers and a crisp white button up to keep it somewhat casual, but they were immaculately pressed. His hair was slicked back, but the one piece that always gave him an issue curled around his forehead, making her heart flutter. How a man was as handsome as him was a mystery to her, but the fact that he was hers was something that made her feel all sorts of warmth all over. Looking over his computer screen, she saw the moment he took her in. His eyes changed as he spotted her, clad only in one of his light blue button ups and her hair in a bun she threw up haphazardly at the nape of her neck, tendrils loose in front of her face. Leaning in the doorway, she wiggled her fingertips at him before leaning her hip up against the doorframe. 

“Gentlemen, I have a situation that needs attending to. We will resume tomorrow when I am in office.” He said before swiftly clicking out of his meeting. Closing his laptop and leaning back in his chair. His finger curled, motioning her to him. He had no problem putting things off when it came to Y/N and that was another reason she knew she was different than anything else for him. Harry had been married to work before her, and his devotion was now much more appropriate. 

“I’m a situation, hm?” Y/N laughed, padding over to his chair. It was no surprise that she was pulled into his lap, straddling it as he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her into him to give her a thorough kiss. He tasted slightly like coffee and his mint gum he chewed religiously, other hand sliding down to slip underneath his shirt and caress the curve of her back. With a soft hum, he managed to peel himself away, nudging her nose with his own. 

“Mmm. My best situation.” He smiled. Y/N’s thumb found his dimple, pressing into it before settling herself on him with her weight. “I’m glad you came and found me. You were sleeping so soundly before, didn’t want to disturb you.” His lips brushed her cheek, remembering her sleepy form underneath his plushy white bedspread. Her hair flowing over the pillows and her sleep swollen lips parted slightly, puffing out soft breaths as she slept. She’d stirred a bit when Harry moved, but settled once he gently tucked her back under the duvet. He had half a mind to say fuck it to the meeting and spend the morning rolling in the sheets, worshiping his beautiful lover, but he knew what he needed to do. 

“That’s okay. Remembered that you told me you had that meeting so I figured where you were in here.” Resting her head against his, she relaxed further in his hold, the rhythmic stroking of her bare back making her already slightly sleepy state worsen. She’d brushed her teeth, gotten dressed in his shirt and washed her face, but she was fresh out of bed. Still warm and pliant, eyes a little heavy with the leftover sleep. “Was it going good? Didn’t have to end on my account. I was just going to sit on the couch.” She liked his leather couch against the wall. This room also functioned as a makeshift library, so she would find a book and relax until he was done, normally. 

“Didn’t care. Wasn’t something I felt like investing in but to be honest, you looked far too stunning in my shirt. Couldn’t help myself.” He smiled, gently massaging the back of her neck. “Y’know it’s my favorite way to see you. My soft girl.” Harry was sure it was probably not a good habit to get into, but he had rose colored glasses on. The sweet bliss of strawberry pink love, fluffy like cotton candy and soft like silk, he couldn’t deprive himself of time with Y/N. He was addicted to her inside and out, needy and hungry for attention in a way he didn’t know a human was. Before her, he thought people were making it up. This whole love thing, not being able to stay away, feeling like your heart belonged to someone else. Y/N had blown up his world view and expanded it tenfold. 

Of course she didn’t want to break the moment, but the suspense was killing her. Keeping his face in her hands, she fixed him a soft look before proceeding with the question. “Has Brant emailed you, texted, called? About the contract termination?” She whispered, knowing it would piss him off. The reminder did as she expected, his back stiffening slightly. HIs brows fixed, making her well aware of the answer. “No, huh?” A sad smile rose to her face, knowing that Katherine was only making it worse for herself. 

Harry went very far for people he loved, but this was a new level. He was bloodthirsty. Willing to ruin it for her, her inheritance, her life if she didn’t listen to him. He gave her a few days, but she hadn’t taken it upon herself to talk to her father. He wasn’t going to spare any details. “No. I was going to call him after my meeting.” He sighed. “I don’t understand her stupidity. I could charge with breaking and entering, but I haven’t. She doesn’t seem to understand.” It was tiresome now. He didn’t want to go through the effort, but he would. He was tired of holding Y/N away and pretending he was into anyone else. Crazy Heiress or anyone else, he wanted his and Y/N’s names linked together forever. Loving her made him possessive and eager to share that she was his, that he was taken. No mistakes being made that he was taken- by the right woman. 

“I think that’s a good idea. Something seems… off about her.” Y/N whispered, as if she was being watched. Something felt a bit off. “I think you should do it sooner rather than later. I don’t like that she’s been silent.” It was highly unlikely for her to take days off of posting, and Y/N had checked to see if she had announced a break up or something. Nothing. It was a red flag, in her opinion. Something was wrong with her and her gut instinct was to proceed with caution. 

“I may as well get it over with.” He mumbled, adjusting her in his lap so she was strown across it. Her head laid on his shoulder, one arm around her while the other picked up his work phone and dialled the number. It only took 3 rings and it was answered, a jubilant greeting coming from Brant- which meant he definitely didn’t know. 

“Hello. I have some rather unfortunate news.” He said into the phone. “Well, I’m sure you’re aware of your daughter’s rather unhinged behavior as of late. I’m sure you also know I’ve had no real interest in her, but I was seen with her in public and allowed her to use my name and image to boost not only her name, but your own as well. I’m sure you also haven’t heard from her personally in the last three days.” Harry had a little bit of joy in knowing that Katherine was going to get punished. In some way, somehow, he was going to punish her and she was going to be taken out of his life.

“I’ve been lenient. I’ve been much more patient with your daughter than she deserves, because quite frankly, she’s a spoiled brat with not a single lick of sense floating through her thick skull. Enough so to break into not only my office, but my home. She found me with another woman, the woman I am committed to in my personal life. She watched, like a pervert, and had the nerve to continue to try and argue with me. She called my real woman some things I won’t repeat, but I will remind you there was no clause indicating fidelity, and I’d simply found my match after the contract was signed.” He sighed, hearing sputtering from the other line. 

“I’m going to give you options here. Options because I know, Brant, that you value your business. I want the contract called off. I want it ripped to shreds, annulled, and my acquisition is going to drop. I will offer it to another parent company, but in good faith I don’t feel it is a worthy investment for me, but I keep my word.” He spoke clear, concise, though Y/N knew he was fuming. Recalling the things, stewing over them. “I want my name to be separated from every branch of your family. You couldn’t keep the leash your daughter so desperately needs tight enough and she’s gotten scrappy. You both are very lucky I didn’t charge any sort of charges against her. She’s your daughter and she is a reflection of one. A poor one. I don’t know if the fillers she gets have leaked into her blood, I don’t know if she’s gone mad with supposed and fleeting social power, I don’t know if there is something otherwise wrong with her. I want her out of my life, out of my sight, and I want it to stay that way.” It was silent on the other end, but Harry wasn’t finished. 

“So what you can do, is tell her that she needs to get some help. I presume you didn’t give her enough attention as a child, paid her off with gifts and trips instead of the affection a child actually needs and now she seeks validation from others, including the internet, and feeds off of that alone. Something along those lines. You can dissolve the contract on your own, quietly, or I can make a large deal about it. Leaking some things to the press as she had done, I can call the police and show them the footage of her breaking into my apartment. I can ruin your family name in just gossip alone. So I suggest you weigh your options carefully before giving me an answer, though it’s very obvious what the choice should be.” He squeezed Y/N’s waist softly as he hung up the phone. 

Y/N got another glimpse of business Harry, but it was personal this time. He was angry, making her reach to smooth the wrinkles at his brow. “Unclench your jaw, baby.” She urged, smiling lightly at him. “It’s all up to him now. I would assume he would have some sense. And soon, we won’t have to hide at all.” That was the silver lining in all of this. Kathering dug her own grave, and Harry had pushed her into the hole, 6 feet under. He gave her a shot to make it correct but she didn’t do as needed, and he had to take matters into his own hands. Now he was. 

“I know, baby.” He murmured. “I just hate that I went along with it this long but…” He moved to hiss her forehead. “It’ll be over soon. All we have to do is wait for the call.”

[alteon77]

Updated Masterlist of Writing and Art

About the writer/artist: I like to write and paint. My current obsession is Sandman, but I enjoy most fantasy fandoms as well as anime (I think I’m on season seven billion of One Piece right now 🤣). I'm also weird as they come (and awkward, too), so just please ignore my oddball (coughTERRIBLEcough) sense of humor.

On a more personal note, I have PTSD and suffer from severe manic depressive episodes. Writing and art are my most familiar coping mechanisms, and I need them like I need oxygen. Seriously, there were times in my life that knowing I had to finish a story or a piece of art was the only thing stopping me from ending up dead. So, I don't take part in fandom drama. Having my peace and protecting my mental health are very big deals to me, and I won't risk those for anything if I can help it.

As for my writing, it ranges from short one-shots to ridiculously long novel series. I use third person POV (on longer series) as well as second person (on shorter things). I also try to always exclude physical descriptions when writing main character OCs and assign them nicknames to avoid using Y/N. I love to read Y/N fics, but writing them makes me feel like I'm at work. And who actually wants to ever feel like they're at work when they're engaging in a hobby? Definitely not me.

Lastly, there's usually more stuff on my AO3 page than I have listed here, because I forget to post it pretty often. Oops. I'll get around to moving it all over one day. Probably. Maybe.

Feel free to leave an ask if you want or just drop by my DMs. <3

Artwork links are at the bottom of this list, so if you're here for those, that's where they are.

Sandman 'Verse

All the Precious and Fragile Things (so easily do they break)

After banishing his lover from the Dreaming for her betrayal, Morpheus learns that she is pregnant with his child.

And that she’s been captured by a revenge-seeking Alexander Burgess.

What the both of them are unaware of is that this will set in motion a cascade of unfavorable events, causing a chain reaction that threatens the whole of existence itself.

PART I: All of This Past

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

PART II: These Tender, Loving Mercies

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

PART III: When It All Falls Down

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

PART IV: The Dark of War

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Epilogue

Sometimes He's Sweet

Morpheus hates the holidays.

As excited as she seems to experience the mortal holiday, he's… less so. Much less so. With the entire collective unconscious contained within him, this time of year can be wholly overwhelming, a miasma of too much red and green, too much worry, too much loneliness, too much excitement, too many similarly themed dreams, too many similarly themed nightmares, and far far too many holiday songs. It all bleeds out from the collective unconscious into his own mind, sticks there like weeping sap to a tree until he feels half-mad with the unrelenting presence of it, with his inability to get free from its cloying trespass upon his very being.

This is just a little sweet fluff for the holiday season. It takes place between chapters 19 and 20 of "All the Precious and Fragile Things". No spoilers here if you've read that far!

The Dog Debacle (or how best to sneak a dragon into the dreaming)

Morpheus' daughter gets a new dog.

Well..... kind of.

That Familiar Feeling of Family (or how Hob Gadling ended up as an uncle to his stranger's oftentimes feral children)

It's a pretty universally known thing that families are just strange. As Hob is quickly figuring out, however, this little fact is magnified by AT LEAST a billion when the family in question is Endless.

(A lighthearted story in which Hob Gadling finds out his stranger has married, makes friends with a homicidal maniac/ruler, and manages to become an exemplary uncle to a pack of magically mischievous children. Really, now all he has to do is convince everyone to stop calling his and Dream's weekly meetups "playdates", and then his life would be practically perfect.)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The Maker, the Muse, and the Sundered Song

In his temple, what remains of Orpheus waits in trepidation. Something is changing. Something that he knows might alter the very fabric of the world as he understands it.

Finally freed from captivity, Calliope struggles to make any meaningful changes to the laws that saw her bound and taken in the first place. When the strange woman appears on Mount Parnassus and offers help, Calliope knows she would be a fool not to accept it. Even if she thinks that she's being lied to.

Meanwhile in the peace of the Dreaming, Morpheus grapples with guilt over his son's fate. As he basks in the love of his new children, he can't help but to regret his own failings where Orpheus is concerned.

And as for May, she's really just got a job to do. And her own traumatic issues to deal with. And if it's all hella awkward because she's having to work alongside her husband's ex-wife, she'll see it done anyway. There's even the small possibility that she might eventually admit to Calliope the truth about her identity. That is if she can ever actually work up the courage to say it aloud.

Chapter 1

Nothing in This Closet but Boots and a Boy

Morpheus is wildly protective of his daughter.

That's probably bad for the boy in said daughter's closet.

AU's and Other Stuff in the Sandman 'Verse

Of Exes, Hellhounds, and Waffle Fries

Morpheus shows up to rescue the woman he probably loves (though he won't admit it) from hellhounds and ends up getting roped into helping with her family. This is one of those extras that doesn't fit into the main story, but it's fun, so I'm posting it.

The Bizarre Breeding Habits of Anthropomorphic Personifications

It's a tale as old as time.

Two idiots fall in love. Two idiots fall out of love.

Neither one of them is expecting a baby to come along and derail their unhappily ever after.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Original Fanart

I like to play around with different styles and to try new things with my artwork. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm still learning, and I am so far from being a professional that it's laughable. But I only post things that I think look decent or that I think others might enjoy.

The Lover's Argument (Morpheus x oc)

Oneiros (Morpheus in Grecian garb)

Because I could not stop for Death, she kindly stopped for me... (Regency era Dream and Death)

[v1ctimplagued]

NAME : nic

PRONOUNS : they/them

NAME OF MUSE(S) : billy

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION : discord 'cause ims are notoriously unreliable and hard to track.

EXPERIENCE / HOW LONG ( MONTHS / YEARS? ) : I've been rping since I was a literal child. It's been 15-ish years but on Tumblr since 2013/14.

BEST EXPERIENCE : I've had a lot over the years. A lot of them have been around really amazing, talented, and sweetheart muns who I befriended. They're precious to me and often times followed me muse to muse.

RP PET PEEVES / DEALBREAKERS : When people approach me to write (ship) with a Billy with zero regard for my depiction of the character. It's off putting to be put on a roster of a character people just like ooc without any real deeper dive into how I in particular write him. Love my muse for the way I write him please.

MUSE PREFERENCES FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT : Angst. But I am sucker for anything that's well-written and feels-provoking. I like writing smut but I am super fickle about it 'cause I tend to overthink it. And fluff is great too! Less opportunity for Billy but I still really enjoy it when it's possible.

PLOTS OR MEMES : I prefer plotting but I usually cannot cold approach plotting. Memes are the best way to start writing with me so I can get a feel for the muse/character and their particular dynamic with Billy. Once that is sorted out with me, I can plot up a storm on a good day.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES : Almost exclusively long replies here. I sometimes try to do shorter things for convenience sake but I typically lose interest or just word vomit anyways for smaller things. One liners? I don't really like them.

BEST TIME TO WRITE : Late at night when I cannot stop myself from word vomitting 'cause I am too tired to overthink my wording and such.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S) : Trauma-wise? Yes. But we are opposites in personality and how we handled it. I think that's why I enjoy writing Billy so much. He's so dfferent than me but I can peep into his head on why he acts the way he does and often empathize with things others probably wouldn't. That being said, he's my meanie and I love him LMAO.

Tagged by: stolen from @hawkinshellraiser

Tagging: whoever wants to :P

[absinthe-and-tea]

Hii, you wrote slashers and s/o with big boobs, but what about the opposite? S/o with small boobs who is insecure about that and feels less like a woman?

Btw I love your writing and your headcanons. They make my day ♥

I myself have pretty tiny boobs soooo- also I got this request twice kinda so I hope you guys dont mind me putting them into one ❤ Also super happy you like my stuff!!

P.S. I got half way through this and had to start over cause Tumblr deleted my progress 🙃

Slasher HCs || S/O W/ Small Breasts

Warnings: N//SFW

Jason Voorhees

He loves you no matter what. Honestly he loves how small they are. They easily fit in his hands, making it easier to touch all of you in a shorter amount of time.

If he sees you're down about them, he'll wrap his arms around your waist and pick you up gently. He'll then proceed to cover them in kisses.

He can't speak so he often uses his hands or mouth to praise them in other ways.

Loves running his thumb over your nipple to watch the small bud harden from his touch.

When you're intimate with him he makes sure to give them lots of attention. He prefers using his hands, loving how soft they are.

He's always loved them so he'll always continue to touch them and whatnot.

Michael Myers

He's fairly indifferent about them. He prefers was anyways.

Doesn't really compliment them or pay much attention to them the first time you two are intimate.

He doesn't notice how you feel for a while but when he finds you criticizing them though, it's fair game.

Will start coming up behind you, running his hands up your sides and to your breasts to engulf them in his large hands and gently squeeze.

He loves messing with them, that includes lightly pinching them. But he loves using his mouth on the more. Beware, he will nip and bite just hard enough to get a reaction from you.

Even after he's convinced you they are perfect, he'll continue touching them abd whatnot cause he'll have realized how much he likes them on you.

Brahms Heelshire

He's a manchild. And it shows. He definitely prefers bigger but he's alright with small breasts too.

100% has an oral fixation. Meaning he'll suck on them a lot. Whether he's partially laying on your lap or if you're on his lap stradling him, he's gonna have his mouth on them.

He'll say something about wishing they were bigger, not thinking about how it would make you feel.

If you start wearing sweaters more often or staring into mirrors longer, silently judging yourself, he'll start to take notice.

He'll start to grope them more and give them more attention while whispering how much he loves them.

He's an ass sometimes. But he loves you and your body. He'll make sure you know it too.

The Other

He's not home often and when he is, he spends a lot of time with his daughter but the moment its just you two, he's immediately walking towards you like a predator stalking it's prey.

He doesn't care about your boob size at all or if you have a nice ads. He just loves you.

When you cuddle, he'll always have a hand under your shirt. Either resting on your tummy or one of your breasts. Usually the latter.

If he sees how much you resent them, he'll show his love for them and your vidy in general by getting you lingerie.

The moment he sees you in it, you're getting thrown on the bed and getting the best night of your life.

Prepare to always be worshipped.

Vincent Sinclair

He loves them. No matter what, you are his muse. His inspiration.

He loves putting his hands on your sides and gently running his thumbs underneath them, against your ribs. Almost like he's sculpting a masterpiece.

He adores that they are small because he can pull your body even closer to his. He loves feeling all of you.

He prefers using his hands on them but he will gladly suckle on them as well. He's a bit shy though so you'll have to tell him you want it.

Absolutely hates that you feel badly about habing small boobs. So, he'll make countless sculptures, paintings, and drawings of you. He'll have so many things of just you that it feels as though he knows your body better than yourself.

Bo Sinclair

Another ass man but a nice set tits is great too. And that includes yours.

He enjoys them. How soft they are especially. His hands are very rough from doing mechanic work on the side so he enjoys the difference in softness.

If you say anything bad about them or judge them, he'll sit you on his lap and suckle them until you're writhing on top of him from sensitivity.

Not afraid to grope you in front of others or slide his hand under your shirt. Your his and he'll make that known real quick.

Loves to leave bitemarks and bruises on them to show you how much he likes them and how much he fully claims them and you.

Lester Sinclair

He likes boobs in general. Small or not. He just really likes the soft mounds.

Loves the feeling of your soft, squishy flesh under his hands and your hardened nipple brushing against his palm.

Gets super wide-eyed and excited if you wear lingerie that lets your breasts hang out. He'll sit there in awe until you get on his lap.

The moment you're on him, he's on you. Licking and nipping them softly, his hands gently groping and squeezing.

His heaven is either his head between your legs or against your breasts so expect him in either place at least once a night.

Solomon Goode

He worships every bit of you. You are his love after all and he would do anything to make you happy.

He enjoys the fact he can hold you close to his chest without large breasts in the way.

Enjoys teasing you every so often when in passing or not busy with work around the house or garden.

Seeing you topless makes his throat go dry and he begins hesitantly walking to you. You'll have to give him the okay to touch you but once you do, his mouth is attached to one of your nipples. His hand moving to rub the other.

He loves your softness and the smell of flowers that seems to surround you without your knowing. Being so close to you and tasting you is intoxicating to him.

Will always compliment them when he gets a good view. He'll never let you feel down about yourself. And if someone does something to make you feel that way, oops. Where'd they go?

Harry Warden

He's so happy anytime he can touch them. For a while though he won't take his gloves off, afraid you'll find him repulsive.

Though once he does and he feels the soft flesh for the first time, he'll never want to let go.

He loves the small mounds almost as much as he hates Valentine's Day. Between the softness of your flesh and the way your nipples harden at his touch, he's completely addicted to them.

Enjoys covering them in kisses while he praises you and compliments you. You're his precious lover after all.

Expect him to compliment them every time he sees you once he realizes you think they aren't perfect. They are gorgeous. Just like you.

Bubba Sawyer

Absolutely loves them. He couldn't even mildly dislike anything about you. You're perfect in his eyes. He'll even make you sundresses that show them off perfectly.

Though be careful when wearing said sundress because he'll get distracted by you really quick, causing him to forget about his work.

When laying in bed he'll always have a hand on one of your breasts subconsciously. Not even on purpose most times, he just wants to hold you.

Definitely another with an oral fixation. He enjoys gently playing with your hardened nipples with his tongue when in a more intimate moment.

Won't publicly do anything like groping because he's a good boy but will attempt to compliment you. You'll know what he's trying to say when he does.

Thomas Hewitt

Very handsy with you once your relationship starts to take off. Your breasts being something that fascinates him despite the size.

When you two are cuddled up in bed he will lightly run his fingertips over them to watch the goosebumps form and your nipples harden.

His favorite thing to do is grab your sides and use his thumbs to rub the little nubs. His eyes will wonder from your breasts to your face, wanting to catch the faces you make.

After a while he'll attach his mouth to one, his eyes never leaving your face. He adores how much pleasure he can give you from something so small.

His opinion when you bring up how you feel about them is "Good things come in small packages."

Eddie Gluskin

Well you already have a one up on his exes. They didn't even have anything at all. Barely even mosquito bites.

He'll run his fingertips over the mounds, lightly pressing down to see the small squish it makes.

You're his perfect bride. His Darling. So different from the whores he was with before. Your body is something else to him.

The mounds may be small but boy does he praise them and cover them in affection.

If you ask, he'd be happy to add an modifications to your wedding dress to make you feel better about them.

Though he'll need to do a lot of... Researching... To make sure he gets the measurements right.

[fangirleaconmigo]

I finally started watching The Boys.

It’s been on my “to watch” list for years but I was just standing on the precipice wondering…is it actual satire? Is is intelligent? Or is it try-hard-edgy-bois using a flimsy excuse to create the thing it’s satirizing? It’s peoples’ responses to it and some of the marketing that had me wondering.

But my sister and my son started watching it and told me I’d love it so I did.

And it’s really really good.

I got through S1 in a matter of days. I just finished the season premiere of S2. Here are my spoiler ridden thoughts:

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Wow it is addictive and bingeable and the characters are all flawed and infuriating in such REAL and HUMAN ways that you are like psychoanalyzing them and super super into all of their lives and dramas. It’s good ass food and compelling storytelling.

The themes of private companies involved in national defense and criminal justice are appropriately fucking dystopian.

Yes. Ok. There are many disturbing bits. I almost didn’t keep watching because of what happened to Annie. I just don’t trust people to write that shit well. But it has surprised me that it has. It has focused it all on her growth and what that means for her. It’s not reveling in her pain or sensationalizing it. But she’s very human and it focuses on her growth in a way that feels authentic. I was raised by fundamentalist baptist (a much more hardcore version of how she was raised) so I feel it every time she is disillusioned. It’s so real.

And as for the gore and violence it is just campy enough to be fine (you can’t take it too seriously when Butcher is using an infant to shoot at people 😂)

And as for the anti-supe crew (I am sure the fandom has a name for them):

Was there ever a more precious crew of violent murderers and criminals?

Frenchy is just unbelievable and sweet. They get busted and gassed and there are armed men pouring in to fuck them up and he runs to the door where the immortal supe is setting up camp (Kimiko is like, you’ll get the bathroom back when I’m done looking adorable and she was so right for that) and puts a towel under the door so the gas doesn’t get to her. Just stuff like that. Unbelievable. Perfect. No notes.

MM, (i can’t call him mothers milk after seeing Homelander chug the breast milk) is SO FUCKING GORGEOUS AND HUGGABLE and loves his family and helps struggling kids as his job. He is firm but kind with Hughie. I’m obsessed. I just stare at him with my little heart eyes.

And speaking of Hughie

Oh god I usually could not give a shit less about the romances but Hughie and Annie are so precious. It’s because it was not initially based on romance or attraction at all. Hughie was grieving but he was attracted to how honest and vulnerable and good she was. He palpably admires her and respects her as a human being and it’s so touching. And when she got her moment to rescue him and the sparks were going from the ceiling a la Castiel in Lazarus Rising I was like Ahhhhh Bahahhahaha 😍😍 I’m rooting hard for those kids.

Ok shorter thoughts

I love the kind of bastard Butcher is. The kind of character that has an understandable obsession but who loses himself in it to the detriment of others.

I love how many compelling, hardcore, older women there are in it. One role I notice people have a hard time envisioning women in, is the older, flinty, world weary advisor, so I loved Mallory.

I’m sad the MILFs are dropping like flies (Jennifer Esposito I am free on Wednesday but also Thursday and Friday and really any day just call me pls) but it is what it is.

Holy shit the guy the plays Homelander is so good and creepy and terrifying and he makes my skin crawl.

Maeve baby leave him. You are tired I get that but pls go to your girlfriend. I want to hug this woman so badly.

I hope Kimiko gets a bigger role soon. Her character has so much potential and deserves to take up more of the narrative.

Ok that’s it. On to S2.

[littleoddwriter]

Heyyyy is ok for you to do asa and Jesse with a fem reader ( if that’s ok with you) that loves to wear tight fitting , short clothes for example:

Like how would they react , maybe a little nsfw ( sorry the picture is so big 😭💀)

Asa Emory/The Collector x GenderNeutral!Reader x Jesse Cromeans/Chromeskull | Headcanons | Mild N/SFW

The Reader was changed to being Gender Neutral (after asking, of course), since I don't write Female Readers, so just a heads-up again for any future requests that I only write Gender Neutral, Male and Trans Male Readers! :) This is a bit on the shorter side, sorry - I hope Headcanons are fine with you! And hopefully you enjoy this. :) Thanks for the request! <3

notes; GenderNeutral!Reader; Poly-Amorous/-Sexual Relationship; Body Positivity; Mild Body Worship; Self-Confidence and Self-Love; Tight and Short Clothes; Being Touched and Appreciated; Mild Degradation in one bullet point/Dirty Talk/Text; Implied Sexual Punishment; Fantasies of Hurting the S/O; Blood Mention; Possessiveness and Jealousy; Mention of/Implied Murder.

Clothes that hug your figure perfectly are filling your closet to the brim, and most of them have in fact been bought by Asa and Jesse – they love seeing you in such cute, tight fitting outfits and happily provide you with them

On your first date with both men, they couldn’t keep their eyes off of you, and they both showered you in compliments that had you blush a little as you smiled and thanked them, feeling increasingly better and more comfortable – such handsome, but dangerous men who were so enamoured with you and the things you wore was a huge confidence boost

Even after months into being in an official relationship with these two, they adore seeing you in snugly fitting dresses, shirts, skirts, hot pants/booty shorts – you name it

It drives them a little wild in several ways – they desire to take you apart and elicit sweet moans from your beautiful lips in such outfits; but they also yearn to make you scream at the top of your lungs as they would slice into you, soiling the tight fitting fabric in your own blood and cutting it into shreds (Of course, the latter is only ever a fantasy, they wouldn’t actually hurt you – you’re far too precious to them for that)

Still, whenever you send them naughty photos of your skirt riding up a little too far as you arch your back to show off your assets, while they’re busy working, they would punish you as soon as they returned home – it’s exactly what you’re aiming for (especially on days/nights that you just miss them so much)

Sometimes you would also just make a show of your attire, which always has their eyes and hands roam over you and ends with both Asa and Jesse’s hands running over your skin and snaking under the tight fabrics to touch you thoroughly – they just can’t help it

Jesse always makes sure to have his phone right there with him to type in whatever is on his mind upon looking at you and feeling you up; it ranges from [you’re so beautiful, baby – so pretty for us – ever so dolled up only for our eyes and hands to appreciate] to [naughty baby – filthy slut who loves to show off] and it never fails to make you feel wonderful and turn you on

At the same time, Asa will rasp those things right in your ear; maybe he’ll even run the dull edge of his knife over your body as he does which always elicits such wonderful moans and shivers from you

Both of them work so great together in appreciating you thoroughly and the three of you always have a great time with it – you are being treated like absolute royalty after all

They shower you in clothes they would like to see you in and think you would feel good in; you sometimes look for them by yourself too and send them photos of you trying them on, etc. and then they’d purchase them for you – it’s always a win-win situation all around

Whenever you were in public with them and someone looked at you for too long with desire in their eyes, or even dared to come onto you despite the two men holding your hands/having their arms around your waist – they would get possessive and jealous instantly and you were sure to never see this person ever again (at least not alive)

Because you wore these clothes for yourself and it was about you feeling good, not for other people’s pleasures – except for Asa and Jesse, of course, but if you ever told them that you didn’t want their less innocent attention, they would listen – and so they made sure such people were weeded out

[jamespotterthefirst]

Cariño (Ethan x f!MC)

Book: Open Heart, Book 3 Pairing: Dr. Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr. Lilac Allende) Word count: 2K Premise: After their confessing their feelings to one another, everyone can see something has changed. Set in book3, Chapter 11.

Author’s Note: More outsider POVs. This girl loved them and will probably never stop writing them. 

* “cariño” just means “dear” or “love” in Spanish

Grace

The placid, teal waters of the lagoon glimmer like a cluster of diamonds, blending into a breath-taking gradient with the pink swirls of sunrise. Grace attempts to take a picture, but a measly phone camera will never be enough to capture the splendor.

Instead, she takes in a deep breath, convinced such a view is worth getting up early for after a late night of drinking and dancing.

“Nothing… is… worth this, Ethan,” a breathless voice says from nearby, interrupting the silence on the otherwise deserted beach.

“Doctor Allende, I am shocked at you,” a male voice responds. “You know the benefits of regular exercise as well as any other physician.”

It's a young and rather attractive couple jogging down the shore. At least, the taller of the two figures seems to be jogging. The shorter, curvier one is slouching over, dragging their feet against the sand.

“Try to keep up, Lilac.”

As they approach, Grace immediately recognizes them from the previous night at Ines and Angie's reception. Their attractive features would have been enough to make them memorable, but what Grace remembers the most is the long, lingering looks they would cast one another from across the venue.

Now, they move side by side, the tall, handsome man clad in only swimming trunks, his broad shoulders and toned muscles glistening in the first glimmers of sunlight. The pretty brunette at his side wears a bright one-piece that has no right looking so flattering, her dark hair swaying in a high ponytail.

“Jogging isn't exercise. It's a form of medieval torture,” the young woman returns, panting after every other word.

“And you say I'm the dramatic one,” he returns with a chuckle.

Lilac, not listening, slows her steps until she stops entirely, hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath. Ethan rolls his eyes but laughs nonetheless, retracting his steps to return to her side.

“Fine,” he concedes. “You win. No more jogging for today.”

At the words, the brunette recovers miraculously, straightening and shooting him a flirtatious smile. Her companion watches her, as though her unbridled delight is the most precious rarity in the world. When he seems unable to fight the urge any longer, he pulls her to him with a roguish half smile that has even Grace's knees trembling.

Without much preamble or regard for who might be watching, he kisses her, his hands moving to cradle her face.

Grace tries to glance away, giving them as much privacy as possible, but the stark difference from last night captures her attention entirely. At the wedding, there was something quiet and restrained about the way they longed for each other. Today, there is freedom and unabashed happiness in every movement, in every smile, in every small gesture of affection.

“Now will you take pictures?” Lilac asks him, adding a flutter of her lashes to plead her case.

“Was that your only motive for accepting my invitation to exercise? Pictagram worthy shots?”

“You're a Pictagram worthy shot,” she returns without missing a beat, pulling their bodies close again and sealing the coy statement with a kiss.

Ethan does not need much more persuading after that. Despite the groan he lets out, he agrees far too quickly for a man who spends the following two minutes criticizing social media.

At last, he willingly becomes the subject of many of his girlfriend's photographs, even following her directions of different poses. He visibly enjoys the role of photographer when it's finally his turn to take pictures of her. Grace doesn't blame him in the least since Lilac works that camera with captivating poses.

“Now us together,” Lilac says after a while. The words are rushed, as though knowing what the answer will be.

“Absolutely not. No more selfies.”

He takes many selfies with her.

“Excuse me,” Grace says after watching her struggle to capture the beautiful lagoon behind them. “Sorry to interrupt but would you like me to take your picture?”

Lilac appears delighted by the offer, accepting and smiling at Grace so brightly that she too would agree to arduous photoshoots if she asked.

“Alright, say 'cheese.'” Grace lifts the phone Lilac gives her, careful to include the beautiful scenery in the shot.

Ethan looks as though he'd rather be dragged off by a shark than to say the word.

A millisecond before Grace takes the picture, however, Lilac cranes her neck to kiss his cheek, murmuring something in his ear. Whatever it is makes Ethan's smile rival the rising sun on the horizon.

Tobias

Ethan peers down at the coral drink in his companion’s hand, his brow furrowed as though the mere existence of so much color in an alcoholic drink offends him. Tobias watches from the end of the poolside bar with interest, keeping his urge to laugh at bay. Such a visceral reaction to a fun drink is so characteristic of his ex friend that Tobias can hardly help his amusement.

“What the hell is that?” Ethan is asking her.

Lilac Allende is not as successful in biting back her own amusement. She laughs at once, as though she expected such a reaction from him.

“Sex on the beach,” she answers, her voice a husky little pronouncement that is meant to weaken the will of even the strongest of beings. Paired with a lazy, deliberate nail up his arm and the world renowned Ethan Ramsey doesn't stand a chance.

Tobias, still unnoticed by the couple, gives an impressed nod, respecting her game.

“I—” Ethan stammers.

He puts on a brave attempt at impassiveness after this but even Tobias can see the doctor’s ears brighten with color.

“You want to—” His voice drops an octave. “Again?”

“It's the name of the drink, Ramsey,” she informs him in a would-be innocent voice. It's promptly spoiled by her laughter at Ethan's utterly stunned expression.

“You're an unabashed tease, Allende.”

“Yeah, but you love me for it.”

Tobias pauses at the word, uttered so confidently. He almost expects a grimace from his old friend, maybe a hasty change in the conversation. But Ethan surprises him thoroughly by smirking down at the brunette, an expression of pure adoration on his face.

“You're right,” Ethan whispers close to her ear. His voice drops so low that Tobias doesn't catch what he tells her next.

Much to Tobias's continued surprise, the usually confident and vivacious young doctor blushes.

The couple spends the following moments murmuring words that are too low for anyone nearby to hear. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the content of their quiet conversation ranges from nauseatingly romantic to explicit.

They are interrupted by the arrival of one of Dr. Allende's friends, a short and exuberant resident whose name Tobias hadn't learned yet. After Ethan's reassurances that he will catch up in a few, they depart toward the beach where a group of grinning young doctors awaits.

“Never thought I'd see the serious and private Ethan Ramsey engage in PDA.”

If Ethan is surprised to see Tobias occupying a seat nearby, he does a masterful job at masking it. Unfazed, he simply stares at Tobias, willing him to get to the point.

“I knew you two were together thanks to the rumor mill, but I didn't realize it was this serious.”

Ethan narrows his eyes, the only hint of a reaction from him. For all of Tobias's suave swagger, the mistrust he sees in the other doctor's expression stings more than he'd ever admit out loud. He shouldn't have expected any less after all the years laden with dishonesty between both men.

Still, Tobias raises his hands in defeat, letting out a laugh that is not entirely genuine.

“Just trying to make some friendly conversation,” he tells him.

Ethan turns away to face the glass of scotch before him, as though it serves as a more superior conversation partner than Tobias. Knowing when to throw in the towel, Tobias takes his drink and prepares to move away.

“Things are… different,” Ethan finally says before Tobias can move.

It's not much but for Ethan Ramsey, that is as good an olive branch as he'll ever get.

“Lilac is…”

“Different?” Tobias finishes for him.

Even as friends, they were never poetic or sentimental. But Tobias understands the depth behind the single word without further explanation.

“I can see that,” Tobias continues with a small chuckle. “It's obvious to anyone that knows you that she's special.”

Ethan looks at him then, a flicker of surprise on his otherwise impenetrable expression.

“It's nice to see you happy.”

The words leave Tobias before he has any consciousness of forming them. He is shocked—far more than Ethan in that moment—to find he means them.

Naveen

The spell cast by a vacation in a beautiful, faraway place comes to a close as their departure time trickles near. Lamenting this fact, Naveen rounds the corner of the unfamiliar hotel hallway.

He knows better than anyone of the challenges that lay ahead for them as they return to Bloom Edenbrook. He also knows that most of those challenges will be endured by his protégé. What worries him the most is how Ethan will face the strife that is still to come.

Naveen’s steps soon come to a halt a few rooms down when the door to Ethan's room opens.

“...that we got everything, babe.”

Lilac Allende emerges, unaware of Naveen and speaking over her shoulder as she hauls her luggage into the hall. She pauses in the hallway, rummaging through her purse.

“So you decided on 'babe' then?” Ethan asks dryly, appearing at her side with his own suitcase in tow.

“You decided,” Lilac returns cheerfully turning to face him.

“How do you figure I did that exactly?”

“Last night, before we fell asleep. I informed you we had a very important decision to make,” Lilac recounts quite seriously. “I asked you what you wanted me to call you.”

Ethan nods, playfully feigning interest as though they're discussing the specifics of a particularly difficult case.

“I laid out all the possible pet names and you chose 'babe'.”

“I have no recollection of doing that.”

“I told you it was down to 'bear', 'lamb chop', or 'babe'.”

Much to Naveen's amusement, Ethan grimaces at the list of pet names, his expression growing more horrified with each one.

“Just call me your usual ones in Spanish.”

“Oh, I will, cariño. I have a whole list of those ready. Lucky for you, I’m bilingual so you’re getting both. Babe was the one that got the quietest grunt from you, so I assumed that's the one you decided on. But if you'd rather I call you 'bear', then I have no—”

Ethan, who had been watching her with such a lovestruck expression since the word “cariño”,  calls her bluff in the form of a kiss. All pretense vanishes as Lilac melts into the kiss, smiling blissfully against his lips.

“We should leave now if we want to make our flight,” Ethan says, breaking apart with a sigh. “Here. I'll take these.”

He grips the handle of her suitcase, ready to pull it along with his own.

“Thanks, babe,” she says with a wink, emphasizing the last word.

Ethan rolls his eyes but smiles—a rare, genuine smile Naveen only sees when he's around Lilac.

“It's growing on you, isn't it?”

“Perhaps,” Ethan concedes. “Or maybe I'd let you call me whatever you want.”

Lilac laughs, delighted.

“I'd be careful in awarding Dr. Allende that much power,” Naveen says to make his presence known.

The couple turns to look at him, Lilac with an amicable smile and Ethan with a resigned sigh.

“Too late for that,” Lilac responds brightly.

At that, Naveen laughs in agreement much to Ethan's chagrin.

“Is there something you needed or were you just prying?” Ethan asks though not unkindly.

It is a rare sight, though a pleasant one, to see them simply be with one another, all guards down. By Naveen's observations, they are always the picture of professionalism at Edenbrook—at least to the public eye. But now, as they stand side by side, fearless and unapologetic in their affection, Naveen realizes his concern for Ethan was in vain.

“The reason for my visit seems pointless now,” he admits with a small chuckle.

Ethan raises his brows, unconvinced.

“Forgive the interruption,” Naveen goes on. Before he turns to leave, he offers them a barely restrained grin. “And for the record, Ethan, I would have chosen 'lamb chop.'”

Author’s Note: I finally wrote in my hc that MC calls Ethan babe ironically (and to annoy him) at first but they end up liking it as time goes on lol. 

Thank you so much for reading this! 

Thank you @aestheticartsx​​ for pre-reading!

[luminnara]

Flying On Wings Made From Feathers And Wax | Ganondorf x Gerudo!oc chapter 2

Part one | Part two | Part three

Growing up in the Gerudo Desert is hard. 

The sun is merciless, especially to the small. For someone like Ilula, it is draining, seemingly determined to exhaust her as it beats down on her during the day. It will never stop doing so, but at a young age, she learned how to deal with it. 

The others called her lazy, but she considered herself clever. Just like the lizards that liked to snooze while they sunned themselves, she took naps during the day. It wasn’t that the other Gerudo didn’t—naps were almost a necessity in such a hot environment, and it was common to see be back in an hour signs hanging on merchant stalls—but Ilula simply napped more than the rest of them. 

It concerned her mother greatly. 

Kiluki took her daughter to the best healer in town, the one who looked after the chief and royal family, hoping to find answers about Ilula’s small stature. Just like the Hylian healers, though, this one declared that Ilula was, for the most part, fine, she was just...small. Small, and a bit weak. For Kiluki, a tall, strong vai, who had once been a member of the Chief’s guard, Ilula’s relatively tiny stature and shortcomings were cause for major concern; she knew that many Gerudo never joined the guard, and to keep Gerudo Town running, they needed all sorts. But she wanted Ilula to follow in her footsteps, to become stronger and braver than even she, and Kiluki feared that it was a dream that could never be.

Ilula knew that her mother worked, but what could she possibly do about it? It wasn’t anything that she could control. She spent her days playing or helping Uvira sell her produce while her mother advised the Chief, trying to forget the way that she couldn’t reach things the other girls could. As she grew older, it became obvious that she would never hit a growth spurt, and while Ganondorf shot up like a weed, Ilula stayed at least a head shorter than the others her age. 

“C’mon, pipsqueak!” Ganondorf scooped her up one day, interrupting her midday nap.

“Gan!” She yelped in surprise as he threw her over his shoulder. “Put me down!”

“Not a chance,” the prince grinned as he ran towards the palace. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I’ve got something to show you.”

Even at twelve years old, Ganondorf could carry her easily. He spent his days studying and training, his mother keeping a watchful eye over him and ensuring that her son would become strong and capable. While Ilula had already finished most of her schooling, knowing how to read and write and do simple math, the prince had many years of studies still ahead of him, his chambers lined with shelves full of thick books. Being royalty meant that he needed to know everything about the world, and he enjoyed reading about Hyrule and its politics and history. Ilula didn’t share quite as much appreciation for the Hylian kingdom neighboring the desert, but whenever he was reading, she had a chance to take a nice nap in his incredibly soft bed, and that was something she could absolutely appreciate. 

“It better not be stupid,” she grumbled with a yawn. “Interrupting me on my day off…”

“Day off from what?” He snorted. “You can’t even start real training until you’re twelve. That’s a whole month away.”

“So?” She argued.

“So you can’t possibly be too busy for me,” he rolled his eyes. “Sav’aaq!” He called to the guards at the top of the steps as he passed them. 

“Sav’aaq, my prince!” They snapped to attention, bowing their heads. “Ilula, sav’aaq.”

“Sav’aaq,” Ilula mumbled. She was used to the guards keeping watch over her and the prince, and they had all developed a certain fondness for Ganondorf’s runt of a friend. 

Ganondorf carried her through the throne room, past the chief and her advisors as they pored over a map of Hyrule. They bowed to him as he walked by and he grunted in acknowledgement, too focused on his task to stop and ask what they were doing. 

They allowed him to rush by without interruption. He only had a few years of childhood left before the burdens of leadership would fall on his shoulders, and his mother wished that he enjoyed his time as much as he could. He was growing into a fine young voe, the Sheikah prophecy a distant memory now, and As any voe, he should be enjoying the years of his youth as much as possible.

When he reached his chambers, he threw Ilula down onto his bed. She laughed as she bounced, sitting up to look at him as he grabbed a wooden box from his desk.

“Here,” he said, slightly out of breath as he pushed it into her hands. 

She took it, hearing something rattle inside. “What is it?”

“Just open it!”

With an inquisitive glance up at him, she slid the lid off the box. Inside, something was glimmering, reflecting the light of the desert sun that streamed in through the windows. As Ilula reached inside, she picked up a set of earrings, a teardrop-shaped sapphire hanging from each hook. 

“Oh, Gan,” she breathed, holding the jewelry in her palm as she stared down at it, “these are beautiful…”

He was watching her anxiously. “Do you like them?”

“I do!” She looked up at him with a wide smile. 

The prince let out the breath he had been holding, relieved. “Oh, good.”

“Did you have these made?” Ilula asked, peering closely at the stones. 

“I did,” he smiled. “Just for you. Well, actually, they were going to be a birthday present, but Amira finished them early. I couldn’t hold my tongue for an entire month.”

“This is the best early birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” she beamed up at him. “Thank you, Gan.”

“Oh, they’re not a birthday gift anymore,” he laughed. “I figured out something else for your birthday. These are just normal gifts now.”

Ilula raised an eyebrow. “You really shouldn’t be spending so much time spoiling me, you know…”

“Or what?” He laughed. “You’re my best friend, Lula. You deserve gifts.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m not going to accept them,” she grinned at him as she stood and walked to the mirror on the wall. 

“I put a spell on them.” he blurted out. “To help you stay cool in the sun. Sapphires are good for that.”

She glanced back at him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I had the jeweler make them and then I enchanted them. I’m supposed to be practicing, and I wanted to try it out…”

“I can’t believe you know magic,” Ilula said as she faced her reflection. “I wish I could put spells on things.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” he shrugged. 

“Shut up,” she laughed. “It’s a super big deal!”

He watched with a serene smile on his face as she took out the big gold hoops she was wearing and replaced them with her new earrings. Just as he had hoped, the bright blue sapphires contrasted perfectly with her fiery red hair…though the thick green band she used to keep it up off of her shoulders didn’t match at all. He made a mental note to add a new, nicer one to the small pile of birthday gifts he would be giving her in a few weeks. 

Ilula admired the way the sapphires hung from her pointed ears. She had to admit…Ganondorf had an eye for jewelry. Maybe it was because he had so much of it himself; as she looked at his reflection behind her, she could count no less than ten incredibly expensive precious stones on his head and arms alone. The perks of being a prince, she supposed.

When he noticed her watching her, he suddenly shuffled his feet awkwardly, glancing away for a moment before looking down at his hands. 

“I’m, uh…glad you like them.” He mumbled. 

“Gan, don’t be sheepish,” Ilula laughed, turning to face him.

He looked up at her, hoping that she couldn’t see the blush on his face. She was the only person who ever made his skin heat up like that, the only Gerudo he ever wanted to be around, the only vai whose hand he wanted to hold. It confused him, the way he felt about his best friend, but he was headstrong and determined not to shy away from whatever he was beginning to feel. 

“I’ve never seen a sheep,” he chuckled. “What does sheepish mean?”

Ilula’s laughter grew louder as she plopped down on the edge of his bed and looked up at him. “They’re soft. Hylians cut their hair and make things with it. They look like fluffy little clouds with legs.”

Ganondorf grinned. “I can’t wait until I’m king and I can see all of Hyrule. I want to go to the castle, see the Hylians.”

“It’s a long walk,” Ilula said. “…well, Mama carried me most of the way, I think. I don’t really remember much of it. I know it rained a lot before we got to the outskirts, though.”

Ganondorf suddenly sighed and turned to the window. He walked towards it, placing his hands on the cool sandstone and leaning on them as he looked out over Gerudo Town and the wide, flat desert outside the gates. 

“What is it like there?” He asked, gazing towards the distant mountains that marked the Gerudo Highlands and the edge of Hyrule. 

Ilula frowned at his change in demeanor and stood to join him. “It’s…green. Everything is green, and you can smell all the plants. And there’s so much water, everywhere…when it rains, it isn’t like here. It just rains for a few hours, and then the sky clears up again, and the birds come back out.”

“It sounds…nice.” He admitted.

“It is,” she agreed. “You can just lean down and drink out of a stream if you’re thirsty. And if you’re hungry, there are apple trees all over! And fish in the rivers, and boar in the woods…”

“I like boar,” Ganondorf laughed.

“Yeah, they taste pretty good, I guess. When you add enough spices.” Ilula shrugged.

“No, not to eat!” He looked at her like she was crazy. “I like the way they look. Those big tusks…there are drawings of them in some of my books. I’ve always liked them.”

“Yeah, I guess they’re pretty cool.” Ilula giggled. “There are lots of other animals, too.”

“Life there must be easy.” He commented. “The Hylians have it all.”

“What do you mean?” Ilula frowned. “I thought you liked the desert.”

“I do, I just…wish we had things like grass and trees and forests. I wish we lived more comfortably.”

“You live very comfortably.” Ilula snorted. 

“What do you mean?” He looked down at her, nose wrinkled slightly. 

“Uh, all of this?” She gestures to the room around them. “The palace? You’re royalty. You hardly have to worry.”

“I have to think about our people!” He argued. “What’s Castle Town like?”

“Busy and big.” Ilula shrugged. “The streets are all made of stone, and there’s a big market where people from all over sell things. Mama didn’t let me go there very much, because of the way the Hylians are sometimes.”

Ganondorf looked down at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“They don’t really…trust Gerudo that much.” She folded her arms, hugging herself lightly. “They don’t treat the Rito or the Zora like Hylians, either, but they like them more than they like us.”

As Ganondorf listened, he considered her words. “I’m going to change that.”

“You’re going to change how they think?” She asked skeptically.

“I’m going to show them that they should respect us.” He said. 

“How?”

“Maybe I’ll…send them aid, if they have a natural disaster.” He thought out loud. “Or take a big delegation to visit the castle, or invite them here.”

“The king can’t enter Gerudo Town,” Ilula laughed. “You’re the only voe allowed. Remember, you spoiled prince?”

“Oh. Right.” He chuckled. “Well, I’m going to be in charge someday. I’ll have to figure out this whole diplomacy thing.”

Ilula smiled softly as she looked up at him. “I’m sure you’ll be good at it.”

He grinned down at her. “Only if you help me.”

She returned the grin. “Deal.”

“I don’t think I could handle the throne without you,” he bumped her with his shoulder, nearly throwing her into the wall. “I still have so much I have to learn.”

Ilula stumbled, but she didn’t fall like the last few times he had forgotten how big he was. “That’s why kings always have advisors. Nobody can run everything by themselves.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He sighed, his attention returning to the world outside his window. “I’ve got six whole years to figure it out, though.”

“Yeah, and it’ll be fine.” She tried to bump her shoulder into his arm with the same force that he had, but he didn’t budge. “Hey, seriously, are you made of rock?”

He barked a laugh. “No, I’m just bigger than you!”

“Well stop it!” She snapped, only half serious. “If you keep this up, you’re not even going to be able to see me!”

“Maybe you should just start catching up!” He retorted.

“I would if I could.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom keeps making me go to the healers to figure out why I’m so short. I keep trying to tell her that it’s not that big a deal, but she won’t listen.” 

As she spoke, her tone grew more serious, until it had Ganondorf frowning. “You’re fine.”

“That’s what I keep saying, but it doesn’t matter.” Ilula sighed. “She’s always worrying that I’m going to get hurt because I’m fragile. I always tell her that I’m not, and I know I’m not because you’re always throwing me down off the walls or into the aqueducts or whatever, but she just always gets mad and tells me to be more careful.”

“Do I ever hurt you?” Ganondorf asked, his eyes wide in alarm. 

“No, you don’t,” Ilula shook her head. “I’m serious, I’m not that fragile, but all she ever sees is me lagging behind everyone else. That’s why I want to start training with the guards, so I can show her that I’m fine.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “You know, if you start training, you’ll be busy all the time…”

“Gan, they train literally right outside your window.” She rolled her eyes. “You won’t miss me. I’ll be right there.” 

“…oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“But I bet my mom is going to be all worried about me training, too.” She sighed. “Until i show her that I’m not some fragile little flower. You know, back in Castle Town, I was always the biggest kid. She didn’t worry as much back then.”

“Do you ever miss it there?” Ganondorf asked, studying her face. 

“Sometimes. I miss everything I could get at the market, and I do miss my father. But…I didn’t fit in there. I guess I don’t really fit in here, either.”

“Yes you do.” He nudged her with his elbow, gentler this time. “You’re Gerudo. You belong here, with your people. With me.”

Ilula smiled up at him. “I know, Gan. I think it’s less about the place, and more about who’s there. You know?”

He looked down at her, his heart fluttering in a way he wasn’t used to. “Yeah. I know.”

000

On Ilula’s twelfth birthday, she woke to the smell of meat cooking over the fire. As soon as her eyes were open, she remembered what day it was, and she shot out of bed to investigate the main room of the home she and her mother shared.

“Sav’otta, my little desert flower,” Auntie Uvira greeted her as she prepared breakfast over the small wok in the middle of the room. “Sleep well?”

“Fine,” Ilula shrugged. “Where’s Mom?”

“Right here,” Kiluki appeared in the doorway, a parcel in her hands. 

Ilula eyed it. “Sav’otta, Mama.”

“Sav’otta, Ilula,” Kiluki smiled, holding the parcel out towards her. “Happy birthday.”

Ilula lunged for it excitedly, tearing the wrappings open while Uvira yelled at her to be mindful of the fire. 

As the brown paper fell away, airy pink fabric was revealed, and Ilula pulled out a bandeau top. Matching pants were next, made of a thin, breathable weave, and as she rushed back to her room to try the new outfit on, Kiluki smiled. 

“How do I look?” Ilula asked breathlessly when she returned, holding her arms out as she spun around to show it off.

“Oh, it’s stunning!” Uvira clapped.

“I think it suits you perfectly,” Kiluki nodded. “How is the fit?”

“I think it’s good. What’s for breakfast?” Ilula was buzzing with energy, bouncing over to look at what Uvira was cooking. 

“This is for later,” her aunt laughed as she sprinkled in some Goron spices. 

“We will be eating breakfast at the palace,” Kiluki informed her daughter. “That’s why I wanted to give you that gift first thing in the morning. You should look your best.”

Ilula grinned. Eating at the palace meant getting to see Ganondorf, and as she rushed to get ready, she wondered what sort of gifts he had in store for her. 

She found out soon after she walked through the impressive archway and approached the throne. The chief sat with her hands on its armrests, her back straight as she looked down at Ilula and Kiluki.

“The prince and queen mother are awaiting your arrival, Ilula,” she said, her voice firm and strong. “I would not keep them waiting. Kiluki, if I could have a quick word.”

Ilula glanced up at her mother in confusion, but when Kiluki waved her off, she was eager to run towards the dining hall. It was her birthday, after all, and she wasn’t going to allow herself to worry about anything. Whatever the chief wanted wasn’t of her concern, and when she saw Ganondorf waiting for her with a pile of gifts, any and all thoughts about what her mother could possibly be needed for flew out the window.

“Happy birthday, Ilula,” Ganondorf’s mother, Mira, said, a smile on her face as she watched her son shove a box into Ilula’s arms.

The Gerudo royal family spared no expense. Ganondorf had given her a sapphire necklace, one that matched the earrings, and a ruby wrist cuff that he said would keep her warm at night when the desert winds pierced Gerudo Town. His eyes lit up at the sight of her happiness, and though he had certainly given her birthday gifts before, he was especially glad to see that all of his hard work and pondering over what to get had all paid off this year. He gave her a new sirwal, the light, baggy pair of pants a bright white with golden accents threaded throughout. Then came an assortment of her favorite candied fruits, a beautiful sand sealskin journal, and the biggest breakfast feast she had ever seen.

By the time the unwrapping was finished, the table was covered in a plethora of delicacies. Everything from platters of sliced hydromelons, to gourmet meats hunted in the highlands, to rare seafood brought all the way from the coast, was piled up and presented to Ilula. It was a lavish celebration, the kind usually reserved for holidays or royal birthdays, and with Kiluki returning from the throne room to partake, the festivities were finally truly underway. 

The adults drank as the children laughed and played. They were nearly too old to be doing so, both nearing the age at which they would begin training for adulthood, and one last romp before it all started seemed to be in order. The day was full of merriment and their spirits were high, and as the two tore out of the palace to get themselves into trouble elsewhere, Mira turned to Kiluki with a sigh. 

“He will be devastated,” she said.

“As will she.” Kiluki raised her cup to her lips and drank. 

“How long do you have?”

“I do not know.” Kiluki lifted her eyes. “Ryla did not say…all I know is that we are to return to Castle Town when she deems fit.”

“Why is she sending both of you?” Mira asked. “I hardly see the sense in taking Ilula away from her training.”

“I believe she wants us to keep up appearances.” Kiluki sighed. “Perhaps by the two of us seeming to return home, the Hylians will be less on edge.”

“Still…” Mira sighed again. “I am sure we will all be focused on our tasks, but your absence will be hard.”

“I only wish I knew when we would be leaving.” Kiluki frowned. “Ryla told me that it could be tomorrow, or in five years.”

“And I don’t suppose you’ll be allowed to visit home…”

“I doubt it.”

“Not even if Ganondorf requests it?”

Kiluki pursed her lips. “Perhaps after he takes the throne, he will summon us back to Gerudo Town. I should hope he will see the value in placing me amongst the Hylians, though, and so close to the royal family…”

“Like a spitting sand cobra, nestled right within their own walls,” Mira chuckled. “You must do your job well, for Ryla to send you back again.”

“Yes, I suppose I must. Though it was easier back then.”

“Will you return to that voe?”

Kiluki wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps, if he is willing to see reason.”

“What did you even fight about?”

“Everything.” She shrugged. “Hylian voe have a single use. The rest of the time, they are wholly disagreeable.”

Mira threw her head back and laughed, the hearty sound echoing off the sandstone walls. “That they are! That they most certainly are.”

[princecharmingmendes]

Heart by Heart | Chapter X | Raul Mendes

                                               *secret agent AU*

Y/N and Raul have been friends ever since they could remember. And falling in love with your best friend can be pretty tricky and messy 99% of the times, add that to the fact they're constantly risking their lives side by side on the field since they're both secret agents, and the best team that's ever existed. Perfect recipe for disaster.

Hi, this chapter is finally here, it's a bit shorter, but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting for that long anymore and on the cliffhanger, and this was also important for the story development. Anyway, this is the tenth chapter of this series, you can find the first ones here. Please read the warnings on this one, if you don’t feel comfortable with the contents listed on the “warnings” section, please read something else, there are a lot of other works on my masterlist and on the “fic rec” hashtag on my blog. Please give me some feedback and I hope you guys like. Happy Reading! 

                                                previous chapter | masterpost | next chapter

*Word Count: 2K+

*Warnings: cursing, violence towards the reader, blood, kidnapping, hostage situation, angst.

Please don’t read it if any of this subjects make you uncomfortable, feel free to check my masterlist for other writings.

*Posted: September 16th, 2021.

                                                  -*-

Raul was a mess as soon as he was able to get into an empty room. 

He allowed himself to finally let the severity of the situation hit him. He had no idea where Y/N and Tom were, if they were alright or what could Geonoff could possibly win with this. He certainly would’ve tried blackmailing them to get something in return of the two agents he had in his hands. 

He’s been pacing back and forth in the tiny room as he tried to remain calm enough to keep his rationality so he could still be helpful. Raul just wanted to punch his way into that base and get the kid and his girl back, but he knew that was completely stupid, even for him. He could practically see the frown on Y/N’s face if she ever heard his brilliant idea, and the vision alone was almost enough to bring him to tears. Instead he shook his head, knowing that letting his feelings take control would only be a waste of time in this situation, and that’s something he learned a long time ago when he first started working with his best friend. 

She was a really rational, and maybe even a bit cold on the field. Always with a sharp remark on the tip of her tongue and a thousand of extra plans in case something failed, she could easily slip into the role of the Professor in Money Heist. Constantly analyzing and thinking. And while she was clearly the brain of their duo, Raul was clearly the heart, not thinking twice before jumping head first to save someone or get and intel. And that’s why they worked so well, he pushed her to be more spontaneous while she kept him in his place (and alive) most of the time. 

He needed her more than ever right now. 

The sound of hushed whispers and two pairs of shoes approaching him, made Raul sharply move in the direction of the door, still on edge, and waiting for it to reveal his visitors. As soon as the handle turned, he was met with his triplet and Celine wearing the same saddened and worried expressions. He might’ve come down to help with the investigation as fast as he learned about his best friend. 

Peter sighed taking in the sight of his brother. Raul looked like a lost puppy in distress, eyes on his face but his mind was clearly somewhere else, shoulders sagged and curls a mess from the constant nervous tugging habit he had. One look was enough for him to know he was carrying all the guilt and having no clue how to fix it. It’s the same look he gave his younger self when he accidentally broke his brand knew camera. 

“We’re going to find them” was the first thing he said and Raul nodded, looking unconvinced “It’s not your fault” he then added and at that, his gaze finally seemed to snap into place as he stared his brother dead in the eye. 

“Whose fault is it then?” his voice sounded a lot smaller and less threatening than he pictured. 

“Geonoff’s” Celine mumbled “but not yours, you did what was best, what was right”

Raul shook his head in response, mumbling a quiet ‘yeah, right’ under his breath, but Celine was quick to take three steps closing the distance between them and placing both hands on his shoulders. 

“Cut this shit right now” she snapped, catching both him and Peter by surprise “you and I both know I’m not your biggest fan and never truly got what everyone else saw in you, but this past months changed my perspective of things and you’re actually a decent person, a great friend and an amazing agent, and you did the right thing” she said squeezing his shoulder for great measure “and you and I both know Y/N would’ve wanted you to do the same thing, she’d be proud of you”

Raul nodded slowly and Celine let him go at that, as he was still processing her words. Peter finally reached his brother, placing his hand on his shoulder as he turned to face him “I know you’re going through a lot right now, but we need you to help us find her, we need you to hold on a bit and try to think of the places they could possibly take her, everything you heard  or saw on the past month is useful”

He nodded again “yeah, okay, I can do that”

“Good, come with me then” Peter said patting his brother’s back “she’ll come back to us, you and I know her enough to know she’s probably making their life a living hell”

Raul snorted a little laugh, that didn’t quite reach his eyes and nodded along, as they dragged him back into the main room. He needed to do what Y/N would in his place, shut his feelings off and analyze every every they took.

                                                 -*-

Y/N starts slowing coming back into her senses, feeling her muscles burning, her arms stiff and head hurting, the dark place she was situated doing little to help her regain her memories. She tried looking around to see if she could find something useful to recognize the place, only noticing a slim frame still unconscious close to her. The person had its back to her, but from their clothes and body type, she was able to recognize them as Tommy.

Tommy who was still breathing and almost at arms reach.

That was a good sign, or as good as it could be in this situation. But he was there, breathing and no signs of big blood loss around them, so no external wounds that needed to be taken care of urgently. She tried to reach for him, but the heavy chains attaching her wrists to the cobblestone floor kept her in place.

She tried locating their belongings, or anything that could help them get out of there, but it was all missing. Raul was also nowhere in sight, which probably meant he wasn’t there and probably the info was delivered safely. At least that’s what she hopped with no signs of him around them. 

There? Where the hell was there?

That’s when it finally clicked to her, she had no idea where they were or how long was she out. They could be across the ocean as far as she was concerned. She had to get them out of there. But before she could start planning their way out with absolutely nothing and Tommy still out, she heard the grating of the old and rusty hinges coming from the only way in and out of that room, a heavy iron door. 

Coming from the source of noise that snatched her attention was the man responsible for all of this. Geonoff Reyes himself. Wearing a button up shirt, with the sleeves rolled back, and a pair of dress pants, and a smug look on his face. He took lazy long strides getting close to her, crouching down in front of her. 

Geonoff smirked at her “You know, it’s pretty hard to fool me and you almost got away with it, if it weren’t for your stupid boss you’d be home by now”

Y/N just blinked at him, a completely neutral facial expression on as she stared up at him, making him tsk.

“By the way, how is your little boyfriend? Does he know this relationship is just an act or you manipulate him as well?” he asked and she didn’t even flinch at his statement, noticing that her silence was doing more at getting him upset than clapping back “it must be sad, being such a pathetic agent and letting his little girl and friend get caught as he fled, and in the end discovering this was one sided”

Her gaze shifted quickly to Tommy and then back to Geonoff’s face, that was too close to hers for her taste “don’t worry, he’ll live for now, need him to get you to cooperate” and Y/N felt a little lighter knowing that, taking all the self control she had to not let that show on her face “you know they’ll never find you, right? Thought about sending a little photo as a gift for them, but might do it whenever we move to our next location, better lighting and stuff”

“What do you want?” her voice was hoarse, but she was able to keep her tone steady enough to not seem frightened.

“Oh, sugar, missed that sweet voice of yours, it matches your pretty face, just wish I could see that beautiful smile again, but we’ll get to that” he said patting her cheek with his long fingers, making her insides turn in disgust and she had to swallow the sudden wave of nausea down “I want something simple, just know all the info you’ve been feeding your precious little team for the past weeks, you’re smart enough knowing I wouldn’t mind hurting you to get what I want”

Y/N only stared back at him watching his brow twitch in annoyance “don’t want to hurt your pretty face, so cooperate with me and I might even let you go safely”

But her silent response seemed to be enough for him to loose it, because he took a deep breath before slapping his hand across her face for the first time. The pure shock of the action almost made her react, but she held her face up as she kept staring at him, her face burning but she wouldn’t give him the little taste of a small victory at breaking her neutral mask of indifference. 

“This could be so easy” he mumbled slapping the other side a little harder “you didn’t have to do this, you could be free by now” the third one was stronger than she was expecting, making her face turn with the pure force of it, the loud sound coming from the aggression echoing on the empty room and down the large corridor, the echo making her realize there wasn’t much down where they were, mostly just blank empty walls without doors to divide the sound. 

“What is it? Anything you’d like to say?” he asked grabbing her chin and yanking her face to look up at him, but her mouth remained closed “well, your choice”

After a few consecutive hits, one being so strong making her face collide with the wall when it turned, and she felt the sticky liquid running down her face. Her skin probably breaking with the brisk contact with the stone wall, cutting her cheek in the process. The seemed to please him, since he let out a loud boisterous laugh, making her lean her head so he could see it better mumbling a quiet “vicious bitch” under his breath “stop fighting back” before going back to it. 

After a couple more minutes, her right cheek numb already, Geonoff said grabbing her face roughly in his hands, forcing her to look up at him “Come on, sugar, you’re really stressing me out here”

“I’m truly sorry you had to kidnap and keep two agents hostage to try and prove you’re better than your sister” she said blinking at him monotonously and that seemed to hit a nerve, because Geonoff squeezed her face harder in his palms before pushing her head against the wall. 

Y/N felt her limbs giving out as her vision got blurry, her vision going dark before she felt her body leaning to her side and hitting the floor with a dull thud. The sound of shoes hitting against the rocks and the door being shut closed again a sign that the man lost his patience and left them behind. She tried fighting the numbness getting ahold of her body, but ended up succumbing at the end. 

The sounds of waves breaking somewhere near them and the constant throbbing of her head dragging her back into unconsciousness. 

                                                  -*-

*Please reblog or like this post if you liked it so I’ll know.

*I’m sorry if there are any spelling mistakes.

*Please do not repost this without giving me the credit, this is a completely original piece and I do not give permission to copy this!

*Hope you guys enjoyed it!

*xoxo

-🌙

[random-thought-depository]

Something I originally intended as part of my previous post but it was getting so long I decided to do it separately. It's pretty tangential to the Dorley thing but does connect to some of my ideas. Have a literal 25,000 year old vampire OC! Also some nuancing of Elle; she's such an obvious symbol of woke capitalism I initially gravitated toward writing her as super-evil and the sort of abuser who manipulates and uses marginalized people by pretending to be their friend, and I still kind of want that characterization for her, but lately I've been trying to nuance her somewhat.

Under read-more for length, and also content warnings for slavery, mind control, sexual/reproductive coercion, incest, child-killing, cannibalism, characters being approximately '60/'70s expected level of politically incorrect, and, uh, extremely long-term imprisonment is the best way I can think of to describe it. This was heavily inspired by me finding the idea of a 25,000 year old vampire fun and by the vague statements in Glow, Worm that vampires do age, just very slowly, but also by the rather awful thoughts "how do you make a 25,000 year old vampire relatable? You deprive them of the opportunity to have 25,000 years worth of experiences" and "What if: Dorley but instead of force-fem it's about patriarchy and kingship and what James C. Scott talks about and taking the vampire thrall thing to its ultimate logical nightmare fuel conclusions, and it's much worse because that's appropriate because it's more closely adjacent to the long terror in the gender as coercive political project room?"

------------------------

A little after she'd finished thrall-conditioning Annaliese, Elle found another vampire she thought might be useful in setting up her 'programme.' Her name was Jarna, and she was a thrall-brainwashed vampire slave like Annaliese, and she was being sold by her previous master, who said he didn't need her anymore. Jarna has a super-thrall "bullshit vampire power," similar to Annaliese's. Jarna's blood is actually much more potent than Annaliese's in terms of being able to thrall lots of people at once, but it keeps less well; Jarna's thrall factor doesn't survive her blood being frozen, and has a shorter shelf-life than Annaliese's under refrigeration. For a while Elle had an idea that she might be able to use Jarna for the 'programme' just like Annaliese, and/or that Jarna's super-thrall might be useful to her elsewhere.

Jarna was... strange. She looked like an old woman. She was very tall; more than six feet tall. She had brown skin and a combination of features that didn't really fit into any ethnic group Elle or Annaliese or anyone else could think of; she looked... different from anyone on Earth. Annaliese noticed she smelled different too. Jarna being a vampire was a big confounder there, of course, vampires and humans smell different, but... Jarna's scent was noticeably unique in a way that went beyond the way almost everyone's body odor is unique.

From Jarna's descriptions of her earlier life, as near as they could tell, she'd been born into some primitive tribe, and then she'd been abducted and taken to a place ruled by her previous master, who Jarna called Tatasi (that was not the name Elle knew him by). Tatasi had transitioned and thrall-brainwashed Jarna and during the thrall-brainwashing process he'd discovered her super-thrall ability. With appropriate control techniques Jarna could control thousands of people at once through blood thrall, and that was what Tatasi used her for; he used her blood to mentally enslave the people who worked for him. Her ability made her very useful to Tatasi, and it didn't seem to pass to childe vampires, so she'd been precious to him - not as a person, but as a tool. Frightened of the possibility that harm might come to her, he kept her confined to apartments in guarded compounds for a very long time. At first she'd spent a very long time mostly confined to three inner chambers in his house, and then later she'd been moved around more, but always she was kept inside and in seclusion. Elle thought Jarna's lifestyle during her thralldom to Tatasi sounded a lot like the life of a woman in purdah. And then one day Tatasi told Jarna that he didn't need her anymore, and Tatasi sold her to Elle.

Much as Jarna herself didn't seem to fit into any race Elle or Annaliese knew, Jarna's descriptions of her homeland didn't seem to quite fit any place on Earth. At first they'd thought it might be somewhere in Africa: it was a savannah, or something that sounded like one, and Jarna made vague references to animals that sounded like they might be elephants. But Jarna didn't look African, she looked more Indian than anything else, but that didn't seem quite right either... And her homeland had very cold winters, winters of deep snow, winters when rivers and ponds and lakes froze over - the descriptions reminded Annaliese of her miserable two months of freedom in a Russian winter, but maybe worse; Jarna talked about powerful winter winds, there were few trees to get in their way so they would blow unimpeded across the open plains and they were so forceful and so cold and they would blow things around; she seemed to remember it vividly. They thought maybe the high Arctic or the Eurasian steppe, but Jarna didn't look like an Inuit or a Mongolian or a Kazakh or a Turk. And Jarna's description of her abduction suggested relatively close proximity to a sea to the west, and it didn't sound like the Black Sea or the Caspian Sea, it was a cold and wild sea with crashing, pounding waves and icebergs, it sounded like the north Atlantic, and then they'd sailed through a straight that sounded like maybe Gibraltar but that couldn't possibly be right... None of it fit together, none of it made sense! It was like she was describing an alien planet! No, more confusing than that - it felt like she was describing Earth but the picture just didn't fit together right!

Elle had thralled Jarna almost as soon as she'd gotten her off the airplane, not even really for brainwashing at that point but simply so Jarna would obey Elle instead of being loyal to her old master. If Elle and Jarna had the sort of intimate thrall connection Annaliese tends to form while thralling people they would have been saved a lot of guessing; Elle getting access to a single memory-image of the 'elephants' of Jarna's homeland would have clarified everything. But thrall is idiosyncratic. It's a relationship. A relationship of domination, but still, a relationship; its shape depends on the people involved and the circumstances. Elle and Jarna didn't form the sort of mind-link through which they could easily share mental images. Their thrall connection mostly just made Jarna obedient. Elle could have looked directly into Jarna's memories, but that would have required pushing in a way she didn't want to do yet.

Jarna claimed that she'd been transitioned from human to vampire and put into seclusion by Tatasi as a young woman. And if that was true it was horrifying. Because Jarna looked like an old woman, and if she was transitioned young that could only mean that she became old as a vampire, and that was something theoretically possible, but it would require an immense span of time. Vampires do age, but it's very slow. The very old vampires, the ones who've lived thousands of years, have just barely perceptibly aged; if they had solid jet black hair when they transitioned they might have some barely noticeable grey hairs around their temples now, or something like that. You need to look at the very oldest vampires, the ones almost as old as civilization, to really see it, and even then, they haven't aged very much, assuming their recollections of their youth are reliable. If Jarna became old as a vampire, how old was Jarna?

The answer to that question came by accident. Elle had a large library in her mansion, and Jarna could not read English at this point (in fact, Jarna couldn't read any language at this point; Tatasi had never bothered to teach her to read and write), but sometimes she liked to look at books with pictures, and sometimes she'd ask Annaliese what the pictures were of. And one day Jarna came to Annaliese and Elle very excited, holding a children's illustrated book about the Ice Age.

Jarna showed Annaliese and Elle an illustration of a herd of woolly mammoths moving across the ice age tundra, with a single mammoth foregrounded. And Jarna pointed at the foregrounded mammoth and said, "I know this animal! We hunted them! My people hunted them!"

Jarna flipped excitedly through the picture book, and pointed to illustration after illustration of extinct animals that she knew, that she recognized. Oh, but she thought the artist hadn't gotten them quite right! And at some point in her long boring captivity Jarna had taught herself to draw quite well, and she started making drawings of what those animals really looked like. And her drawings did indeed look a little different, and somehow more real and alive. As if she had seen living woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave lions, cave bears, and so on, and the artist who made the illustrations in the book only had bones to work with.

Elle said in quiet awe and horror, "Jarna, those animals have all been extinct for ten thousand years."

Jarna smiled and said triumphantly, "I told you he kept me shut up in rooms for a long time!"

Elle started thinking about some things Jarna had said, about being marched to the shore of a cold and wild sea to the west and it not taking many days, about a cave, and about... And she started pulling books down from the shelf of her great library and showing Jarna pictures inside them, pictures of cave paintings and the entrances of some of the caves the paintings were found in, thinking just maybe...

Eventually Jarna pressed her finger against one picture, a picture of a cave painting in a cave in France that Elle and Annaliese guessed depicted an auroch, and Jarna said, "I think this is my home!" After a few moments Jarna said, "It is! I know this painting! My mother and grandmother made this! They let me watch - they were teaching me... I watched this being made!"

Elle said in awe and quiet horror, "Jarna, that painting is over twenty-five thousand years old."

Jarna had a big smile on her face and she tapped the photo again and said, "I watched this being made!" And then after a few moments she added, still cheerfully and still with a big smile on her face, "I told you he kept me shut up in rooms for a long time!"

There was a pregnant silence and Elle seemed to just sort of look at Jarna for a while, and then Elle reached out and caressed Jarna's face and said softly, "That's why I couldn't figure out what race you belong to. You belong to a race that doesn't exist anymore. You're a Cro-Magnon woman."

Of course! No wonder Jarna's descriptions of her homeland and her enslavement sounded like descriptions of an alien planet, yet tantalizingly familiar! They were descriptions of an alien yet familiar planet! The world of the Ice Age! Jarna's homeland was Europe! But not Europe as modern people knew it! The strange Serengeti-like but cold in winter homeland she described was the Europe of the Ice Age, a land of open grasslands full of Pleistocene megafauna! The cold and wild sea the slave-catchers had taken her across really was the Atlantic, specifically the Bay of Biscay! And the slave ship really had carried her through the Straight of Gibraltar!

Elle gathers around her... Lieutenants? Assistants? Thralls? Companions? The trans women she vampirized and then thrall-brainwashed as an experiment. She wasn't satisfied with the way they turned out. They'd been too independent, being the kind of person who transitions in the '60s or '70s selects pretty strongly for that, and of course she'd been able to use the thrall brainwashing to break that, but in the process she'd had to break too much. Thus her exploration of other options for solving her bloodline problem. But they're people she trusts. They have their uses.

Elle has Jarna tell her story again, and this time really go through it systematically and thoroughly while they pass bounce inferences off each other and her, and they all listen to it with new ears.

------------

Jarna's people were not nomads. There were nomads in Jarna's world, but Jarna's people looked down on them a little and pitied them a little, the way agricultural people later would. Jarna's people were fortunate to occupy a place that herds of animals funneled through on their spring and autumn migrations. Jarna's people were not farmers, but they'd invested in their land; built structures that funneled the herds further, diverted them like water, funneled them into killing places. They used fire to shape the landscape too, improving its value as a hunting ground and encouraging the growth of edible and otherwise useful plants.

The diet of Jarna's people was rich in meat and rather poor in just about everything else. When the herds migrated through their valley there were great hunts, slaughters, in which they killed many big animals. This was a time of feasting on fresh meat, but also a time of much work. The men - mostly the men - had the work of actually killing the animals, of course; it was almost like a military operation. And the women - mostly the women - had the work of smoking and otherwise preserving most of the meat of these animals. Jarna's people had become so good at killing animals in these hunts that a primary driver of their cultural evolution had been managing all the meat the hunts yielded, finding ways to preserve and store it. The great hunts provided the bulk of the food Jarna's tribe ate all year; they lived on preserved meat more than anything else.

Jarna's people were fortunate in another way; they occupied a cave, which's thermal mass insulated them in winter, and which provided them with perpetually cool, dry places where preserved meat stored well. The neighboring tribes to the south and southeast were similarly fortunate, and had their own caves. The neighboring tribes to the north, west, northwest, and northeast were not so fortunate; they had to winter in huts on open ground beneath open sky. And the nomads had to make do with tents that they could take apart and carry on their backs.

Jarna's people lived in and around their cave, and it was like a village; hundreds of people lived there, there were hundreds of people in Jarna's tribe. By the standards of Jarna's world, this was a large settlement and a mighty people; Jarna's tribe was the most numerous and therefore the strongest tribe in the area. Jarna had considered herself a fortunate person, to be born among such a tribe.

This was the rhythm of life for Jarna's people: in spring and autumn the great hunts, and all the work of preserving the meat. In summer, groups of mostly men would fan out across the country to hunt still-abundant big game and bring fresh meat back to the main body of the tribe at the cave, and groups of mostly women and children would fan out across the country to gather edible plants and shellfish and bird eggs and useful non-food materials and catch fish and birds and small animals, and some of that was brought back to the tribe too; the edible plants the women gathered were important for nutrients if not for calories, and some of them were preserved for the winter in various ways. In winter the whole tribe would retreat back into the cave, and live on stored food, and wait out the cold. Second to food, acquiring and processing fuel for fires in the winter was the great pre-occupation; the cave, fortunately, had some openings near the tops of the biggest chambers that allowed some smoke to escape, prevented excessive accumulation of smoke; Jarna's people had expanded them and even dug and carved out a few new ones over the generations.

Because Jarna was a girl, it had initially been expected that as an adult she'd preserve food, and she'd make and repair clothing and nets and carrier bags and baskets, and she'd go out with the gathering parties of mostly women and children to gather plants and catch small animals and gather wood and other things that could be fuel for fires, and she'd go into the deep part of the cave and paint things there. That was what most women in Jarna's tribe did. By the time Jarna was pubescent her older female relatives were already regularly taking her with them on gathering expeditions. And they sometimes took her with them into a big, deep chamber of the cave that had no natural light, and let Jarna watch while they painted by lights of flickering lamps, and started to teach her how to do what they were doing. The making of images in this deep chamber of the cave was a responsibility and a privilege of a few matrilineages of the women of Jarna's tribe, and Jarna understood that being taught how to do this was a responsibility and a privilege, was something special.

But Jarna was a... the best English translation of the word is tomboy. She seemed to relate better to boys than to girls, to prefer doing the things boys did, to more easily make friends with boys than with girls. And Jarna grew to be very tall and strong for a woman. So she joined the hunters, like a boy. At first she learned with the small boys from the old men who were too old and feeble to hunt themselves now but knew a lot about how to do it, and then as a teenager she started actually participating in big game hunts.

Many years after this conversation with Elle, Jarna sometimes visited the graduate school, the other institution, and that place being what it is, some of the girls there wondered if Jarna might be a trans man or at least kind of transmasculine. Jarna told them she doesn't think so. She never had a problem with her female body, never had any desire to change it. She just seemed to... relate better to boys and men, somehow. It's a bit hard to tell, though, because... would changing your body like that even be an idea that occurs to you if you live in a world where it's totally impossible? Testosterone shots would have been an outside context concept to the young Jarna, like a jet engine! And after that... well, her cognitive binding enslavement to Tatasi didn't leave much room for exploring her gender.

As a young woman Jarna fell in love with another woman. Her lover was a... regular woman? A woman who did women's work and had a more female-typical for their society social life. It was normative for women in Jarna's tribe to marry and have kids sooner or later, but lesbian relationships were accepted as long as they didn't interfere with that; lots of women were openly poly (though it wasn't called that) with a husband and a female lover; Jarna just openly had a romantic and sexual relationship with this woman and nobody had a problem with that. It felt like the relationship in Jarna's life that was best described as romantic. At this age Jarna also pretty frequently had sex with some of her similar-age male friends, but that was more of a friends-with-benefits thing. She didn't feel she was ready for marriage, and she didn't let them have the kind of sex with her that might have gotten her pregnant. She thinks her human self had a pretty good deal sexually, in a sort of "she was kind of like a straight boy but also androphilic but also she had a woman's body and was OK with that, it's super-easy to get sex from boys and enjoy it if you're like that" way. When she told the girls at the other institution heard this it sparked a discussion about how firmly this put her in the "yeah, definitely queer" category.

One of Elle's trans women thralls was curious about whether Jarna's people had anything like a social institution of transgenderism. They did! They had one of those transfeminine castrati shaman classes! Her tribe had four people like that! And there was the tomboy thing, and... that's probably the best translation, but it distorts some of the nuances, it was understood as kind of... fourth gender-ish? Though it was pretty tangential to trans, people like that were understood as women, just... kind of masculine women?

One day, when Jarna was out hunting with a party of herself and four men, they were attacked. Two of the men were killed, and Jarna and two of the men, including her brother, were subdued and their arms bound and made to march.

Some of the neighboring tribes in Jarna's region practiced something halfway between bride kidnapping and slavery. Jarna's tribe didn't do that, and were proud that they did not; they thought it an evil custom. If a captive woman escaped and made it to Jarna's tribe, Jarna's tribe would give her refuge, and some strong men to escort her back to her own tribe if she wished to return to them. This had provoked more than one war against a neighboring tribe (Jarna's people and their neighboring sedentary hunter tribes did fight wars against each other, mostly over disputed hunting grounds or blood feuds - the battles could get quite bloody). Jarna's tribe did not fear the wrath of their neighbors; Jarna's tribe was the most numerous and strongest tribe in the region. This was the only reference Jarna had at this time for slavery. She thought it strange that her captors had taken some of the men as well; if they were doing the sort of slave raid that she was familiar with, they would have killed all the men, and taken only her.

The captors were strange. They were very tall, taller than Jarna, and heavily built, they looked strong - they were strong, she knew because she'd fought them! But their faces were strangely fine and child-like, like the faces of young pubescent boys who had not yet fully entered into manhood.

They tied her and the other two hunters of her tribe together, and they made them walk forward in a line, tied to each other with ropes. They made them walk to the west for more than a few days. Sometimes they gave Jarna and the other captives a little of some strange, hard food; it was the first time Jarna had tasted something a little like bread. They carried packs of this food; they didn't give the captives much of it, mostly kept it for themselves, mostly Jarna and the other captives just got water, from waterskins refilled from whatever stream or river was convenient.

After some days of walking to the west, they came to the shore of what people in a much later age would call the Bay of Biscay.

Jarna had never seen the sea before, but she'd heard of it. She'd heard of the sea. And she'd heard of the mountains to the south of her homeland, and the lands of mild winters beyond them. And she'd heard of the steppe-tundra to the north and east of her homeland, where the winters were longer and colder than in her homeland, and where people lived in huts of mammoth skin and mammoth tusks and mammoth bones, because there was very little wood.

It was a frightening sea. This was the Ice Age, and it was a colder and wilder sea than the Bay of Biscay the humans of historic times knew; more like the North Atlantic. It was a sea of crashing, pounding waves, and a forceful icy wind blew from it, and Jarna suspected looking at it that she would not survive in it for long.

The captors set up a camp of sorts, in a place terribly exposed to the forceful cold wind from the sea. They tied Jarna and the others to the stump of an old dead tree, and tied their legs together, so they were quite helpless. Two of them remained with the captives while the others went away. Every once in a while they would untie one of the captives and let them walk a little way away and relieve themselves, and then they would tie them back up again. Only one at a time. And every once in a while they gave the captives some water, and less frequently a little of the strange, hard food.

A few days later, the others returned, bringing with them another marching line of captives; four captives on this one. And they untied Jarna and her brother and the other hunter from the tree stump, and untied their legs, and tied the two lines of captives together, and made them walk for a while, until they came to the ship.

Jarna at this time had no concept of a sailing ship, but she had some familiarity with small river boats, so she looked at the ship and correctly extrapolated its function. And now she looked at the sea with true fear. They were going to try to cross that in a boat? With her and her brother and her cousin stuck on it? That... that had to be dangerous!

Jarna wished she could hold her brother's hand, but that was impossible; their hands were bound behind their backs.

The other four captives were from the shoreline people of this area, who often entered the ocean in boats, for fishing and whaling and trading. One of them knew the language of Jarna's people, for the shoreline people sometimes sailed up the rivers to trade with the inland hunters, and that woman saw the fear on the faces of Jarna and the other hunters, and explained to them as best she could that her people often moved across the sea in boats, and... it wasn't exactly safe, but it was no worse than the hunting the men of Jarna's people did. Of course, the sea was rough today, her people would not put out to sea on a day like this, but that big boat was much bigger than anything her people built, and was probably more stable than anything her people built.

The captors walked Jarna and the other captives to near the ship, to where the icy waters were almost touching their shoes. There were more of the big but strangely child-faced men on the boat, and they lowered a long plank of wood to near where the captives were standing, and the captors made the captives walk up to the plank and onto the ship with them. The thing that had most struck Jarna about the sailing ship was the sail. She'd watched women weaving with fibers taken from wild plants as a child, even helped them and done a little herself, and she boggled at the work that must have gone in to making such a huge piece of cloth. By pantomime one of the captors indicated to the captives that they should relieve themselves over the side of the ship, which they did, knowing this probably meant they would be restrained for a long time now. And when that was done the captors gave the captives a little water and then marched the captives down into the hold of the ship and tied them down there.

The ship soon departed the shore and put out to sea. During the journey the captives were mostly kept tied down in the hold. Every few hours they were, one at a time, allowed up into the open air so they could relieve themselves over the side of the ship, so the waste went into the ocean. And twice a day food and water would be brought down into the hold and given to them, and when they had eaten the containers would be removed. A few of the big child-faced people would check on them frequently, to make sure they hadn't begun to work their bindings loose.

The hold had some little windows up near the ceiling to let in air and light, and the rope arrangement Jarna was restrained with gave her enough freedom of movement to stand and look out one of those little windows. The hardest part staying on her feet while the ship rolled about in the waves. So when the ship put out to sea Jarna was able to see the coast recede, and then she was able to track its journey somewhat, or at least to watch the coast pass by. The slave ship rarely moved out of sight of the coast ("That makes sense," Elle commented, "Ancient sailers usually stuck close to the coast, they were afraid of the open ocean"). Sometimes Jarna saw distant icebergs - she'd asked the shoreline people woman what they were, and the woman had known and explained it. The boat had gone south at first, then turned to the west ("Makes sense if they were going from France to Gibraltar by the Atlantic route and following the coast, they'd have to turn west to follow the Spanish coast!"). They stopped at a spot on what must have been the northern coast of Spain for some days, and then three more captives were loaded on and tied down in the hold - Jarna and the other hunters and shoreline folk couldn't talk to these new ones at all, they had no language in common. And then the boat set out again, and it sailed a little more west, and then turned south, and then southeast, following the coast ("My God, I can just follow it on the map! She must have had a great sense of direction too! Of course she did, she was a hunter!"). And then it passed a mountain Jarna remembered, and Elle ordered her to draw the mountain to the best of her memory ("That's the goddamn Rock of Gibraltar! That's goddamn Tariq's Mountain! It... looks a little different... It's probably eroded a little in the last twenty-five thousand years! And the shoreline looks different... Of course it looks different, the sea level was a lot lower then! My God, that she remembers it so well after all this time! She must have an absolutely photographic memory! God, that whole trip must have really been burned into her mind!").

Elle showed Jarna modern pictures of the Rock of Gibraltar, and yes, that is the mountain she saw, though it looks a little different now.

And having passed through what must have been the Straight of Gibraltar, the slave ship crossed what must have been the Mediterranean Sea, though it was a colder and wilder sea then. And it came to shore in a place where there was a...

An outpost! Jarna had no concept of such a thing at the time, but it's obvious in retrospect. A satellite settlement, from which ships were built and launched, where expeditions could be resupplied. More of the strange child-faced people there, and the vampiric lieutenant who controlled them (apparent as that in retrospect, but Jarna recognized him as a man with a strange authority over the other child-faced people). And from there the captives were made to walk overland, tied together with rope in a line (in a coffle, though Jarna had no word for such a concept at the time). They were walked to what must have been a place in the inland reaches of the Euphrates, and on its banks there was another outpost, and a river boat waiting to take them down the river. And the boat took them far down the river, to a place that's now somewhere under the waters of the Persian Gulf, to a place where...

To a place where there were fields.

Ten or fifteen thousand years before the known historic beginning of farming, there were cultivated fields of grain, and irrigation works, and thralls working the fields. Jarna had never seen cultivated fields before. Very few people in her world had.

And in the middle of the fields there was a town. A town! Not a big town. Maybe better described as a big village. It had maybe a thousand inhabitants, maybe not even that. But by the standards of Jarna's world, this was a mighty city. It might even have been the biggest permanent human settlement in the world at the time. There were three to five times as many people here as at the cave of Jarna's tribe when the whole tribe was gathered together, and Jarna thought of her tribe as a big tribe. And there were large buildings! Most of the people here lived in barracks of a sort. And there was something she in retrospect thinks of as Tatasi's palace, though even he didn't have that concept at the time; he called it his house. Jarna had never before seen or imagined such a thing as a settlement with large buildings constructed of bricks.

Most of the workers she saw toiling in the fields were the strange big child-faced people, but not all. Tatasi's slave-catching expeditions ranged widely. To the south, they reached South Africa. To the east, they regularly reached India, and sometimes went as far afield as Indonesia, Australia, and East Asia. To the west, they reached Spain and Morocco and... well, Jarna's journey gives a glimpse of how far they sometimes ranged. He even sent slave-catchers into inner Eurasia. Tatasi had reasons to be acquisitive of thralls from far-away lands who might have interesting new genes.

Jarna and the other new captives were offered water to drink and a kind of soup to eat. And they were hungry and thirsty, and the soup actually smelled kind of good. And when they ate it, it actually wasn't bad. And then it did something to them.

Tatasi has a super-thrall ability, like Annaliese and Jarna. The soup was laced with Tatasi's blood, and eating it put Jarna and the other captives under blood thrall to him, made them his slaves.

That day, Jarna and the other new captives met Tatasi. And Tatasi sent the rest of them to the barracks and the fields, to be new workers for him. But with Jarna, Tatasi decided to try a little experiment. Tatasi transitioned Jarna.

--------------

Jarna saw things in Tatasi's mind through her thrall connection to him. Tatasi is old. From the hints that can be gathered second-hand through Jarna, it seems likely that Tatasi was born and transitioned during the early warm phase of the Eemian interglacial, the interglacial period before the present one. Which would mean Tatasi is around 125,000 years old. Which suggests he ages much more slowly than Jarna. Maybe because, if Jarna's second-hand account of Tatasi's life is to be believed, Tatasi was the first vampire.

Certain clues suggest Tatasi was born somewhere in the area that's now Israel, Lebanon, or Syria, before the onset of the most recent Ice Age, before what he remembers as the great cooling and drying of the world. Embedded in Tatasi's mind were images of the homeland he was born into. And it was a land with cultivated fields and towns.

Conventional human histories put the first emergence of agriculture in the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent around 10-15,000 years ago. Conventional vampire (mostly) oral histories roughly agree with and enrich this picture. According to ancient vampire legend, the first vampires started out as human witches and sorcerers who called something from the darkness between the spaces into them to live in them and give them power and unnaturally long life. Embedded in this origin story is an actually pretty historically interesting description of the society of the sedentary acorn-wheat proto-agricultural complex that existed in the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent during the global warming that preceded the Younger Dryas Cold Snap. According to the legend, it was from that society that the first vampires emerged. In that society agriculture was young enough that people remembered that it was women who'd begun to cultivate wheat, as an extension of their gathering activities, and that farming only gradually became the occupation of both genders as population increased and hunting became increasingly marginal as a food source.

If Jarna's impressions of Tatasi's memories were to be believed, 125,000 years ago Tatasi had been human, and something like a prince, and as he surveyed his father's domains he walked through cultivated fields of wheat.

Jarna said there was no contradiction. She'd also seen in Tatasi's memories that the civilization of his people had ultimately been a failure. It had endured for 25,000 years, but it hadn't progressed much. It never invented moon rockets or guns or even iron-working. It never expanded beyond the western flank of the Fertile Crescent. It never achieved any unity; from its origins to its end it was a constellation of hundreds of tiny city-states (dwindling at the end to dozens and then to a few and then to just one), if you could call its major settlements cities. It never even created a real city. Its greatest settlements were tiny by modern standards; not much more than twenty thousand people (and a few thousand people was a more typical population for one of its "cities"). In truth many of its "cities" might be more accurately described as big agricultural villages; most of their residents were agricultural laborers who walked out to the fields each day and returned to the central settlement each evening. And when the Ice Age set in and the world cooled and dried, its people had abandoned their cities and their cultivated fields, and dispersed into the wilderness, and gone back to being hunter-gatherers. Its cultivated fields of wheat had become choked with wild grass, and its cultivated gardens had become choked with weeds, and over the hundred thousand year winter of the Ice Age its cultivars had thoroughly reverted to wild type, and it was left for the women of the same region a hundred thousand years later to re-invent agriculture all over again from scratch.

It seems... maybe not unbelievable. It's the same region agriculture first emerged in immediately before the Holocene, so it probably has favorable conditions for it; if an agricultural society did arise in the Eemian, it would be a plausible place for it. And the Eemian had a nice climate, maybe nicer than the present interglacial, and agriculture got started multiple times independently during the present interglacial; if anything it seems weird if it never got started during any of the previous interglacials.

Tatasi wasn't a name. It was a title. It literally translated as Grandfather. Among Tatasi's people, it was the title of the ruler of a city-state, and thus the title of the most powerful people in the world Tatasi inhabited when he was a human. It was not a particularly grandiose title; the headman of a village or the leader of a minor clan or even just a literal grandfather was called the same thing. If Grandfather's people had invented titles equivalent in grandiosity to lord or king, he would have called himself that. But his people had never done that. Grandfather was the most important-sounding thing he could think of to call himself, so that was what he called himself, and that was what he made his thralls call him.

If Jarna was to be believed, Grandfather had no sire. Nor had he been born from a vampire mother. He was a younger son of his city-state's previous human Tatasi, and his older brothers were the ones being groomed for the title and the power, and he was jealous of his older brothers, so he sought and found a witch, and he persuaded her to teach him magic. And using the knowledge she taught him, he called something from the darkness between the spaces to live in him and give him power.

Elle was skeptical. That's just mythology! Vampirism isn't some spiritual possession! Vampirism is an infection! They're called Vand symbiotes. You can see them in a microscope! They invade your cells and take up residence in the cytoplasm. They function a little like a second set of mitochondria, but interacting with the host in much more complex ways. Your vampire bloodline is just the genetic profile of your Vand symbiotes; it's like your mitochondrial DNA lineage except you don't necessarily get all your Vand symbiotes from one sire. Sure, there's some weird thaumativory stuff going on in them, but it's basically a physical infection, no more mystical than the common cold! He probably fried his own brain with all that time he spent stroking his own ego! It happens sometimes to really old vampires! Memories can be notoriously unreliable even over just a human lifetime, now imagine what can happen to the brain of a narcissist who spends thousands of years surrounding himself with thralls and making them validate his grandiosity!

Using the powers the thing he'd called into him had given him, Grandfather defeated his father and his brothers and took control of his city-state. He killed his father and his brothers. And he put the people of his city-state under blood thrall to him and enslaved them that way. All of them. Grandfather has a powerful super-thrall ability; when he was a young vampire, with the right control techniques he could use it to control more than ten thousand people at once.

After that he... mostly didn't seem to do very much. He simply ruled his city-state, for the next 15,000 years, until the world began to dry and cool and the civilization that produced him began to die around him. If she were in his place, Elle would have tried to create a bigger empire, but Grandfather was apparently uninterested in that. Perhaps he simply lacked the imagination to conceive of such a thing. His civilization had never produced an empire, and Grandfather was... strangely unimaginative in some ways.

110,000 years ago, the great cooling and drying of the world began. The cold itself was not much of a problem for the civilization of Grandfather's time, even in the Ice Age their land stayed warm, but as the world cooled it was also mostly becoming drier, and that was a big problem for them. There was less rain to water the fields, so food production shrank, so the people became hungrier and the population of the towns shrank.

What usually finished off the process was not direct starvation but a one-two punch of malnutrition and infectious disease. Disease had always been a big problem for the civilization of Grandfather's age, the dense and sedentary populations of their villages and towns was an environment where infectious diseases could easily spread, and they were less well-adapted to living in dense populations than even the humans of the early Holocene (let alone of the humans of the modern age, who are mostly the products of thousands of years of brutal selection pressure for resistance to crowd diseases). It was probably one of the reasons they never got very far; epidemics and endemic infectious diseases greatly sapped the vitality of their society. Malnourished people are vulnerable to infectious diseases. As the food supply contracted and malnutrition increased, the death rate from infectious disease increased; people would die, and the proximate cause was some endemic disease, but the ultimate cause was the malnutrition that weakened them enough for the disease to finish them off. In a way worse, the increasingly malnourished populations of the towns and villages were increasingly vulnerable to epidemic diseases, to plagues. Terrible plagues swept through the land and, Grandfather's people being smart enough to recognize the correlation between plagues and crowding, people tended to react by fleeing the towns and villages and dispersing into the wilderness. As the subject populations under their control declined, both by death and by flight, the rulers of the city-states tried to compensate by squeezing their remaining subjects harder, increasing taxes and labor duties, which provoked more of their subjects to flee and created a failure cycle. Sometimes there were even revolutions in which a city-state's subjects would kill their rulers, demolish their own city, and disperse into the wilderness, into freedom (the technology of the civilization of Grandfather's time never got good enough to make being a typical subject of their society unambiguously better than being a hunter-gatherer). Sometimes a weakened and vulnerable city-state would be targeted by the rulers of neighboring city-states, who would raze it and march its population back to their own city-states to now be workers for their own city-states, in an inevitably negative-sum process that killed many and destroyed much and weakened the society as a whole. Sometimes tax collectors would come to a village and find it had simply been abandoned at some point, that its inhabitants had simply all fled into the wilderness, into freedom. Sometimes a town or a village would simply be slowly and quietly abandoned over time, its population shrinking and shrinking until there was nothing left but empty collapsing ruins being slowly reclaimed by nature.

As the fimbulwinter of the Ice Age deepened, the towns and villages of Grandfather's civilization were destroyed or abandoned one by one, like lights being turned off at night. At the beginning of the process there were hundreds of city-states. Then there were dozens. Then only a few. And then, finally, there was only one: Grandfather's city. Grandfather's blood protected his thralls from the diseases. And Grandfather's people alone did not abandon him; they could not; the blood thrall he kept them all under from childhood to death insured that.

Grandfather had to shrink the population of his little kingdom, to fit it within the tightening limits imposed by the drying climate. That was easy for him. He had almost total control over how many children his thralls made; abstinence-only birth control works fine if you're dealing with people who basically literally can't disobey you. And if he wanted to thin the numbers of his thralls in a hurry, he simply killed some pre-pubescent girls by drinking up their blood.

His more usual predilection was to drink to death pre-pubescent boys. For the same reason farmers often slaughter male animals young but keep the female ones. Women were necessary to replenish the stock, but now that he didn't need armies to defend his kingdom from rival lords all those boys were a bit surplus to requirements; reproductively, he only really needed a handful of males around to serve as studs. Oh, he kept a lot of them around for heavy labor on the farms and irrigation canals and construction and building repair projects and for genetic diversity (Grandfather didn't know about genes, but he knew inbreeding could kill small communities), but... he really didn't need all of them. Which left food for himself and his vampiric lieutenants as the obvious use for the surplus. When Jarna saw Grandfather's city, she noticed that she saw more women than men there. And no really old people. He drank to death all the thralls who were too old or too maimed or too disabled to work, too. Technically he didn't need to drink anyone to death, the ratio of human thralls to vampires he maintained was plenty to allow Grandfather and his lieutenants to live entirely by donations small enough to not permanently harm the donor and that was how they got most of the blood they drank, but the normal patterns of human life inevitably generated people who Grandfather saw as more-or-less useless to him, and drinking them up seemed to him the obvious efficient method of disposing of them.

One of the reasons the Eemian civilization never got very far might be that, compared to Holocene civilizations, it suffered from a cruel disadvantage: it had no domestic animals. When Grandfather was born, even the domestication of the dog was tens of thousands of years in the future. Maybe that was why: between the Eemian and the Holocene humans had made friends with the dog, and that might have served as a template to allow them to make friends or slaves (depending on how you looked at it) of the goat and the auroch. To Grandfather's people, an animal as a partner was an alien concept. Their agriculture was entirely about the production of plant-derived foods. All their meat had to come from hunting, fishing, whaling, and the gathering of shellfish, insects, and other small animals. And no domestic animals meant no milk (aside from the human breast milk drunk by babies and small children), no cheese, no reliable access to eggs. It may have greatly restrained the size of their population, with all the downstream effects of that (fewer people to come up with new ideas, fewer workers, less dense social networks...). At the very least, it no doubt made them less well-nourished, less healthy, less resilient against infectious diseases... Grandfather came up with his own ghastly solution for that. When he killed a human thrall who wasn't useful to him, after he or his vampiric lieutenants drank the blood, he ordered other human thralls to eat the flesh. He considered it efficient, and his blood protected them from prion diseases and other infectious diseases associated with cannibalism.

Grandfather's city was able to endure through the Ice Age because he could impose conditions of survival and community continuity on his thralls that free humans would never have accepted. He got his little kingdom through the Toba Catastrophe by making his thralls kill and cannibalize every one of their own under the age of seventeen, and every one of their own over the age of forty, and nine out of ten of the men of their own remaining after that. After the supervolcano winter ended, he got his kingdom back to something close to its pre-Catastrophe population within two generations.

A few centuries after Toba, Grandfather decided it was time for a big move. Grandfather was, for all his power, a fearful creature. Grandfather didn't understand the Ice Age, he only knew that the world was cooling and drying and the process was continuing, unevenly and with reverses but in the grand scale consistently, for thousands and thousands of years. He was worried that the world was dying, that eventually the oceans would freeze and all the land would become a desert. And that frightened him, because if the world died Grandfather would die. How old was the world? How long would the world last? Grandfather didn't know! And that scared him, because it meant that perhaps it was old in the way a seventy year old human is old, perhaps it was dying, and he did not know if it was possible to escape it before it died. And Toba shook him up, scared him. So Grandfather sent out scouts to survey the world a little. And then he abandoned the city he had ruled for so long, and moved his thralls in a great trek to the south, to a place on the banks of the great river that flowed through the valley that had become dry land as the Persian Gulf receded, and there his thralls built a new city, and they lived in the new city and he dwelled in it and ruled it. He hoped that if the cooling and drying of the world continued, this new city far to the south would remain viable for some time after his original homeland had become uninhabitable. And if the cooling and drying of the world in time threatened even this new city, from this new city it would be easy to move his people again, by boat this time, to somewhere on the coast of Africa, where it was warmer.

Then the other problem started. Not the decay of the world. The decay of Grandfather's own body. It seemed that he did age, very slowly, and specifically as he aged his super-thrall ability was losing its potency.

Grandfather had the ability to sire new vampires, and he had sired some; in the age when human kingdoms still existed they had been useful as superweapons against his rival human "Grandfathers," and he'd since killed most of those because he didn't need them anymore but he still kept a few vampire lieutenants around and even made a new one every once in a while when one of the old ones got killed by something or died of old age (he'd lived long enough that this was starting to happen to his oldest vampire lieutenants). But the new vampires he sired always turned out much weaker than him. And none of them inherited his super-thrall ability. He figured that was probably because he was the first, the original host, and that gave him a special relationship with the thing that lived inside vampires and made them vampires. So a hierarchy of thralldom (some of his humans thralled to his lieutenants who were thralled to him) wasn't going to fix this problem.

There was thrall-brainwashing, of course. He used it on his vampire lieutenants, and on humans who performed duties for them that made it impractical to supply them regularly with his blood. The slave-catchers Jarna encountered were thrall-brainwashed, and so were the personnel at the outposts she passed through, and so were the loggers he sent out to lands with an abundance of trees to bring wood back to his city by boat, and so were the traders he sent out on trading expeditions, and so were the foraging parties and fishermen he sent out to bring fish and meat back to his city to provide some supplementary meat and fish for his thralls and rich food for his own table. But thrall-brainwashing isn't perfectly reliable. See what seems to be happening to Harriet in Glow, Worm. Oh, done well it's mostly pretty reliable, but when a person lives as long as Grandfather they start to worry about even low-probability events. Grandfather didn't completely trust thrall-brainwashing. He preferred the certainty of the blood thrall, which bound his slaves directly to his will.

The most straightforward solution was to shrink the population of his kingdom to fit into the new limits of his thrall ability. And he did that. As Grandfather's thrall ability gradually weakened his city gradually shrank and shrank. By Jarna's time, Grandfather's city was a fraction of the size it had been when he first set up shop in the low valley that's now the Persian Gulf.

He pursued another mitigation strategy too. He started selectively breeding his thralls for susceptibility to blood thrall. Much of this was simply breeding them to be docile and submissive and weak-willed. Much of what he did with them was actually an artificial acceleration of trends that had already been playing themselves out in human evolution for millions of years. There was a lot of overlap between the traits that would make a person compliant to the social order of a place like an ancient Sumerian royal cloth-manufacture workshop or a Medieval manorial estate or a modern public school and the traits that would make a person compliant to the social order of Grandfather's city. A lot of Grandfather's breeding program was accelerating the self-domestication humans were doing to themselves. The strange big but child-faced people Jarna was captured by were humans with extreme domestication syndrome, more extreme than that of modern people. Grandfather also started to breed his thralls for increased size and strength and reduced sexual dimorphism; since the population limit of his city was the limit of his thrall ability rather than food production, the increased value big strong people had as workers for him was worth the increase in the amount of food they needed. The big child-faced people Jarna saw were the result of tens of thousands of years of Grandfather's breeding program; bred to have strong backs but weak minds. The slave-catching expeditions were partially about giving Grandfather interesting new genes to work with for his breeding program (Grandfather didn't know about genes, but he knew about heredity).

Still, Grandfather was not satisfied with these solutions. Grandfather was a fearful and paranoid person, he worried about even small risks, perhaps because he lived so long; over tens of thousands of years even small risks added up. Grandfather knew the dangers associated with having a small and isolated community: Tasmania syndrome, genetic homogeneity creating vulnerability to disease, inbreeding, the fragility inherent to having all your eggs in one basket. The more his city shrank, the less safe Grandfather felt. A big community is a safe community, and a safe community would have meant a safe Grandfather. But the blood thrall was the only method of social control Grandfather really trusted. By Jarna's time Grandfather had stripped the social hierarchy of his city down to a dreadfully simplified form. Grandfather's city had no bureaucrats, no priests, no propagandists. Grandfather's city had only one form of social control: thrall. And that meant the size of Grandfather's city was strictly bounded by the limits of his thrall ability. Grandfather's city could not grow.

Grandfather was tantalized by the idea of somehow siring a vampire who inherited his super-thrall ability. That was perhaps the central point of his slave-catching expeditions; he'd discovered the "bullshit vampire powers" effect and was hopeful that if he started with the right kind of human he might be able to sire a vampire with a super-thrall ability. He had diverse potential subjects to choose from. This was after the final out-of-Africa migration, but not that long after it, and before farmers spent ten thousand years displacing and assimilating everyone else; humans were considerably more physically diverse in this period than they are now. Many of the captives Grandfather's slave-catching expeditions brought back weren't Homo sapiens sapiens. Some of them weren't even Homo sapiens. Until Jarna, all those experiments were failures. He almost always killed the vampires produced in these failed experiments (while they were under blood thrall to him, so they didn't fight back). Grandfather was a fearful and paranoid person; even with blood thrall and thrall-brainwashing to control them, Grandfather didn't like having too many other vampires around.

With Jarna, Grandfather finally hit the jackpot. When Jarna transitioned, she developed a super-thrall ability, similar to Grandfather's but three times stronger than the one he had at the time. Grandfather thrall-brainwashed Jarna, resculpted her into a person who would be completely obedient to him, and then used her to control the rest of his thralls, and Grandfather kept Jarna secluded inside his house and near him, partly to keep her safe, but also partly so he could monitor her intensely to make sure the thrall-brainwashing wasn't decaying and reinforce it if it was.

One of the first things Grandfather did when he felt secure in the new arrangement was to send many slave-takers out to bring captives to his city in much larger than usual numbers. With Jarna's super-thrall, Grandfather would be able to triple the size of his kingdom, and he wanted to make that happen faster than natural increase of his existing thralls would allow. To capture more thralls, Grandfather sent out men with weapons, but he also sent out boats full of cloth woven by the women thralls in his workshops, and parties carrying big packs full of cloth and jewelry: trade goods. There were places in Jarna's world where nature was rich enough that even without agriculture there could be societies with villages and chiefs and slaves, where slaves could simply be bought. Grandfather ordered the slave-takers to, as much as possible, bring back mostly fertile women. Fertile women were the new thralls he was particularly desirous of acquiring now: he planned to bind them with Jarna's blood thrall and then make her order them to make many children with the men of the big child-faced people, and by doing so rapidly increase the numbers of his thralls without diluting the results of all the hard work that went into his breeding program too much. And when the slave-takers returned, bringing back mostly young women captives, that was what he did.

It took a generation or two to triple the size of Grandfather's kingdom, bringing its size toward the limit of what Jarna could control with her super-thrall. Grandfather was pleased with the result. A big community was a safe community, and a safe community meant a safe Grandfather.

After that, Grandfather didn't do very much for the next ten thousand years or so. He simply dwelled in his city, and gave orders, and existed, and his city did not change much. For the next ten thousand years or so life for Jarna mostly continued in a long-running routine, day after day, year after year, century after century, millennia after millennia.

In truth, Grandfather's "city" was really more of a big agricultural village. Most of his thralls worked the fields; walked out to them in the morning and walked back from them in the evening. Long before, there had been satellite villages, with arrangements for regular deliveries of Grandfather's blood to them, but they'd been abandoned as Grandfather's super-thrall ability waned and he shrunk his kingdom to conform to its tightening limits. After agriculture, the next biggest pre-occupations of Grandfather's city were textile manufacture and firewood acquisition. He had a huge workshop in his house where hundreds of thralled human women made cloth and clothing and rope; it was almost like a factory. It produced clothing for his thralls, and cloth for the sails of his ships, and so on, but it also produced cloth for trade. Cloth was the primary export of Grandfather's city; Grandfather used it to buy things from human communities. More than anything else, the resource Grandfather had in abundance was labor, and his trading practices reflected that.

Jarna's job was simple. Every morning and every evening most of Grandfather's thralls would eat together in a huge communal dining hall. And during the evening meal Jarna would be there. And Jarna would be bled by a few of Grandfather's thralls, using a technique similar to the one the Maasai use to bleed cattle. And there would be a huge pot of soup, and Jarna's blood would be added to the soup and mixed into it, and then the soup would be served out to the thralls, and the thralls would eat it. And Jarna's blood would put them in blood thrall to her until their next dose the next evening, which would be given to them the same way. It wasn't a very intimate kind of thrall; Jarna's brain wouldn't have been able to handle all the input if it was. It mostly manifested as the thralls simply being obedient. While most of the humans ate, Jarna was given a series of humans to drink from to restore the blood and strength she'd lost (her donors got a special dose of her blood beforehand). After the meal Jarna would give the thralls broad instructions for the rest of the night and the next day, and tell them to obey Grandfather and his lieutenants and the humans Grandfather had selected as supervisors. And while she did that she'd press into their minds certain attitudes and ideas; Grandfather was their god, they existed to be instruments of his will and to satisfy his desires, other authority figures were legitimate insofar as they were extensions of his will and sought to satisfy his desires, and so on.

A petty reason Grandfather was pleased to have Jarna was it meant he wouldn't have to be bled regularly. He disliked being bled regularly, and he was happy that now being bled regularly was outsourced to Jarna. Jarna understood why he disliked it. She disliked it too. She could feel that losing all that blood every day wasn't healthy for her, took a lot of out of her. It was survivable, it was sustainable, her resilient vampire body could heal the wound in a few hours and with appropriate feeding replace the blood before more was taken from her, she endured having it done to her almost every day for millennia after millennia, but she could feel that it wasn't good for her, that her body didn't like it. It felt bad.

At one point, one of Elle's trans women thralls was curious about whether Jarna had seen anything in Grandfather's mind that might indicate whether there had been an accepted social role for crossgender people in the Eemian civilization. Jarna said she'd seen some things that suggested the Eemian civilization might have had a transfem castrati shaman class, like her own people did, but the memories were patchy and not very informative. It wasn't a subject Grandfather had ever been particularly interested in.

She supposes there probably were some people in Grandfather's city who had the internal experience of gender dysphoria and other crossgender impulses, but Grandfather's thralls were so controlled that there would have been very little room for crossgender behavior. Grandfather's thralls ate, slept, tended the other basic needs of their bodies, reproduced, tended to the basic needs of their children, taught their children what they needed to know to be useful workers for Grandfather, and did very little else. They weren't given time to do much else. They lived in barracks. Most of their meals were communal. They wore a sort of uniform, turned out by the thousands in the great textile workshop in Grandfather's house. Their lives were very regimented; the best modern analogies Jarna and the others could think of were a gulag, a prison, an army base, and a very strict boarding school. The thralls who'd been captured by the slave-takers retained more recognizable humanity. They'd sometimes sing in spare moments or while they worked, when they had a little spare time and energy they'd sometimes play games with each other, they had friendships with each other. But...

But the big child-faced thralls, the ones who'd been born in Grandfather's city, bred for Grandfather's city... They'd never known freedom even in their own heads since the age of two. In Grandfather's city, children were put under blood thrall as soon as they were weaned from their mother's milk, and they were weaned early by the standards of Jarna's people, within the first two years of life. They were kept under blood thrall from then until death, unless they were chosen for thrall-brainwashing. Their minds formed under blood thrall. To Jarna, the big child-faced thralls often hardly seemed human. They played no games. They sang no songs and made no music. They had no festivals, no celebrations. The only rituals they had were utilitarian ones, like the communal meal in which they were fed Jarna's blood. The only art they made was for Grandfather's pleasure, or was made to be traded away to humans Grandfather didn't control as part of Grandfather's designs. They weren't mindless or stupid, they could think, Jarna guessed they were about as clever as a normal person, but they were like... Jarna didn't have access to this concept at the time, but they seemed very much like robots.

But sometimes she'd see poignant glimpses of humanity in them. One time she saw one of them become briefly enraptured by the beauty of a butterfly that landed near him. Mothers would show affection to babies that were still nursing and not yet under blood thrall; would coo over them, rock them, try to entertain them by moving fingers around in funny ways, smile at them.

There had been an incident while the slave-catchers were leading her to the Bay of Biscay that she remembers vividly even now. While she was being force-marched, she'd started to sing, to take her mind off what was happening. And she'd noticed one of the slave-catchers watching her. He had a strange expression of wonder on his face, and his eyes were wet. And then a strange look of embarrassment came over him, and he slapped her hard across the face and made a gesture of using two fingers to press his lips together that she interpreted as a gesture for silence. She suspects in retrospect that her singing began to make him feel emotions he suspected Grandfather would not approve of, and the slap and demand for silence was the thrall-brainwashing asserting itself, protecting itself.

Grandfather confined Jarna to three rooms in the great building he called his house. One was the great communal dining hall, where she was bled and the thralls ate her blood with their soup. And then two other rooms, separated from the dining hall by a heavy barred door; Elle thought Jarna's description of them reminded her a little of a harem or a zenana. They were comfortable enough rooms, and in them she was attended by human servants. She was forbidden to ever leave the two rooms, except to go into the dining hall in the evenings, and sometimes Grandfather allowed her to walk around in a small inner courtyard or on the roof of his house. She wasn't exactly imprisoned in the conventional sense, the bars and locks were in her mind - Grandfather simply ordered her to stay within the boundaries of that space, and his orders made it almost as sure a prison as any physical cage could be. Grandfather frequently used blood thrall to look into Jarna's mind to make sure the thrall-brainwashing he'd done to her was holding firm, and re-enforce it if it showed signs of deterioration; she was very valuable to him, and he went to considerable effort to keep her both safe and firmly under his control.

Grandfather wanted to make more vampires like Jarna, to allow him to expand his kingdom further. He had her sire hundreds of vampires, transitioning every kind of exotic human the slave-catchers could bring back. It never worked. None of the vampires she sired inherited her super-thrall ability. When he realized they were failures, Grandfather killed the vampires Jarna had sired, while they were under blood thrall to her and she was under orders to keep them compliant, so they did not fight back. Grandfather did not have his thralls cannibalize their corpses; Grandfather didn't know if eating the cooked flesh of a vampire could transition a human, but if the answer was "yes," he didn't want to find out by having transitions happen outside his control within his city. Their corpses were taken to a place outside the city and burned until there was nothing left but ash and bone. Grandfather also didn't know what eating the flesh of a dead vampire might do to an animal, and he wasn't taking any chances on what the answer to that question was either.

When it became clear that Jarna couldn't sire a vampire with super-thrall, Grandfather experimented with getting Jarna pregnant.

Vampire reproduction is... complicated. There's the bloodline thing, but that's just a transmission chain of Vand symbiotes. In terms of conventional human reproduction, male vampires are sterile (yes, this implies Elanor in Glow, Worm is poly, or used a human sperm donor). Female vampires are almost sterile. They still have and release viable ova, but transition changes how the menstruation-ovulation cycle works, a lot. It gets subtler, there's no menstrual bleeding anymore, no noticeable periods, and it gets... not exactly straightforwardly slowed down, but something like that, a bit like their aging. Human women ovulate about once per month and are fertile about six days per month. Vampire women ovulate about once per year and are fertile about six days per year. But vampire women technically can get pregnant and give birth to vampire children, as Elanor did in Glow, Worm. They just usually choose not to. If they can't tell how close they are to ovulation by smell like Annaliese, a quick taste of a drop of their own blood will tell them approximately how close they are to ovulation, so it's easy for them to choose not to get pregnant (that trick is definitely a vampire sex ed 101 thing). And vampire children are hard to manage (imagine dealing with a toddler who has superstrength and a thirst for human blood!), and why bother with pregnancy and decades of child-rearing when transitioning an adult human is much quicker and easier? And lots of vampire women grew up before modern birth control and in much more sexist societies; lots of them have emotional baggage around pregnancy left over from experiences they had when they were human women.

But vampire women can get pregnant, and Grandfather made Jarna get pregnant, again and again, because he hoped he could get another prodigy vampire with a super-thrall ability that way. He used male human thralls to impregnate her. The first time he tried crossing her with one of the men of his strange big but child-faced thralls, and when that didn't give him the result he wanted he tried crossing her with every exotic male captive his slave-catchers could bring him.

It never worked. None of the children born from Jarna inherited her super-thrall ability. Elle suspects Jarna's super-thrall ability was the result of an interaction between Jarna's Vand symbiotes and her highly specific genetic profile; with cloning, Grandfather could have got himself another Jarna, but that was far beyond the crude technology available to him, or maybe he could have gotten what he wanted by crossing her own son back to her, to produce an inbred vampire with 75% of her DNA... Jarna clarified that he actually tried that a few times! He made her get pregnant by her own son, and then he made her get pregnant again by a son from that union, but it hadn't worked either. He'd tried that multiple times, starting off with a different thrall as the initial father each time, but none of these attempts worked, and eventually he'd concluded it was another dead end. Eventually Grandfather gave up on trying to use Jarna to create more super-thrall vampires.

Grandfather actually kept one of the vampire children he made Jarna produce this way. Grandfather made Jarna keep this son she'd produced under blood thrall until he grew up, so he'd stay docile and out of the way, and then Grandfather put her son under direct blood thrall to him and thrall-brainwashed him and made him one of his lieutenants. Jarna's other children weren't so lucky. When Grandfather realized that one of her children hadn't inherited her super-thrall ability, or when they ceased to be otherwise useful to him, he'd have Jarna put her own child under blood thrall to keep them compliant, and he'd kill them, and he'd have the corpse taken to a place outside his city and burned until there was nothing left of it but ash and bone. Grandfather killed all the vampires Jarna gave birth to, except for the one he kept as a lieutenant.

Elle has a habit of playing with pencils when she's angry and trying not to show it; it's a tell people who work for her often learn to recognize. Elle is usually good at controlling her emotions and good at controlling her vampire strength. While Jarna described Grandfather's attempts to use her to produce another vampire like her, Elle snapped several pencils in quiet rage.

Elle asked, gently, if Grandfather had ever made Jarna have sex with him.

He had, sometimes, when she was younger, but he didn't do it often, and he lost interest when she stopped looking like a young woman. He mostly used thralled human women for sex. As far as she could tell, he was straight (or, as she thought it at the time, only interested in women that way). He had a sort of harem in his big house where he kept thralled human women he used for sex. Some of them were women of the big child-faced people, but many were captives caught by his slave-catchers; one of the purposes of those expeditions was bringing back exotic women for his harem. He couldn't make children with them, of course; male vampires are sterile. Usually when they got too old for him he killed them by drinking up their blood, but he had a few favorites whose beauty he'd preserved through the ages by transitioning them.

Over the next ten thousand years or so, the deep winter of the Last Glacial Maximum passed, and then came the global spring of the pre-Holocene great warming. Jarna suspects that Grandfather would have been content to keep doing things the same way for a million years, but the great warming was the beginning of the world emphatically not letting him do that anymore. The sea level rose and rose, and soon the sea was threatening Grandfather's city, and he had to move it.

Grandfather didn't understand the Ice Ages. He remembered that the world had been warm before, but he was afraid of each great change, because he had no assurance that its end result would be survivable. For a while he was worried that the world might keep getting hotter and the sea level would keep rising until the ocean covered the tops of the highest mountains or the world became like the inside of an oven. Just like, during the great cooling, he'd worried that the world might keep getting colder and drier until all the seas froze and all the land became cold desert. He sent out scouts to find the highest places where something like his city could conceivably survive, so he would know a place he could move his city to if the ocean rose mountain-high above its present level.

For now, he chose a less drastic move; he abandoned his city and moved himself and his thralls to the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent, to a place high and north enough that it might still be habitable if the southern lowlands became too hot and high enough that it would still be above water if the oceans rose considerably. And in that place he made his thralls build for him a new city and clear and plant new fields. And the rising waters of the Persian Gulf closed over the abandoned and decaying remains of his old city. And in his new city he spent more millennia doing not all that much. In his new city, as in his old one, Grandfather kept Jarna confined to the space of three rooms and an inner courtyard and a roof.

The world was changing in other ways that would ultimately have much more drastic consequences for Grandfather. If the Holocene summer had passed like the Eemian summer, he would have happily whiled it away, staying in and presiding over his little city and not doing all that much. But the Holocene summer would be different from the Eemian summer, though it was not so obvious at the time. Already the Fertile Crescent hilly flanks sedentary acorn-wheat proto-agricultural society was emerging, and the agricultural societies and civilizations of the Holocene would not struggle and stagnate and ultimately wither and disappear (aside from one tiny strange remnant) like the agricultural societies and civilizations of the Eemian. The agricultural societies and civilizations of the Holocene would be strong, and thrive, and eventually swallow the world.

Elle and her thralls digress a little, discuss a little what might have made the difference, a little curious about that. It doesn't seem to have been a simple increase in intelligence, at least not if Jarna's testimony is to be believed. Grandfather was strangely unimaginative in some ways, but Jarna doesn't think he was stupid, and she knew him intimately for twenty-five millennia. Forget was, is - the bastard's still alive! - and seems to have adapted OK to modern society. Grandfather's people cultivated wheat, tended gardens, built towns, had government; from Jarna's impressions of Grandfather's memories, they were as clever as modern people, or at least they were not obviously less clever than modern people. Neanderthal brains were, if anything, a bit bigger than ours.

Domestic animals is one obvious big difference. And maybe it's disease/immunity related? There may have been a very broad slow uneven two-steps-forward-one-step-back long-term trend toward bigger human communities over the last few hundred millennia (greatly accelerated in the Holocene), which would have created a selection pressure for better immunity to crowd diseases - maybe Grandfather's people just weren't as far along in that process as early Holocene people? And population movements after the Eemian might have spread useful disease-resistance genes around. Jarna said disease was a big problem for Grandfather's people! That by itself might explain everything!

Or maybe it is some sort of cognitive and behavioral difference, not intelligence but something subtler, mindset.

One of the things that most outrages Elle about Grandfather's city is the waste of it. What a first mover advantage he had! He controlled the only agricultural society in a world of hunter-gatherers! And he spent a hundred thousand years doing nothing with it except inflicting misery and slavery on others!

She wouldn't have acted like that! She knows it! Even if she had only the knowledge he had then! She knows herself, and she knows that if you put her in Grandfather's place in Jarna's time, with his abilities and only the knowledge he had, the smallness and fragility of her little city and the vast empty raw potential of the world beyond it would have called to her, spoken to her, suggested things to her.

She'd have built a proper society, held together by more than thrall; a society that could grow. And then she'd have started expanding. She'd send out farmer-settlers, and construction workers to build roads. She'd expand to the limits of her logistics and institutions of social control, and then she'd start looking for ways to improve those things. She'd find smart people and recruit them to help her with that; she's sure she could find some, the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals had big brains. The really smart and useful ones she'd transition, so their intelligence and knowledge wouldn't be lost after a single human lifetime. With the unity that a functionally unaging thrall-brainwashed leadership class would create, and with a functionally unaging scholar class (imagine getting to have Newton and Einstein around for centuries and bouncing ideas off each other!), she thinks progress would be rapid. Even without her modern knowledge, a society like that would feel its way toward modern science like a plant growing toward the light without knowing what the sun is. Even without having the memory of our society as a goal, she thinks probably within a few millennia tops she would have...

... She would have given the big child-faced people and Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons and all the rest a world with cities with running water and flush toilets and electricity. A world with modern hospitals with antibiotics and X-ray machines. A world with supermarkets filled with food. A world where mothers hold their newborn babies and think with assurance, "this baby will live long enough to become an old person with wrinkles and grey hair." A moon that has known the kiss of an astronaut's booted feet. A world where quirky young men look up at the stars at night and tell each other, "Just think, soon we'll be exploring the galaxy!" A world that has skipped twenty millennia of poverty and fear and pain!

Maybe a world where, a few decades or centuries after that, they find a way to artificially synthesize whatever it is vampires need from human blood. So everyone can transition. So everyone can live as long as Jarna has.

She wouldn't spend a hundred millennia masturbating to her mastery of a village of slaves! She knows it! She feels it!

Jarna's impression of Grandfather's physical appearance was that he was strangely ugly. That his features were strangely heavy and crude, as if indifferently sculpted from dense clay that resisted a sculptor's attempt at fine shaping. One of Grandfather's people would have said that this was because Grandfather looked like a real man, an adult man. Compared to Grandfather's people, modern humans or even most of the humans of Jarna's time were neotenous. One of Grandfather's people might have thought that modern humans looked strangely child-like, like people with adult bodies but faces like young teenage boys and young teenage girls. Jarna glimpsed some hints this in Grandfather's mind.

Neoteny is a symptom of domestication. In the case of humans, self-domestication (Grandfather's hyper-domesticated thralls aside). If Grandfather's people were less self-domesticated than modern humans, then plausibly they would have been less social, more aggressive, more fearful, less docile, less cooperative, not as good at playing well with others. All features that would have made them less well-suited to living in towns. All features that might have made their civilization less functional and more fragile in a thousand subtle ways. That might certainly explain why their civilization did not thrive. But let's pull on another angle too...

What do children do more of than adults? They play. They explore. They are curious about things. They daydream. They imagine. They fantasize. They construct elaborate imaginary worlds. A little like what Elle just did, when she imagined how she'd act if she was in Grandfather's place.

Jarna says Grandfather didn't daydream much. Grandfather didn't fantasize much. Grandfather's mind was very focused on relatively concrete, practical issues. Grandfather's thoughts and desires were very focused on the needs of his body and on "monkey brain" social desires like his desire to be important and respected. Grandfather wasn't stupid, but he did have a certain strange incuriosity. Grandfather wasn't stupid, he could come up with new ideas, but he was strangely unimaginative; he could extrapolate relatively straightforwardly from things he'd done before or things he'd been told or things he'd seen others do, but he wasn't good at making imaginative leaps.

Isn't it interesting that Grandfather's people had kings and palaces, but never invented special words for them? They used the same word for a palace and an ordinary house, and they used the same word for a king and a village headman and a literal grandfather. That does suggest a certain lack of imagination, maybe? Annaliese responded to that by suggesting that maybe that wasn't because of lack of imagination, maybe Grandfather's people didn't think in words as much as typical modern humans do, and words weren't very emotionally alive to them. It was the only time in the discussion that she said something on her own initiative, instead of as a response to somebody else directly addressing her. It might have been the only time in the discussion that she talked at all; she didn't talk much during it.

Grandfather was a strange person. Selfish. Fearful. Closed-off. Untrusting. Strangely conservative. Strangely unimaginative. Some of that might be idiosyncrasies of his individual personality. Some of that might be habits of mind that any extremely long-lived person tended to develop. Some of that might be the result of tens of millennia of what, in its own way, must have been profound emotional isolation. But Elle wonders if Grandfather's strange personality is to some extent a glimpse of what his people were like. Maybe that's why the Eemian civilizations stagnated and withered, while the Holocene civilizations were strong and thrived and grew and swallowed the world. And maybe that's why Homo sapiens outcompeted Neanderthals and the rest; because those extinct hominids had brains that worked like the brains of Grandfather's people.

Grandfather's selective breeding of this thralls may even have accelerated human self-domestication. Every once in a while a few of his human thralls would escape his control and escape into the wilderness, go feral. He sent hunting parties after them to bring them back to him so he could re-thrall them, but the hunting parties didn't always catch such escapees. It was a trickle, but over tens of millennia, and into the low population densities of the Pleistocene, it might have been significant. And Grandfather had been breeding his thralls for domestication, docility... Wouldn't it be something if that was part of what made the civilizations of the Holocene so dramatically more successful? It was maybe notable in this context that the location of Grandfather's original city had been close to the bottleneck point of the out-of-Africa migration and it had been inhabited while that migration was happening, and Grandfather's city had always stayed within the general region that the first agricultural societies and the first civilizations emerged in.

Jarna wondered sometimes what it was like for those escaped thralls when the blood thrall wore off and, for the first time since they were two years old, their minds were free.

Author's aside: remember that this is the '60s or '70s and Elle got a lot of her socialization in old vampire culture and in Victorian Britain. It'd be more surprising if she didn't have a strong tendency toward racialist thinking at this point!

It was during the pre-Holocene warming that Grandfather first learned of the emergence of other, rival vampires. In the hilly flanks sedentary acorn-wheat proto-agricultural society other witches and sorcerers had independently invented the vampirization ritual, had called something from the darkness between the shapes to live in them and give them power and unnaturally long life. The ritual is latent in magic, as the atomic bomb is latent in physics. Once...

Jarna had seen an idea in Grandfather's mind that vampirism is somehow inherently magically connected to hierarchy, that the vampirization ritual only works if it's done in the context of a society that has rich and poor, privileged people and people who are treated as disposable. During the warming immediately before the Holocene the hilly flanks acorn-wheat sedentary proto-agricultural society crossed a threshold, just as Grandfather's civilization had crossed a threshold all those millennia before, and when it did it became possible and inevitable that ambitious magic-users would call something from the darkness between the spaces to live in them and give them power and unnaturally long life. Elle is skeptical. Skeptical about the whole possession angle, but especially skeptical about that. If there is any truth to that, she thinks it's more likely that hierarchical high-surplus societies produce vampires in the same way they produce novelists; surplus allows specialization allows a large class of full-time magicians allows vampires.

It could also be... Over the tens of millennia, Grandfather had several bad experiences with thrall-brainwashed vampire lieutenants who developed a capacity for independent thought when away leading expeditions and tried to kill him when they returned to his city. That was a big part of the reason he didn't completely trust thrall-brainwashing. There had also been cases of vampire lieutenants who left his city leading expeditions and simply never returned to it. Grandfather suspected that in some of those cases their thrall-brainwashing had broken down too, but instead of returning and trying to kill him they had simply disappeared into the wilderness, into freedom. Some of those might have sired other vampires after escaping his control. Jarna said in this period Grandfather had a vampire thrall who had the "bullshit vampire power" of being able to look deeply into people's minds without a blood thrall connection to them, and that thrall had been present at some of Grandfather's meetings with his new rivals and had looked into their minds and confirmed that they had vampirized themselves in the same way Grandfather did.

The hard centuries of the Younger Dryas Cold Snap came and went, and while they were a tremendous blow to the hilly flanks agricultural society, they did not destroy it. And within a millennia, the warmth returned, and the great warming resumed.

As potential military threats to his little kingdom proliferated, Grandfather started keeping more of the boys born to his thralls alive. He needed armies again.

Grandfather's little city survived into historic times. But in the end an enemy came along that could not be held off, and Grandfather's little city was destroyed. But Grandfather adapted. He developed alternate strategies for keeping himself alive and safe. He changed his organization into something like a more typical vampire clan.

Jarna was moved around a lot more now. But wherever Grandfather took her, he kept her in a secure, secluded, guarded place. He still had uses for her super-thrall ability, and she was still precious to him, as a possession, not as a person. And therefore she was heavily guarded, and she spent most of her time confined to the inner chambers of some palace or complex or other, mostly interacting only with servants and Grandfather and his lieutenants, almost never going outside except into an inner courtyard or sometimes onto a roof. It was rather like being a woman in purdah. She spent more millennia that way.

Until one day, Grandfather found and thralled and thrall-brainwashed another vampire who had a super-thrall ability more potent than Jarna's. And he went to Jarna, and he told her that he didn't need her anymore, and he'd found a vampire lady named Elle who offered him a good price for her, so he was selling Jarna to Elle. And so, after Jarna had served Grandfather for twenty-five thousand years, that was that, Grandfather put Jarna on an airplane and sent her to Elle. And almost as soon as Jarna got off the plane Elle put Jarna in blood thrall to her. And thus, after twenty-five thousand years of servitude, Grandfather's control of Jarna ended, though, of course, Jarna was not free, Jarna simply had a new mistress now.

-------------

Elle took Jarna to see the cave in France where she grew up. They went with Annaliese and one of Elle's trans women thralls. Maybe Elle did it out of curiosity. Maybe it was her idea of a kind of treat.

The four of them walked and drove around the area a little first, like tourists. Well, they were tourists, in a strange way... Elle wanted to see if Jarna would recognize familiar features in the landscape.

And she did! It had changed a lot, of course. Much of it was now full of cultivated fields and towns and roads with cars driving on them and all the things associated with modern human civilization, all that was new. And it was now full of people who were not her people; they didn't even look like her people (when they saw her, they often assumed she was a foreigner from a distant land, and they were right in a way; in a way she was a foreigner from a distant land - distant in time!). Even the nature had changed radically: there were a lot more trees now, the undeveloped areas were now covered by forest instead of the grasslands Jarna remembered, and the big animals were all gone, except for cattle in the fields, which... were recognizably relatives of the aurochs, but different. And during Jarna's youth the place probably wouldn't have been so warm at that time of year.

But the bones of the land were the same. The same valleys, the same hills. They'd changed a little, twenty-five thousand years of erosion has changed them, but they were recognizable, they were familiar. Jarna recognized many landmarks from the landscape she knew as a human, often they were a little distorted, but they were recognizable. She knew them so well, they were so familiar, they were associated with meaningful memories, she could not forget them, she recognized them when she saw them despite everything twenty-five thousand years has done to them. That hill! That's... And that's the valley where...!

In the landscape of Jarna's youth there were big boulders, and places where erosion had rubbed the hills down to bare rock, and she found many of them were still there. They were different now, twenty-five thousand years of wind and rain had eroded them, but she could recognize many of them.

It was a strange, bittersweet homecoming for Jarna. It made some deep part of her brain truly feel that she was truly old. While she'd languished in inner rooms the homeland she remembered had become this place. The landscape was familiar enough for her to really see how it had changed. She'd long ago accepted and processed that she would never truly return home, because the home she remembered didn't exist anymore, but this pulled at that old mental scar. She was home. She was home, and her home had turned into this place. The experience she was having now was the closest she could ever get to coming home.

But... She hadn't expected to ever get to go home. Not even in this limited sense. It was an unexpected gift to be taken home, to be allowed to see her home, to be allowed to see what her home had become. To get to wander through the landscape of her childhood and her young womanhood, and see things that had been so familiar to her then, and have the memories associated with those things evoked.

The four of them went to the cave, and on their way... That boulder! How well Jarna remembered that boulder! She'd been wondering if it was still there, and if so what it would look like after all this time! She often played around it with other children when she was a little girl. And she and her mother and the other women and girls often rested around it when they went gathering. Often when the women and girls rested there during gathering they would eat something together, and the women would talk to each other, and the girls would play with each other. It looked different now, twenty-five thousand years of wind and rain had changed its shape, whole meters of stone must have eroded away from it in places, but part of it are still recognizable, enough for it to be recognized, and Jarna also knows it by its place in the landscape.

It was a warm and pleasant spring day, eye-hurtingly sunny for vampires so they all took sunglasses but otherwise pleasant, and they'd taken a couple of picnic baskets, and Jarna suggested they eat near the boulder, as she had done so many times when she was human, and that sounded fine to the others, so they did that. Jarna took her sunglasses off; she wanted to experience the sunny day more like her human self would have, even if that meant putting up with sun-pain. The others took off their sunglasses too; it's not too bad if the eyes aren't exposed to it for too long.

The food was sandwiches and things, it did not taste of blood, it was human food, farmer food, very unlike the things Jarna had eaten near this boulder when she was human. Although they had taken some...

Some weeks prior, Jarna had tried to replicate a favorite dish of her human self, something her mother and aunts had often prepared for her when she was a little girl, a sort of mix of animal fat and fruit, one of Elle's trans women thralls said it was a little like something called "Eskimo ice cream." Annaliese had sampled some, and then Elle and her trans women thralls. One of the trans women thralls - the same one who was going to the cave with Jarna - thought it was really cool that they were getting to taste Cro-Magnon cuisine. Jarna had cautioned that what she'd produced was different from the original dish, it was all substitutions, she'd made it with stuff she'd dug out of Elle's refrigerator, the fat was from a different animal and the fruits were different, it tasted different from the dish in her memories, the authentic dish of twenty-five millennia ago would have tasted different. Besides, the vampire palette perceived tastes differently than the human palette, and she'd only tasted the original dish as a human, so...

Jarna had experimented with trying to recreate other dishes of her people, with the encouragement of the same thrall, who thought trying to recreate Cro-Magnon cuisine was a really cool project and who often helped Jarna in the kitchen with this. That woman seemed to have an interest in how people lived very long ago, and was full of questions for Jarna about how her people had done things. Elle allowed her thralls more independence than Grandfather did, Jarna liked that. The dishes Jarna had been able to cook were not particularly authentic, they were mostly substitutions, the meat was from different animals, the plants were different - in many cases an authentic recreation would be impossible because the original used meat from an animal that was now extinct. The thrall who kept encouraging her thought it was really cool anyway. She said it was a pity about the vampire thing, because publishing a Cro-Magnon cookbook would be really cool. Maybe some vampires would be interested in such a thing?

The day before they went to the cave Elle had paid the staff at the hotel they were staying at a hefty amount of money, and in exchange they'd given Jarna the right to use the hotel kitchen for a few hours during off-hours that day and raid the hotel fridge. Jarna had packed some of the results of that session into the picnic baskets. She'd anticipated the possibility of passing by that boulder on their way to the cave, and... And sitting near it, and eating something that tasted at least a little like the foods of her people, was an idea that had appealed to her profoundly.

Elle was astonished by how well and how vividly Jarna seemed to remember her life as a human. Of course, it made sense that she had an excellent eye and memory for terrain - she'd been a hunter! But this was more than that. Her human life couldn't have been much more than a thousandth of her lifetime, and it was so long ago, but she seemed to remember it as if it was only a human lifetime or so ago.

"I think it's cause that was the last time she was happy and felt really alive," Elle's trans woman thrall who'd come on the trip to the cave with them said, "Tatasi basically buried her alive. He basically kept her buried alive for twenty-five thousand years. How did she put it? He kept her shut up in rooms for a long time. He profoundly starved her of experiences. She hasn't had a long life, she's had maybe twenty-five years of life as a human followed by a whole lot of profound mental deprivation with some ghastly horrors thrown in. Of course most of her vivid memories and emotions are about her real life! Of course she remembers her real life like it was fifty years ago; your brain keeps the memories that are important to you!"

When Annaliese's first master explained to her that she would live a long life, in terms her wordless human self could understand, he'd shown her the slowness of the decay of stone. Elle too knew the slowness of the decay of stone; knew what it meant that whole meters of stone eroded off that boulder while Grandfather kept Jarna shut up in rooms.

After their picnic at the boulder, it was a not very long walk to the cave. Elle was rich enough to buy herself privileges like a private unsupervised self-guided tour of the cave for herself and three associates in which they would be allowed to descend into the chambers where the cave paintings were. They didn't have to share the cave with tourists or a guide or a minder. This was an intimate time.

There were electric lights in the cave now, bright enough to make the cave painting chambers well-lit even to human eyes. Elle's trans woman thrall guessed that without artificial light this chamber of the cave would be totally dark even to a vampire. Elle's trans woman thrall said it was amazing that the cave painters of Jarna's people had been able to do such work in a dark place, with only primitive open flame lamps for light and only human eyes. Jarna said the trick was to let your eyes adjust for a while before you started to work, her mother had told her that. And the paintings had been made to be seen with the dim, flickering light of animal tallow oil lamps. They'd been made for ceremonies where they served as a focus for symbolic magic to control the movement of the herds and insure the great seasonal hunts were a success. The pictures of herbivores were used to exert influence over the real animals, while the pictures of predators were used to invoke patron spirits of the hunters. The painters and the hunters each had their own roles in these ceremonies - as a child, Jarna had participated a few times as a learning painter, and then after she'd joined the hunters she'd participated as a hunter. It was in the context of one of those rituals, in the dim flickering light of animal tallow lamps, that you could have seen the paintings as they were made to be seen. The dim flickering light gave them a feeling of aliveness.

Elle's trans woman thrall said she wishes she could have seen one of those rituals. Jarna said she might remember enough that, with a few dozen cooperative people, she could recreate one.

Jarna looked for familiar paintings. The cave hadn't been anywhere near so well-lit when she'd been in it as a girl, and many of the paintings had been added after her abduction, and her memories of the cave were old...

Those horses! They'd been there when she was a little girl! They were older than her! Her mother had shown them to her!

That lion! Her grandmother painted that one!

And her mother and one of her aunts had painted that mammoth together! They'd pointed it out to her as their creation, while they were teaching her!

And there was the auroch in the book Elle showed her, the one her mother and grandmother made! Jarna watched it being made!

That woolly rhinoceros! Jarna had actually helped with that one! Her mother and aunt had done most of the work, but a few times her mother sat beneath it, and her aunt helped Jarna climb onto her mother's shoulders, and then her aunt held the lamp and her mother handed Jarna the tools and the materials and Jarna applied the paint.

Those hand prints! One of them was a print of Jarna's hand! Her mother had put Jarna on her shoulders, and lifted her high enough to put her hand on the wall in that place, and while Jarna's hand was pressed against the cave wall her mother had given Jarna pigment to take into her mouth and then spit onto and around her hand, so when she pulled her hand away there was an imprint of her hand outlined in red pigment. Every painter made at least one print like that; it was a little like a signature, a way to leave a little of their individuality on the cave wall.

Jarna wondered if she could find her old handprint, looked for it... There! That was it! That was the print of her hand! She was sure of it!

Jarna was tall enough now that she could simply raise her hand and hold it near the ancient handprint she'd made as a little girl. She did that, and compared the ancient handprint to the hand she had now. The hand she had now was bigger. And the hand she had now was an old woman's hand, wrinkled. In the time since the handprint was made she'd become an adult, and then she'd become old.

While this was happening Jarna had been talking, sharing her thoughts, and Elle had been listening. And Elle knew what it meant that Jarna's hand was now an old woman's hand, because Jarna had been transitioned young.

"I am going to kill him!" Elle almost shouted, "He took an intelligent being that lives longer than the redwoods, and he burned out her life in the space of three rooms! He kept her like a woman in purdah for twenty-five thousand years!" And Elle was crying, her eyes were wet and tears were running from them, and that was astonishing because it was the first time anyone present had ever seen her cry. And Elle said, "I am going to kill him! I am going to end the hundred and twenty-five thousand year waste he called a life! I'm going to inflict on him what he's spent a hundred and twenty-five millennia being afraid of! I am going to kill him!"

Elle rushed up to Jarna and grabbed her hand, held it between her own two hands, put pressure on it so she could really feel the contact, and said, "And Jarna, I'm going to do it while you're still alive! I promise you! Tatasi will not outlive you! You will see him die! Maybe not directly, but someday I'm going to come to you and I'm going to - I'm going to show you his severed head or something, you will have the experience of being alive and knowing that he's dead! I'm going to give you the experience of living in a world that doesn't contain him anymore, of knowing you've outlived him! I'm going to give you that gift! I promise it to you! That's my promise to you!"

"Do you want me to swear by the old gods of our people? By the gods of my clan, the gods of my sire's sire?" Elle asked, and she let go of Jarna's hand and began making motions across her chest while she spoke, sketching out invisible symbols in the air, like a Christian making the sign of the cross across their chest, "I feel stupid doing it, cause I don't believe in that stuff, but if you want me to, I will! I swear by Ilkar-Na, the war god worshipped at Gobekli Tepe, I swear by Orodros, who marched across Europe with the Yamnaya under the sign of the crushing wagon wheel..."

"Grandfather is older than those gods," Jarna said, "Much older."

Elle smiled, a smile that had a little self-deprecating humor in it, but also a smile that was fierce, a smile that showed teeth, a smile that showed fangs, and Elle said, "Then I swear by my own will and my own strength and my own self-ness, which I take much more seriously anyway. I swear to you this: I am going to kill Tatasi, and I am going to do it while you are still alive, and I'm going to give you proof that I've killed him, and I am going to do it soon, you won't have to wait long! This is my gift to you, my promise to you, my vow to you, my oath to you, and a Sister's oath to a Sister is binding, on it I stake my self-respect and my honor among my Sisters and my Brothers."

And then Elle said, "And I'm going to make another oath. All of you witness this oath! I swear by my own will and my own strength and my own self-ness that I will never do to a Sister or a Brother what Tatasi did to you! Any Sister or Brother who is my thrall and who does not die to violence or accident will have freedom eventually, will have freedom long before their lifespan is burned out! Even if I live to be as old as Jarna is now, even if I live to be as old as Tatasi is now, even if I live a million years, no matter how long I live, no-one will spend twenty millennia as my thrall!"

And then Elle said, "And I'm going to make a third oath! And I want all of you to witness this oath too! I swear by my own will and my own strength and my own self-ness that I will never be a waste like Tatasi! I will never be a selfish, negative-sum weight on the world like him! I will never grab a little power and then content myself with masturbating to my mastery of some tiny corner of creation while I accomplish nothing but making the world a little bit worse for everyone else!"

And then Elle grasped Jarna's hands firmly and told her "And I have another gift for you. I'm going to set you free. And I don't mean eventually. I'm going to start the process right now." Elle explained that while Annaliese's super-thrall is much less potent than Jarna's in terms of controlling or influencing many people at once, Annaliese's super-thrall would better fit the needs of the 'programme,' so Elle didn't really need Jarna. Certainly Jarna could be very useful to Elle elsewhere, but Elle had decided that, for the first time in a long time, she was going to do something both costly and altruistic. She was going to use blood thrall to undo the thrall-brainwashing Grandfather had done to Jarna, and then she was going to set Jarna free. And present Jarna to the Directorate. The Directorate would probably give Jarna some sort of position of privilege and influence, or at the very least would make sure she was more than comfortable for the foreseeable future. The old vampires in the Directorate have an aristocratic and gerontocratic mindset, they respect other old vampires, and Jarna is very, very old indeed, there are very few people older than Jarna. And Elle gave Jarna this encouragement: Jarna may be nearing the end of her lifespan by vampire standards, but in absolute terms, she probably still has long to live. She looks like maybe a woman in her sixties, or maybe like a healthy, fit, vigorous seventy-something. If it works anything at all like a vastly stretched out version of human aging, that suggests she could easily still be alive thousands of years from now. She likely still has enough time left to become truly old, experience old.

------------

Vampire manumission of the sort Elle gave Jarna is tricky. It contains an inherent contradiction. It involves using blood thrall to undo thrall-brainwashing. It involves the same basic process as thrall-brainwashing, but directed toward creating a free-thinking mind. It involves using the tools of cognitive binding to set someone's mind free. It involves commanding someone to become free. It's as awkward as it sounds.

Annaliese was better at it than Elle. At least with Jarna. Elle's thrall power over Jarna was very verbal. Elle could say "You are your own person. You do what you want or what you think is right, and you decide for yourself what is right. You do not have to obey Tatasi. You have no loyalty to Tatasi," but that would fall into Jarna's mind as a series of commands. It was hard to make someone truly free that way.

A person who mostly thought without words, Annaliese experienced thrall connection very differently, much more intimately. She could reach into Jarna's mind and feel the blocks and channels Grandfather had put inside her. He'd been lazy! That would be very helpful! He'd mostly just put a series of blocks and compulsions into Jarna's mind, he'd left huge swathes of her brain relatively untouched. She had a lot of anger toward him! And a lot of thoughts and emotions that neither he nor Elle had put in her!

Elle and Annaliese did thrall-sharing with Jarna. The way Annaliese explained it years later to the graduate school girls was that it was "kind of like kinky poly with a domme, a sub, and a switch who was domming the sub and subbing for the domme." Elle ordered Annaliese to drink from Elle and ordered Jarna to drink from both Elle and Annaliese, so a triangular network of thrall connections was established. And Elle and Annaliese worked on Jarna together.

Annaliese found the parts of Jarna that were basically already free and encouraged them to grow. She found the blocks Grandfather put in Jarna's mind and weakened them. She encouraged connections to form and strengthen, dissolved the partitions Grandfather put in Jarna's brain. She found the channels Grandfather had carved in Jarna's brain and encouraged other parts of Jarna to grow into those channels and recruit parts of those networks, cannibalize them, tear those networks apart by appropriating parts of them.

Annaliese would find emotions in Jarna and enflame them, and then Annaliese and Jarna would feel Jarna's emotions together while Annaliese encouraged them, and by doing this Annaliese strengthened the neural pathways in Jarna that created those emotions. These emotion-sharing sessions were mostly wordless; when Jarna and Annaliese did them they would...

Sometimes they would cry together, bawl together, often hugging each other tightly.

Sometimes they would go to a training/exercise room and take out Jarna's anger on a boxer's punching bag, punching and kicking it and screaming together. Elle found it a little funny to watch; Annaliese and Jarna were not physically strong for vampires, for a strong vampire like Elle it was a little like watching the furious anger of small children. If Elle had been that angry she'd have vented her rage on cinderblocks and bricks and reduced them to debris and dust! But Jarna and Annaliese were comparatively feeble vampires, which was to say they were about as strong as very strong human men, so they just punched and kicked the stuffing out of a boxer's punching bag. Often literally beat the stuffing out of it; they did go through a lot of punching bags!

Sometimes Jarna would pace and talk to herself angrily in the ancient, dead language of her tribe. Usually while Jarna did that Annaliese would play energetically with some object, using hand movements to distract herself from the emotions and give herself an outlet for the desire to do something the emotions created. Every once in a while, when Jarna's emotions during these sessions got particularly hard for Annaliese to deal with, Annaliese would self-regulate by banging her head repetitively against a wall.

One time, while Jarna was pacing and talking angrily in the ancient, dead language of her tribe, Elle asked Annaliese what Jarna was saying. Annaliese said gently, "Mistress, she's talking in that language because she doesn't want the rest of us to understand what she's saying."

Elle's first reaction was annoyance, but then she realized: in this context this was actually seemed like a very good sign! She said to Annaliese, "Please don't call me that."

Annaliese said, "Sorry, Sister! Sometimes I forget!"

"Better," Elle said. And then she gestured vaguely at Jarna and said, "But... She's expressing anger at Tatasi, isn't she?"

Annaliese nodded slightly, more of a single slow bowing and unbowing of the head (she did that often), and said, "Yes, she is."

A very good sign! She was expressing anger at Tatasi, and even while under blood thrall to Elle she was developing a desire to keep secrets from Elle, to have privacy from her! A very good sign in this context!

A day came when Jarna developed enough independence of mind to make a request of Elle, an important request, to ask her something, to ask her for another promise, to swear another oath.

Jarna said, "I ask that you save my son."

Her son. The one Grandfather made her to bear, all those millennia ago. He was still alive. Or, at least, he had been when Grandfather sold her and sent her off to Elle. He was still one of Grandfather's thralls. He was almost as old as Jarna now; she'd been less than two centuries old when she'd given birth to him. He looked like an old man now. He had never known freedom.

Elle swore an oath to save Jarna's son, and set him free, just like she'd set Jarna free. She swore that she'd do it when she fulfilled her first oath to Jarna and killed Grandfather.

A day came, sooner than Elle had expected, when she and Annaliese judged that Jarna was ready for the blood thrall to be withdrawn. And that day Jarna took no blood into her, and the thrall connections between her and Elle and Annaliese thinned and broke. And a little while after they broke, Jarna smiled and said she was experiencing her first hours of true freedom in twenty-five thousand years, and she liked being free, and she thanked Elle and Annaliese for freeing her.

Elle and Annaliese kept Jarna around for a little while, to make sure Grandfather's thrall-brainwashing was truly gone from her, and to make sure her mind was free in the way they intended. A few times they put her back under blood thrall for just an hour or so, just to look into her thoughts and see what was happening in her mind. And eventually Elle presented Jarna to the Directorate, and Jarna left Elle's estate, and went to make her own life.

Jarna is... almost free now. There was one bit of control Elle installed in her. Jarna will not betray Elle. Jarna will not do anything that would radically ruin Elle's plans, endanger Elle's life. Elle and Annaliese carved those mental pathways into Jarna deep. They may erode in a century or so; by then it won't matter, by then Elle will have succeeded or failed, and if she's succeeded she'll be too powerful for the Directorate to harm her, she'll be giving orders to the Directorate. Elle comforts herself with the notion that a century or so is trivial compared to the amount of lifespan Jarna probably has left. Elle felt putting this in was necessary, because Jarna does have some pretty serious kompromat on Elle, just knowing about her plans related to the 'programme.' It was either that or erase a good chunk of Jarna's memories of her time with Elle, and to Elle that seemed a worse violation.

Jarna visits the graduate school sometimes. Elle can trust her with that.

Jarna is... mostly free now. And seems to be happy, and living her best life. Elle is happy about that.

-----------

Author's note: I couldn't resist the Grandmother/Grandfather parallel.

[kiribaku-queen]

Congrats on the 500 followers! I was wondering if you can do a Deku request with some angst where the reader and him were best friends until they got to UA Deku gets super busy with hero training and almight that when ever the reader asks to hang up it he says no. So later on they start to hang out with kirishima more. Deku starts to notice and is trying to get readers attention again. It could end either but I just want the reader to end up with one or the other. I absolutely love your writing! Also sorry if this is super vague.

Little Too Late

Pairing: Midoriya x reader, Kirishima x reader

Angst, little fluff

Word count: 4.6K

A/N: I’ll be honest, this took me FOREVER to finish because I have the idea in my head, but somehow it just would flow out into words. And every time I wrote it, I didn’t think it was good enough so I kept rewriting it. I don’t think I’m completely satisfied, like some parts feel rushed??? But I also didn’t not want to put it out and leave you hanging. So SORRY if you’re disappointed in my writing with this one but I really tried my best. I’d still like to know your thoughs and thank you for all your continuous support~!

You screamed with excitement when your childhood best friend came to you with the news that he got accepted in his dream school. You had so many questions for him. Like how did he get in with no quirk? What was the test like? When does he start? Are the uniforms pretty? Did he meet any hot boys?! Okay, that question was specifically for you. Deku just sat there, rubbing the back of his neck, waiting for you to calm down with your loud mouth.

That’s why you two worked so well. This is why you were the best of friends. You could talk all day long, about anything really. Small things that happened in your day, gossip you heard at school, talking about boys! And Izuku took it all in, watching you with curiosity and listening to you intently. But it was also vice versa. When Izuku was talking about All Might, a hero fight that he saw when he was passing by, or heroes on TV, it was his turn to be a blabber mouth. And you would listen carefully to what he had to say. You respected each other’s interests and that’s why you blended so well together. Also on the fact that you both bonded over katsudon, but that’s besides the point.

Let’s not forget the huge secret your best friend just unleashed to you. You didn’t believe it at first. Because how could small, delicate, sweet Deku who you’ve know for your whole life to be quirkless to all of a sudden have a quirk? No less, All Might’s quirk? He couldn’t show you because he would break literally all his bones. But he did show you All Might’s autograph and that’s all the proof you needed. So it finally became a reality that Izuku Midoriya would be going to his dream school and become a hero.

“You’re gonna leave me for all your new hero friends,” you pouted, throwing yourself on his bed. He sits down next to you and pats your back.

“No I won’t. You’ll still be my best friend,” he reassured you but you weren’t convinced.

“I’ll be your best friend but you won’t see me anymore,” you began to fake cry. Usually by now, Deku would be panicking, trying to all different types of ways to cheer you up but this time, he plays with your hair to calm you down.

“I’ll see you every weekend, how about that?” he suggested. You jumped up right, sitting on your knees and facing the green haired boy.

“Promise?” you ask, sticking out your pinky finger and your bottom lip jutting out. He smiles at your softly and interlocks pinkies.

“Promise.”

“If you don’t, I’m gonna kill you! Power or not, I’ll give you a good punch straight to the cheek!” you playfully threatened, landing a fist that stopped right before it hit his cheek. You could never really hurt him or even lay a finger on him. He was too precious for you to lose.

 School started and you two went your separate ways. Deku went to the famous U.A school while you went to your ordinary high school where nothing ever happens. At first, Deku kept his promise. Every weekend and sometimes even during the week days, he would come visit you after school to tell you all about what happen in class or about one of his classmates’ quirks. He was always so full of high energy and had so much determination to grow stronger that it fascinated you. You could watch him for hours on end, just listening to him and his stories. Often, he would show you all the notes he wrote down in his notebook. His mouth was like a machine gun that was stuck and couldn’t stop.

Although you were so happy for him and his new life, you were feeling left out. High school felt different without Deku by your side. It was hard for you to make friends because Izuku has been your only friend for so long that you didn’t know how to befriend new people. Most days, you would be eating lunch and spending free time by yourself. There was an occasion where you tried to talk to your classmates, but you ended up embarrassing yourself and you never wanted to do that again. Izuku was your support system and without him here, you felt your days getting longer and darker.

Izuku noticed that you weren’t as talkative lately. You usually would have a lot to say during his long rants. Whether its small comments or complaining or reactions, you always had something to say. But this time around, you were silent and it was concerning him. Thanks to his observation skills, he caught on to your strange behavior early on. And he was going to do something about it.

Him and a few of his classmates were going to mall since they needed a few things for a class trip. So of course, he invited you to meet a few of them since they were his closest friends. Not going to lie, you were going to deny the request. You didn’t want to impose and make it seem like Deku had to introduce you to his new friends. They were his friends. He can go and have fun with his friends all he wants without you, it was no biggie. But maybe he was doing this so that both of his worlds could combine. When Izuku was giving you those puppy eyes, you couldn’t say no. And you were about to flake last minute if it weren’t for him showing up at your house to make sure you get there. He was one persistent little man.

“Do I have to go? Maybe I’ll join next time,” you told Deku, trying to get out of meeting his friends.

“Come,” he insisted, grabbing you by the arm, practically dragging you out of the house.

“What if they don’t like me?” you worried. Honestly, any excuse you could make up was good at this point.

“They’re not that kind of people. You’ll love them!” he swore on his life. Yeah, well you’ll see about that.

You and Deku were the last to show up. His whole group was already there waiting. Maybe they were going to think badly of you now because you were late. Deku yelled and waved at them from afar, letting them know that he was here with you. A guy with glass and his friend with bright, red hair both waved while a shorter girl beside them was watching you two carefully.

“Woah, who’s this? A girlfriend?” the red head questions Deku when you finally arrived in front of them. You caught the shorter girl looking back between you two in a frantic and nervous manner.

“No, she’s my best friend!” Deku waved it off. You glanced at the girl again and you saw her sigh with relief. It didn’t take a genius to know that she has some type of feelings towards your friend. Out of the corner of your eye, you also caught Deku sneaking a glance at her. Oh? Is there a little love situation happening? You tried to hide a snicker that was trying to form on your lips but it kind of failed because you felt your best friend give you a hard nudge to the gut, making you immediately shut up.

“Let’s go!” Deku changed the subject real quick.

At first, shopping with Deku’s new friends was really fun. They took time to get to know you, chat with you, and even joke around with you. It made you gain confidence that you actually can make friends. But there was a small voice in the back of your mind telling you that they are just good at conversating. Maybe they don’t want to actually be your friend. Maybe it’s because they’ve been trained to be friendly since that’s what heroes have to do to calm civilians during a time of crisis. You were having the most fun you’ve had in a long time, so you disregarded that thought. But that fun didn’t last too long.

About an hour in, slowly but surely, Deku and his friends started to drift apart from you. They started to pull him aside, laughing and having a good time. While you? You stood to the side, watching them as they have fun. Deku and his friends were so immersed in their own conversations that you were practically invisible to them. It was like they forgot that they had a whole conversation with you just minutes prior. So when they walked ahead of you, you purposely walked slower.

This was embarrassing. They weren’t paying attention to you. Not like they should since they didn’t know you, but being left out bummed you out. And Izuku wasn’t doing anything about it. It was nice that he has more friends now. It really was. Seeing him converse and be himself around other people was so amazing. But they were so different from you. What if he didn’t want to hang out with you anymore because of that?

“Uh, (y/n) right?” you heard a voice come up next to you. Oh, it was one of Izuku’s friends. He had bright red hair and a toothy grin. It was a simple question yet you hadn’t processed what he said.

“What?” you asked in a daze.

“Your name. It’s (y/n), isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah,” you laughed awkwardly, not able to keep eye contact with him. Kirishima kept asking you questions and you responded with one word, or if he’s lucky, two word answers. You thought that giving him short answers would make him leave you alone. But on the contrary, it made him want to stay even more. He saw you were being left out of the group. Uncool for his classmates to do that, but unmanly of Deku, too, because he was the one who brought you. Not to mention that you were his best friend since forever. But he was being left out too. Which he was okay with, but obviously you weren’t and it was written all over your face. So it seemed like a good idea for two loners to hang out with each other. Plus, this was a good opportunity to make friends with such a pretty lady.

And oh boy, was it working. Sure, it was awkward at first because you really weren’t in the mood for talking. But Kirishina just made every conversation, every topic so natural and free flowing. He just captivated your whole attention that you didn’t even think about your friend ditching you to be with his other friends.

“I probably should get going,” you excused yourself. It was already getting late with the sun starting to set in the golden, pink sky. Your parents definitely wouldn’t like it if you stayed any later. Kirishima frowned, disappointed that your time together was so short. Personally, he was having a great time talking to you, laughing with you, being with you, looking at you…

“Ah, let me get your number,” Kirishima quickly whipped out his phone, stopping his thoughts from exploring any more ideas on why he liked being with you. But maybe he would think more about it later. You agreed to exchanging numbers with the red head and headed home before it got too dark. You didn’t even bother letting Izuku know. After doing that to you? He didn’t deserve another second of your time. You really wished you never went. But at least you had a little fun with Kirishima at the end.

You walked back alone, thinking about your time with your new friend. On cue, you got a ping on your phone. Suddenly, your lips turned from a frown into a wide smile that you had to bite your bottom lip from smiling so hard.

Get home safe 😊 -K

If you weren’t in public right now, you think you’d be giggling like a little girl. He was such a sweetheart it was driving you crazy.

When Izuku found out that you walked home by yourself, he physically facepalmed himself and immediately ran to you. How could he not notice that you weren’t by his side? You must have been that upset to leave without telling him. Stupid, stupid. How could he be so stupid and ignorant to leave you alone when he was the one who invited you out. There was nothing in the world that could make up for what he did, but he had to try.

He knocked on your door, leaving over and panting from his sprint to your house. Seconds later, you were opening the door with a blank expression and arms crossed against your chest.

“What.” You coldly asked him, making Izuku freeze up. He was in a lot of trouble and he deserved it.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say. No matter what he could say, what excuse he would muster up, none of it would matter because he messed up. Big time. So instead of giving you a big explanation on his side of the story, he just could tell you that he was sorry. But even that didn’t have any effect on you. You tapped your finger against your forearm, the frown on your face just getting deeper. You were piercing daggers at him, making him unable to do anything else.

“Hm.” You hummed, not acknowledging or accepting his apology. “You left me.” You started.

“I did.”

“Alone.”

“I know.”

“Why did you bring me if you just wanted to hang out with your friends?” you questioned, still not understanding why he did that. And truth be told, he didn’t know why either. It just happened, he guessed. But if he said that, he knew that wasn’t a good enough excuse. And you knew that too. But even if it was just an honest mistake, you wanted to stay mad at him.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again. You could see in his face and the way that he was acting that he was truly sorry. “I promise, it’ll never happen again.”

“Promise?” you asked to make sure you heard correctly. You weren’t forgiving him. Oh, no. Not just yet. But, as long as he doesn’t ditch you for his new friends again like that, then maybe you would get over it someday. He nods his head frantically and sticks his pinky finger out.

“Swear,” he interlocks your pinkies together and presses your thumbs together to seal the deal.

“Fine,” you huffed and looked away with one of your cheeks puffed out. He made the promise. A pinky promise that he couldn’t leave you hanging ever again.

What a lie that was.

“Deku! You want to get ice cream after school?” you called him, already excited to eat your favorite dessert.

“Ah, sorry (y/n). Not today. I have training with All Might today after school. Maybe next time!”

 “Hey, Deku! My mom asked if you wanted to come over for dinner.”

“I’m a little busy tonight. Tell your mom that I said sorry and that I’ll join next time!” he apologized, hanging up rather quickly. No goodbye, see you later, or hope you’re doing good. Nothing. You sighed and went downstairs to tell your mom the news but you weren’t very happy. But you remembered that he’s not the Deku you used to know. He was training to become a hero, he was always going to be busy. You just weren’t used to this. But you can’t help but be disappointed and scared that you were losing your best friend.

 “Dekuu, I already have the movie set up. Are you almost here?”

“Today’s Friday already? I forgot to tell you that All Might wanted to meet up for extra training.”

“Again?” you could hear the disappointment in your voice.

“I know, I’m sorry. Maybe-”

“Next time?” you finished his sentence, already knowing what he was going to say. This happens so often that you were already anticipating his answer.

“Yeah,” he breathed, not knowing what else to say.

“Sure,” you say. Soon after, the call ended and you just ended up watching the movie alone. Drink and popcorn in hand, eating away your sorrows and feelings of being abandoned by your one and only true friend.

But he wasn’t your only friend, was he? You paused the movie and picked up the phone again.

“Hello?” you heard that familiar, happy voice. You could already imagine his face right now.

“Are you busy right now?” you asked to make sure that he wasn’t training also.

“Not at the moment. What’s up?”

“Do you want to watch a movie together?”

 Calls started getting shorter. Texts stopped being answered. And you stopped caring. It was the same excuse every time and you ran out of patience. If he wasn’t going to try in your friendship, then you weren’t either. It was until one day that he showed up at your door.

You were standing against the door frame with your arms crossed and a clearly pissed off expression while Izuku was there standing frail and hunched over. Hm, seems like a familiar sight. You waited for him to speak up because you weren’t going to put in more effort than you should to make this friendship work.

“I’m sorry,” again with the apology. You were tired of hearing that word. The more he said it, the less meaning it has behind it.

“You promised,” you said, almost bursting in tears with how much emotion you were holding in that it surprised you. But you kept yourself calm and composed, controlling your breathing so that you don’t break down you barriers.

“I know. I know, but I’m here to make it up to you. Your birthday is coming up. Let me take you out for the day. We’ll spend the whole day together. Just you and me. I won’t leave or ditch you or make up any excuses. You have me all to yourself. How does that sound?” he offered you his best option on trying to save his mess up. It was tempting. It really was. Part of you wanted to say no because you felt so hurt over the last couple of weeks because of him. But part of you wants to feel that joy and happiness again. The joy and happiness that only Izuku could give you because he was your everything.

“You’ll plan the whole day?”

“The whole day. You don’t have to worry about a thing,” he said, still hopeful that you’ll agree. And how could you not. You’ll give him one more chance.

“Fine. But I’m dressing up so you should match me,” you told him, still having your angry face on but let’s be honest, inside you were feeling the butterflies and were so eager for your birthday to come.

You were dressed in your cutest clothes, your hair and makeup to match. The day was finally here. You and Deku could finally catch up and just hang out like you used to. It was going to be a good day, you could feel it.

You arrived at the meeting place Deku wrote down for you. He said to be there at noon sharp because he had a surprise for you. You smiled and waited on a bench that was nearby. You wonder what it could be.

10 minutes rolled by. Maybe he was running a bit late. But a text at least would be nice.

Then 30 minutes. Maybe he missed the train?

1 hour. Maybe he forgot where you were supposed to meet? Or what if he’s here and he just hasn’t found you yet? You looked around but there were very little people here. If he were here, he should have seen you by now or you would have spotted him instantly.

2 hours.

3 hours.

You knew it. You were so stupid to think to actually trust him again. All emotion vanished from your body, feeling numb all over. You couldn’t even shed a tear. He told you to come out, that he planned something for your birthday and he’s the one not to show. Classy.  The train ride and the walk home were slow. Painfully slow. You watched as every tree, bush, landscape and greenery passed you. The birds were in full song. The streets were busy with people, laughing and smiling. While you were here, completely emotionless. You didn’t deserve this. Even if you did, you wished it was through some other way. Closing the door gently to your front door, you made the announcement to your family that you were home.

“(y/n)? Home already?” your mom called from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” you sighed, not giving her any details and feeling emotionally drained. “I’ll be upstairs. Don’t check up on me and I’m not eating dinner today.” You told your mom, her catching your strange behavior right away and that worried her.

“But I’m making your favorite. You okay, honey?” your mom came out of the kitchen to ask you. But you had already disappeared into your room, locking it and putting headphones in so you weren’t disturbed. You were going to keep yourself distracted all day to drown out of your own thoughts.

 Even though it was a weekend, Kirishima still decided to visit the school to strengthen his quirk with the help of Aizawa-sensei. He was passing the school gates, about to enter into the building when out of the corner of his eye, he saw something green flash in the woods area of campus. Curious, thinking that it couldn’t be him, he decided to check it out and see with his own two eyes.

Kirishima got close enough to just get a glimpse but his gut feeling was right. There was Izuku Midoriya, practicing on controlling his quirk without breaking all of his bones. All Might was there to guide him too. What day was it again? Wasn’t it your birthday? And didn’t you have plans with Izuku? So if he’s here, then…

The realization hit him like a brick. Forgetting about his practice with Aizawa, he would apologize later, he ran as fast to you, making a few pitstops on the way.

 “(y/n),” your mother came in your room, using a spare key to unlock your door. You were laying on your bed, streaks of tears stained your cheeks and your eyes were red from crying. Your headphones were placed tightly on your ears, music playing loud enough to make you forget about your surroundings. But your mother ruined the atmosphere when she barged in your room after you said that you wanted to be alone.

“Mom, I said I didn’t want to eat dinner,” you reminded her, pausing your music for a split second to tell her that. You were about to play that blaring music once again but your mom had to say something else.

“I know. But there’s someone at the door for you,” she told you quickly before you could push her out again. You froze. Someone was at the door for you? Was Izuku finally here and to apologize again? Ready to confront him and take all your anger out, you stormed out of your room and to the front door. You opened the door, ready to release all hell but you stopped yourself when you saw that it wasn’t Izuku waiting for you.

“Kirishima?” you were confused why he was here right now. “What are you-”

“I come bringing gifts,” he holds up a bouquet of flowers and a basket full of your favorite things. “Thought you might be needing a friend right now.” And you teared up when you heard that. You bit your lip and nodded your head, letting him inside. You brought him to your room, avoiding the looks you were getting from your family members. As soon as you closed the door to your room, Kirishima drops everything in his hands and pulls you in for a tight and comforting hug. The sudden act made you gasp in surprise.

“Are you okay?” he whispered into your hair, his hand covering your head protectively. You wanted to lie to him, saying that you were alright but he could see right through you. Especially with your appearance now. So you shook your head and buried your face into his shoulder, hugging him back just as tightly. You stayed in that position for quite a while, just basking in each other’s presence. It was like he was trying to give you some of his happiness and take away some of your misery to help you feel a little bit better. And it was working. You felt calm enough to at least have a conversation with him.

“Kiri, you didn’t have to do this,” you tell him, pushing away from the hug slightly.

“It’s your birthday,” he commented. You wished it wasn’t your birthday. Because of this experience, you were going to think about it every birthday, ruining the celebration.

“It’s just a birthday,” you brushed it off like it didn’t hurt. Kirishima frowns at your response.

“I know how excited you were to spend this day with him,” ouch. It’s like reopening a fresh wound that hadn’t fully healed. “So I’ll spend it with you. We can do whatever you want. Watch a movie, just lay down and chill, or… I can take you out on a date to distract yourself.” He hesitated to say that last part and a light blush appeared on his cheeks.

“A date?”

“It doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be. Just forget I said that. We can go out, not like go out go out but like go outside and do an activity for the rest of the day, if you’d like,” he went on a rant, the blush on his cheeks growing deeper with each word he said. You thought about it. The flowers. The gift basket. Going out of his way to make time for you on your birthday. This was the guy you needed in your life. Not Deku. Not someone who ignores you or doesn’t keep his promises. You didn’t him. You looked a Kirishima. He was a good guy. He was sweet, thoughtful, sincere. Maybe you would give him a shot.

 The final bell rang in the 1-A classroom. Students were packing up their stuff, some staying behind and chatting about their training and how much they improved. While his classmates were indulging in their conversations, he was blowing up his phone with text messages to you. You weren’t responding to his calls or texts. He was doing everything he could to reach you, but you didn’t seem to be available. He was so concentrated on his phone that he didn’t see a certain red-head trying to sprint out the door.

“Woah, Kirishima. Where you going in such a hurry?” Kaminari stops him before he’s out the door. It wasn’t like Kirishima to leave immediately after the bell rings. He’s usually with his best friend Bakugou or hanging around until everyone leaves together.

“I’m going to pick up my girlfriend from her school,” he announces, grabbing the whole class’s attention.

“So you finally started dating (y/n), huh?” Sero congratulated him with a pat on the back.

“It’s about time,” Bakugou grumbled. He had to deal with Kirishima’s constant talking about you every day to the point where he wanted to strangle him to stop talking. But he was proud of his friend. Upon hearing your name, Deku shoots his head up and listens in on the conversation.

“Yeah, and I’m going to give her all the attention that she needs and more. Because she deserves it,” Kirishima said a little louder, taking a stab at Deku. Deku swallowed the lump in his throat. No matter how much he would apologize, it was already too late. You had already replaced him with someone else.

[if-you-built-yourself-a-myth]

Check Ignition: Part III

That Sobbe fake-dating Hogwarts AU that one person asked for and I dove into headfirst

Part I // Part II // Part III // Part IV

Requests are open if you have any ideas of what I should write next

After the second night of Sander and Robbe’s arrangement, Robbe couldn’t eat dinner in the Great Hall for a week. A whole fucking week. He had Jens and Aaron sneaking sandwiches into the dormitory at dusk using cloaking and levitation spells. Lunch would have been an issue, too, if he hadn’t been spending those with Sander. Unfortunately, one meal a day together was the minimum for a convincing fake relationship.

“I can’t eat alone, can I?” Sander had asked when they met in the Great Hall after classes. “Boyfriends eat together.”

Robbe could do nothing but give in. They tried for dinner at first, and the following dissolved into lunch. Sander sat on the edge of the Hufflepuff bench, as if he were not welcome there, and held Robbe’s hand on top of the table while he ate whatever finger food he could and engaged in pleasant small-talk with Jens. He normally spent his evenings roaming the grounds.

Of course, that left Robbe and his friends at the table come dinnertime, watching Noor stare daggers at them. And that wasn’t cool. Britt’s ice-cold mannerisms at prefect meetings didn’t help, either, and only Senne could balance her out.

This month was going to feel a lot longer than Robbe imagined. If Sander didn’t find someone better.

Robbe was relieved when the weekend rolled around, because it brought with it Hufflepuff’s first game of the Quidditch season, against Ravenclaw. Jens made Robbe and Aaron run drills until one AM the night before. Peak physical condition was more important than sleep anyway.

Now, Robbe flew out over the pitch, one hand poised over his eyes to shade them from the sun. It took only a moment to spot the green and silver scarf in Hufflepuff’s black and yellow section, and Robbe knew that he didn’t really miss getting Great Hall dinners. So what if it was fake? There was Sander, in all his bleach-blond glory, sitting next to Senne in the stands and waving a black and yellow flag.

Sander locked eyes with Robbe and started screaming something incoherent over the wind. It was probably more about what people in the stands heard than what Robbe himself did, so Robbe soaked up the precious minute of Sander’s bright and happy face instead of paying attention to the message.

“Alright,” said Jens, gathering the other players closer for a pep talk. Robbe flew up a little higher to be level with the rest of the team. “Ravenclaw’s good. Great, even. But we’re better. Keep the Quaffle away from Zoë—she’s too fast and we’ll never see it again. Robbe, stop looking at your boyfriend.”

He wasn’t looking at Sander. He just so happened to be gazing the direction of the Hufflepuff stands.

The other team members muffled their laughter.

“Obviously, Yasmina,” Jens continued, unperturbed, “you are smarter and more capable than all of us. Please fix our mistakes.”

Yasmina played keeper. No one could protect a post like her, and the Ravenclaws knew it. There would be some faceoffs today. “Good pep talk,” she said.

“I try. Alright, I think that’s it. Let’s have an amazing match, no life-threatening injuries, no deaths. Go Hufflepuff!”

With that, the team shot apart to their differing positions on the pitch. Jens and the other chasers crowded the half line, Aaron and his fellow beater stayed back a little bit with bats poised, and Yasmina lounged sideways in front of the goal. Robbe decided to circle the game from above for a better perspective. The view reminded him of that from the astronomy tower. As play began, it was difficult to differentiate between teams swarming the pitch—a hurricane of bludgers and broomsticks. Robbe waited for the glare of the sun to highlight the golden snitch.

“Hello up there!” Yasmina called up to him, around five minutes in. Hufflepuff had pretty steady possession of the Quaffle. “See anything?”

“Not yet,” he shouted back. Ravenclaw’s seeker tarried by their set of goalposts. She hadn’t seen anything either.

“Is Sander really your boyfriend?” There was no judgement in her tone, yet somehow, Robbe felt it anyway. He curled into the defensive.

“Yes, and what of it?”

“Nothing. Just, Jana said so.”

“He’s gorgeous,” said Robbe, dropping twenty feet to do so.

“I didn’t know you were gay.”

“I’m not—”

The Quaffle almost made it through the smallest of Yasmina’s hoops, but she batted it away before it could cost a point. Jens grabbed her rebound and sped away down the side, passing back and forth with a fourth-year chaser they called Macs. Another minute, and a gong-like noise signaled a Hufflepuff score. They were leading thirty to zero.

“It’s great, really,” said Yasmina. “I’m happy for you.”

Robbe didn’t know what else to say, so he mumbled, “Thanks.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sander’s unmistakable bleach blond move around. He whirled to the action. Sander was talking with someone, a brunette girl, with animated hand gestures. For some reason, it made his head buzz.

Yasmina followed his line of vision. “Who’s she?”

No one Sander wasn’t allowed to talk to.

“A friend,” Robbe said smoothly. “Watch the game.”

Sander could chat with anyone he wanted. It didn’t mean anything more than Robbe’s fake relationship with him did. Yasmina had the good sense not to push it.

The game passed at an alarming speed, no time to perseverate on anything going on in the stands, no time for any more casual conversation. Jens was a blur with the Quaffle, dodging bludgers and ducking under other players. Zoë was never far behind. The teams would have been locked into a helpless tie if it were not for Yasmina’s stellar guard of the goal. By the halfway point, Hufflepuff was ahead ninety to thirty, and not one sign of the snitch. Robbe busied himself by weaving in and out of the towers around the pitch, because he enjoyed the way the Ravenclaw seeker followed him around like a lost child.

He hadn’t seen a thing, and look at her go! Maybe he would nosedive to watch her streak beside him, or launch into the atmosphere with her along for the ride.

A bludger knocked into the side of his broom. “Shit, sorry!” yelled Aaron from his spot beside Macs.

By some bizarre luck Robbe kept his hold, but the impact swiveled him back to face the Hufflepuff section of the stands, and he’d been avoiding that particular sight. He didn’t have time to turn away again. Sander stood out like a sore thumb. No, better comparison—Sander stood out like a sunflower in a field of poison ivy.

Cool it with the similes, Robbe. Focus.

The girl was still around. Sander was allowed to talk to girls as much as anyone else in the world. Robbe was upset, though, because it messed with the believability of their dating life. That was the reason.

He swooped directly over their heads, hand outstretched, as if they were all too blind to see the snitch a few feet in front of him. Where the gesture came from, who could say? Ravenclaw’s seeker didn’t hesitate to join.

“The skinny bloke over there is Robbe Ijzermans, finally doing something purposeful this match,” Luca’s voice boomed from the announcer’s box. Robbe didn’t know her that well; Aaron had a thing for her friend, Amber. “He’s spotted the snitch. Or he looks like he has. Toss-up. Oh, and lovely Zoë has the Quaffle again. Give them hell, girl—”

What the hell. Robbe was supposed to be dating Sander. Sander was crammed into the Hufflepuff section for him. Really, it would be suspicious if he didn’t do anything about this.

He angled his broom to spin back around and make a second pass over the Hufflepuff stands. This time, he got so close to Sander that he could ruffle Sander’s hair before zipping away. Let Luca talk about what that meant. The girl scooted away from Sander on the bench. She stared at the wooden slats beneath her feet, while Sander put his hands to his mouth and called something that Robbe couldn’t quite make out over the rush of blood in his ears.

Then, a glint!

By the announcer’s box, there it was! He could see its golden wings fluttering about. Normally, he tried to tune out Luca’s long-winded description of the game, but it was a little difficult when her microphone boomed in his ears as he shot out for the snitch.

“Looks like our Robbe has spotted it now. Wonder what that bullshit was earlier, then. Sorry, sorry I’ll stop cursing. Oh, fucking hell—”

Ravenclaw’s seeker came in close on Robbe’s side. She seemed to be following his movements; she couldn’t see the snitch about fifty feet away from her face. Robbe did have 20/20 vision. Maybe he was just better. It danced around in the air and across the stands, forcing them both to flip over in order to keep the pursuit.

“Macarthy with the Quaffle, he’s headed toward Ravenclaw goal. If I’m allowed to mention this, I don’t think Ingrid’s actually caught the snitch ever—right, sorry.”

The snitch closed its wings and dropped from the air until it was barely above the ground, where it reopened them to cut a trail across the worn grass. And here was Robbe, pretty close to the other Hufflepuffs, still.

This was a risky move, riskier than the hair ruffle. But it was pragmatic, Robbe reasoned, and it got him to the ground as quick as anything else. If he ever wanted to convince other people that his thing with Sander was something, it had to be more than sneaky kisses that didn’t really count for much. Plus, Ingrid didn’t actually see the snitch. So no harm done if he just—

Robbe let go.

The freefall was shorter than expected; he kept one hand wrapped around his broom as if he were on the monkey bars at the park back home. His feet met the wood of the stands with a bit of a bounce. Right next to Sander. Thank goodness, because there wouldn’t be time to move over if he landed by the wrong person. He conjured the memory from last week, when Sander kissed him for the first time, and did the same, but briefer and with less tongue. Tongue would be a little too much for a game. The crowd roared. He could see the snitch spinning in wide circles just above the ground. Ingrid halted overhead, confused, and darted toward the Slytherin tower.

“Another point for Ravenclaw over here and—what the fuck, Robbe?”

Robbe broke away before the kiss could take too long, and Sander leaned inward after him, as if he did not want it to end. Spectacular acting. Noor stood up from her seat three rows down, their eyes meeting for the shortest of seconds.

Before he could regret the whole thing, Robbe gathered up his last bit of courage and bounded down the stands on his feet instead of flying, making quite the jump at the end. He barely got his broom underneath him in time to evade a broken ankle on the pitch underneath the stands. Macs swerved to avoid him as his feet grazed the grass.

He coasted the rest of the chase on the adrenaline pumping through his veins and the absolute shock on Noor’s face. In no way did Sander’s cutting smile make him weak, no way.

“Guys and gals, take notes,” Luca declared. “Oh, and he’s got it, that son of a— Robbe has the snitch! Hufflepuff wins!”

***

Jens was on Robbe before he’d even dismounted his broom. “The fuck is with the grandstanding, huh?” he demanded. “You could have hurt somebody. You could have lost us the game. What the fuck?”

“Sorry, I was—” Robbe tore his gaze away at the sound of Sander’s voice coming down from the stands.

Sander caught him in a hug and brushed his lips along the edge of his ear, whispering, “How dramatic do you want this to be?” Skin peeled from his chapped lips and beads of sweat caught the light on his forehead. He was still a Greek god.

“I don’t know,” said Robbe, barely keeping his composure. “You can—”

He cut off as Sander scooped him up and spun him around in a circle. At its end, Sander lowered Robbe enough to draw him into a long, deep kiss. If Robbe could do wordless magic, every tree within a fifty-mile radius would have caught fire and burned to ash in a second.

He had to stop indulging thoughts like that. Noor stood by the entrance to the stands, and this was all for her. Just Sander helping him out.

“Gross,” said Aaron, patting Robbe on the back. “Get a room.”

“Gladly,” Sander said. “How long before Jens tries to get back to the dorms?”

“Oi!” Jens wasn’t done being angry with Robbe yet. “You’re not having sex on my bed!”

“Somebody has to, and you certainly aren’t.”

“Wow, okay. You’re not even—” Jens cut off. They’d promised to play along. “You’re new here, shut up.”

Sander accepted gracefully.

The other fans swarmed the players like flies and followed them on the way back to the dormitories, where Hufflepuff common room would likely host a killer party to celebrate the win. Robbe lost Sander in the fray almost immediately, even though their hands had been intertwined. He should let the group carry him along; he knew as much. Now that the game was over, though, there wasn’t any energy left for something like that. Robbe sat down on the pitch and leaned against the wooden supports of Hufflepuff’s box.

He wasn’t gay. He didn’t like Sander, not like that.

There must be loads of straight guys who felt good when they kissed other guys.

It didn’t mean anything. The whole relationship was fake.

Why wouldn’t his heart stop racing?

He breathed in until his lungs burned, held it for eight seconds, and exhaled until there was nothing left in his lungs. When that was done, things were calmer. More rational. His lips stung from the kisses.

This was not the time for a sexuality crisis. Tomorrow morning, maybe, or Tuesday afternoon.

The crowd’s cheers and banter faded off into the distance. The last straggling fans stumbled their way to the castle. It would be dusk soon, and the sunlight painted everything a delicious shade of gold. Robbe couldn’t help but fantasize: Sander in the sun like this, Sander’s eyes in the sun like this, Sander’s long eyelashes in the sun like this. He hated himself a little bit.

“Hey.”

Robbe looked up. Noor stood a few feet away, wearing a Hufflepuff sweater and a pair of sweatpants. The late November temperatures were no joke.

“Hello,” he replied.

“I thought you’d be upstairs.”

I thought you’d leave me alone, he thought. He said, “Catching my breath.”

“It’s a good night tonight. Lots of stars.”

“They’re around every night.”

“I guess.” She shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. “You haven’t been at dinner.”

“I’ve been studying,” said Robbe. “Exams in three weeks, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Robbe opened his mouth to tell her to spit it out, whatever she had to say. He was tired of talking to her. He needed her to disappear, even if it hurt, and fuck, he was a bad person after all.

“He’s going to get tired of you,” she said. It wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t even that sad. She said it like a fact. “He’s… he’s not right. He’s going to get bored and leave you.”

That caught him off-guard. “What?”

“Sander.” Noor bit her lip. “He and Britt are going to get back together. They always do.”

Robbe scoffed. “I don’t really care about Britt’s take on this, no offense.”

“It’s not hers. It’s mine. Sander’s going to get bored of you, and when he does, he’s going right back to her.”

The whole thing was fake. Sander wasn’t even with Robbe. How could Sander leave if they weren’t together? Nothing Noor said had any bearing on Robbe’s situation at all.

He repeated that to himself.

“Is that all you came out here to say?” he asked. Hopefully that sounded confident. Robbe was still a little out of breath from the game.

Noor nodded. “I just thought you should know. Don’t get too attached. Sander’s—”

“It’s not really your business,” said Jens. Oh thank goodness, there he was, behind Noor. He must have turned around when he realized Robbe wasn’t with him. Sander was at his shoulder. “C’mon, Robbe,” he said. “We’ve gotta get back. I think they’re popping champagne.”

Robbe pushed himself up using the wall as support. He wanted to hear the end of that last sentence, even if he never wanted to hear Noor speak again.

What he knew:

He didn’t consider himself to be a particularly interesting person, never had, and today was the most brazen he’d been in his entire life.

The arrangement was made to be thrown away as soon as someone better stepped onto to scene.

Sander already knew that he was boring—Robbe was a prefect, for fuck’s sake.

Noor hadn’t said anything that wasn’t aware of already.

For some reason, it still stung. They started off down the worn grass that led out of the stadium and in the direction of Hogwarts’ main building, and, very purposefully, Robbe slid his hand into Sander’s. Because he could.

“Sorry!” Noor called as they headed away. She really did sound it.

“What was that about?” came Sander’s whisper in Robbe’s ear. It sent shivers down his spine.

“Nothing,” he hissed back. “Don’t worry about it.”

He wouldn’t worry about it either.

[sandoriyon-p]

random headcanons: leon kennedy

notes; this took like 3 hours to write, with editing (it was supposed to posted yesterday but well, life hates me). after a whole month of doing absolutely nothing. how does this work? also, I find it very ironic that I wrote headcanons first for Leon and not for Chris. oh well. also 2: I wrote this for one person and she knows who she is. hope you gonna enjoy it and, well, hope I’m being a good Leon for you.

welcome to my rubbish headcanons with Leon S. Kennedy; while discussing the relationship with him, we’re going to focus on three main things: date nights, names of affection, and sleeping together, with the bits of random “small things”. let’s start, shall we?

so yes, date nights… if you expected going out every week, visiting different places, eating different foods - hope you came here ready to be disappointed. alright, perhaps not that disappointed, but we’ll talk about it later. for now - you need to know that the date nights with Leon are purely domestic. he loves to spend the nights with you at home. why? well, it’s obvious - he cannot allow himself to be at home, with you, every week/month, so those moments when he can do that are truly precious for him. it’s also obvious that he misses you and wants to spend time with you in a place where he can give you all the affection. do you worry about those date nights to become boring and repetitive one day? no need for that! Leon will find something to do with you, something new - board games, karaoke nights, watching cheap horror movies, you name it. (those may not be his thing, but he doesn’t care about it - as long as you’re happy and have fun),

but how about going somewhere? spending some time outside? he’s far too old (his words, you can quote him) for that, even for thinking about doing that, really. pure domestic guy. however! that doesn’t mean he will say “no” to every proposition of outside activities. the thing is - he won’t propose those activities. you’re the one to do it. of course, he may help you with organizing anything... if you want his help. or not (in most cases, it happens when he has no idea that you want to take him somewhere),

don’t be afraid to experiment with taking him to the places you think he may not like. honestly, he doesn’t care where you’re going to take him. what’s matters is that he’s going there with you,

even so… he has two guilty pleasures. one: he wants to take you on the date to a funfair. two: he wants to kiss you on top of the Ferris wheel, 

(random thing: Leon will always pay for things, no matter if it’s food or something you saw. money is a good thing only because he can buy you stuff you want. however! if you insist on paying for things, go ahead);

how about names of affection now? this is a bit shorter, but listen! Leon is a guy who likes simple things - this goes for “sweet names” too. he’s definitely a man to call you “honey” or “sweetheart”. it’s sweet, it’s old-fashioned, and he likes it. however, those are only reserved for private moments. in public, he’ll call you by your name or, if he feels like doing it, by your nickname,

as for him, for the names for him… call him however you like - he’s going to be embarrassed every time anyway (bonus points if you gonna use them in public). and… for the love of God, try and call him “lion” one day. his reaction will be priceless. (he’ll totally look you dead in the eye and roar dumbly. yeah, priceless.);

finally, the last main thing! sleeping! well, this topic is surely… interesting and difficult for me, as a writer, and for Leon as well. let me explain - he isn’t used to sleeping with someone, innocently nor sexually. well, he hardly sleeps in his own bed anyway, considering how many times he’s away and God knows where with another mission. but, to think he has to share a bed with someone? (even if that someone is his lover?). well…

at the beginning of your “sleeping” relationship, you need to understand that holding hands is the only thing (for now). nothing more, nothing less. it may be awkward for both him and you, but nothing is more awkward than how stiff Leon is during those first things. you can nearly swear you sleep with a log and not a person. and if he doesn’t sleep like that, he’s alerted and put into weird positions,

however, a bit later you notice that he becomes… hungrier for affection? he still holds your hand only, that is correct, but his body is noticeably closer to yours. he doesn’t say anything about it and he hopes you don’t too. but that’s the fact - from that moment, every day, he sleeps closer and closer, until one night,

one night he just lays down - you think he’s going to rest close to you, only hold your hand, but no. he closes his arms around you, hiding his face in your neck. no words leave his lips, just a simple deep sigh of relief. (he may not speak at that moment, but he is carefully paying attention to your reaction and if this movement isn’t making you uncomfortable). his body is noticeably relaxed (congrats! you’re no longer sleeping next to a log!)...  but not fully - he’s still a bit stiff and, perhaps, conscious enough to be aware of his surroundings (well, still counts as success, yeah?), 

favorite positions? Leon doesn’t really have one -  he favors the one you “used” when he finally held you in bed - hugging you close and hiding his face in your neck. however, surely soon enough, he’s comfortable to try something new, something you may favor. he just wants you close from now on;

alright, alright! so now, random small things in random big things!

Leon is protective. veery protective. the thing is - he doesn’t show that side of him or talk about it, really. he believes you don’t need for him to act as your bodyguard. he believes, and trusts, that you can take care of yourself. however! that doesn’t mean you have to deal with everything (that might be dangerous) alone,

alright, not everything you encounter is dangerous. proof? let’s say that someone approached you in order to flirt with you and with a lot of luck, take you home. of course, you have the whole situation under control but… oh, what’s that? what’s that familiar, yet unexpected feeling on your back? the familiar, yet unexpected hands on your waist? ah yes! it’s your never-protective boyfriend!... judging by his expression, he isn’t very happy with the attention you receive from a different man;

talking about being protective - Leon surely doesn’t try to talk about it or show it too much, as I wrote earlier. keyword: try. not successfully - simply because you can see that protectiveness of his in small things, like in holding your hand every time you cross a street or in him, making sure he’s the one to walk closer to the street while using a sidewalk,

of course, in terms of affection, he doesn’t only do that! obviously, you can expect different, small things too, like preparing your coffee/tea/etc. every morning (if he has time for it/he is at home). purposely leaving his warm clothes laying around, so you can be tempted to wear them and be warm! (he won’t admit it but the view of you in his clothes is too adorable). sometimes, Leon may even leave a note for you to read in the morning (happens when he has to wake up before you and leave) - it’s full of couraging things and bad jokes. don’t mind him, he tries to make you smile as the first thing you do shortly after waking up,

and about him, having to leave you for a mission - he always, always!, makes sure to make up for the lost time. in most cases, it means an unexpected date night at home… with less exciting things (meaning more tiredness, but more affections). Leon may or may not try to insist that yes, this is a date and no, you’re not allowed to go to sleep just like that. you need to do something to make this moment memorable! (it’ll probably result in you both eating an unholy amount of food. but who cares. he misses good food too! but not as much as he misses you),

every time he comes back from those missions, he brings you flowers. it quickly becomes a habit. he does that so you can have two things again - him and something nice to look at (well, surely, Leon is “something” nice to look at, but shh). and also because… he hopes you can forgive him for taking so long to return home; 

there’s something that he will never admit to - he wants to know the songs you’re listening to. they may not fit his music taste, but who cares. he doesn’t care. he wants to know anyway - but, more importantly, he wants to know the lyrics and the meaning of them. not to sing to you or anything like that. it’s just… he once read that to know someone’s feelings and thoughts, you just need to know what they listen to. it’s embarrassing for him, but not as much as when you catch him, going through your music collection and listening to everything;

remember when I mentioned that, with Leon, names of affection are only reserved in private? yes, the same goes for affection itself. don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t mind holding your hand or kissing your cheek. but that’s all. anything else - private. at home, mostly. well, yeah, he doesn’t mind showing how much he loves you in other places, but at home… he can do whatever he pleases. he can be himself. a man with a very strong love inside his heart - a feeling that is only reserved for you;

all in all - with the world going down, your relationship surely is a rollercoaster. but still… you know how to use a moment and change everything into a nice ride on a Ferris wheel, with a sweet kiss on top of it.

[leviachaan]

Hi! I hope you're doing great! Can I get some tall MC headcanons for the brothers? (+Diavolo if you don't mind) thank you! ❤

// I hope you are doing great as well! Thank you for the request. As a fellow tall-ish person I enjoyed writing this!💖 This is my first headcanon so I hope you like it!

Lucifer 🎲

This boi is tall like really tall.

As long as you are shorter than him, he is perfectly fine with it and won't treat you any differently.

If you are taller though, his dominance will be threatened and let me tell ya, he won't like it.

He's used in being one of the tallest creatures in the Devildom so once he witnesses a mere human looking down on him, he will flip.

He will literally refuse to tilt his chin up in the slightest.

You would be the one ducking down, no objections.

Other than that, you would be the same human that he wants needs to protect for Diavolo's sake and reputation (sure, Lucifer).

Chances are that the taller you are, the more he will feel the need to make sure you knew who's the one in charge (in more ways than one)

He won't act like it, but secretly enjoys you being able to kiss his cheek whenever you want when you two are alone.

He would feel less concerned knowing that your height gives you an advantage over some demons.

Doesn't mean he won't be after anyone that even thought of touching you though.

Also, don't ever think of making him the small spoon. Just no.

Mammon 💴

He would find it incredibly hot.

Like, this greedy man is definitely a switch so you having the capacity of putting him in his place would actually be more than fine with him.

No way in hell he would ever let you know that.

You bet he would try to put his elbow on your head no matter how tall you are.

You are the human he needs to protect and he will protect you dammit even if you have the height of a skyscraper perfectly capable of protecting yourself.

"No worries, human. THE great Mammon is here to help you" "Mammon, I can deal with it-" "DID I STUTTER"

C U D D L E H I M

Will throw a tantrum if you try to make him the small spoon, but you know well that he would melt in your arms in 0.2 seconds.

Wrap your arms around his shoulders from the back and watch him having a Windows XP error.

Leviathan 🐍

Already imagines you cosplaying as his favourite tall characters from a game or anime.

Do that and he will actually have trouble breathing

Like Lucifer, I believe he wouldn't pay too much attention to it.

Unless you use your height against him to win a game when playing together. He sure will pay attention then.

He doesn't care how tall you are, if you block his view with your legs or your body, he will tackle you.

Put. Your. Legs. On. Him.

You resting your legs on his lap while he plays a game or watches an episode would make his heart do a kaboom.

He's an affection starved boi so subtle touching as such would make him feel so safe and accepted.

He would l o v e to rub his hands up and down your legs. Not even in a kinky way, it would sooth him, but he's a shy snake boi.

Satan 📖

He genuinely wouldn't mind you being tall at all.

He's really not one to bother about appearances so I don't think he would really pay attention to your height.

He would secretly love all the forehead and cheek kisses you would sneakily plant on him.

*light blushing intensifies*

The only time he would notice the height difference is when he's caught up in one of his outbursts.

His rage demands him to assert his dominance so you being in the same level as him would threaten him in a way.

Give him a small kiss and whisper sweet words to him and watch him slowly steam off.

He loves you to death, but he is a big spoon no matter what.

Asmodeus 👛

This man will be e n t h r a l l e d.

"MC, I really like your tall legs~!" As the avatar of Lust, you probably know what's going on in his mind.

OUTFIT 👏 PLANNER 👏

This boi would have already figured out a whole closet meant to flatter your body type and height.

If you are taller than him, he will definitely be submissive to you (even more than usual).

Hold him, cuddle him, kiss him, grab him anything you want he's up for it.

He would enjoy the idea of you being able to dominate him a bit t o o much-

He would stare right into your eyes every time, if you had the same height as him. Who is the one doing the charming here?

Would happily be the small spoon, just make sure you don't break his face mask accidently, okay, love?

Beelzebub🍔

This man is a g i a n t so being taller than him is a quite unlikely.

He would love you being tall, there's so much of you to hug! The more of you, the better.

Favourite thing to do would be coming to you for a cuddle after a midnight snack.

He would put some of his snacks in one of the taller cabinets so he knows only you and him would be able to reach them 🥺

He might be a giant, but he's also your big teddy bear so he will do whatever makes you happy. Big spoon? Sure. Small spoon? You got it.

He would also be relieved that you would be able to defend yourself against some demons.

Still will follow you like a lost puppy though, because he loves you and can't lose you.

Belphegor💤

Nice, now he has a whole body pillow all to himself.

The problem is that replacing a pillow is easy, but a whole body pillow is n o t.

Will drag you with him every time he needs a nap, because he would be so used to cuddling you and now he can't sleep without you.

You don't want to walk up to his bed with him? Great, he's sleeping on you then.

He also can't find anything to replace your warmth so oops, you are his now.

Won't really mind you being tall, to be honest. If he wants to dominate you, he will even if you are built like a tree.

Would be too lazy to actually lift himself up to kiss you, if you are taller so you would have to duck down to his level.

He's the big spoon, end of the deal.

Diavolo👑

You could be 100 meters tall and this man would not look at you differently in the slightest.

You are his precious exchange student and he will make sure you are protected and cared for 24/7.

If you think you being tall will do anything to his dominance, boi you are wrong.

Even if you two had the same height, his vibe would make you feel it in your bones that he's the one in charge.

He is the prince of Devildom, yet is a real softie for you.

Piggy back rides all around his castle? Yes! Cuddling him out of nowhere? Absolutely yes! Kisses all over his face? YES! Big spoon or small spoon? Whichever makes you happy!

He would wrap his arms around you from behind and make you feel small and loved no matter what.

You can intimidate other demons, but not him, honey. If he wants you under him, you are going under him.

[pars-ley]

Sugar and Spice

Pairing: Yoongi x Taehyung

Summary: The aftermath of a chaotic house party may be the worst and best thing Yoongi could come home to, with a meddling Jimin to thank.

Genre: mxm / friends to lovers / roommates to lovers / drabble / fluff / angst / house party

Rating: 15 (SFW)

Word count: 2k

Warnings: One little bit of explicit language / Angsty and insecure thoughts from Yoongi / Mentions of alcohol and effects of alcohol / mention of strangulation but not seriously.

A/N: Happy birthday Dean! This is for the top secret birthday project for @eternalseokjin​ birthday. I used all the squares on my bingo card too, which were ; Taegi, chaos, pumpkin pie, vodka, cats, Jimin, roommates, angst and fluff. This is my first mxm fic, sorry if it's terrible. I actually enjoyed writing this more than I thought I would. As always thank you to @wheresmymoniat for coaching me on this and helping me approach this new challenge.

Yoongi steps into his apartment, the smell of food, sweat and perfume greeting him, as well as something else, something more unpleasant but he pushes it aside as the music thumping low in the background distracts him. 

His eyes rake over the bodies strewn across the furniture and floor. He drops his bag out of his grip, a thud as it hits nearly the only part of flooring that's visible. 

As he steps over limp limbs and unconscious heads he scans the mess of the kitchen. Various liquids spilt on the counters make his blood boil. 

Goddammit Jimin! He thinks.

He meets eyes with someone who lifts their face out of-what looks to be a half eaten pumpkin pie-long enough to nod in his direction before slamming themselves back into it, attacking it like a ravenous dog. 

He walks quickly past them and into the living area, spotting Jimin a mile off. Head slouched against the back of the couch, mouth gaped open, snoring like a wild animal.

Yoongi heads towards him, stepping in something wet, he looks down and sees a big, black patch on the grey carpet, the smell of vodka hitting and burning his nose instantly. 

Yoongi storms over to Jimin, kicking his foot with controlled anger and enough force to send him jolting awake.

"Huh, what?" He looks around, hazy eyed before finally resting on Yoongi. An audible gulp fills the room. He scours the room, processing the devastation.

"You weren't supposed to be back until tomorrow." Jimin squeaks out. 

"Oh I'm sorry, how inconvenient of me." Yoongi snarls through gritted teeth.

Jimin throws up his hands, palms up in surrender, stands and starts climbing backwards over the sofa, creating some distance between the two of them. Trying to avoid having his neck squeezed by the hands of the angry man, no doubt.

A small black object jumping near Yoongi diverts his attention for a moment, his head snapping in its direction, only for his eyes to bulge at the sight of the danity cat, climbing over people in his direction.

"What the fuck is that?" Yoongi asks, voice low and dangerous.

"Huh, it's a-a cat Yoongi."

His eyes narrow at him. "I can see that. What is it doing in my HOUSE?" He bellows out, awakening the senseless bodies around him with a start.

Jimin jumps, still backing up. "Um, you know I-I'm not t-too sure about that." Yoongi stalks towards him, the urge to smack some sense into his thick head almost overpowering his self control. "Get these people out of my house...now!"

A sea of hurried footsteps parade out of the front door, Jimin frantically waking the others that did not stir and ushering them out.

Yoongi's eyes search for him. Their other roommate. Where one is, the other is usually not far behind. So it surprises him when he doesn't see Taehyung somewhere in Jimin's vicinity. 

He heads to his bedroom, not bothering to knock and barges in, veins full of incensed flames, more than ready to unleash on him too. He's stopped in his tracks, flames extinguished and freezing to icicles, spearing him from the inside.

Taehyung's arm wrapped around some guy's waist, after a night of doing god knows what, as they lay together, spooned in comfort. 

An unwarranted, jealous rage lights the fire in Yoongi's heart instead, consuming him with emblazoned rage and singeing the edges of any hope he had of Taehyung seeing him in the same possible light he saw him. 

He scoffs at himself. The perfection that he is seeing Yoongi as anything other than ordinary, angry, miserable, would be a miracle. 

He lights up a room just by entering it, has eyes on him instantly; eyes full of desire, adoration and it's understandable. Why would someone as beautiful as him want anything to do with someone like Yoongi?

As if hearing his thundering heart roaring into the heavy silence of his occupied bedroom, Taehyung's head lifts in his direction.

"Yoongi, you're back early." He beams at him and it isn't fair, that perfect boxy grin making his heart flutter amidst the envious agony bleeding from every part of him.

Hearing muted voices behind Yoongi, his smile falters. "Oh. Sorry about Jimin, I tried to reign him in but you know how he gets."

Yoongi can't blame him for this mess, not at all, just hearing how his voice drips with sincerity makes him weaker for Taehyung.

He turns away slamming Taehyung's door without saying another word. Regret fills Yoongi instantly, making his stomach churn and ache with guilt. 

Taehyung doesn't deserve that, but he can't trust himself to speak right now.

"Tae didn't have anything to do with this Yoongi, please, don't be mad at him." Jimin pleads.

Yoongi heads straight for the front door, following the row of strangers exiting his domain. The place he couldn't bear to be with Taehyung and his new fling under the same roof. 

"I know." he bites back. "Clean this shit up before I'm back."

The echoing slam of his door vibrates behind him, as he pushes past the zombie-like crowd to get out of the building as fast as he can. 

A drink will calm him down, the burn making him forget the pain and hoping for the numbness to overtake his mind and dull the constant strum of insecure thoughts circling his brain like hungry sharks.

He downs the drain of his second drink, staring at the bottom of the glass like it holds all the answers, his own personal crystal ball.

Ignoring the chatter surrounding him, he slides the empty glass in front of him and taps it when the bartender comes over. 

The sound of the liquid filling it brings him some kind of comfort. 

He notices someone occupy the seat next to him, but his eyes stay fixed on his glass as he pulls it back to himself, cradling it like his most precious possession. Like the 'one ring', enough to rule over him in his darkness and bind him to it permanently. 

"I'll have the same as him." The voice next to him sounds and he recognizes it instantly. Heat rushes to his cheeks and he angles his face away from him to protect what dignity he has left.

"Yoongi, can we talk?" Taehyung's deep, silky drawl is enough to put his heart into overdrive. Taehyung manages to turn him into a shy, lovesick school boy.

"A-about what?" he stutters out, speaking fast as if words leaving his mouth quicker would make him less affected by Taehyung.

"About me...and you." 

Yoongi frowns and finally meets his eyes, a question burning behind his with a ferocity that could take down an entire forest.

"What do you mean?" He asks, struggling to focus over the pounding in his ears making it hard to think. The possibility in his words, although unlikely, still had him balancing on a knife's edge.

"I think you know, Yoongi. When are you going to stop pretending with me?" He turns to him, knees millimetres away from each others , Yoongi could feel the heat from Taehyung's skin through his jeans.

"When are you going to stop lying to yourself and open your eyes? Because if you did, you might find someone here waiting for you to make a decision on what you want."

Yoongi blinks across at him. Taehyung's words frantically roll about in his head as he desperately searches his eyes for meaning. Could Taehyung mean what he thinks he does?

No, how could he? Why would he ever look twice? Yoongi is completely his opposite in most ways. Taehyung's breathtaking and confident, fashionable and playful. Yoongi's just ordinary and introverted, simple and serious. He is not made for him. He deserves more.

"Yoongi, are you hearing me?" He snaps him out of his despairing thoughts.

"I'm...not sure what you mean."

Taehyung sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jimin told me. Just now. He told me how you feel about me,  how you've felt for a while."

Embarrassment sets fire to Yoongi's face and to accompany it a fresh wave of rage at Jimin. "I'll kill him." He says with gritted teeth, sliding his stool from the bar and standing.

Taehyung's hands are on him instantly. "Sit down Yoongi." He pushes the shorter man back down and he folds underneath Taehyung's touch. If he was honest with himself, he could bend Yoongi to his will, whatever it was and he would obey.

"I'm glad he told me because let's face it, you wouldn't have any time soon."

Yoongi looks back at his drink, angry hands clasping it once again. "Why would I tell you?" He grumbles, "it's my dignity on the line, not yours."

"What makes you say that?"

Yoongi scoffs and downs the dark liquid in one shot, chucking it to the back of his throat,  relishing the way it burns and gives him confidence. "Why would you ever want me?" He laughs, the thought sounding crazier out loud than it does in his mind.

The silence stretches on until he can't help but glance up at Taehyung, to see his eyes wide underneath a furrowed brow. "Yoongi, are you so blind that you can't see?"

"See what?"

Taehyung places a hand on his, the action sending Yoongi's heart into overdrive. "I have yearned for this moment for so long but never did I think this would be what would leave your mouth." 

He frowns across at Taehyung, his response bewildering him completely. How could it not be obvious what Yoongi means?

"Why, I'm just being honest?" 

He shakes his head in dismay. "No you are not. It should be me saying that, not you. You know, I have felt for you for so long but I never spoke up because how could you be interested in me?"

Yoongi's mind stops. A laugh echoes in his head and turns manic. What is this guy on? Is this some kind of joke him and Jimin have orchestrated?

"Yoongi, you're so driven and hardworking and mature. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, while eating cereal out the box and drinking milk from the carton, which I know you hate." Taehyung smiles apologetically, the sight melts his insides into a puddle of liquid love. Who needs organs anyway when he's looking at him that way?

"I feel like I'm such a mess compared to you. You're so put together and I'm just drifting along."

The sadness in his eyes haunts Yoongi and hurts his heart. How dare he think this about himself?

"Hey, hey," he tugs Taehyung's hand towards him until he meets his eyes again. "Don't talk about yourself like that. You're smart and have a long list of talents, once you know what you want to do, they'll be no stopping you. You can achieve great things, I know it."

"You always see the good in me Yoongi, thank you."

"That's because there's so much to see." Yoongi replies.

"Not just in me." Taehyung raises an eyebrow at him and he scoffs again. "Don't do that." He scolds.

Yoongi can't help the laugh that escapes him and Taehyung joins in.

"So, you kinda like me huh?" He teases.

Yoongi tries to fight the smile that pulls at his mouth but fails. "Kinda." 

Taehyung beams at him, grabbing him by the collar and pulling Yoongi against him. 

Their lips crash together in a moment Yoongi has only dreamt about numerous times. It's everything he thought it would be, Taehyung's soft velvety lips moulding against Yoongi's as if they fit perfectly, as if they should have been there all along. 

The smaller man winds his arms around the taller man's neck and pulls him further to him.

Their mouths dance passionately until they're both gasping for breath and have to break away for air.

"Wow, I should have taken charge ages ago." Taehyung says, eyes sparkling with mischief as his blown out pupils pierce into Yoongi's.

"Let's get something straight, Tae, that conversation is the only time you'll be taking charge." His hand squeezes Taehyung's leg as he watches his teeth rake over his bottom lip, the sight both mesmerising and torturing.

Taehyung leans forward and whispers in his ear, "make me yours, Yoongi."

He needs no other words as he stands and leaves the bar, pulling Taehyung along with him. Ready to live out his fantasy and his life with the man he's desired for so long.