#which is a minuscule amount for me

[puppiedogs]

i called the ssa office to ask something and in the pre-recorded message they say, like it’s not fucking Insane, “if you’re calling with regards to a disability claim, due to a staffing shortage, current processing times for disability claims are between 250 and 300 days, after which it will take three to four weeks for you to receive your decision by mail” as though that’s just something that happens whoopsie sorry about that like die actually. how do these people sleep at night

[blixabargelds]

time is a big flat circle and my life is a boomerang and i’m stressed and miserable and i have the same brain at 27 as i did at 13 and im fed up

[screampied]

࣪₊ 𐙚 YOU SAY IT'S BIG BUT U TAKE IT ?! ★

gojo, nanami, toji, sukuna, geto. you come home struck by a love curse and need their help on "recovering" from the after effects. (anon req)

𐚁̸ wc. 3.8k

𐚁̸ warnings. fem! reader, feral reader, love pollen/curse, unprotected, sukuna has two dicks, dirty talk, p in v, oral (f + m receiving), squırting, biting, spanks, dumbification, overstim, brēeding, premature ejaculatıon, mdni.

☆ SUKUNA RYŌMEN

“wha— you’re clingier than usual,” the curse grumbles as you burst through the door. you’re panting steadily. he was almost shirtless with his usual kimono that’s exposing his abs. rickety arms of yours wrap around his waist before you drop right down onto your knees. with a raised eyebrow, he huffs. “eh. should i even ask.”

“no,” you reply within a second. your voice inwas nothing but a pure trembly tune. your body . . it felt hot all over, some stupid pollen or whatever it was was responsible for your feral state. you were even smelling the definition of the word too. you were grateful he didn’t ask, alas instead—he crosses all of his arms before glancing down at you. pawing at his boxers to fall down, it comes down slowly. the wait was killing you as you glance at his huge hardened bulge preparing to be exposed. oh, you’re already drooling. you needed sukuna so bad, your thighs were already quaking. the air surrounding you both suddenly felt scorching and the minuscule goosebumps that reside amongst your skin felt even hotter. “i- i need a taste, ‘kuna. please.”

he hums in amusement. “oh? don’t let me stop you then, horny girl,” and an oversized hand grips onto the crown of your head. with a nod, he views as your eyes light up at the now hefty sight of his two flashy dicks. with a groan—he shudders once he gapes at your tongue and how it licks against the one near the front. “mhm, you little . . minx. good, take it then. enjoy your precious meal.”

sukuna’s in love with your mouth—with your tongue, you’re so sloppy and you just can’t help it.

running your sweet tongue along both areas of his dicks—every part, the base, the length, and even the sensitive frenulum—he groans loudly. it’s an almost roar that echoes through his chambers. both of his dicks which were visibly stacked amongst each other. one was in front while the other was in back. each were the same amounts of thick and broad. thickset and fucking heavy, you bob your head down against the first one until he shoots raw into your mouth within just a few minutes. “fuck, easy, e-easy,” he stammers, feeling you snake a hand against his neglected cock to stroke it, fondling with his heavyset balls.

hearing sukuna stutter does something to you. you couldn’t exactly describe it, but you wanted to hear more of it. his head tilts back slightly as his lips purse, preparing to click his tongue. “ugh, can’t handle you when you suck that good,” and he grabs you by the hair, making you return his lascivious gaze. “look at you. jus’ a cock drunken mess. got m-me,” and he deeply exhales. sukuna chokes on his own words, barely even able to finish his sentence.

you took so much out of him in such little time. truth be told, maybe this love curse whatever it was, was a good thing. spit races down both sides of your mouth as you happily keep his shaft warm into your tight throat. his cum was a lot, a bittery taste of his own lingers on your tongue before he cock taps against the roof of your mouth. if it wasn’t for you doing a simple trick with your fingers, you’d have gag. you wanted more, lathering your tongue against his tip with no shame—you then reach a hand down to play with your pulsing clit.

“mphm.” you mumble inaudibly, feeling him start to push your head further down. a chaffing smile goes against your mouth and he scoffs. you’re making him feel things. things he didn’t even know he could feel. sukuna’s cold heart significantly flutters at the sight of you. it flutters simply at how good you make him feel. it’s a feeling he didn’t want to stop. at least not yet.

“god, ‘m gonna cum again,” he inhales before exhaling lowly. as he does so, his chest collapses back in from his sigh before he’s now facefucking you. the curse’s thigh taps and clenches, muscles creating a flexion within the nerves stored inside before he sees you drooling for more. as the bobbing of your head’s tempo increases, he groans before making you stare dead into his eyes with a simple grip. “nasty girl. comin’ home just to slobber on my dick, look at that f-face, fuuuuck,” and the moment you end up making him cum for about the umpteenth time of the night, he’s embarrassed. face flushed, you’re switching between his dicks to give them both equal amounts of love before he moves you off from sucking him. “brat,” he glares, grabbing your chin as a few sloshing spurts of cum pour down your chin. sukuna then leans in to kiss you, his tongue tweaks against your lips and he tastes own arousal with no shame at all. shame never exists for a man like him—a cursed being like him. you moan, feeling a fang of his gently bite into your bottom lip before he pulls away. in a low, shaky tone, he grumbles. “wipe that smile off your face, woman. this isn’t o-over.”

☆ NANAMI KENTO

“my love?” nanami hoarsely pulls down the newspaper he was reading from his face. the glimmer of the g-shock he wore that wraps around his wrist ricochets against the chandelier hanging above the two of you. eyeing you closely, he leans back against his wooden rocking chair. “how was work? your boss take it easy on you today?”

“kento,” you breathe, getting right on his lap. you’re met with those same gentle fawn irises that’s captured your heart within an instant. a hand of his gently strokes against your waist before he watches you speak in such a needy way. “touch me— please, i want you so bad.”

nanami chortles lowly. “aw, i want you too honey.”

“no . . like, i want you,” and he sees how you’re glancing back at him with feral, blown pupils. nanami could tell how needy you were just from your tone and body language alone. he could never say no to you, his beloved wife. nanami knew you, and most importantly, he knew every inch of your body like the back of his hand . .

the moment he’s got you laid on your back, everything’s lost. it’s as if time comes to an abrupt stop. the moment you feel his thick cock ease it’s way into your cunt, you immensely swallow him whole. “so warm ‘n snug,” he whispers, bringing his lips toward your face to pepper various kisses against your skin. he’s so gentle with you, he always was. he cups your chin before giving you a deep kiss to distract you from the brief tang of you clamping onto him. “how . . do you feel? is this okay—?”

his low voice was so smooth—leisurely, he’s rocking his hips against you before he playfully nibbles near your chin. a hand of his intertwined with your fingers as he waits for your sweet response. “i- i feel hot,” you moan, throwing your arms around him. “more please, ‘ken. makes me throb when you touch me.”

nanami chuckles, a quick piston of his hips and your legs wrap around his slim waist. his cologne swarms around your nostrils before you whine again. you sound so pretty—melodious, each moan that escapes out of you sounds like a harmony within each lewdly musical moment that passes. “so the curse makes you more sensitive for me?” he coos against your neck, another free hand of his rubbing against your tummy. you’re just laid back, taking every appetizing inch of him and your eyes roll and roll to the very backs of your cranium. “my sweet girl,” and his voice—you could get off to it, you were already profusely pulsing from his deeply through strokes regardless. “i’ll touch every inch of this perfect body if it ‘cures’ you, mhm.”

his touch makes you more sensitive though. nanami was sensual, taking his time with you. his pace was not to fast or too slow. just right . .

his fat cock slowly jackhammers itself into you, irregular breaths sounding more and more jagged. as he’s talking you through it against the shell of your ear, you dig your fingertips into his back. as you run a hand down, you feel a tiny mole print against his skin. “kento, r- right there, riiiight there,” and you’re keeping the entirety of his waist hostage with your ankles. “cum in me, your cum’s gonna save me i think . . s-so, please.”

“you say such silly things sometimes, my sweet,” he whispers against your neck, giving it a long suck. you moan from his tongue flicking against the new mark he created before he’s quickening his hips just a tad bit. the bed creaks and sings, it’s as if it’s making a new mixtape with its noises. “but alright, if my baby wants me to fill her up so she can feel better, i’ll do that,” and before he shoots into you—he grabs your chin. “ah, but look at me though,” and he’s panting heavily, sepia-colored strands sticking against the sheet of sweat that goes against his forehead. “look at me. look into my eyes, wifey,” and he sneaks a kiss onto your trembling lips. thrusting into you at brimming speed, he groans. “atta girl, there she is,” he purrs at you, a thumb brushing against your quivering bottom lip. he looked at you as if he loved you, nanami was sweet but a secret filthy man at heart. only for you though. “wanna see that pretty face. think ‘m gonna give you a baby or two while ‘m at it, my love. f-fuck.”

☆ GOJO SATORU

“girl—could be a little nicer y’know,” gojo grumbles as you lightly flick him against his back onto the plump mattress. you were always no match for his unprovoked sass. with a teasing pout, he’s staring right back up at you as you straddle his chin. grabbing a fistful of his hair, you inch your pooling warm entrance against his face. “how do you even get struck by a ‘love’ curse anyway? thought that only happens in fan fiction, heh.”

“just shut up,” you moan, hovering over your boyfriend’s face. he was so pretty — just gawking at him alone had you going more feral. gojo’s eyes, they were always so ethereal looking. a bright blueish cerulean—almost a viridescent green with how it reflects against the bedroom light. “f-fuck, i want you to taste it so bad, ‘toru. want you.”

with an impish smile, he slides the side of your panties aside. “soooo, what are ya waitin’ for? let me eat this ‘curse’ out of you, angel.”

and the moment you plant your sopping wet cunt against his face, he’s ultimately determined to do so. gojo was a messy eater. it was really no denying it. you’re swiping your slick heat against his nose like a credit card and he eats it up everytime. drool pours from the corners of his mouth as he’s gripping your thighs with both hands. doughy padded thumbs of his pierce into your skin as you’re rutting against his face in rapturing pleasure. “like that baby, f-fuck.”

“go on—praise me some more,” he giggles, warm breath fanning against your entrance. your stomach caves and seizes in and out as you’re still moving all around. it doesn’t take long before your legs start to quaver. “call me a good boy, yeah.”

as much as you wanted to eye roll in the most dramatic way, you couldn’t.

you’ve got a firm grip into his white, snowy strands before giving it a solid yank. “g- good boy, ‘s good for me, ‘toru. think your tongue is working,” and your voice was so soft, its delivery was almost a mere whisper. gojo’s sucking against your clit, casually making out with it in such a sloppy way that’s he’s imitating a french kiss. you continuously pulse into his mouth, feeling him breath through his nose before he spanks your sensitive entrance. as he does such a thing, a splash of your own arousal goes onto his face. teasingly, he sticks out his tongue to lick it clean. “f-fuck.” you whine, and he starts to feel himself get hard. not from you calling him a good boy, but the view itself.

the view of you, riding his face, straddling him in such a sexy way makes him feel a raging hard on in his boxers.

oh, the way you were maintaining such eye contact.

so sensual, you use his face for your own pleasure, hearing your heartbeat arise at a more quick through your ears. the sharp edges of gojo’s teeth nibble playfully against your thighs before you whimper once he prods a lengthy finger inside. he’s located your g-spot just like that, immediately moaning aloud before his digit curls up into your gummy walls. “fuck, you’re so hot when you pull my hair, ‘s no fair,” and as you’re whimpering loudly, chewing on the skin of your arm—you end up finishing after a while.

the moment you do, you end up squirting a bit. it comes out in a tiny trickle—gojo’s face lights up as you’re struggling to keep your thighs open for him but he spreads them further apart for you anyway. “shit,” he exhales with a cunning grin, that smug expression you oh so desperately wanted to wipe off. “i didn’t know my girl was a squirter. maybe you should get struck by that love curse again,” and he licks against your pussy for a final time before spanking your folds. “let’s do that again. wanna get you real soaked tonight. i always like my girls messy.”

☆ TOJI FUSHIGURO

“no way you woke me up just so i could fuck you.” toji deadpans, bringing a hand towards the hair that sticks against his chest, scratching it for four long seconds. two arched brows of his curl into a furrow before he grunts. “i was havin’ a good ass dream too.”

“toji i’m gonna die,” you protest, tugging at his boxers. “i searched up the symptoms a- and it said that if i don’t do anything um— sexual related, ‘m gonna die within four hours.”

“oh boo,” he rolls his eyes, and you moan once you feel the roughness of his palm squeeze against your ass. toji pulls you close to him, so close that you could feel the heat of his body radiate against your own. so close that you could smell his natural manly scent. the strong manly musk, his scent alone had you throbbing right inside of your laced little panties. in a groggy voice, toji leans in to suck against your neck, earning out a mewling whimper from you. “fine, but don’t be surprised if i don’t let ya cum. my dream was really fuckin’ good.”

knowing toji—he was probably dreaming about being a millionaire, but anyway . .

he happily helps with your little issue by fucking you thoroughly into the sheets. harp hips of his penetrate into you again and again. you whine, bratty cacophonous whimpers spew out of your lips as you cling onto the milky, pale sheets. it’s probably been hours, the entire room has a candied aroma of pure desire and intimacy. toji groans as your cunt clamps against him tightly. two scarred hands of grab ahold of your waist before pressing it deeper against him. “mhm, ‘s it workin’ baby? needed a good fuck, baby?”

“y- yes,” you moan, strands of hair almost blinding your eyesight by how it continues to get in your face from the quick paced movement. skin against skin—skin tight. everything felt heavenly. toji’s husky pitched groans only makes you throb even more before he leans right up closer against your ass. “harder, fuck me, ‘toji. pleaseplease. make me cum.”

with his own heavy huffs of breath escaping, he gets all the way up close before raising a foot to press down against your head.

a shrieking gasp comes out of you at the angle. he’s buried so deep now that your pussy stings and smacks from his sack. his hefty sack that hangs. kissing his teeth, toji rolls his eyes back from how good you squeeze around him before groaning once more. “goddamn, y’er a little slut. wakin’ me up for dick, ‘oughta edge the shit out of ya,” and he grabs a nice amount of your hair, making you raise up. the soft, delicate wool of his sock still glides against your skin and you moan from his rude, overzealous tempo. “yeah? should the baby girl cum, or nah. personally, i‘d say no. you were bein’ a brat. 'love curse' my ass.”

you try to sit up but he only pushes you back down, your face smushed against your fluffed out pillow.

“nuh uh, sit the fuck back down,” he snarls, swatting a soft palm against your ass. you’re so close—you moan again as he deepens his hits. his rhythm that was once so decent was now sloppy and merciless. toji’s fat mushroom tip thwacks and thwacks against your clit so much that you could feel it’s delicious curve. it’s a tickling sensation if anything—but the last thing you were doing was laughing. as he tightens his grip a bit, resuming to rock his hips into you, he purrs against your ear in a throaty chuckle. “heh, oh so you can’t speak now? thought ya wanted me to go harder?”

“i- i do,” you try to explain, but it only forms into a sweet meaningless babble. “fuuuuck, ‘s good but take your foot off me, toji. your sock is um.. wet.”

“your sock is um wet,” he mocks you before lowering his foot. you cringe as he pitches his voice—you don’t even sound like that. as he’s still having you arched over, watching as you then hide your face into the crook of your elbow. with a final smack against your ass, he pulls out before letting off an offended, tch. “ungrateful ass.”

☆ GETO SUGURU

“rough day?” geto slyly smiles, watching you struggle to walk into his room. he locks his phone to get a good look at you. you’re heaving insane amounts of breaths, pant after pant squeezing out of your full lungs as if you’d just got down with a marathon. “aw, let me guess. that love curse again? baby, you really gotta stop gettin’ yourself in these positions. it’s silly.”

“suguru,” you whine, collapsing right into his lap. the way you flop onto him was so cute—you’re met with a smug grin and dark, inky eyes that’s taking in all of your features. always so pretty. he smells so good, it’s driving you crazy. “wanna ride you.”

“you always ride me,” he strokes your chin, staring into your eyes lovingly. his hair was pinned into a unkempt yet attractive ponytail. geto gingerly wraps a hand around your throat before whispering against your lips. “so it is that lust curse again, isn’t it? careful. startin’ to think you’re doing this on purpose just to ride me, pretty girl.”

it works every time though—because within minutes later, you’re riding geto on the plump sofa. he was trying to multitask, trying to send an important email but your hips always snapped him back to reality. eventually, his phone slips out of his hand. geto groans at the way your rhythm’s got him in such a chokehold. you’re unhinged, playing with your tits right in front of him that he can’t help but feel against your soft mounds himself.

“s-shit,” he hisses, your body forever an image embedded in his mind that he couldn’t erase. your pussy squelches against his cock and you feel him reach such deep angles all at once. his girth was enough to make your mouth salivate with slippery saliva. mouthwatering, the upward curve of geto’s dick has you going stupid, you’re whining constantly before you lightly shove him back against the cushioned furniture. “slow down, you’re gonna make me c-cum quick, baby, goddamn.”

perhaps your hips alone were the enemy all along, you’re barely giving him a chance to breathe and it turns him onever more. how feral you were—he could see how blown and needy your pupils were. as you wrap your arms around him, still jerking your hips forward, you pull him into a deep, passionate kiss. geto groans right into your mouth, it’s guttural. playfully, you twirl a finger around his hair as you’re fucking him. geto’s hand placement was against your hips, long pretty lashes fluttering every few seconds before he gasps. “baby,” he huffs, a slippery strand of spit leaving your lips as he tugs away. with half-lidded eyes and a flushed face, he moans again, yet this time it’s louder, a bit more pitchy. “i’m gonna c- cum, shit your hips is gonna kill me.“

“don’t waste it p- please,” you plead into his ear, the soft breaths of your voice that exit from your throat makes his dick twitch inside you. you’re still grinding against him, the tempo was so speedy that it gives geto whiplash. he was truly witnessing his life flash before his eyes—all thanks to your precious pussy, featuring your crazed hips. he hardly doesn’t know where to roam his hands—but they remain glued to your waist, attempting to guide you closer. “inside, sugu. spill it ‘n me, make a mess.”

groaning—his head tosses itself back in rapture as he falls into his lewd, anticipated embrace. he’s feeling hot and warm just like you. the warmth your pussy provided him makes him bite his lip.

“fuck, fuck, f-fuuuuck,” he swears once you suddenly pick your hips back up. after a few seconds once you gradually slow down—he’s shooting a warm load of cum into you. so gooey, it fills you to the brim and you slow down finally, still swaying against him to make sure it’s fully plugged full. it pours into you all at once, a whopping amount of seed that’s so much that it oozes between the crevices of your thighs. you rode geto so good that he doesn’t even notice the sofa had ended up collapsing. the sound was short and concise—he’s moaning once you wrap a hand around his throat, feeling the vibrations of his grunts go against your fingertips. “phew,” he swallows, still dumping a good amount of ropy amounts inside before he goes limp against the couch. geto still has your hips in place before he’s gasping for short collected breaths. with glossy eyes, he notices your needy smug grin, not showing one ounce of fatigue. “again, huh? fuck, let me catch my breath first baby, you’re fuckin’ dangerous.”

[charyou-tree]

I need people to understand that Uranium is an eldritch horror

I'm not talking about radiation, or nuclear weapons, or anything that you can do with uranium, I mean its mere existence on Earth is a reminder of cosmic horrors on a scale you can barely conceive of.

When a nuclear power plant uses Uranium to boil water and spin steam turbines to keep the lights on, they're unleashing the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star.

Allow me to elaborate:

In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. The primordial fires of the Big Bang produced almost exclusively the two lightest elements, along with a minuscule trace of lithium. It was a start, but that's not much to build a universe out of. Fortunately, the universe is full of element factories. We call them "stars".

Stars are powered by nuclear fusion, smooshing light elements together to make heavier elements, and releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process, powering the star and making it shine. This goes on for millions to billions of years depending on the stars mass (although not how you might think, the bigger stars die young), the vast majority of that time spent fusing hydrogen into yet more helium. Eventually, the hydrogen in the core starts to run low, and if the star is massive enough it starts to fuse helium into carbon, then oxygen, neon, and so on up through successively heavier elements.

There's a limit to this though:

This chart shows how much energy is released if you were to create a given element/isotope out of the raw protons and neutrons that make it up, the Nuclear Binding Energy. Like in everyday life, rolling downhill on this chart releases energy. So, starting from hydrogen on the far left you can rapidly drop down to helium-4 releasing a ton of energy, and then from there to carbon-12 releasing a fair bit more.

But, at the bottom of this curve is iron-56, the most stable isotope. This is the most efficient way to pack protons and neutrons together, and forming it releases some energy. But once its formed, that's it. You're done. Its already the most stable, you can't get any more energy out of it, and in fact if you want to do anything to it and make it into a different element you're going to have to put energy in.

So, when a massive star's core starts to fill up with iron, the star is doomed. Iron is like ash from the nuclear fire that powers stars, its what's leftover when all the fuel is used up. When this happens, the core of the star isn't producing energy and can't support itself anymore and catastrophically collapses, triggering a supernova explosion which heralds the death of the star.

What kind of stellar-corpse gets left behind depends again on how massive the star is. If its really big, more than ~30 times the mass of the sun and its probably going to form a black hole and whatever was in there is gone for good. But if the star is a bit less massive, between 8-25 solar masses, it leaves behind a marginally less-destroyed corpse.

The immense weight of the outer layers of the star falling down on the core compresses the electrons of the atoms into their nuclei, resulting in them reacting with protons and turning them all into neutrons, which creates a big ball of almost pure neutrons a couple miles across, but containing the entire mass of the star's core, 3-5 sun's worth.

This is the undead heart of the former star: a neutron star.

If, like many stars, this one wasn't alone but had a sibling, it can end up with two neuron stars orbiting each other, like a pair of zombies acting out their former lives. If they get close enough together, their intense gravity warps the fabric of spacetime as they orbit, radiating away their orbital energy as gravitational waves, slowing them down and bringing them closer together until they eventually collide.

The resulting kilonova explosion destroys both of the neutron stars, most likely rendering the majority of what's left into a black hole, but not before throwing out a massive cloud of neutron-rich shrapnel. This elder-god blood-splatter from the collision of the undead hearts of former stars contains massive nuclei with hundreds to thousands of neutrons, the vast majority of which are heinously unstable and decay away in milliseconds or less. Most of their decay products are also unstable and decay quickly as well, eventually falling apart into small enough clusters to be stable and drift off into the universe becoming part of the cosmic dust between the stars.

However,

Some of the resulting massive elements are merely almost stable. They would like to decay, but for quantum-physics reasons decaying is hard and slow for them, so they stick around much longer than you might expect. Uranium is one such element, with U-238 having a half-life of around 4.5 billion years, about the same as the age of the Earth, and its spicier cousin U-235 which still has a respectable 200 million year half life.

These almost-stable isotopes were only able to be created in the fiery excess of energy in a neutron star collision, and are the only ones that stick around long enough to carry a fraction of that energy to the era where hairless apes could figure out that a particular black rock made of them was emitting some kind of invisible energy.

So as I said at the beginning, Uranium is significant because it stores the fossilized energy of the destroyed heart of an undead star, and we can release that energy at will if we set it up just right.

When you say it like that, is it any shock that the energy in question will melt your face off and rot your bones from the inside if you stay near it too long?

[xoluvx]

cowgirl; b.eilish

[▸] cowgirl by nicki minaj smut

"save a horse. ride a cowgirl, right?" you whispered in her ear, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. the cup in your hand was empty, but your craving for her was filled to the brim. you needed her. you needed her bad.

when she sauntered into the party with that costume, you hadn't expected to have such a visceral reaction. your eyes locked on the cute strawberry blonde cowgirl. tracking her like a predator did its prey. you just knew you had to have her.

with a few drinks in your system, you found your bodies orbiting around each other until you were innocently conversing. teasingly complimenting her costume. boldly wrapping an arm around her shoulder whispering such daring things that had her blushing.

she'd let the words sink in as she bit her lip curling her arm around your waist. her fingers bunched the fabric of your costume causing the dress to ride up. you felt a breeze brush along the back of your thighs and shivered leaning closer to her.

she'd taken off her cowgirl hat, placing it on your head to which you'd scrunched your nose and giggled. the act so minuscule yet so meaningful. she was flirting back.

it'd felt like an eternity. sexual tension building over an insane amount of torturous hours. it all amounted to your bodies stumbling into her room. her cowgirl hat still on your head. her hands gripping your hips. your arms wrapped around her neck. kissing hungrily and desperately. when her thigh brushed between your legs, you moaned clinging to the collar of her shirt.

"is that your gun or are you just happy to see me?" you teased in a hushed voice, but breathing heavily from the heated make out session you'd just endured. billie smiled and cupped your face bringing you in for another kiss as your hand traveled down to her holster. your fingers wrapped around the pistol's handle pulling it out as you backed away from the kiss with a devious smile.

you ran the muzzle along her cheek. the cold metal sent shivers down her spine. she absentmindedly opened her mouth. the pistol so phallic as her plump lips parted. you were amazed. so enamored you wanted to devour her. you wanted to ride 'til you couldn't feel your legs. 'til the only name you remembered was hers.

right now you were enjoying stripping away every little piece of the costume she'd so meticulously picked out.

you let go of the fake pistol and it fell on the floor with a loud thud as you reached for the collar of her shirt pulling her in for another kiss. it was sloppy, desperate, and hot as your tongues tussled. her fingers gripped your ass pulling you closer until your chests were rising and falling in sync.

you worked the buttons of her blouse. whimpering when you struggled to undo them. sensing your frustration, she replaced your fingers with hers pulling harshly on the fabric until you heard the thread rip; buttons popping off the shirt. you gasped with amazement and your mouth hung open as you made eye contact. a devilish look plastered on her face.

though she'd been of assistance, she was still letting you take control. you eagerly hooked your thumbs in her holster. it hung low on her hips. you had to have been a complete fool to not think that was the hottest thing ever. her slim waist and big tits in a pretty lacy bra. her leg between your thighs. your hips swaying as you pulled her closer by her belt loops. it was all so fucking hot.

your fingers fumbled with the buckle of her holster and she came to your rescue once again. fingers working it quickly letting it fall on the floor near the fake pistol. your fingers busied themselves with her belt. so many fucking layers for such an impatient person like yourself. you'd wanted to take your time, but as you were nearing her naked frame you were eager for more.

when the belt came undone, your fingers shakily unbuttoned her pants. lips connecting with hers just for the sake of touching. she cupped your face as your lips hung open and her tongue roamed every corner of your mouth. you tugged on her pants, coming down with them until you were on your knees.

you looked up at her doe-eyed, fingers hooking in her thong pulling them down her legs. your mouth hung open. practically drooling. she peeled off her shirt letting it fall with the rest of her costume before reaching around her back to unhook her bra. when her breasts broke free a small gasp escaped your lips and you tugged at her thong almost tripping her.

she ordered you to get up as she completely broke free of her costume before disappearing for a few seconds. when she returned, the strap hung from her body and her natural hair cascaded down her shoulders. you fisted the fabric of your dress feeling very much overdressed and underfucked.

"strip," billie instructed motioning to your clothes. you tugged at the zipper on the side of your body letting the dress fall and pool at your feet. the only thing that clung to your body was your underwear, but those too were instructed to be removed by billie who was now sitting at the edge of the bed. you reached for the cowgirl hat you were still wearing, but she held her hand up.

"keep it on," she commanded in a raspy voice.

"and show me how you ride," she teased motioning towards her lap as your eyelids fluttered, completely stunned. she was in total control, yet made you feel like you were the one calling the shots. you approached her slowly. knees sinking into the mattress at either side of her body.

she held the fake dick as you slid onto it. face contorting with pleasure as she stretched you so deliciously. your lips parted as you looked into her eyes. pussy swallowing her whole as you planted your ass on her lap. cock erect against your cervix. you sat for a few seconds adjusting.

when you started swaying your body, billie snarled and leaned back placing a hand behind her head to admire the view. she watched the way you moved so seductively. selfishly swaying for your pleasure. she placed one hand on your hip. it lived there and burned from the touch of your scorching skin as you moved back and forth in an enchanting dance.

you leaned forward placing your hands under her breasts as you lifted your ass each time you swayed. the new movement hit a place so yummy you were biting your lip so hard you were on the verge of drawing blood. you were practically bouncing on her cock and she grunted each time your ass landed on her lap until you were a whimpering mess. you hung your head low as your nails dug into her skin.

her hands cupped your ass. they moved with the beat of your bounces until you were sitting up again. lips parted beautifully as the softest yet sexiest sounds escaped your body. you rutted your hips against hers, her cock rubbing so gloriously on your cervix.

you were so fucking close you could hardly keep your eyes open. when you tossed your head back in pleasure the cowgirl hat nearly slid off. you placed a hand on top of your head holding the hat in place before looking down at her.

her eyes were wild. she was biting her lip. she looked flushed. cheeks pink as her hair tangled under the weight of your heaving bodies. you clung to the cowgirl hat swaying faster. bouncing harder. moaning louder. maintaining eye contact with billie who had since captured a picture of the scene in her mind to store for later.

just pretty girl riding her into oblivion.

diaween 2024 🧡

[nicxl333]

October 3rd - ITOSHI SAE

“how many times do i have to fill you up for you to get there’s no one but you. ‘m gonna keep going till you understand.”

content: 18+, nsfw, breeding, unprotected sex, multiple rounds, spanking, rough sex, argument, afab! reader

☆彡

“it was nothing? so why the fuck am i seeing another girl pressed up against you in the tabloids?!”

you threw your bag onto the side table by the entrance of your penthouse, storming in with sae in your wake. you were beyond fuming, and he knew it. you turned to face him, hand on your hip.

“if it was nothing why weren’t you phased by it? better yet, why would you even neglect to tell me you were doing a photoshoot with a model? you’ve never had a problem telling me prior, so why not now?!”

sae toed off his shoes and released the tie from around his neck, allowing a slight amount of solace to ease the rising tension in the room.

“i already told you, the crew didn’t tell me until i was on set with her. everything in that photoshoot was for the purpose of my contract with this brand. i had no say in it whether you like it or not.”

“whether i like it or- sae! can’t you understand how that makes me feel? whether or not you didn’t know prior, why am i having to find out through the tabloids? you had every and all opportunity to tell me after your shoot was done.”

you took a step closer to him, until you were right in front of him. it’s a shame you were arguing really, because he looked so delectable staring down at you. the way his chest rose and fell, the notes of his cedarwood cologne wafting through your nostrils, the stray strand of hair falling over his piercing eyes.

if you were to reenact what was playing out in your mind right now, it would most certainly be the image of his thick, veiny cock drilling into your sopping wet cavity. alas, he just had to be a dickhead.

“you say i’m the only one, but why are you constantly in the news, paired up with another girl, yet i’m the one hidden away. why should i be made to feel like i’m always competing for you?”

he matched your energy, taking one minuscule step, so that you were almost chest to chest, your clothes partially kissing every once in a while. his right hand raised to your chin, tilting your head upwards, capturing your attention in a ethereal whirlwind. his cologne was intoxicating now, making you slightly dizzy. your heart picked up moderately, pulsing in anxious anticipation wondering what he would do next. one thing about sae, he was unpredictable, so as of right now, you were unsure of where this argument was heading.

he leaned down, so that he was mere millimetres away from your lips. your heart was thudding now, which lead you to wonder if he could potentially hear it too. he was close, too close. if you swayed even just slightly forward, your lips would just about tou-

“distracted? i’m talking to you y’know.”

him and his smart mouth.

dazed, you stepped away from him slightly, to insert some distance and reclaim some authority.

“the media will always make things out differently to what they actually are, you know that much.” he started walking towards you, while you started walking backwards. this continued until you hit the wall of the hallway, just adjacent to the door of your bedroom. both hands at either end sealed you in between him, no escape from his intoxicating presence. he leaned in once again, whispering to you this time.

“you think there’s competition? i’ll show you why you’re wrong.”

before you could say anything, his lips captured yours, his right hand gravitating downwards to lift your left leg and wrap it around his waist. your dress rose up enough for your underwear to be slightly exposed to him. you kissed him back, your tongue entangling his in a slow and sensual dance. one hand placed itself on his chest, feeling his chiseled abs underneath, while the other wrapped around the back of his neck, pressing him further into you.

it was wet, it was hot, it was sloppy, but all you could think about was how you wanted, how you needed more.

to make matters worse, you could feel the tent in his black dress pants pressing up against your partially soaked underwear. in a bout of pettiness from him essentially deflecting from the argument, you pushed yourself against it, inciting a low groan from sae, although swallowed by your tongue enveloping his once more. in response, his hand left your thigh, travelling under your dress, and gripped your ass, causing you to moan out in a mixture of shock and arousal.

“jump.”

you followed his command, releasing any reservations about how things turned out and essentially dismissing the previous fucks you had.

his hands supported your body weight, and led you to your shared bedroom, placing you down with ever so tender loving care. he slid your dress off, your underwear following. he then pushed you down so you lay on your back, although you rose slightly and rested on your elbows to see what he was doing. you watched on as he hovered over your breasts, lowering his lips to the left one, and rolling his tongue over the hardened pebble. your body seized up in impatient pleasure as his lips enclosed over the nipple, giving it a long, hard suck. he made sure not to derive the other of any attention, his left hand fondling the other one as he satisfied you. your soft moans filled the room, your empty, wet pussy throbbing in want.

“sae. i need more.”

in an instantaneous response you felt his left hand snaking down towards your cunt, spreading your folds and slowly circling your bud. the motion was light and slow, a long method of torture to your impeding orgasm. sae knew this too, but he loved seeing you like this, falling apart in front of his eyes and writhing for more. reason being it reminded him of the exact reason why no other girl would ever compare to you. the way your eyesbrows would knit up, your soft whines indicating how sensitive you were, how your back arched when you came and you would turn your face to the side. no one could do it like you, not even close.

his long fingers slipped into your wet pussy with no restraint, immediately curling upwards and thrusting. his fingers were so free flowing that even though you were his first experience, it made you wonder if he somehow had more than he was letting on. you moaned out, legs threatening to shut. he was one step ahead of you however, prying them back open and increasing the intensity of his strokes.

“it shouldn’t have to take me fucking you like this for you to realise you’re the only one for me. you think i’d do this for anyone else? fat chance in hell.”

“but you don’t express yourself sae, how am i supposed to know?” you whined. “i just wanna have my boyfriend to myself, is that such a problem?” the end of your sentence came out high pitched, thanks to sae quickly leading you to an orgasm. your back arched and your pussy tightened on his fingers, restricting them from moving any further.

“i never said it is, but i’ve told you there is no one else. i get i should’ve told you beforehand, but i’ve never given you any reason to believe otherwise.”

he pulled his fingers out, your cum spinning webs around them. he raised them to his mouth, maintaining eye contact while he sucked off your secretion, swallowing shortly after. he then leaned down to kiss you, his hand wrapping around your neck to hold you in place. your hand in response reached down, feeling up the tent in his pants. you needed his dick inside you now, stretching you out to a point where you couldn’t think, let alone say anything.

“sae, please, please, just give it to me. stop playing around.”

“impatient much?”

“you’re so mean.” you whined.

he rose to his feet, unbuckling his belt to lower his trousers and free his restrained cock. it was pink, angry and begging for attention. the veins were extremely prominent, branching out all over. to top it all off, the tip was glistening with pre-cum, dribbling out slightly each time his cock pulsated, matched to the rhythm of his heartbeat. no matter how many times you had sex, every-time his heart never failed to race with the thrill of sinking into you.

“turn around.”

you followed his instruction, knowing you were about to get fucked up. you decided to play into it, arching just how he liked, ass all out on display.

he lined himself up and gave you an experimental rub with his dick. just to see how bad you really needed it. you whined once more, your ass automatically pushing to meet his dick. it was then he realised he reached his limit.

he pushed into you with a strangled grunt. you were hot, scorching even - most of all tight. your cunt immediately enveloped his dick in a strangulating hug. he had to stop himself, couldn’t carry on. if he did, he felt like he would cum. he could feel himself throbbing violently. it scared him. this time was different. who knows if it was the product of your fresh argument, but this time brought about a whole new sense of responsibility, possession he had over you. the kind of possession that told him to fill you up over and over again.

his thoughts were shattered to smithereens when you to fuck yourself on him, deciding to take matters into your own hands. your thrusts were so powerful that such an esteemed soccer player like him (who’s duty was to score and defend against grown men), was struggling to hold form. you moaned out in overwhelming ecstasy, and it was then he realised that you were going to make yourself cum whether he did anything or not. he pulled out till just the tip remained, and pushed back in with a heave. you arched into him, a chill running down the entirety of your spine. he set immediately into a rhythm, fucking you with harsh passion and precision. no stroke was different, each one hitting that exact spot that had you squirming. you cried out in pure bliss, your eyes pricking tears as you struggled to keep composed at the sheer power of his thrusts. he grabbed both of your hands, crossing them behind your back, using them as leverage to drill into you harder.

“you think i’d ever give anyone else the satisfaction of feeling what you’re feeling right now? you think anyone could ever come close?”

you didn’t answer him. you physically couldn’t. he was actively rendering you incapacitated, draining any sort of strength you could have to refute him. he didn’t like the silence though, his right palm raising, and striking your left cheek. your body jolted in pain and arousal, your pussy clenching around him tighter than ever before.

“answer me. you had every bit of energy to accuse me, but now you want to be silent?”

“no one sae! there’s no one else! only me!”

“good, good girl. now be quiet and take my dick. arch your back further and let me make you cum again.”

you did what he asked while he angled himself differently to hit your g-spot specifically. from this alone you knew you were about to cum again. your back arched, your grip on sae strengthened and a bolt of electricity ran through your spine. sae powered right on through your orgasm, even having the audacity to speed up.

he started throbbing once again, his limits bursting out. he buried his head in the crook of your neck, softly groaning while his pace turned sloppy and irregular. you felt yourself becoming full as he filled you up to the brim with ropes of his cum.

you breathed a sigh of relief while the mixture of yours and sae’s cum started to drop out of you. all was silent for a moment and you thought he was done with, until you realised he was still hard.

it was at that moment, he rose up, grabbing your hips and giving you one hard thrust that shook the whole bed. you moaned out in surprise, shock and pure overstimulation.

“you should know by now that there’s no one but you y/n. i don’t know how you don’t realise no one comes close. how many times do i have to fill you up for you to get there’s no one but you. ‘m gonna keep going till you understand.”

please note: hi guys, i just wanted to say this is not proof read. something came up last minute today so i had to decide between not posting today or just posting it now and making my adjustments at a later time. my word is my word though so here is my first kinktober oneshot! enjoy <3

[prettiedup]

do u write for sukunaaaa

if so can we have cum denial wit him. like fingering n teasing reader till she’s crying n babbling 🐾 <3

sugarpie ୨ৎ

not getting sukuna’s attention has you acting out ୨ৎ

yeah probs mii first nd last time writing abt kuna ^.^ i really enjoyed doing dis for u tho ^_^

⋆｡‧˚ʚɞ˚‧｡⋆ SUGARPIE ⋆｡‧˚ʚɞ˚‧｡⋆ --->  rough fingering, pet names (baby, princess, mama), shameless use of the word daddy :P, begging, clit slapping, squirting, daddydom!kuna, lawyer!kuna, orgasm denial

“kuna.” you drag out his name as you climb onto his lap. it’s been hours since he’s given you any sort of attention, you understood that the paperwork he is working on is extremely important. he briefly explained to you days prior about taking on a big case that would bring in a lonesome amount of money once everything was said and done. which is fine, of course you’re gonna support your kuna in whatever he takes on. but what isn’t fine is his attention being diverted to papers instead of you.

he grumbles out while he leans to your side so that he could see what was displayed on his desk. you sit quietly on his lap for a few moments, your mind is racing with how you could get his attention back onto you. a deep rooted, responsible and sensible side of you reminds you that he’s working and he told you that he would be busy on it, you know you’re being selfish but you can’t find it in you to care. if anything it’s sukuna’s fault for spoiling you so much! 

“kuna.” you whine again. your head lays on his hard shoulder while your hands begin slithering against his waist. even through his shirt you could feel the hardened muscles, you loved just running your acrylic tips over his muscles and watching them tense every now and then. “daddy, are you ignoring me?” you ask with a frown that sukuna didn’t need to see, he could hear it in your voice.

“‘f course not, baby. ‘m just busy trying to sign these documents.” sukuna barely pays attention to the words coming out of his mouth as he jots down more and more onto the paper. 

“aren’t you tired?” you huff, “can’t you just take a little break?”

“not right now. i need to stay on top of this case ‘nd fill out as much as i can as fast as i can.” he suddenly leans down a little to grab a paper thats on the far end of his desk. you wrap your arms tighter around him, but you know sukuna would never let you fall. no matter how busy and out of it he seems.

you don’t like that response at all. you roll your eyes at his resistance and settle with resting your head on the crook of his neck. you breathe in his cologne. the colognes’ he wears pairs so well with his natural scent. they smell so warm but masculine in a way. you close your eyes, opting to lay there and enjoy the feeling of his heart thumping and his body movements each time he inhales and exhales. you use the sound of the pen sliding against the paper as white noise.

you hum softly against him. this is better than being in separate rooms, you suppose. you would prefer for his attention to be on you completely but you’ll take what’s given at the moment. usually, you’d be chattering away about minuscule things while sukuna works but he quickly shut that down weeks ago.

“my office is my sanctuary, princess. i don’t care if you come ‘n here but you have to stay quiet so daddy can focus.” the firmness in his tone left no room for debate, which is why you slowly nodded your head while looking up at him.

you were only able to sit still and quiet for a few minutes, you tried, you really did. but you couldn't contain yourself from letting out littles hums and shifting your hips every few minutes. your little thin panties would get snagged on the shape of his cock causing little whimpers to escape from your throat when it does happen. sukuna doesn’t comment on anything you do, only occasionally patting your thigh when he deems you are moving too much.

“kuna, please.” you whine out as you lift your head from his shoulder to look at him fully. you didn’t have to say what you wanted, he knew. he always does.

“‘m working, mama.” he reminds you. irritation is seeping through his usual tone. hearing the slowly growing firmness begin to take over his words causes little hairs to stand up on your body, you both loved and hated when he talked to you like this.

“i don’t care! i need you kuna!” you clutch at his shirt with your hands. the hairs continue to stand.. no way you just raised your voice at him. a twitch of fear settles in your stomach. 

“watch your tone.” he stops writing completely. 

“wouldn’t have gotten loud if you would’ve jus’ paid attention to me.” you mutter under your breath as you begin getting off of his lap.

“the fuck you just say?” 

୨୧

“kuna, i can’t! ‘s too much please!” you cry out as his thick fingers roughly pump into your fat pussy. the sounds of your arousal coating his digits filled the room, you were so fucking wet. he had already managed pull an almost orgasm out of you. he waited until you were breathing heavy and for your legs to be shaking desperately to pull away. 

he doesn’t respond to you, only forcing your legs further with one hand while adding another finger. you squeal and whine while clutching on his wrist. his fingers are so fucking thick inside your sensitive pussy. your clutch at his wrist does nothing to slow him down.

your poor pussy could do nothing but take his aggressive fingers, you thrashed around on his lap which only made him slink an arm around your waist to hold you in place.  fat tears ran down your cheeks as he continued holding your legs open so that he could continue to fill you.

everything about sukuna is thick. not just his fingers, but his cock (especially that), his muscles, his personality. those were just minor reasons that added up to why you loved him. 

hearing the humiliating squelch, squelch, squelch and just feeling your arousal dripping down from your everflowing pussy to his lap. if you weren’t getting fucked stupid by his fingers you would’ve been embarrassed from the growing wet spot that is forming on his slacks. 

“talkin’ t’me crazy.. have you lost your fucking mind?” he asks. with every word he’s hammering his fingers as deep as he possibly could, it’s almost to the point that it hurts. you whimper out a soft “daddy” and try to close your legs to prevent him from continuing to abuse your poor pussy.

you can’t find it in you to say a response, instead, you let out loud mewls and sobs. sukuna doesn’t take much appreciation to his words being met with silence, with a rough huff he pulls out the hand that’s fucking you to oblivion to give you three rough slaps against your right thigh.

a piercing sob breaks through your lips,“yes! daddy! ah! yes! i'm sorry daddy!” you didn’t even know what you were saying. loud sniffles mixed with the words you slobbered out. you were a complete mess, you loved when sukuna got you like this.

“‘s okay, though. don’t worry, baby. daddy’s going to make sure you remember your manners.” he plunges his fingers back into you with no warning prompting an unexpected orgasm to shoot from your sensitive pussy. he groans and begins slapping at your clit. squeals escape from deep in your throat. he remembers specifically telling you not to cum until he said so.

“daddy! oh! ah! ah! i’m sorry!” you try to crawl away from the intensity of your orgasm. sukuna clicks his teeth and roughly pushes you back up so that your back is aligned evenly to his chest. you’re fully sobbing now as a stream leaks out and sprays onto his fingers, lap, and parts of his paperwork. 

“no more, kuna, puhllleeaaa-ahhmygodd..” your sentence is broken when he powers his movements back up. you’re still leaking out your orgasm when he adds a third finger. “daddy! kuna! baby! pleaseee, no more!” drool leaks from the corners of your mouth as you are dumbly babbling out to him.

“tch.” he sighs. “cummin’ even when i told you not to. you must really not be my good girl now? hm?” you could hear the smirk in sukuna’s voice. usually when he finds your actions amusing, you’d pout at him. but you were so fucked out all you could do is continue to grip his wrist weakly.

“‘s too much, kuna. toooo muchhhh.” you groan. you try closing your legs around his hand once again and this time sukuna bites down on your shoulder making you squirm. he didn’t bite down hard, he made sure to only use enough force to make you stop moving.

“keep ignorin’ me.” he warns. “your second time now. even while getting punished, you’re still actin’ up.” he jeered. “maybe you’re not my good girl after all.” 

“‘m your good girl. promise. ‘m your good girl.” you sniffle, he was still rubbing his fingers against your walls filling you up jussttt right. your eyes glance down and you could see his hand sparkling with your arousal and to make matters more intense his fingers are etched with your cream. you could only whine at the sight.

he places soft kisses on the side of your neck and jaw. “watch me fuck my pussy.” he mumbles while placing a soft kiss on the corner of your lips. “gonna make sure my pussy gets all the attention it's been beggin’ for, and you better not fucking cum again until i say so.”

[acourtofwhatthefuck]

Bad for Me — Cassian x Reader

Hi! I found this in my drafts and thought I’d share it while I’m finishing up the next part of Bluebird. I’m not sure why I never posted it 🤔maybe because I don’t think it’s very well written. Also, it seems I was using a prompt list for parts of dialogue in this, but I can’t for the life of me think which one it was 😅but anyway, enjoy an angsty piece with an angsty cliffhanger ending 💅🏻

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings: None.

✧: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ

“What the fuck is this?”

There wasn’t a part of you that didn’t shake with anger as you stormed your way into the sitting room. Anger that had built up and festered as the day had faded into night.

It was late. You’d waited up — waited for the telltale, arrogantly loud footsteps that had announced Cassian’s return. Where he’d been all day, you didn’t know nor care.

Sure enough, you found him in his usual chair by the fireplace, a glass of whiskey rested on the arm and his eyes closed. His fingers rubbed circles into his forehead — a positive sign that he was sporting a particularly gruelling headache.

Good. You would yell into his ear until he launched himself off one of the verandas and flew far, far away.

“What is this?” You repeated, chucking the item you held straight onto his lap.

His eyes slowly opened, and he glanced down impassively. “That’s a piece of paper. It’s useful for writing, or drawing, or—”

“Don’t be a smartass.”

It had surprised you, to say the least, to wake up to the folded note on your bedside table — in Cassian’s rough scrawl.

Find yourself a pretty little dress. Don’t make any plans for Friday next. We’re going dancing. Cassian.

“Explain.” You demanded, your tone clipped. Brash.

You didn’t want to go dancing with Cassian. Or walking, or running, or…anything.

It was bad enough living under the same roof as him. Working in the same circle as him. Bad enough having to be civil in the name of a unified front.

But you were professional. You could pretend to get along in front of people.

That didn’t mean you had to socialise with him, though.

With a sigh, he sat up straighter, brushing his hair back. “Rhys is having me play courtier again.”

Your head cocked to the side. “But you’re so terrible at it.”

The minuscule pause and tick of his jaw told you you’d landed a sure blow. A nervy spot, for Cassian, was certainly his abilities off the battlefield. Why Rhys insisted on sending the General on certain courtier expeditions was beyond your comprehension. And beyond Cassian’s, too, judging by how much he hated it.

You took no small amount of pleasure in that fact. A little payback for all the ways he’d torn you down over the years.

“Hilarious.” He rolled his eyes at you.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Whatever. Rhys is having me represent him at a fucking ball in the Hewn City and I need a plus-one, so — you’re coming.”

Your shoulders tensed. “Absolutely not. Ask somebody else.”

“There’s no way I’m putting Mor through that. And she’s in Vallahan, anyway.”

“So take Amren with you.”

“Be real, Y/N.”

You stared at him, clenching your jaw. You hated him. Hated him so, so much — loathed him — that you swore your veins turned to ice around him. Ever since you’d met him, and you’d taken one look at him and thought he was the most beautiful male you’d ever seen. 

You’d sworn never to fall in love again, when you’d joined Rhysand’s Inner Circle — and seeing Cassian go through flings like you went through books only solidified that decision.

Hate was a good thing. Hate was something you could pour all your anger into and throw at the person that seeped into your thoughts a little too often.

And dish that hate out you may, but gods Cassian gave it back just as fiercely.

“Ask one of your many lovers.” You spat. “You have your cock in a different female every week. I can’t imagine you’re short on admirers.”

Cassian stretched his arms over his head. “And how many admirers do you have, Y/N?”

You tried your best not to flinch. To let him see the effect his words had on you was as bad as him thrusting a dagger into your gut. You willed yourself to give nothing away.

“Just find somebody else.” You said. “There’s not a fucking chance I’m going anywhere with you, of all people.”

You didn’t give him a chance to respond. You turned on your feet and stalked from the room, leaving the note on his lap and your barbed words hanging heavy in the air.

✧: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ✧･ﾟ: *✧･

Three nights later, your bedroom door burst open so abruptly that you dropped your book on your face.

“Pause your masturbation for five minutes.” Cassian’s deep, arrogant voice filled the room. “I have your dress.”

You sat up, your entire body tensing the way it always did in his presence. “What.”

He kicked the door shut behind him, and even in your considerably-sized bedroom, his domineering figure seemed to take up most of the space. He strode to the foot of your bed — and paused, just for a moment, his eyes drinking in the sight of your nightgown, your unbound hair.

You didn’t have a chance to remark before he straightened himself out and launched a flash of pale pink fabric at you.

“For the ball.” He said. “I checked your size and asked the shopkeeper to pick it out, so…if you don’t like it, I don’t really give a fuck.”

Your eyes fell down to the dress in your lap. Undeniably pretty, with its rosy hue and flaring skirt, thin straps and tiny, beaded jewels. A dress you would probably choose for yourself, if the occasion called for it.

You’d always loved clothes; dresses in particular. The intricacies of certain garments fascinated you, and the thought of creating your own made your heart skip a beat.

You thought you’d feel pretty in this dress; prettier than you usually felt, in your leathers or shirts and breeches. It wasn’t all that often that you had an occasion to dress up for.

But even this gown wouldn’t convince you to accept Cassian’s invitation. Or, rather, his order.

You pushed the dress away from you, though your fingers lingered within the soft fabric. “You’re absolutely fucking insane if you think I’m going to that ball with you.”

Cassian’s eyes fell to where your hands stroked the skirts, before climbing back up to meet yours. The bastard knew what you were feeling. He fucking knew.

“Oh, you so want to.” He smirked. “I can see it in your eyes.”

You shrugged nonchalantly. “So it’s a nice dress. I’m sure one of your many sexual escapades would appreciate it.”

The General’s head tilted, a few strands ripping from the loose knot his hair was tied into. “What is it about my sex life that bothers you so much?”

That you’re free to even have such a sex life without judgement. That you will never know what it’s like to be ostracised just for exploring such things. That you can fuck who you like with no repercussions. That it isn’t me you’re—

“Don’t mistake me for someone who gives a shit about anything you do.” You bit. “I just wouldn’t want such a nice dress to be wasted.”

“It won’t be. Because you’ll be wearing it to the ball on Friday.”

“No.” You threw the dress back at him. Picked your book back up. “I will not.”

“I’m going to hang it on the door.”

“Don’t bother.”

He ignored you, of course. The dress was hung. “We’ll be leaving at seven.”

“No we won’t.”

“We will.”

He pulled your bedroom door open, slipping out.

“Cassian?” You called, and there was a strong pause.

He poked his head back in. “What?”

“I’m not going to that damned ball with you.”

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You were going to that damned ball with him.

High Lord’s orders, your ass. You’d kill Rhys for this.

The dress was a perfect fit, clinging to you like a second skin. And as you stared yourself down in the mirror, smoothing your hands over the fabric, you couldn’t remember the last time you’d felt this pretty.

A long, long time ago. A night of passion. A night that would ultimately ruin your life.

You shook the past from your thoughts, straightening yourself out. It was imperative that you wore an unbreakable mask to the Hewn City. One that was steeled and sharp and revealed nothing of the person that lay beneath.

A thump fell on your bedroom door. “We’re going to be late.” Cassian barked.

You rolled your eyes, turning away from the mirror. The beads of your dress swished as you moved, and you focused on that, rather than the oaf that was currently trying to break into your room.

Just a few hours, and this would all be over.

“Simmer down, General.” You pulled the door open, stepping out. “I’m ready.”

Cassian stepped back. And stopped.

His hazel eyes slowly traced the length of your body. And despite the fact that he’d griped about being late, he took his sweet time drinking you in.

You waited for the snide remarks. For whatever fault he would surely find with your appearance. But when his eyes landed on your face again, you couldn’t puzzle out his expression.

“Good.” Was all he commented. “Let’s go.”

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“Can you quit your fidgeting?”

Cassian scowled beside you, rolling his shoulders. “The collar on this thing is too tight.”

Your eyes travelled the sculpted length of his body — not for the first time — before you forced them away. He looked…undeniably breathtaking.

His comfort, you knew, was in leathers and body armour. Only on rare occasions like Starfall or Solstice did he swap his usual attire for more casual clothing like button-up shirts and trousers. You couldn’t recall a time you’d actually seen him decked in a tailored suit.

Until now.

The material was of deepest burgundy, outlining — accentuating — every last muscle it possibly could. There was something thrilling about the thought of so many deadly weapons hiding within that dashing attire. Something thrilling about knowing the Lord of Bloodshed walked beside you.

Right now, though, he was the fucking Lord of Complaining and Whining. You rolled your eyes, turning to him.

“What are you doing?” He watched as you pushed up onto the tips of your toes.

“Shutting you up.” You adjusted his collar, ignoring the feel of the backs of your fingers brushing his neck. “Better?”

“Suppose so.” He rolled those shoulders again. He wouldn’t be content until the suit was off him completely.

“Then let’s go.” You currently stood outside the towering gates of the Hewn City, the air always unpleasantly cold in these parts. You took a step forward, your dress swishing along the ground—

A warm, rough hand landed on your arm. Stopped you.

“What?” You glanced at Cassian over your shoulder.

“Rhys is expecting us to represent him.” He said, his hazel eyes strangely fierce. He always got that look when there was a task at hand. “I know we hate each other. And that’s more than fine. But just for tonight, can we pretend that we…don’t?”

You stared back at him pensively. A petty part of you wanted to shrug him off and scoff. To tell him that the unpleasantness with which he’d always approached you had long laid any potential alliance to waste.

But he was right — Rhys was counting on you both. And Rhys had done a lot for you since you’d turned up on his doorstep with barely a coin to your name. For him…for him, you would pretend to enjoy Cassian’s company.

“Whatever.” You shrugged the General’s touch off, turning back around. “Fine.”

It wasn’t going to be easy, though.

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You made sure, in your life, that you never had to spend any extended amount of time with Cassian. You tolerated him when you had to, and avoided him the rest of the time.

But you’d been for nights out in the same group, of course. And you’d forgotten how many females tended to flock to his side and fawn over him.

This ball was a sure reminder of that.

You’d barely stepped into the room and grabbed yourselves a drink before groups of females were glancing over and chatting excitedly, shrill giggles floating over to you. It was a mere five minutes before one of them mustered the nerve to ask him to dance, leaving you standing on your own.

It was during that first dance that you decided — you weren’t just going to be civil with Cassian.

You were going to be so sickeningly over the top that he’d have no chance of skulking off with any of those females and leaving you by yourself while he got his cock sucked. Not a chance. If they thought he’d been claimed by another member of Rhys’s Inner Circle, they’d back off; if a little begrudgingly.

So you watched. Waited for that dance to end. Rhys hadn’t given you any specific orders, besides attending on his behalf and keeping an ear out for any gossip. You drank your wine and enjoyed the music, and the second Cassian had an empty space before him, you dipped in before anybody else could.

It seemed to surprise him. He blinked at you, before straightening himself out. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing with you.” You grabbed his hand, fastening it on your waist.

“Rhys never said we had to dance together.”

“You want us to get along, Cassian?” The music began, tugging you into movement. “Then let’s get along.”

With the other couples beginning to dance around you, it left no other option than to follow suit and avoid causing a scene. Cassian’s jaw ticked, but he grabbed for your other hand and began to pull you around the dance floor with him. He was no seasoned dancer, by any means, but he displayed more skill than you’d expected.

Another thing you loved — dancing. Feeling like your feet were floating. Once you started dancing, you wanted to keep going and going into you fell off the world and tumbled into a blissful beyond. Nothing else mattered besides the music, the moves.

“I didn’t know you could dance.” Cassian commented, echoing the thoughts you’d had about him.

You shrugged, not misstepping once. “I was forced to take lessons as a girl.”

“I didn’t know that, either.”

“Why would you know? It’s not as though we like each other.”

He spun you around. Dipped you in his arms. “And why is that?”

Laughable, that he was the one to ask that question. “You tell me. You never tried.”

“Is that how it went?”

“It is.”

He stared at you, expression unreadable. No other words were exchanged as one dance came to its end, and the music flowed into the next piece. But you didn’t need words to carry out your plan.

The second you caught a glimpse of hopeful, waiting females in your periphery, you pulled Cassian closer to you once more, your bodies flush against each other.

You may have felt a teensy bit ridiculous as you slipped your fingers into the strands of his hair and brushed it out of his face.

“I like your hair like this.” The words were heavy on your tongue. Not untrue, but…painful to say out loud.

Cass stared at you. “…thank you.”

But his thanks was lost in your satisfaction as the awaiting female disappeared from the corner of your eye, skulking off to sulk, no doubt. It was an effort not to smirk. Still, you righted yourself and continued with your plan.

You made certain that yours and Cassian’s bodies met in all the right places. Very close. Very dangerous.

Perfect — because there were still hopeful, simpering females watching. Waiting for you to walk away.

“Dance with me again.” Your breathy tone wasn’t entirely for show — nor was the hand you trailed down his arm for emphasis.

But Cassian frowned at you. “What are you up to?”

“Me?” Your eyes glittered. “Nothing at all.”

He kept his gaze on you, following you into your second dance. You could have sworn you saw the slumping of many shoulders as you spun around the floor, Cassian’s hands like a burning brand on your skin.

You weren’t even really paying attention to him, simply following the steps mindlessly, until he spoke again.

“That isn’t how it went.” He said.

Your brow furrowed as you spun around. “What?”

In one swift move, he was pulling you against him, pressing your fronts together. “You said I never tried to know you. I refute that.”

You shrugged. “You treated me with the same contempt as the bastards I ran away from.”

“You treated me like I was dirt beneath your shoe and I didn’t deserve the time of day.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. That simply was not true. He had always been cocky, and arrogant, and difficult. He acted as though mud wouldn’t stick to him, as though he could do what he liked, when he liked.

Suddenly, you didn’t want to be dancing with him anymore. Didn’t want his hands on you, simpering females or no.

He could go to hell.

“I never thought you didn’t deserve the time of day.” You contested tersely. “I—”

“I know.” He interrupted. Spun you around again. “I worked it out eventually.”

“Excuse me?”

“What your problem is.” Another dip.

You didn’t like this conversation — it’s direction. It would be easier to run away, to avoid it.

Easier, but cowardly.

“Pray, tell, General, what do you believe my problem is?” You stared at him.

He leaned down, just as the music faded. Poised his lips at your ear. “Jealousy.” He murmured, the word seeming deafeningly loud. “Sometimes the way you look at me makes me think that perhaps you don’t hate me that much.”

You knew your body stiffened between you. And as he pulled back and smirked, you also knew that he knew he’d won.

Whatever it was that glittered in his eyes was…knowledge. Knowing. An understanding. And that couldn’t mean anything good for you.

“Cassian?”

The two of you looked up upon the intrusion, only realising then that the music had stopped, and the dancing with it. A doe-eyed girl stared at the General with bright, sparkling hope in her eyes.

“I was hoping I might have the next dance.” She said.

You didn’t care anymore. You barely spared either of them a glance as you let go of Cassian and pushed out of his arms.

“He’s all yours.” You said.

And then you went to find some fresh air.

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“I’ll be sure to tell Rhys that you spent the evening skulking around on your own whilst I did all the posturing.”

You glanced at Cassian out of the corner of your eye. You weren’t interested in a verbal sparring match right now. The night air was pleasant on your skin, and you allowed it to cool your face, your neck. Allowed it to wash away the tension permanently coiled within your veins, if only for a few stolen moments.

“Go ahead”, was the only reply you offered.

Eyes pierced into you as you bathed yourself in the moonlight. Even with your own shut, you could sense Cassian watching, waiting. But you wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of anything beyond vague acknowledgement. Not now.

That seemed to fucking torture him.

“What—no smartass response?” He quipped.

“No, Cassian,” you sighed quietly. “No smartass response.”

He paused — seemed genuinely knocked silent for a moment — before he scoffed. “I don’t believe that for a second. Even in silence, I know you’re up to something. That scheming brain of yours—”

“This scheming brain of mine is exhausted.”

As your eyes flew open, you caught the way he faltered, a slight misstep, the barest ruffling of his wings. For all he was the General of War, the Lord of Bloodshed, you’d also observed him to be a profoundly emotional person. And that emotion sometimes won as he fought to hide it.

This emotion…it was ire. Gone was the sharp-edged teasing. He found issue with your words, and his jaw gave a telltale tick.

“What could you possibly be exhausted by?” he scoffed. “You need only turn up looking like a fucking goddess and people respect you. You’re not some lowly, bastard-born brute. You don’t get sneered at simply for breathing—”

“You believe people respect me?”

“Of course they do!”

“You don’t.”

He stumbled — actually stumbled — and it was only that which alerted you to the way he’d been inching towards you. But his steps faltered, and he gaped at you like your revelation was entirely out of pocket. Like you had no reason to feel that.

“You have never respected me.” You held firm on your point, even if your voice was a tad quieter. “I fled a fucking viper’s den and ran to Rhysand’s court, hoping to find a sense of…of belonging. But you…” A soft, rueful chuckle shuddered out of you. “You have made it your mission to ensure that would not be the case.”

Slowly, Cassian’s brow pinched. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, seeming to search for the right words. “That…isn’t how it went…”

“It is,” you shrugged. “You said I treated you like dirt — perhaps, unintentionally, I did. Perhaps it was a defence mechanism, because I never expected to flee absolute hell and come face-to-face with a male that I immediately wanted.”

There they were — the words out in the open. The truth wedged itself between you like a glaring, unmissable sign. You had never hated Cassian. Quite the opposite.

“I thought that I would never want another male in that way again.” You revealed hoarsely. “I thought I would live a life content with just…being me. With friends and nothing more. But that first day I met you, I walked in and I…I knew. I felt it.”

Cassian blinked, slowly shaking his head. “What…”

“And then you were so hostile, and I thought that maybe that was a good thing. That it would discourage me from feeling things. But I must be a fucking glutton for punishment, because no matter how cold you were towards me, my feelings only grew. And I tried…I tried so hard to shift them into hate, but I couldn’t. I’ve never been able to. I simply…can’t.”

The way he stared at you…so hardened, so severe…you couldn’t get a read on the reaction. But then…had you ever really been able to get a read on him?

“You were right…what you said about me being jealous,” you swallowed. “I was. I am—”

“That was…just a joke…I was just being a dick—”

“No,” you shook your head. “You were right. I was jealous in there, and I’m always jealous when people flirt with you. When I see you smile at them and joke with them and I shouldn’t wish it was me but I do. These feelings are constant. And that, Cassian…that is why I am exhausted. It’s exhausting for me to know you.”

Silence.

It should have been a relief, to have finally shifted such heavy feelings from your shoulders. But they were like tangible beings, fogging the air around you, wrapping you and Cassian up in a situation that was complicated and ugly and not at all ideal.

You knew he would do nothing with your feelings…except maybe sneer at them, laugh at them, throw them back in your face. You expected nothing from him. And the longer the silence went on, the more you began to wish that you could steal your confessions back. Shove them deep back into that narrow part of your heart that was still capable, somehow, of feeling such things.

You cleared your throat, tweaking the pretty, delicate gloves that covered your hands and forearms. “We should…head back inside.”

You breezed past him, suddenly desperate for the mindless chaos of the throne room. But you’d only managed a few steps forward before Cassian was gripping onto your arm and yanking you back.

Your dress fanned out as he spun you around, and a breath pushed out of you as he slammed you against the nearest wall, the cold brick biting into the fabric of your dress.

Before you could say anything, he was dipping down, his mouth sliding over yours.

Cassian kissed you deeply, punishingly, his lips moulding to yours perfectly. You gasped against him, and his tongue slid into your mouth to dance with yours, his rough, rugged taste invading you.

You’d thought about this moment a ludicrous amount. You’d imagined what the weight of his lips might be like, how perfectly his tongue might duel with yours. Nothing — no amount of imagining — could prepare you for the reality. The sense of rightness as his hand coasted up to clasp the back of your head, his fingers sinking into your hair. He gave a gentle tug, and you moaned in immediate response.

Air, it seemed, was not important. Not as you kissed him back feverishly, gripping at his shirt in an attempt to pull him as close against you as he could possibly get. The press of his hard body against yours was pleasure in itself. You nipped his lip, desperate for more, more, more, and he groaned in response.

This — this could very well spiral out of control, and you would welcome it. You wanted him to tear your clothes off and take you against this wall. You wanted him to make you feel like he wanted you, like it wasn’t exhausting to know him—

But there was suddenly emptiness and coldness. And it took your mind a moment to catch up and realise that he had pulled away.

Not far. Just enough to stare down at you, his deep hazel eyes flaring and furious. His panting breaths sawed out of him, landing directly on your lips and making you desperate for another taste. You tilted your head up—

He shook his head. Stepped back.

“No,” he murmured, voice gruff. “No. You…you are very bad for me.”

Your entire body turned cold at the words. Words that sliced at you, reminiscent of ones you’d heard before. “What?”

“You’re bad for me,” he repeated. “And I am very bad for you.”

“Cassian—”

“Don’t—don’t even say my name.”

With a swiftness that sent a gust of wind rustling the skirts of your dress, he turned, wings flaring and launching him into the star-speckled sky above you. You gaped at his retreating figure, flying off into the night, leaving you alone not only in that courtyard, but in the fucking Court of Nightmares.

Your mouth had turned dry, your skin cold. You lingered out there long after Cassian had flown off, waiting to see if he would come back. Pathetically hoping he would.

He did not.

And as you conceded, slipping your courtier mask back into place and turning to retreat back inside, his words rang like a deafening klaxon in your head.

You are very bad for me.

[shiny-jr]

from DIASOMNIA

- Warning: Yes, this is still a yandere thing. You have been warned. Gender-neutral reader. 

- Characters: Malleus Draconia, Lilia Vanrouge, Silver, Sebek Zigvolt.

- Summary: (Continuation, after this “we just got a letter, wonder where it’s from”) You have barred them from entering the safety of Ramshackle Dorm, but they are determined to make their words reach you. Which is why the letters begin arriving at your doorstep.

- Note: This is just the first part, only with Diasomnia. I’ll post the rest later once its written. For now, I hope you enjoy this part! Oh, and this was inspired by the mention of letters @qierxing​‘s fic inspired by the whole imposter au idea. So yeah. Hopefully I caught all the mistakes in this post because I am not rereading all that again.

Diasomnia   |   Ignihyde

Among the first letters you pick is carefully sealed in a black envelope. You found it peculiar that Grim, who had offered to use his claws to open the envelopes, hadn’t been able to cause the slightest tear as if it were being protected by some magic. But it opened with ease during your first attempt to rip it open.

You didn’t care much for the wax family crest that had sealed it, or the black envelope itself. Maybe it would feel liberating to just set them all ablaze as soon as you finished skimming over the carefully written words.

To my dearest human,

I understand the pain I have caused you.

Ever since that moment I betrayed you, all I have seen in my vision and in my mind is your expression of terror. It tortures me. Your terror spurred by my actions and my very own hands. I am your most beloved and loyalest of companions in this world, and yet, had my retainers behind those doors not intervened, you would have been gone forever. And it would have been all my doing, all my fault.

I write this letter to apologize, but as I write this, I realize that there is no forgiving what has been done. Ever. No matter how I plead or what comes from my lips. But I will say this: there are no amount of words that can truly convey how sorry I am. This will haunt me for the remainder of my centuries of life.

Agonizing thoughts plague my mind and torment me at all hours of the day and night, at every and each moment. Even now, I reflect on everything I had done to harm you. While, the time I believed in those falsehoods was minuscule compared to the days others knew and acted upon it, the fact still stands that I was too easily deceived by mere rumors alone. I was blinded by my rage when I heard that someone dared to impersonate you and had been the probable cause of your vessel’s malfunction, that I did not even take a brief respite to consider the validity of the information that reached my ears.

Believe me, although I realize you have no reason to hold even a shred of faith in a single word I say and for that I would not blame you, but I will atone for the crimes I have committed. In any way possible. Even if it takes my entire lifetime, I will continue forward until I have achieved this goal and you may smile upon me once again. There is a human saying, which if I recall correctly I believe goes something like, forgive but never forget. Well, I would beg for forgiveness, while knowing full well that my misdeeds will never truly be forgotten. The harm I inflicted will leave scars that will never fully fade.

For every scratch my nails left on your delicate flesh, you may drive vines of the sharpest thorns against my own skin until blood pools all around me. For every bruise from my hand that tainted you, I would hand you an iron sword to use as you wish against me until you believe I’ve had enough. If it pleased you, I would even utilize my magic to transform into a figure with wings, which I would then proceed to sever the wings by my own hand and offer them to you on a silver platter.

Any punishment you can think of, I would readily accept.

Although living with the guilt of my mistakes and knowledge of the weight of my actions against you, is by far the most painful torture I’ve ever known.

If I do not receive word from you soon, I fear I may go insane with my own guilt. Yet I know I bring this upon myself. And if I were to go insane, if I was not insane this entire time already, you are all that would be in my thoughts. You are all that would remain in the part of my mind that is intact. You are currently and have been all that I think of, so perhaps my sanity is already long gone.

I would venture into the deepest crevices of hell and back, just to prove my worth to you. Even if I must be punished for the rest of my life, so be it. But I implore you to allow me to redeem myself, let yourself bear witness to the incredible feats I may accomplish in your name. Redemption... The thought of perhaps one day receiving the blessing of your smile and your grace once more in the near or distant future, is the light at the end of the tunnel in this dark period of my existence. I am yours. Whether you still desire me or not, I will forever be yours, and I will brave through trials of fire to demonstrate my eternal devotion to you.

Just know that I will do everything in my power to please you. Whether it be to fulfill the judgement you cast upon me, to demonstrate my worth and determination to achieve redemption, or simply because you command it so, it shall be done. 

For now, I will wait on your response and deliberate over my next course of action. Should you desire anything, anything at all, wether it be something as simple as traveling to the store for a purchase, you have a moment of recluse and desire company, or if you command me to move the island or clear the very heavens, all you must do is speak my name. Then, consider it done. Once my name is upon your lips, I will be there as the last syllable leaves your tongue. 

I will await the moment I am summoned.

Forever yours,

Malleus Draconia

That was... unnerving. Your hand unconsciously drifted up to the slight puncture wounds on your neck. They had long since dried, but you vividly remember feeling the thin trail of crimson being drawn and dripping down like a steady stream. 

You could remember the way Malleus withdrew as soon as he realized the truth, like he had been burned with his hands on you in that fashion. The blood, your blood, staining his sharpened nails. The red was deeper than any nail polish or ink. 

You were nearly sent spiraling, until you felt a tap and the texture of paper against your arm. When you glance down, you see Grim pressing his paws with another crumpled letter onto you. The ink on this letter is red, but the feline’s wide curious eyes are a glowing blue. 

“You okay? What’s so interesting about that wall you’re lookin’ at? You’re kinda just staring off into nothing there.” 

Offering a grateful nod to Grim who frowned worriedly, you accept the already opened envelope while tossing aside the letter from Malleus. “I’m good. Just... thinking.” 

Lifting a hand, you place your palm against his head and scratch the spot behind his ears. Grim lets out a content purr and holds a bag of junk food, which he probably found among the mountain of gifts, and curls up beside you. You continue the slow and soothing scratches as you use your freehand to unravel the letter Grim brought you from the towering stacks. 

This envelope was already cut open. It was a light brown and more square-shaped as thin rope kept it tied together. It had a mash of colorful strings that formed a messy bow to top it off. At least, you assumed it was meant to be a bow, but it looked more like a messy knot that would be impossible to untangle. Good thing it was already partially cut by Grim’s claws earlier. 

As mentioned, the ink was red, an interesting choice. While the handwriting was not as elegant as Malleus’ letter. Some words were written neatly, before falling off the line and blending with other words. Making it a bit difficult to read, but you managed. 

If you’re reading this, 

This means that I am not irredeemable in your eyes. 

Had I been beyond redemption, you would have not even opened this letter. If this was a lost cause, a merry dance, this paper would’ve been tossed into the trash without a second thought. But, my words have reached you. You’re reading this right now, aren’t you? It’s why I decided to write this. I could predict the actions you’d take. You are different from your vessel, but it’s only natural that you would act similarly to the silly little doll you controlled, the same doll that sparked this whole fiasco. 

I truly am so sorry if I frightened you. While I will admit, it was my intention to strike fear into your heart and use you to serve for another dubious purpose, that was when I hadn’t recognized you. Although, I know this doesn’t mean much to you, I figured I should be entirely honest to you. It’s the least I can do. I’m such a fool for being quick to believe the rumors like some sort of senseless child.

All I can do now, is remain true and offer up my loyalty. It’s nothing compared to the mistakes I made, and I’ve made plenty, but I know an apology will never suffice. So, even if you’re still uncertain about redemption, I’ll remain loyal. Among all the beings and creatures I’ve met in my lifetime, you remain an enigma. You’re human, but at the same time, you’re different. There continues to be so much I do not know of you. I wonder, could you hear me whenever I spoke to your plaything? Do you recall the stories I told, of my time as a reckless youth? Foolhardy, wild, that I was. But I was also fiercely loyal. For the Draconias, I razed down all foes like wheat in a field. 

Now that I consider it, perhaps it's best if you hadn’t heard me recount those tales. While I had been eager to share with you my experiences and act out my thrilling adventures, perhaps my story telling was much too graphic. I wouldn’t want the vivid details of bloodshed to be cause for alarm as our most recent encounter was far from pleasant. You have to forgive me, sometimes I get carried away when narrating my accomplishments and exploits. I’ll share more light-hearted memories with you the next time we meet. 

Our first meeting with your true self really went abysmally, didn’t it? I know that things never really go as planned, so I don’t bother planning such things in advance. But, I had pictured it to be a lovely moment. Silver and Sebek would look at you with shining eyes and proclaim their loyalty as they had practiced vows over and over again for such an occasion, I would get to embrace your true form and unlock your secrets, and of course Malleus would be truly content for once as he finally received the company he deserved. 

But, as expected, things didn’t go accordingly. 

Those three youths are miserable, thinking of the proper words to pen, a way to apologize for the suffering they’ve caused. But now, we are the ones suffering because we hurt you. 

They write and write, but tear their letters over and over again as they believe no words they’ve written so far are adequate. Soon they’ll realize that no words will ever be sufficient for an apology. Even if they were to create new words that are unheard of by any dictionary, it would not come close to being enough. That’s why I’ve decided to stick with this single attempt, because I already know that nothing I ever write will measure up to being acceptable. 

There is something about you that always leaves me bemused. Your grace left me feeling dizzy and giddy, like I was experiencing a little crush again, although this was much more intense than any crush. The truth about your vessel controlled by you, had me perplexed as I had never heard of such a thing. And well, the disastrous chase that followed your arrival... you know that part well and could assume how I feel about that from what I’ve told you. At present, all I can do is remain loyal, for what my loyalty is worth to you. Beyond that, despite having an abundance of experiences, there is no such situation that could have prepared me for this moment. 

Genuinely, I am stumped once again. I cannot even envision what can be done with my own two hands, that can be worthy of your attention once again and earn me redemption. But, you can be certain of one thing, and that is: my loyalty is undying. I still have a few years left in these old bones of mine, and I will use the rest of my life to serve you. 

Whether you want me or not. If you still want me, I will be of use to you. Whatever you are in need of, a soldier, a plaything, a companion, or even someone to take out your anger on. I shall be it. If you don’t want me, I will still be there. I will always be there to smile and lift your spirits like you once did for me through your doll. 

I eagerly wait for word from you. 

Until we meet again soon, 

Lilia Vanrouge

None of these letters were comforting in the slightest. In fact, they only placed you further on edge. For a moment, you considered stopping it here after only two and getting rid of the rest. 

Grim by now had settled in your lap, and looked up at you with those watchful blue eyes. Had he been staring at you the entire time? 

“Let me guess, they’re not taking it well?” 

“No, not at all.” You answer with a grimace. If this was how they were like now, you didn’t even want to know how they acted when they found out your vessel stopped working over a week ago. 

“Huh, sucks for them.” The feline stretched out, his claws poking out for a moment before quickly retracting as he plopped back down on his back with his stomach up. Maybe it was his own attempts to fill the silence, or to let you know you weren’t alone, but he eventually groaned. “Hey, read me one. I wanna know what they say.” 

Unable to say no to your companion, you nodded slowly and smiled weakly, “Alright, alright, let’s see what we have here...” 

You plucked out a random letter with neat packaging. However, just because the exterior was pretty, didn’t mean the interior message would be. You learned that already from the last two letters you had read. 

This envelope looked somewhat similar to the last one, square-shaped and tied closed with string. However, instead of the knot of ribbons on it, it held a simpler gift. The brown rope around it was tied in a neat bow, and between the string were lavender stems with a small branch of wild berries. 

Grim immediately indulged in the berries and the flowers, staining his little fangs and whiskers with the sweet sticky juice and purple petals. All the while exclaiming, “Oh, oh! I remember this letter. Some bird came to drop it and it flew away just before I could catch it...” 

A short laugh escaped your lips as you hear him. “So that’s why you were grumbling this morning.” 

Not wanting to be reminded again, he swat his paw at your nose as the feline hissed, “Shh! Just read already!” 

Dear player, 

I truly am deeply remorseful and I offer my sincerest apologies. 

I was to be a knight, that has been something I have strived for ever since I was a child. A knight not just to serve Malleus but to protect others, and eventually I discovered my purpose was to serve you as well. But... all I did was stand idly by and watch the torment. Shortly after meeting your vessel, I had promised to shield you from all danger. I broke that promise. 

I cannot imagine how frightened you must have been. Had just one person stop and thought things through, they may have realized the horrible mistake that was being made. Had I acted as soon as I felt the tug on my heart when I saw you weakened and on the dirt, I may have saved you from anymore pain. 

Those eyes, your eyes, I see them in my sleep. You were scared, and through your gaze you were pleading for help, were you not? I see it every time I close my eyes. You witnessed it yourself, the very moment when I had failed you. You were right there, so close I could have extended a helping hand. But my grief rendered me sightless, all I could think of in that moment is how my heart ached and how I longed to see you again. Even if it was through your vessel. The rumors didn’t quite make any sense to me, as I wondered how could anyone possibly be so cruel as to tear you away from us? 

Father had said that it would all be over soon. That capturing the imposter and bringing them to their knees, would make everything better. But when I saw you on the ground before we learned of your identity, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was alright. Would the player have wanted this? Would they have scorned upon witnessing the scene? Would this undoubtedly end the throbbing pain I felt in my heart? The pain was becoming unbearable, and I was not the only one to feel it. The news made little sense to me. Sebek insisted that it was true, and Father seemed to believe so as well. However, that is no excuse for how I went along as if it were okay. 

You were innocent and helpless, you, the player, not only witnessed the scene but were the victim. I’m so sorry, I should have done something... If it were the only way to gain your forgiveness, I would spend every moment of my waking hours writing letters of apology. To do so I would keep myself awake for as long as humanely possible. If asked, I would use every moment to pen these letters, each different from the last. Although after several attempts in redoing this single letter, I realize that it would be a pointless endeavor. 

After reflecting, the only way to make up for what I have do is be patient. 

Be patient and await for word from you. I cannot force you, I cannot pressure you, I can only pause and prepare myself to do whatever I must in order to earn back your grace. 

Please, do not keep me waiting too long. I know I have no right to ask you this. I’m willing to wait years if needed, but part of me has this fear that I will never regain a spot near your heart until I’m frail and feeble with age. Rest assured, even in old age, I would be willing to be your knight. Even if my bones ached, I would raise my sword and shield. If I couldn’t use my weakened legs, I would call upon a horse to be my steed. And if I were to become magicless, I would use the remainder of my physical strength to serve you. 

If I may be honest with you? I have no idea what to do. Yes, I said I would wait, but what else can I do? What can I do to eventually secure a place beside you, if it were possible? In times of trouble I normally turn to Lilia and Malleus for advice, however, I am a bit unsettled by their approach to this delicate matter. Truthfully, I am anxious, but while they share the sentiment, they are oddly confident that things will turn out alright in the end. I am unsure how they can muster the self-assurance to quell their fears. Maybe they know something that I do not, and have decided not to share this secret for now... 

Nevertheless, for now I’ll eagerly anticipate the day we can reunite just as I have dreamed. I greatly look forward to the second where not only I can see you smile once again and your eyes might finally look at me with content, but also the moment where all those I know might get the opportunity to be in your peaceful grace. 

I’ve dragged this letter on for too long. If you were to take something away from this letter, let it be this: I will carry out your wishes. No matter what you may think of me, whether it be a positive or negative image in your mind, I will continue forward in your name. Even if you think me unfit for the title of knight, then consider me a humble servant instead. Nothing will shake my commitment, and I will do whatever it is you ask. 

This is a pledge that will not be broken. 

Cordially, 

Silver

This letter felt a bit lighter than the others. Still, it was slightly intense in its own way, but it was nowhere near as extreme as the previous two were. And, maybe you had a better opinion on Silver, not because he was gentle with his words but because he was one of the very few who hadn’t threatened you, directly harmed you, or treated you cruelly. 

But! He didn’t get a free pass just because of that. Yes, he may not have directly caused any harm, but he didn’t exactly help you either. 

Grim had taken the letter from you, and inspected the paper in his paws. He held it above his head, scrunching up his nose a bit as he looked it over. “I dunno... he’s okay.” 

At that, you roll your eyes a bit as a smirk crept up from the corner of your mouth. “You’re not just saying that because his letter came with a snack?” 

“No! You think me easy to bribe? I think not! It would take a whole bucket full of berries just to get me to even discuss it. Then, I’d turn them down and take the berries anyways!” The feline proclaimed his brilliant plan should that situation ever arise. Maybe the gifts you allowed him to take were starting to get to his head. “But... he could be worse. Silver, as dumb as he was like everyone else, he did hear me out after they separated us.” 

Silver did that? If that were true, it’s possible that he wasn’t as bad as the others who had wronged you.

“That’s... good to know.” You murmur as you pluck up another random envelope from the pile. 

The last envelope you pick up before you planned to take a break was surprisingly plain. It was just that. A plain white envelope, sealed by green wax with what looked like a family crest that depicted a creature with fangs and scales. One of the corners was crinkled, as if it was gripped too tightly there. 

As soon as you slid out the folded letter, you were bombarded by the ink. Whoever had wrote this, seemed like they applied too much force. This caused certain parts of some letters to be too round and heavy with ink that made those bits feel damp and stain your fingers the slightest bit. Like whoever wrote this, placed just as much pressure with their hands on the pen gliding across the page, as much pressure as they felt weighing on their mind. 

Great Player, 

As I pen this, I am on my hands and knees.

I have prepared a multitude of letters which I will send daily, so that now and in the future you will continue to hear my apology and know I truly mean it. One admission of regret is not enough. An apology is only an acknowledgment of an offense, it does not absolve one of their wrongdoings. I know this! So, I, Sebek Zigvolt, will atone by any means necessary! 

To you, the player who I wronged and deserves nothing but happiness and perfection, I give my deepest sincerest profuse apology. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m SORRY. Right now when I look at my hands that I use to write, I’m reminded of the vicious way I grabbed you like some... heathen! These hands sullied your flawless self, and for that alone I will never forgive myself!

Had it not been for the wise words of Master Lilia and the bothersome yet logical reasoning from Silver, I would have been at your door everyday, every hour, begging for a second chance. In the midst of brainstorming, I presented my idea of crawling on hands and knees, from Diasomnia to the Ramshackle Dorm, to deliver the letter myself. Then, I would display whatever cuts or bruises formed on my palms and knees which I would receive from the rocky roads or thorns, that way you may see my devotion was true and no lengths are too great when it comes to you! No matter the pain or burden! The idea seems to appeal to Lord Malleus, but I was told that it comes off as too extreme...

But! I beg to differ!! I only consider it so that you may understand what I feel, so that you might comprehend the things I would do for you, and receive me back in your good graces! Additionally, delivering the letter in this manner would cause me as much or more physical pain than I caused you! It is a shame that things have come to this. I had wished so much for our first proper meeting to be one of joy where you might accept me as your knight! In spite of that, I will not falter in shame! If I were to deliver the following letters in that method I had detailed earlier, I would wear the scars proudly! It would be physical proof of my faithfulness towards you! 

I am sorry, and I will continue to say it. Perhaps, this may be presumptuous of me, but if you consider it, Diasomnia did not torment you nearly as long as any other insolent dorm had! And! We retainers accompanied Lord Malleus every day to check on the wellbeing of your vessel, and watch over it while investigating various possible approaches on how to revive Yuu. We diligently did this until the moment we encountered your true self! 

I swear to you, no one shall harm you from this moment forth! 

From now on, I’ll march forward and see to it that you are never hurt ever again! This is something I know that my fellow dormmates will tirelessly work toward as well. 

Have you realized that we have been guarding you and the serenity of your dorm in the past days? Have you not thought it strange that none have come to needlessly pester you? Yes, that is all thanks to the efforts of those in Diasomnia! Even when you do not realize it, we are insuring your welfare and the tranquility you require to recover! Of course, as much as I desperately want to inform you of the details, I will not. It is best you don’t know. 

Now, I must be honest with you. Originally, I had planned this letter to be much longer and have contents that would have been much different than what you are currently reading. I aimed to be honest in my feelings! But before I could sign off on the original draft, I realized that the others may be in the right. It is possible that our devotion, my devotion, may come off as disquieting if I were completely sincere. I’ve had to restrain myself on many occasions, reminding myself to at least appear collected and controlled. That is not as easy as it sounds! 

How could it be, when the one I must suppress my emotions and actions for, is you? That’s as if asking to repress part of my very soul and heart! I absolutely detest hiding it!! But when I remember this is for you and your own comfort, it becomes bearable. I can only hope that soon, very soon, I might be able to unveil my true sentiments towards you! As intense and extreme as they may be! 

It seems that I’m nearing the word limit that they imposed. Once again, I apologize. I’ll have to contemplate new ways to write ‘sorry.’ I wish I could write a million more words for you! But even a million words wouldn’t be anywhere near a satisfactory amount for me to detail how much I revere you! And it would take more than another million words for me to write a full apology, but even then I wouldn’t be satisfied! No single letter is adequate enough, so be prepared to receive the rest I have written! 

I will make sure they are delivered posthaste! 

Faithfully, 

Sebek Zigvolt 

Great... you’re back to being unnerved again. 

There was something about them all being so weirdly obsessed, but in vary different ways. Malleus and Lilia puzzled you, they had you feeling the most uneasy by far. Maybe it had to do with the fact that they were both not human, they were arcane beings with enigmatic personalities and objectives that were incomprehensible to you. 

Out of the four, Silver was the only one that was fully human like yourself, but even he was a bit of a mystery as he was raised by the fae. It was hard to be wary of him, which was probably because your distrust and fear of him wasn’t as intense as it was towards the others due to his good nature and lack of actions he took during the whole disaster. 

As for Sebek, well, he was unnerving in his own right but it was nowhere near on the level that Malleus and Lilia were on. At the very least he wasn’t a complete mystery to you. It was easy to figure out his intentions, because he either said them or wore them on his sleeve. 

Your mind was spinning as you looked over the four letters, filled with lines upon lines and more lines of pages. In that moment your breath quickened as you noticed the cloudy sky outside. For a brief second, you feared you would see that familiar flash of green lightning, taking you back to that dark day when you nearly died. It’s like you could feel Sebek’s hands tightly gripping the back of your skull that forced you against the earth, you saw Silver’s sorrowful gaze that spoke a thousand words you didn’t yet understand, you heard Lilia’s words hinting to a doomed fate of becoming some lifeless doll, and god, you couldn’t forget him even if you wanted to. Malleus. He was the worst of all. You felt his nails and fingers constricting around your neck and squeezing out all the air, you saw his haunting green eyes with those slit pupils as he glowered at you with such anger and hate, and you heard what you had thought would be the last words you ever heard come from his lips––

“Hey!” 

You were torn out of those dark thoughts by the feline in your lap. A concerned frown tugged at Grim’s lips, but once he saw he had your attention, he mustered a slight grin as he held up what looked like an armful of snacks. At least, as much as he could carry in his small paws. From his grin, you could see his little fangs still covered in the remnants of the berries and flower petals.

“Look, I found your favorite! This is getting boring, so let’s just take a break!”

[wing-ed-thing]

Foul Creature (Tobirama x Reader) Chapter XI

Synopsis: The territory between the Uchiha and the Senju dwindles by the day. And in an era where social lines have been blurred, and new clan heads have been chosen, you're stuck between a scorned lover and a man who relentlessly pursues your hand in marriage. You don't have much time before you're forced to confront the sins of your past.

Word Count: 9.6k

Tags/Warnings: Warning for dark themes ahead. Fem!Uchiha!Reader. Please consult AO3 for more specific warnings.

Chapter I | Previous Chapter | Part XI (Current Chapter)

Notes: A one month turnaround for me and this series is becoming unheard of. Probably due to the lengths of these chapters. Why do they keep growing???

Hashirama enjoyed lingering in a lovely garden, and political figures, no matter the rank, tended to flock around Hashirama. So, to accommodate Hashirama’s tendency to idle in nature and the massive posse of political figures that vied for his attention, a sizable courtyard area was built near the Senju dwellings.

When Tobirama tore through the garden and stormed inside, he appeared troubled, much more so than usual. While he usually tried to ignore Hashirama’s bids for laughs and attention, the speed and force with which he stormed through the courtyard raised Hashirama’s brow. 

Tobirama was granted a brief reprieve. However, his brother's delayed presence was strictly attributed to the many political figures Hashirama had to gently dismiss before he could follow Tobirama inside. 

Tobirama was already hunched over a desk, penning away at some lengthy document with his forehead in his palm. While the desk was cluttered, the mass of papers and stationery items were allotted into neat, well-maintained piles for their size. Hashirama frowned in the doorway, allowing his brow to twitch a minuscule amount before he quietly shut the door. His head dropped before it rolled back.

“What happened?” he asked. 

Tobirama didn’t answer. His back flexed with more tension than needed for the simple task of writing. Hashirama let out a deep sigh. 

”I did tell you that it would not end well, now did I not?” 

“I was the swiftest messenger,” Tobirama snapped, slamming his quill on the table. The sound reverberated across the near-empty room. He sat straight, facing forward as he took a steady breath in. But the moment he took to calm himself did nothing for the volume of his voice. “What do I have to shrink away from regarding the Uchiha? We had all killed our fair share on the battlefield. Facing a fellow warrior with a grudge is no matter to me!”

Hashirama flinched neither at his brother’s volume nor the physicality of his outburst. His face slowly melted from its usual brightness to a concerned neutrality.

“Well, this tells me that you did not engage with a fellow warrior.” Hashirama’s gaze narrowed. He hardly let a beat pass. “What did you do, brother?”

The room fell silent. Tobirama should have known that his brother was far too clever to let him ignore what happened at the Uchiha compound. He didn’t expect that in any reality. The moment his hands found your skin, Tobirama knew there was no coming back. It would have to come out eventually, given that this was surely the end of the Uchiha-Senju compromise for which Hashirama had worked so hard. 

And for what he had told you about slapping the scroll out of his hand, the incredulousness he committed was far more severe and far more reckless. 

Tobirama turned, his face nothing less than severe and neutral as he approached Hashirama to kneel and bow deeply at his feet. His head hardly touched the wood flooring below for Hashirama to be filled with dread.

“I have committed a great error, for I have laid hands on a member of the Uchiha council!” Tobirama proclaimed, his forehead digging into the floor. 

Hashirama took a moment of pause above him. 

“And this was in self-defense?”

Another moment of pause came. Tobirama didn’t let it last for long and spoke what he knew was the truth, “No,” he said.

Tension grew in the stale air.

“For the sake of clarity,” Hashirama started. Tobirama’s heart had already begun to palpate in anticipation of the words he knew would come next. Hashirama’s voice had hardly wavered, but Tobirama knew his brother well enough to know that Hashirama was barely restraining rage. “You had laid hands on Madara’s companion.” 

Your name followed, spoken in the same way one would name a jutsu. The mere word stilled the atmosphere in such a way that Hashirama didn’t need explicit confirmation.

Tobirama breathed in.

“Yes.”

Hashirama hummed, deep in thought behind his neutral eyes and deepening frown. Yes, his mind was working quickly, perhaps almost as swiftly as the rising heat of rage in his chest. Hashirama hardly wore his expressions on his face when it came to grave matters, a stark contrast to his usual jovial demeanor. 

“Pick yourself up, brother.”

Tobirama obeyed, and just when he got to his feet, Hashirama’s fist flew mercilessly across Tobirama’s face. It was a strike thrown without frills, just hard knuckle against skin at a velocity unseen. The sound snapped through the room, as red stained Tobirama’s starkly pale skin. He recoiled, having been forced down to one knee from the sheer power of such a simple strike. Hashirama hardly had anything to add, watching as his brother maneuvered his own jaw, popping it back into place. Tobirama’s hand came away with a streak of blood from his ruptured nostril. 

“I cannot say that was not deserved—”

”You best have a great explanation.” Hashirama fidgeted, moving to turn but jerking back toward Tobirama. Hashirama held a hand to his own face, squeezing and massaging the skin of his cheeks as he heavily pondered. He stared off into a corner of the room. “Madara loved Izuna more than anyone else, and I had just barely managed to persuade him into these negotiations—”

—“I know this, brother, the deepest apologies could never—”

“Tobirama, you do understand that you have attacked a civilian?” Hashirama asserted. Another great pause filled the space between them. There was too much to say and little time for it. “You have laid hands on a civilian much smaller than yourself, a diplomatic ally, and the very person that has the most sway over Madara and, by extension, the Uchiha as a whole.” 

Even now, Hashirama's voice held great patience but left little room for escape. He spoke to understand, even as the fate of a unified Land of Fire looked as if it would crash down around him. 

“I need an explanation,” Hashirama said. “If I am to face Madara— for there is no doubt that Madara has already heard word— I require your reasoning.”

He looked Tobirama in the eye, concern and complexity swimming around his dark irises. Tobirama had since picked himself off the floor.

“I am sorry…” Tobirama’s head bowed. “I cannot offer you an explanation that Madara would accept. I am certain that the truth would only make him more furious than he already is.”

“You have bigger issues than Madara if you refuse to speak,” Hashirama said with an acute frown. “Without information from you, I can only assume the worst.”

Tobirama ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, especially out loud. But in the face of his brother, with such important things in the balance, Tobirama couldn’t hesitate. 

“We were involved long ago when we were but children… Perhaps for a series of weeks… Perhaps less,” Tobirama admitted, and to his slight surprise, Hashirama wasn’t fazed. Why would he be when he had also snuck off to see an Uchiha in his youth as well? Tobirama expected no less. He squared his shoulders, clasping his hands together as if delivering a report. “Seeing her after so long… She had brought up things that had happened, and I lost my temper.” His slender eyebrows wrinkled his forehead. He gave a nod of acknowledgment. “I spoke in a foul manner. She, rightfully, retaliated… and I did the same tenfold.”

Tobirama nodded, thinking as to whether he had left anything significant out of his brief summary. Shame coated him like a blanket. It all sounded so trivial when put in such a way.

Hashirama placed his hands on his hips, casting his gaze toward the ceiling. He breathed in deeply, then out.

“Of all the women…” Hashirama sighed, letting his eyes close. “She did not sustain lasting damage, did she?”

“Of course not,” Tobirama defended, sounding almost insulted. “You think I would brutalize a council member unprovoked in the middle of the woods?” He shook his head, his fingers momentarily finding the hair just above his forehead. He raked the strands back like a comb. Tobirama’s eyes also fell shut. He took another breath in as if preparing himself for his next confession. “I pinned her by the neck.”

“By gods, Tobirama!”

“My aim was not to kill or injure.”

“I am sure she was petrified all the same! And you know as well as I that Madara would not see it that way,” Hashirama asserted. “All he will be able to think is that you attacked his companion when he was away—”

—“Please stop referring to her as this.”—

“You could have faintly touched the shoulder of her robes, and that would have been far too much aggression shown toward an Uchiha woman.” Hashirama shook his head.

Tobirama rolled his eyes.

“My regretful actions aside, I do not understand why it should matter whether she is a woman or not.”

“Because the Uchiha are of a different culture, brother. Only a handful of female Uchiha warriors have existed in their history, that being only so many you could have come across, and yet you had to choose Madara’s closest companion to pick a fight with!” He shook his head, letting it fall back into his hand again. “I must go tend to this. We can only hope that Madara remains in a headspace from which he can be talked down.”

Hashirama grabbed his haori, pulling it over his shoulders as he primed himself toward the door. Tobirama didn’t budge. He knew that the mess he made had to be mended by Hashirama. No one else could pull off such a feat.

“I am prepared to take full responsibility,” he said with certainty.

“Madara will certainly demand your head,” Hashirama countered gravely. “We can only hope that creativity finds me on my journey there.”

***

“Where have you been?” you snapped. Madara had barely made it to the compound before you were upon him. “You have been gone for hours!”

You barged out from the Uchiha compound, marching across the dirt clearing to Madara, who stood still. A massive beast was slung across his shoulder, its head handing over his back. 

He scowled. You spoke to him with quite the tongue on you for as long as he could remember. He hadn’t been particularly fond of it then, and ever since he had been chosen as the head of the Uchiha, his tolerance for your attitude had dwindled immensely. Madara checked you far more often, unashamed of using his title to silence you. Still, your familiarity with each other was enough to overpower formalities more often than he would have liked.

“Hunting,” he deadpanned. He spared a momentary glance at the beast draped over his armor.

You looked at it incredulously.

“Is that a deer?” The rest of the council, who were used to your spats with Madara, completely passed the two of you by. They carried their gear, chatting amongst themselves and paying little mind to what you were on about. “You know better than to hunt deer in Nara territory!” 

You placed your fists on your hips, your heart nearly bursting out of your chest after being pent up all afternoon. Of all the times for the Uchiha men to get restless, it had to have been the time you needed them most.

“Well, I will inform you now that while you and the rest of my kinsmen have disappeared for half a day, Tobirama Senju came to this place in search of you!” You huffed, too wrapped up in yourself to notice Madara’s darkened demeanor. You opened your mouth wide to continue, ready to spit venom and fire alike. “I do not even know where to start when it comes to the absolute nerve—”

“I am able to believe such things,” Madara interrupted, his intonation a tick lower than usual. The volume surprised you. He looked at you straight on with a severe air about him. “What did he want? It better have been a very important message to compensate for his coming to this place. Tobirama should know better than to show his face here.”

You sputtered, thrown off by not being able to finish your earlier thought. But with Madara’s words, you were suddenly too caught up in what he said to remember the entire rant you wanted to unleash. You blinked a few times. You had a whole tirade ready that you had carefully been scripting in your head since you dragged yourself back to the compound to await Madara’s return. Now, as things weren’t happening the way they had in your head, you found yourself thrown off.

“Only to deliver a scroll,” you stammered, trying to pick a direction. Your personal issues aside, was there a reason that Tobirama should have been hesitant to show himself at the Uchiha compound? “Did… something happen between you and Hashirama? Because Tobirama came to this place absolutely—”

“A scroll? Bah!” Madara shook his head, waving a hand. He began to march off to follow the rest of his men. “If you are asking just me, I would believe that Hashirama and I are on favorable terms,” he announced into the evening atmosphere. Madara spared a brief, singular glance back at you. “Unless Tobirama suggested otherwise… Even so, a discussion with Hashirama would be paramount before I believe a word that man speaks!” 

Even for his noises of annoyance, Madara appeared almost unconcerned. And while you could see the visible tension in his form on his dismayed expression, Madara continued on.

You followed behind him. You had never been able to keep up with Madara’s long and fast strides. You were convinced he walked like that on purpose. 

“Madara! Will you just let me speak?”

“You have been allowed to speak for the duration of this. Out with whatever is negging you so.”

The head of the beast he carried laid limply over his shoulder, or perhaps the better term would have been heads. It was some sort of two-headed deer with great antlers, a good portion of which dug into the back of Madara’s armor. It couldn’t have been comfortable to carry. 

You breathed in with certainty.

“While you were away, Tobirama had come to this place and raised a hand to me—”

“Madara! My friend! Talking about me, are you?” Hashirama’s voice drowned you out completely.

You turned in shock as Hashirama made his way up the hill, trudging through the dirt path with a great smile and wave of his hand. From the little time you had been acquainted with him, he had always been rather loud when he grew excited. Even during negotiations, the sheer volume of his voice was enough to hear from several rooms over. 

Madara turned as well with a sigh. He readjusted the deer on his shoulder.

“Will no one let me place this thing down?” He lamented to no one in particular. His voice rose when he called across the clearing. “What do you want, Hashirama?”

”No need to be so hostile, Madara!” Hashirama laughed, making short work of the distance between you. “Do I need a reason to visit?”

It was in one moment that you made eye contact. Hashirama’s gaze met yours, and in that connection, his eyes flickered from wide and jovial to wary. The upturned corner of his lip faltered, and it all happened in an undetectable fraction of a second.

He knew. 

There was noise all around you. Madara continued to speak, sighing and complaining as the noises of nocturnal bugs seemed to grow to an unbearable volume. Even the gentle evening breeze seemed to hit your ears in just the right way as to be almost deafening.

Despite how authentic it might have been, you knew that Hashirama’s upbeat and charismatic demeanor was a calculated tool. For as energetic as he was, there was always a certain volume that masked the way in which Hashirama played his cards close to his chest. 

And yet, for all the noise, it only took one look at Hashirama—one pointed gaze that pierced through his carefully crafted diplomatic demeanor—to understand your mutual situation instantly. 

He had come to begin damage control, and you had yet to tell Madara what Tobirama had done. As long as Hashirama wasn’t here to pick a fight, the discussions were still on the table, contrary to Tobirama’s earlier threat.

— “Hashirama?”

Madara’s voice cut through your mental stare. Hashirama’s shock was visible but melted quickly into an endearingly sheepish expression.

”My apologies, my friend, you must speak up!” he laughed. Madara groaned with a roll of his eyes, once again readjusting the deer on his shoulder. 

“I hardly have the time for these things!” He frowned. “What are you doing here, Hashirama? If you do not answer, we can settle your matter during daylight hours.”

“The sun still prevails!” Hashirama gestured loosely toward the setting sun, and in the golden light, you stole another pointed gaze toward each other. “But truly, I wanted to apologize for my brother.”

Madara glanced in your direction.

“Go inside.”

“You speak as if I have not participated in every diplomacy session for the last two sunsets,” you countered. 

Madara hardly had the time to eye you warily. And after a long hunt, Madara had too little patience for beating around the bush. He had truthfully wanted to be rid of you and Hashirama. But as he glanced between the two of you, he knew that trying to avoid one would pick a battle with the other. Reluctantly, Madara’s eyes settled on Hashirama.

“Tobirama should have been relieved that myself and the rest of the council were not here to humor his lapse in judgment,” Madara reluctantly gruffed with a deep scowl. “We may be engaging in peace negotiations, but bear in mind that the passing of my own brother was not all that long ago.”  

His words struck you, the weight of them looming overhead as your mind had yet to piece things together. 

“We may be on friendly terms with the Senju as a whole, but a killer entering our estate is pushing the limits on our… courtesy. Especially with a lady present with no guardian by her side.”

Madara didn’t talk much about Izuna or the nature of his death. Aside from the night Madara begged you to accompany him to the village negotiations, Izuna’s name hadn’t come up since, no matter how much you pushed.

You had wanted to talk about him so as not to let his memory fade, but Madara had refused to speak about the matter. You dropped it, a part of you trying to be understanding while the other was far too wrapped up in the fact that the ceasefire had turned your world upside down.

“Most certainly; we are in complete agreement.” Hashirama nodded profusely. “I will ensure that he will not play courier in the future.”

And yet, when Madara spoke of Izuna’s death to Hashirama on a random summer night in the clearing just outside the Uchiha dwellings, you knew the truth. You just didn’t quite believe it. It hadn’t hit you yet.

“That would be agreeable,” Madara agreed. A beat passed. Hashirama made no motion to leave or speak. “Anything else you wish to discuss?”

Hashirama stole another glance at you.

“Yes, in fact, this is not all I wanted to speak about—”

“I was not aware that Tobirama had been the one to kill Izuna,” you said, your voice projected by pure shock. But the volume aside, the words were enough to slice through the clearing and still the powerful men that stood before you. 

The entire sentence had been flat, devoid of shock, hurt, or anger. It was a statement in every sense of the word that nearly forced the air in the clearing to a thick, atmospheric standstill. 

It felt odd to say out loud like none of the words you spoke were words at all. You could feel the reality of it all floating around you, like tiny particles of truth hovering over your shoulders, ready to fill your chest like crashing waves. And yet, no sensation came. 

It was an objective truth devoid of sharpness, unable to penetrate the core of your soul. Reality felt numb, the shapes of things in your vision sharpening significantly as the most minute textures and details became glaring. 

You thought it would have felt as if the world was crashing down… and yet all you could feel was the warmth of the little embers that had been sparked in your chest.

Hashirama’s tongue recoiled as Madara turned toward you with regretful concern. 

“Is this true?” you asked. 

All Madara could do was look at you before deflating his chest with a deep sigh. He didn’t answer. Hashirama stood by. It didn’t take an emotional genius to recognize that now was hardly the time to have the conversation he had come all this way to have. And yet, the repercussions of leaving you and Madara to hash out the details surrounding his beloved brother’s death were even more daunting. 

“Hashirama—” It was another instance of Hashirama not being where his feet were. He blinked a few times, the motion of his surprise subtle as you and Madara stood closely before him. “Unless your matter is urgent, I must ask you to save this discussion for another date.”

Hashirama took a steady breath in, taking the nanosecond that he had to consider the facts in front of him. He saw Madara fatigued and moderately high-strung. And perhaps he could have worked with that if it wasn’t for the outlier: you. 

You stood by Madara’s side, having overstayed your welcome in the conversation long enough to have swerved the topic so off-topic that it would be impossible for Hashirama to even consider bringing up the indiscretion that Tobirama had committed against you. His brother had wronged both you and Madara. Hashirama knew he either had to nip it in the bud and risk making matters worse or leave the two of you alone. In doing so, he would be trusting that, for whatever reason, you would continue to hold your tongue about your interaction with Tobirama.

“Bah, woman, is it your intention to make things difficult? My shoulder has been bearing the weight of your dinner; I will have you know!”

“It is hardly the fault of my own!... Hunting in Nara territory… What were you thinking? You knew better than this!”

Madara scoffed.

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

“Were not these the thoughts that clouded your brain when you held such crucial information away from me, Madara?”

Right. Right. 

Hashirama bobbed his head a few times and held one hand up to bid the two of you goodbye. Neither of you noticed. 

***

It always started with something like this: something that didn’t bother you until you and Madara bickered more and more. And suddenly, the jabs made half lightly turned into actual problems. Or perhaps they were problems when you initially picked a fight with him, masked by pettiness until you hardly had the restraint to hold your punches.

With Hashirama long forgotten, you bickered all over the Uchiha compound. Hell, you had exchanged words over Madara breaking down the deer he brought back. The antlers— you had decided over verbal blows— would be returned to the Nara to use in their medicine as a gesture of goodwill. Any additional meat that wasn’t roasted over the fire that the other Uchiha had been tending to outside would be salted and brought to the Nara aunties to be incorporated into the next day’s lunch. 

This all, of course, meant nothing to you in the face of the revelation you had uncovered during Madara’s and Hashirama’s conversation. 

“I had known that this would be the outcome,” Madara had sighed following a bombardment of questions. “I bring it upon myself at this point.”

It wasn’t until Madara was finished with all of his tasks and appeared to be looking for anything else to do that you finally cornered him on the engawa. 

“Why?” You had called into the night. 

You gazed at the back of Madara’s large form. Lanterns burned around you, casting a gentle, warm glow onto the wood at your feet. Fireflies and other creatures of the night hovered somewhere in the darkness, the blackness of the night making your wooden engawa feel like the only place in the world. And perhaps at that moment, the Uchiha dwellings were all that existed to you. 

“Was it a surrender?” you asked. You would nearly say you cried it, but no tears welled in your eyes. Your face scrunched, puzzled, as you tried to assemble the pieces. “Has this all been a convoluted way of us begging for our lives?”

Madara stood still, just like the world around you. You were sure he had something heated on his tongue, something along the lines of these things not affecting you. But it did affect you. 

Helplessness was not foreign to you, and yet, for everything that happened up until now, you have never felt as utterly helpless in your life.

You kept pushing and pushing him, knowing he would explode soon enough. But perhaps that was the point; you wanted him to explode. You wanted something, any sort of information that might make you feel less helpless than you felt. 

But for Madara’s infamous temper, he was resigned.

“I suppose it was a surrender in a sense,” he admitted. “For Hashirama defeated me in battle.” 

He kept talking, but you expected more. You expected to be told your place and to keep your nose out of things that weren’t your concern. 

It all made little sense to you. There was little logic to you in the first place. You were a simple apothecary— who shouldn’t have even had that position— becoming the most important Uchiha woman practically overnight. You shouldn’t have known a single detail. You shouldn’t have exchanged words with the Uchiha council, let alone national dignitaries. 

Madara was clan head. 

Madara should have been strong enough for the Uchiha. 

He was smarter than this. He was more driven than this, yet the Uchiha floundered on a field that wasn’t battle. Madara should have taken care of it all just as he promised! Madara shouldn’t have put any of it on your shoulders in asking you to be with him, especially if he knew he was out of his league. 

You wanted a fight.

You stared at the back of Madara’s head, watching as he began to retreat.

You took a deep breath in before you called, “And so you betray the last words of your brother?”

“Woman!” Madara roared for the first time that evening. He whipped around, the sheer tick in volume making you flinch. But even so, you faced him without fear, the ember in your chest flaring to life to form a great flame. You didn’t move from where you stood, even as Madara stepped forward. Your eyes widened in anticipation.

You were picking a lot of fights as of late.

He had a feral look in his eye that only intensified with the glow of his sharingan. The very sight of his red irises made you feel small, shrinking as you lowered your head, trying to hide your excited glee. You gritted your teeth, ready to engage in the verbal fisticuffs you graciously requested.

But to your disappointment, Madara almost seemed to deflate. His eyes closed as tension built up in his forehead. He ran a hand across his face with a deep sigh.

The nocturnal creatures of the forest continued to chirp around you. They were the only things keeping you anchored to the reality below your feet. 

“You want a story, do you?” Madara muttered in a soft tone that didn’t suit him. “You want me to tell you about my duel with Hashirama?”

His finger gently found the bottom of your chin. Madara tilted your head up before his arms coiled over his chest. It was another action that didn’t suit him, yet the night continued to surround you, enveloping you in a muted blanket of protection from the outside world. 

It felt like the summers of your youth. Festivities and special events happened during the day, leaving reprieve and anticipation to the night. The air in the Land of Fire was prone to mugginess to the point where it was almost stifling without the cool air that sailed through the trees. But even so, it smelled the same as it did back then. Your skin felt a bit sticky, but not to an overly uncomfortable extent. You were just warm, almost warm enough to sleep. 

“I had left our home in anger— in grief. I was fully intent on Hashirama and I killing each other the moment I tracked him down. And, as honorable as he is, Hashirama allowed the duel I sought. I suppose I should have known it would only result in a loss,” Madara narrated. Another victory for Hashirama was undoubtedly a blow to his ego, but Madara told the tale levelly. The tone in and of itself carried a great respect.

“And he had simply spared you,” you assumed.

“Nay,” Madara answered. “Hashirama had all the opportunity to finish me then and there. I had practically asked him to honor me with a warrior's death, for then perhaps I could have been reunited with Izuna… but instead, he presented me with a proposal.” Madara made a vague gesture. “This. These negotiations with the hope that we might stop fighting.”

You breathed. The lanterns flickered in the dark, only providing enough light to barely illuminate Madara’s somber face.

“And you believed him,” you finally spoke. “Why?”

Something flashed across Madara’s dark irises, a certain softness to pair with his regretful resignation.

“I would not expect you to understand,” he said. The corners of his lips dipped into a slight frown.

You let him simmer, once again unsatisfied. And truly, there was nothing else to do but probe, not when the Uchiha compound was the only thing comprising your world. Or perhaps it wasn’t the compound as much as it was the engawa upon which you and Madara stood.

“Do you consider that Hashirama believes in us as strongly as you believe in him?” you asked.

Another moment passed.

“Yes.”

“And what do you think of this in the context of all of this? Do you think Hashirama would be in favor of our equality in the village?”

“I believe that Hashirama holds pure intentions.” 

Hashirama, not the Senju. And certainly not the rest of the clans gathered. 

Your eyes narrowed.

“And you think that will make a difference?”

The embers in the lanterns suddenly flared, glowing only slightly bigger. The glow that cast across Madara’s face brightened for only a moment, making the shadows that enveloped his right side seem darker. His black hair held a golden sheen to it. 

“That is yet to be foreseen.”

***

Madara retired early that night. He decided he didn’t want to talk any further, rejecting all speak about Hashirama and Tobirama. Like before Hashirama’s visit, any further mention of Izuna was once again forbidden. But despite one thing in its singularity returning to normal, Madara, ever physical, arrogant, and stubborn, appeared far more pensive as of late. 

He was quiet. It was odd seeing him so quiet. It felt wrong seeing a fighter such as Madara so limp. Despite what your teenage self would have protested, you almost missed Madara’s pompous confidence and self-righteousness. As tiring as he was, his attitude always gave him a spark: a fire that had been missing ever since his defeat at the hands of Hashirama. 

You wanted to ask him, “Where is your fire?”

Perhaps it was because the context of bloodshed was the only place he knew how to fight in the first place. He might have known no other way. And yet, it was odd— painful even— to see Madara out of his element. 

He seemed lost, pushing toward a goal he did not even know how to achieve. His seemingly blind loyalty to Hashirama was another mystery. While Hashirama was undoubtedly a great man, you could hardly say you knew much about him. You undoubtedly didn’t know enough to wrap your head around Madara’s unyielding trust in the man whose throat he’d held a kunai to for a lifetime. Perhaps he was right when he said you wouldn’t understand. 

Perhaps none of it was Hashirama at all. A greater part of you knew that it wasn’t the defeat that plagued Madara’s mind, and that idea holed itself somewhere in the back of your thoughts. 

You couldn’t sleep. 

The memory of Izuna haunted you, something you thought you shoved into a neat lockbox the night Madara came to the apothecary. You hardly remembered him for his last, bitter interaction with you following the Uchiha council’s meeting, but rather the night following the failed raid on the Uchiha settlement. You remembered how he stood in your apothecary, surrounded by candlelight, marred by blood and gore despite his clean hands. 

“Why is it always about what Madara wants?” you had asked him, banking on Izuna picking up the subtext you were too afraid to say out loud. 

There was a brief moment, a second of thought, where you wondered if saying the quiet part out loud would have made a difference. Instead, he haunted you: a spirit of a dear childhood friend, a brother in all aspects but blood, and a potential of something and nothing that faded with the strike of Tobirama Senju’s sword.

Tobirama Senju: another man you wanted to forget. You refused to think of him at all. The mere thought of him made you cringe, yet the rage he had spurred on brought you here.

It was the one place where you thought you could feel a semblance of control over your present. You could sit in the council chambers and imagine what it would look like to have a novel idea. But now, you found yourself hiding again, pressed against a wooden beam in the dark as hushed voices deliberated inside. 

The memory of the initial meeting flashed across your thoughts as you stood outside the discussion hall. You had long since extinguished your lamp, holding it near your hip and close to the ground as you flared your sharingan. Your back met the outside of the hall, unabashedly listening in on the muffled conversation within. 

The walls were made of paper, as was traditional, and any structure that wasn’t made of paper was made of wood. The walls of the Uchiha meeting hall were made similarly, and you couldn’t help but wonder if your many nights of peering through those cracks were to prepare you for this very moment. 

You were drawn to the hall, following only aimless instinct after your discussion with Madara.

“And you think it wise to offer the Uchiha such a central location?” You heard. You weren’t acquainted well enough with all the clan heads to properly recall who was speaking. It sounded like Hyūga if you were to take a guess. A laugh resounded from inside the meeting room.

“Do you desire their proposed allocation?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then leave it be,” the second voice said, “You knew as well as I that any intelligence that Madara holds ends at the battlefield. Best to get them out of the way now. From there, we have more room to talk policy.”

The voices drifted, and as the collection of clan leaders trickled into the hall, you swiftly fled into the forest line to lie in wait. The collection of clan leaders slowly trickled out of the conference building, chattering amongst themselves. The head of the Fuma clan, an old ally of the Uchiha, and Inuzuka, to your surprise, were among the gathered. 

It was long past sunset, but that didn’t seem to affect the way they loitered outside the conference hall before slowly departing back toward their respective dwellings. You observed their hushed whispers from the canopy of a tree, sitting amongst rough wood and biting insects until the clan heads and their respective trustees left into the dark. 

You waited. You waited a few moments longer to ensure they all had left before you dismounted from your hiding place. Slowly, you approached the hall and quietly slipped in the door. 

The negotiation hall was still. And only when you determined that no one was left in the building did you relight the ember of your lantern. You scoured the rooms, starting with the one the three clan heads had just met in.

You weren’t surprised when you found it exactly how it had been set up. The room was spotless, with everything neatly in place, as you’d expect from high-ranking shinobi. 

You wandered to the main negotiation room just down the hall, where all the clan heads would gather again the next morning. It, too, was still.

You placed your lamp down at the table, taking a seat in Madara’s chair. You gazed across the room at where Hashirama would sit the next day. A neutral painting hung on the wall above his seat.    

You thought about the way Madara reluctantly consented to your use of the sharingan to record the conversation. You thought back to the charged looks exchanged between you, Madara, Hashirama, and Tobirama. How could you forget? 

You took a small stack of pages from your robes, a quill from your hair, and a bottle of ink from a string around your waist. You kept an internal record of the meeting and, by extension, a written one. Papers quickly consumed your waking hours since the discussions began. 

The other council members, Madara included, hardly touched papers, let alone put a quill to them. And plot to undermine the Uchiha aside, the whispering clan heads were correct. The Uchiha council were warriors through and through. The entire council had been chosen through battle, as Madara had been chosen as clan head. Scribing was not in their wheelhouse, nor was it in their interests.

It had only been a short time since negotiations began, hardly a week, let alone a handful of days. The Uchiha had yet to give a formal dissertation. Rather, Madara spoke strongly about what he was in favor of, what ideas he rejected, and almost predominantly off-cuff when it came to any ideas he had of his own. Ones that he almost always failed to share with you until it mattered.  

You had penned a few of these rough notes down on the pages below your wrists. As you studied the pen strokes, you couldn’t help but consider that many of Madara’s ideas were strikingly coherent, branching into topics from economic policy to the village grid. However, they lacked structure, well-thought-out details, and were surface-level at best. It didn’t matter how good his speeches were or how well you penned your notes if they couldn’t hold up to basic probing. 

The Uchiha didn’t have a proposal, especially not in the way that other clans did, but were expected to speak soon. Other clans were far better with organization, preparing lengthy dissertations and proposals that would be open for discussion and, ultimately, a vote. A haphazard way of running things, the proposed ideas were arranged by category and run through several rounds of deliberations and cuts until the most popular compromise prevailed.

You studied your handwriting, and the ink started to look less and less like words. You couldn’t make sense of it either, and for all the times your breath hitched when Madara should have done something different during the conference, you had no better ideas yourself. Rather, it took several read-throughs to wrap your head around the complex topics, hardly knowing a good idea from a bad one.

The Uchiha were a battle-minded clan, and you were a woman apothecary who was almost entirely self-taught. Then there was Madara. His struggle with bureaucratic competency aside, he might not have said it, but Madara was incredibly invested in a village of unity. You could see it when you spoke on the engawa. Madara himself aside, it was the only way forward where the Uchiha could even think of seeing the future. 

You considered your leverage and the grief that plagued Madara’s heart. Finally, the unlikely last piece of the puzzle was the negotiations as a whole. 

You gathered the documents and slid them into a hidden compartment of your robes for safekeeping. The warm glow of the tiny ember in your lamp illuminated your face in golden orange light before you blew the flame out. The smoke wafted up into the air, leaving the scent of burning in your nose.

***

A water fixture sat near the Senju dwellings. And at the risk of sounding dubious with your words, its structure felt very Senju in a way you couldn’t quite put your finger on. The water ran from a small pond adorned with lilies and tall grasses and down a manufactured stream lined with round river stones. 

You made your way through the yard, stopping in the center to watch the stream run across the stone. Although, it appeared you weren’t quite as stealthy as you thought you were.

“I could have sworn you were Madara coming to take my head for my transgressions.” 

When you turned, Tobirama was ducking through the doorway and emerging out from the darkness of the Senju dwellings and onto the engawa. You turned away from the stream, quelling the startled jump in your chest. He was, after all, who you had come to see. 

Tobirama’s expression was neutral: neither pleased nor displeased with your arrival at the Senju dwellings so late at night. His surprise, however, was palpable in the air. The feeling was mutual.

You opened your mouth to speak, but before you could utter a word, Tobirama stepped down from the tall engawa and onto the ground below. It all happened quickly: the near effortless leap to the garden to meet you, your panicked step back, and as Tobirama began to bow, you had quickly ordered him to stop.

He had made it to one knee, seeming to freeze in place with the one word for him to halt. It was another instance where you had confused the both of you. His eyes cast down somewhere random; his forehead crinkled as he pondered his actions and wondered where he had gone wrong. Tobirama placed his other knee on the ground and gripped the pebbles below, fully intending to repent with a deep bow. 

Clans and other politics were far from his mind. He was ready to place his pride aside to grovel, but you scolded him again.

“Stop.” It was hard to determine exactly what your tone was. Not quite angry, not quite frightened, your voice was far from neutral and yet far too composed to place an emotion properly. As much as your heart beat loudly in your chest, Tobirama hardly knew better. How could he in the face of your scornful gaze? “Get up.”

Tobirama made piercing eye contact from his bowed position. You stood a distance before him, fists balled and jaw tensed. 

Slowly, he rose to his feet. Even when his face was nearly on the ground, Tobirama held a presence over the courtyard, and the energy he reined over hardly dwindled as he stood at his full height.

He was tall, perhaps even taller than Madara, and yet you hardly felt the domineering presence you grew used to in the Uchiha settlement. You practically expected it from a warrior as bulky and stoic as Tobirama. He seemed to have grown bitter in the years you had been apart. Hardened. Logical. And yet the dark chakra that seemed to drip from Madara in spades was not present in the Senju courtyard. 

Tobirama almost made himself another fixture of the garden, one you might glaze over if your eyes were to bounce across the foliage. You weren’t great at sensing the chakra of others unless the output was explicit— you were hardly one to use jutsu on a regular basis— but if Tobirama was letting any of his energy slip, you couldn’t sense an ounce. He was calm, ready to accept whatever punishment you were there to serve him.

In fact, he reminded you of…

“Is it true that you were the one who had slain Izuna?”

“Yes.”

The answer came quicker than you thought it would. In its singularity, the word was void of a brag or a boast. It came quickly, the noise not overstayed in the air—a singular truth.

You huffed, squaring your shoulders as you swiftly marched forward. You hitched the sleeve of your robes as you did, quickly closing the gap between the two of you as you wound up for a hefty strike. You walked until you were directly in front of Tobirama, arm cocked and at the ready. But for as quickly as the ember inside of you had flared to life, it extinguished into little more than smoke.

Tobirama had closed his eyes, and you hadn’t noticed that he had actually lowered himself a bit to allow better access to strike his face. When the hit didn’t come, he opened his eyes again, ever-neutral. 

You took a step back and lowered your arm, and it wasn’t until you were a few steps away that Tobirama stood tall once more. Then, he waited. 

“Hashirama and Madara… they have met before,” you spoke the accusation softly. 

“Yes, they were friends once.” His voice rumbled like he was narrating a story. Tobirama was straightforward, and the new information came with neither fondness nor judgment. After all, who was Tobirama to judge the way in which Madara and Hashirama met?

 You took a deep breath in before letting a steady stream of air out. The motion melted some of the tension in your shoulders. It was just one new piece of knowledge you didn’t know before, yet the affirmation of your suspicions somehow made you feel slightly less alone.

“Did they meet—” You only wondered momentarily if you should say the quiet part out loud. — “Were they like us? The way we met?”

“I suppose,” Tobirama answered. “Although—” He glanced away for a moment that barely caused a pause in his words before meeting your eyes once again. —- “I hardly believe that the two of them were doing anything like… what we were doing.” 

You quickly tore your gaze away.

“You have become bitter and vulgar.”

“It is simply the truth.”

The small stream continued to trickle behind you, and the sound of water pouring over water was a constant background noise to your aimless conversation. You took another deep breath. 

“You have more,” Tobirama said. Aside from the few times you had witnessed his temper, you found that Tobirama tried to hold things close to his chest. This included the question behind his simple, three-letter sentence. You wondered, during the time between him talking and you answering, if it was because of his temper that he tried to keep so stoic.

“While Madara certainly seems confident that the Senju will not betray us, I would like a safety net.”

“The Senju have no intentions of betraying the Uchiha,” Tobirama put plainly and curtly. He pushed back on you a bit more forcefully this time, red irises boring into you. “Might I remind you that Hashirama took the initiative and spared the Uchiha—”

“I do not truly care for the minutia.” You didn’t know the whole story, but you weren’t about to let Tobirama know that.

“Well, you should.” The corner of his lips twitched downward slightly, but he gave little else. “If you are to engage in these negotiations, I would advise you to keep the details in mind.” 

“It does not take a genius to realize that the Uchiha are perceived as a threat to be undermined during negotiations.”

“We are the wrong people to be having these discussions.” His words came out more like a sigh, despite the mounting pressure of your exchange.

Tobirama shook his head, melting a bit into a more relaxed stance as he did. He was certainly still tense, but the deflating of his shoulders only highlighted the stress that had filled them moments ago. 

“Hashirama has no intention of acting in any other way than good faith. He and your clan head want this village to become a reality the most, you know,” he said.

Tobirama waited for you to respond, pursing his lips inward. He nodded a few times as if something else was on his mind. The time that passed when you didn’t respond appeared to make him restless.

“Your people will defend themselves as much as you will collaborate with others,” he continued. “It is truly not so different than any other negotiation you have done. Perhaps even similar to that of your alliances with the Fuma and the Hagoromo.”

“Most certainly,” you said, vaguely recalling the exchange of sake cups between the two allied clan heads with little other discourse. The Uchiha had, after all, been the most powerful force in the area, and an alliance saved both clans from being pushed from their territories. They had little to stand on other than a few generations of goodwill and Madara’s favor.

“I am confident the proposal that Madara has written up is a strategy that will give every scribe a run for their coin indeed,” Tobirama huffed begrudgingly.

“Most certainly.” You nodded, wondering if you had missed word about a monetary fee. You didn’t quite understand him. It must have been a Senju turn of phrase.

The stream continued to babble in the background. The night only seemed to grow darker, almost completely enveloping the lone lantern that glowed at the far end of the compound. Even so, the light was enough to make out the bare minimum of your surroundings, and your superior vision made up for the rest. Tobirama didn’t appear bothered by the lack of light. You wondered if he felt just as nostalgic meeting in the dark as you did. 

“Madara does not have a plan, does he?”

“Most certainly not.” You probably shouldn’t have answered so honestly, especially in the context of the negotiations and your long, strained history with Tobirama Senju, but he was going to deduce it either way. “That is why I am here.”

Tobirama’s bottom lip tensed. You could tell he was trying to fight a disdainful scowl. He wasn’t doing a great job. 

“Did my brother not already pay a visit to the Uchiha dwellings?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Did I not already try offering you my deepest apologies—” You hummed in confirmation. — “To which you had refused?”

“You can offer your apologies in a different way—you know politics and formalities. You are good with your words. Seeing you at the unity banquet was enough to know this.” You squared your shoulders, tilting your chin up. Your gaze drifted away momentarily as you fished for the documents in your robes. “You may offer your apologies by assisting the Uchiha in formulating a compelling proposal—”

“Absolutely not.”

— “That will ensure our fair share of resources and land in the unified village. And the Senju will back us on the matters we pursue.” You held out the notes you took. Tobirama barely craned his neck to glance at them before he crossed his arms over his chest. “That is how you can repent for laying your hands on me… and for striking down Izuna.”

Tobirama’s piercing gaze flickered up to yours. He apparently gave up his efforts to suppress his scowl. 

“You are absolutely mad.”

“I believe that I am being fairly calm.”

He leaned forward, bending slightly at the waist. His arms were still coiled over his chest.

“You are absolutely out of your head,” Tobirama corrected, gesturing to his temple before returning to his upright position. You understood that one. Tobirama nearly waved you off then and there. “You know that what you demand is impossible, just as much as it is ethically dubious. You cannot expect this of me with any ounce of true seriousness. This is all not to mention that the thing you hold is hardly even a proposal! They, they— they are scribbles at best.”

“If your answer is no, then perhaps your clan— as well as the others— should be aware of your actions,” you snapped, pulling out the weapon that Tobirama was waiting all this time to hear. “The Uchiha are out of their league. I would rather utilize your skillset than cause waves amongst the clans, but I will do so if I must.”

“If that is what you deem appropriate, then so be it,” Tobirama spoke sharply. A pang reverberated throughout your chest. He had called your bluff. “Actions have consequences, and I am ready to atone for my own.” 

“I am presenting a way for you to now.”

“I would have much preferred if you struck me if I can speak candidly,” Tobirama muttered. He shifted where he stood, shaking his head. His shoulder jerked back to adjust the way his robes sat. “I cannot play advisor for Madara. I apologize; I cannot do this for you… There are boundaries for these things.”

Tobirama spoke in the way he always did: neutrally, resigned, and lacking in true harshness despite the nature of his words. He stared at you, once again waiting for you to speak. 

“Well then,” you spoke, having little clue what was actually going to come out of your mouth next. You stood a bit straighter, steeling your resolve. You placed a hand over your chest. “Play advisor to me. Review what I have written. Ensure that Hashirama supports it by daylight.”

Tobirama said nothing as he quirked an eyebrow. And slowly, his cold exterior began to crack from the brows down. He snorted, his shoulders bouncing as his head dropped into an amused swivel. 

You hardly noticed how your breath hitched or when you began holding it. But when the air left your chest, it did so with a stuttering, burning huff. The hiccups between the stream of air held the remaining face you held. 

And not one to be laughed at, you turned to leave.

Tobirama only spoke as you began to march away.

“Alright.”

The singular word made you freeze in your tracks. Tobirama’s head dipped again somewhere behind you, bobbing a few times as his arms uncoiled and his hands found his hips. By the time you turned around, Tobirama’s mouth had formed a tight line, barely restraining the amused smirk that tugged at his cheeks. 

“Pardon?” You blinked.

“Alright,” he repeated, the semblance of a smile melting into a serious expression once more. “My debt is to you, not Madara,” he hummed with a bounce of his brows. “I will take a look at your drafts as long as they were written by you.” Tobirama nodded in affirmation, gesturing toward you to accent his counteroffer.

You breathed in, an awful pang reverberating through your chest. Overcome by a moment of pure instinct and guts, you hadn’t thought he’d take you seriously. 

Wait—

“And you are aware that I know nothing of politics!” You gulped, a part of you thinking that perhaps Tobirama would revoke his consent in favor of your earlier proposition. 

What were you thinking?

“Not much less than Madara from your explanation,” Tobirama muttered with another bounce of his light eyebrows. 

“That is different!” you snapped. “Madara is at least a—” 

The sight of Tobirama’s narrowing eyes made you falter. They moved almost independently of the rest of his face, shrinking inward in scrutiny before returning to their original size. It all happened with one subtle beat, but it was enough to throw you off your train of thought.

Seeming to sense your hesitation, Tobirama continued,

“You have put these ideas belonging to Madara to paper. Continue to do this. Probe him for details, granted he has them, and have the draft approved by Madara. I will assist you in polishing the final product.” Tobirama nodded, almost seeming to warm up the idea in real time as the corner of his mouth dipped in thought. “The Uchiha will receive what they fight for— I cannot make guarantees— but in terms of atonement, I agree to guide your strategy.”

Your strategy. He spoke as if you were some military officer.

“It is a deal.” You didn’t give yourself time to think. You couldn’t afford it, and if you changed your mind later, you were sure you could burn that bridge when you got to it. He was giving you exactly what you wanted, after all. You had little room to complain after the fact.

You offered Tobirama a nod, wanting little else than to retreat. But when you turned on your heel to disappear into the night, Tobirama called your name. 

It spilled from his lips in an almost questioning tone, as if he had something to add, but the fact that he had called you at all made you stop in your tracks. The syllables sounded weird coming from him, and it occurred to you that it was the first time you heard him speak your name in years. 

You turned, your heart beating heavily and steady in your chest as you met Tobirama’s eye. He cleared his throat.

“The blackmail—” His head dipped as if you were trying to hide the way his lips contorted into a slight smile before his gaze returned to yours. —“It was a nice touch.”

Your voice stalled in your throat.

“I am sure that it will make you think twice the next time you are about to behave brutishly,” you oped with a frown. It was officially too late in the night for further repartee. 

“Certainly it shall.” Tobirama bowed his head, and when he looked up, you were gone.

Thank you to all who liked, reblogged, followed, and supported. Your support means so much and is greatly appreciated.

Notes: Part of me wanted to make everything up until now split into Act I and Act II, with this section being maybe Act II or III. Because it feels like a different story, doesn't it? And it feels like it's just starting. This is where the crux of what I wanted to write is actually coming which is crazy. Go figure... 11 chapters of set up.

A recommendation for the Madara fans; The Head, The Neck (Madara x Reader) reads like an alternate universe in which you let Madara marry you. Unfortunately, 'tis only a oneshot. Foul Creature did have a sister series that also took place in the village negotiations and featured Madara as the main love interest. However, I don't think I'll drop the link to that since I don't have plans to update it anytime soon.

I think I'm going to set a loftier goal for the next chapter. I miss Yonji and want to write a chapter of ... And the Beast before chapter 12 of this series. This one is also so long it should be enough content to hold everyone over. Let's set it at 100 likes and 50 reblogs, no restrictions. See you later.

Tag list: @gracefulbumblebee @norasincubi @rahatake @frvv

| Chapter I | Previous Chapter | Part XI (Current Chapter)|

Full chapter list: Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part X

[astralis-ortus]

beyond forever and eternity

✱ husband!bc x fem!reader

— love cannot survive on luck alone.

w.count → 0.8k genre → fluff warning → chan referred to as chris, quite the amount of kisses, mild cussing, and the usual very ew-you're-so-in-love behavior. also, reader is addressed as wifey twice! a.n → based on this request! but friends, i think you need to stop me from all this domestic chan thing because i!! am!! dying!! from!! all!! the!! cuteness!!ㅠ /j ⋆ see masterlist

the past year had felt like the best time of your life.

sure, the first 6 months were filled with one heck of an emotional rollercoaster—a bunch of final wedding preparations, taking care of all the confusing legal papers, making sure your new home with chris was up to both your expectations, and actually having the wedding within the span of 180 days made you wonder if everything was real.

the latter part of the year is when your new reality starts to sink in. some days, it happened when you woke up next to a softly snoring chris—curls as messy as a bird’s nest, yet you couldn’t help but tread your fingers through those dark locks. some others, it happened when you watch his back while he showed off his newly acquired cooking skill, giggling away while chris convinces you—though it sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself—that everything’s going exactly to plan.

other days, however, it happens simply when you caught a glance of the stack of beautiful silver bands on your ring finger, gleaming softly under the light of your cozy living room. you’d then look at your husband sitting next to you, faint crease decorating his forehead as his gaze focuses on a project he’d been working on for the past hour or so. you’d gently bring your finger to tap on those crease, immediately erasing its existence as chris shifted his focus towards you, gaze softening along the appearance of his dimpled smile.

being married to chris had felt like coming home—like he has always been everything you’ve been looking for and more.

“has it started?”

chris’ soft voice along with the warmth of his arm snaking around your waist swiftly snapped you out of your trance, gaze returning to your husband’s smile. you silently shook your head, instead wrapping your arms around his waist and gave into his warmth while allowing a content sigh to slip past your lips. “wasn’t paying attention, honestly,” you admitted, to which he immediately returned with chuckle.

“you’re sleepy?” he gently planted his lips on your forehead while running his palm on your side. “wanna call it a night?”

“no!” you whined, lips pursing in protest. “i’m not sleepy. besides, it’s only like 2 minutes till new year, and i want to spend the first seconds awake with my husband,” you playfully emphasized—and there it was. the rosy bloom across his face quietly surfaces despite chris’ attempt to play it cool, and it never fails to amuse you.

guess it won’t be hard for you to bet that you’ll never be the only one in love in this relationship.

“gosh, wifey,” looking at you with a scrunched nose, chris finally let the adoration bubbling in his chest win when he playfully ruffles your hair—which, of course, earns a string of protests from you, “do you really love me that much?”

“think so,” you stuck out your tongue, eyes twinkling as you decide to further tease your now-red-as-a-tomato husband. “i think i love you so so so much to the point i might pass out. i mean, how can i not? you’re charming, you’re adorable, you’re handsome, you’re hot as fuck—how do you expect me not to? i’m just—“

you haven’t been paying attention—but again, how could you? your gaze had been fixated on chris’ beautiful features, taking notes on every minuscule scar and freckles painted across his blooming face; but as the plush of his lips shuts off your rambling ones, warm hands cradling your equally warm cheeks,

you could hear the fireworks within you harmonize with the colorful blasts outside the window of your hotel room.

you know you’re lucky—despite believing in the concept of soulmates, you know there are universes where your path with chris’ remains as distant, separated parallel lines. you know that nurturing your relationship with chris will have its ups and downs. you know what you have now with chris will forever be both unbreakable and fragile,

and you’re determined to turn your every day with chris as special as it could be.

“happy new year, wifey,” he mumbled quietly, lips fixed into a smile as it grazed against yours when he finally pulled away. pads of fingers tucking the stray strands off your face, chris followed the kisses across your face—on your forehead, your closed eyelids, your rosy cheeks, your soft jaw, before he returned his lips home onto yours.

“thank you for staying with me—for promising­ your forever to me, and i’m looking forward to spending my eternity with you,” with a smile apparent on his lips, his gaze were soft as he tenderly peered into your glossy ones.

“i love you—more than words could ever explain.”

©️ astralisortus, 2024. | likes and reblogs are highly appreciated♡

[cowgirlcherrie]

☆ WISHFUL THINKING. loser! sbf! ellie williams headcanons

♪ 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠…wishful thinking by benee

a/n: here are just some quick head-canons of loser ellie, ellie is best friends with the readers sister, basically like bbf! ellie but girls girl coded dynamic.

warnings/content: 18+ MDNI. a nsfw section. breeding kink. switch!ellie. kissing. petname usage. ellie is so loser…LOL but it intertwines with canon ellie. cursing. dirty talking. finger sucking. edging. mostly toothrotting fluff for the first section

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

౨ৎ loser! Ellie owns an obscure amount of graphic tees with silly slogans on them:

“I ♡ HOT MOMS” or “I ♡ MILFS” or “BIG DICK IS BACK IN TOWN”

** I can’t find the post but one of my mutuals had an exact post of how she would dress…adam sandler core fr

When she gets complimented on them, she does not know how to take a compliment. When you found one of the slogans funny, your hands delicately intertwined with the fabric of her shirt as you tugged the fabric — with your phone hovering over the bolded text to take a picture – Ellie was sweating bullets beneath your touch.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie dismissed you the first time that the two of you met; she moved like a shadow whenever you were around; if you were talking in the kitchen, she would completely walk out of the room and just avoid the area. At first, you thought Ellie stopped coming around and being friends with your sister until you actively caught her turning on her heels and just heads in another direction.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie goes to your college and is a year above you but you didn’t know she was going to JSU (Jackson state university) because you thought she was planning on community, so it was a shocker to see her around campus because she actually would say hi to you or sit and chat if she wasn’t with Dina or Jesse.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie is obsessed with Jurassic Park and owns all of the DVD collections. She even has posters up on the wall that is stills from the movie and ones she was able to find with a deep dive online *cough* Reddit *cough* Facebook marketplace *cough* 

Frequently she tried to get your sister into it who gets sick of her asking–  but kept on nagging at Ellie to ask you instead, and with many dab pen hits and a quick pep talk in the bathroom, Ellie built up enough courage to ask you to watch it with her. 

The two of you bonded over having crushes on Ellie Sattler which was the first time that Ellie realized that you liked girls and she might have a shot with you.

“It’s even better to watch when you’re high because the dinosaurs are all like-…woahh”

౨ৎ loser! Ellie enjoys it’s always sunny in Philadelphia and parks and recreation, and would definitely enjoy emergency intercom or just podcast-y youtube channels 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie sucks at eye contact, whenever you start talking to her she rubs at the back of her neck, and looks at her feet, twirling the necklace that’s tucked closely to her skin and her shirt. She just doesn’t stop fidgeting. Her face gets all red but she plays it off that Joel kept on turning the heater on when there was no need for it.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie wears flat-brim vintage hats, especially some with corduroy fabric, and apart from her standard arm tattoo gets silly patchwork ones, like one of a drawing she did for Joel. Has a lot of rings and especially enjoys the spinny ones.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie who collects Savage Starlight comics, as always, is surprised when you tell her you found some copies in the bookstore that was actually going to get thrown away but you bargained with the owner to buy the barrel of the books because you knew she would like to have them. She gets all flustered when she realizes that you were thinking of her and it brings the craziest smile to her fast that you took enough time to remember such minuscule detail about her. 

“Do you– uh- do you want me to pay you back?”

౨ৎ loser! Ellie wakes up late all the time when she sleeps over at your house like I’m talking 11-12:30 pm and will walk around the house with messy hair, a large t-shirt and boxers, and dry drool patch on her mouth and down her cheek until she realizes she had been watched for the past few minutes by you who was scared shitless because you didn’t even she spent the night.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie in traditional Ellie fashion uses cursing as a coping mechanism when she gets nervous and doesn’t know what to say:

“I don’t fuckin’ know ask your sister”

“That’s fuckin cute… I guess”

“Oh – Fuck you!”

౨ৎ when your sister started this thing every two weeks where there is a girl’s night, she’d invite Ellie over for a sleepover and the sleepless night would be full of gossip, painting each other’s nails, drinking cheap wine that Ellie got from the gas station down the way —  primarily a self-care night, it takes a lot of convincing to get Ellie to join in but once she does, she regrets it slightly. However, she tolerates it because she can use it as an excuse just to see you and learn about what is up with your life or if you started seeing anyone.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie who bitches and cries when she has a facemask on, and is hissing and spewing curses under her breath every few minutes, with a fluffy headband on that is pushing her auburn hair back, begging you to take it off; meanwhile, you are applying a clear coat on her nails because she would complain about any other color but she keeps tensing up.

“Ow! What the fuck is in this…it hurts, take it off! Take it off!”

౨ৎ loser! Ellie when the summertime rolled around, meant she would be spending way more time with you and your sister – eventually, your sister goes to the locksmith and get Ellie her own key. Ellie will be indulging in pool days with you which is a recipe for disaster

She is tripping all over the place, and terribly applied sunscreen on her face which cast a slight ghostly white cast on her face, adding to how stunned she was to see you in a swimsuit, but she couldn’t look away and caught herself wandering her eyes to places she probably shouldn’t have. 

Underwater kiss! Underwater kiss! 

But she tries to play it off and acts like it never even happened the next day. But when Ellie closed her eyes all she could feel was your wet lips on hers, as the two of you were grabbing at each other and the way for a second time slowed down and all she could feel was the movement of the water and your hands on her skin.

When she applied sunscreen wrong and asks you to fix it for her, gets so embarrassed as you rub your hands over her face to moisturize the sunscreen into her face, but every time she opens her eyes she just sees the view of your boobs in the bikini you are wearing and just squeezes her eyes shut. Visibly pretends to bite her fist when you’re done

౨ৎ loser! Ellie 100% asking strangers on Reddit how to confess for you with crazy ass headlines, 

F(22) IN LOVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND'S SISTER F(21) ADVICE? If a girl’s arm lingers on you for too long does it mean she likes you? (F) Good pick-up lines that aren’t cringy for gays only…please How much does astrology and birth chart compatibility really matter? 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie splits her sandwiches with you and gives you a jacket when you are cold because even though she asks you a million times and you said no each time she asked. She still brings a jacket just for you — and how she would scold you for not bringing one. (all out of love though)

“You fucker! I knew you would be cold, see this is why I said to bring a jacket” 

Pretends to be angry but really she was waiting for this moment.

Eventually, you build a collection, having 3 of Ellie’s jackets in your room, which was Ellie’s subtle excuse to be able to talk to you. 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie doesn’t hesitate to pick you up from an on-campus party, and her heart shatters when you are crying because you had a shitty night and you don’t want her to tell your sister. Takes you to whatever fast food is open at that hour even if that means she’d have to drive 30 minutes extra just to make you smile.  

“Shh…sweetheart terrible nights happen it’s okay”

“Are you hungry?…cuz’ like I’m fuckin hungry” Ellie whispers amidst a thick awkward silence, mentally cringing and wanting to bang her head on the steering wheel as she grips the wheel until her knuckles turn white.

Suddenly becomes good with comforting people when it comes to you, but anyone else – the spinny wheel of death appears above her head as she struggles to formulate a good sentence. 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie who hates when you bring up anyone you start talking to or that you are going out with, will sit there with her fist tight and jaw clenched whispering to you:

“There are people who can treat you way better”

And by people she really means herself. 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie who set off the fire alarm once by accident because she was hotboxing in her room with Jesse and Dina and almost got a dean’s office summons and tried to blame it on the neighbors next door. 

౨ৎ loser! Ellie when Ellie tells your sister that she likes you, your sister makes the most disgusted face at her, but becomes Ellie’s wing-woman and kinda tells Ellie all of your likes and dislikes, which Ellie has a whole page in her journal with facts about you. 

“can I have your blessing to uh…date your um, fuck sorry your sister?”

“ellie please shut up I’m gonna throw up”

౨ৎ loser! Ellie has pictures of michael cera as her icons on every form of social media.

౨ৎ loser! Ellie gets flustered easily over indirect kisses, like sharing food or sharing drinks, and suddenly she becomes so hyperaware. 

nsfw 𖦹⋆彡🫧꩜♪⋆

౨ৎ When Ellie started having more than just friendly feelings for you…her whole demeanor changed, the tension was so thick it could cut with a sharp knife. Subtle touches suddenly had more meaning and her body felt like someone lit a match with gasoline dripping from her body and set her aflame. 

౨ৎ after an accidental confession that leads to the two of you dating, lewd thoughts from the shadow of her brain came after and she couldn’t control it — initially was too embarrassed to tell you and had nights where she would just walk to the bathroom and try her best to get off in the shower but it only got her so far before it wasn’t helping or doing enough and at this point she needed to actually touch you

౨ৎ That time she slept over and was sleeping on your couch, hoodie on her body with the hood up covering her face, blankets falling off of her body giving a full view of her sleep boxer shorts. When you walked by to go grab a drink of water around 3 am you could hear her moaning your name in your sleep.

౨ৎ is one of those people who seem bashful, sparky, and innocent throughout the day but in the sheets is the biggest freak ever, she becomes another level of unholy.

౨ৎ a breeding kink! Definitely owns one of the squirting dildos because she loves to watch the way liquids drip out of you when she’s done, will sit back pulling at your folds with her fingers with the shit-eating grin on her face that reads I did that 

“Look at you~” “all fucked out for me” Ellie speaks coly and in between breaths as her head reaches down to put kisses all over your face.

౨ৎ Ellie likes to see how much she can get away with, smacks your ass, pulls you back by your belt loop, sticks her hand way too far up your thigh, moans high pitched in your ear during public settings 

౨ৎ falls asleep with her hand on your boobs, god forbid she’s having a nightmare, she starts squeezing them in the midst of it. 

౨ৎ makes dick jokes talking about some:

“My pullout game is not weak thank you very much, if that was the case we would have had a lot of children already”

When listening to rap music that goes into heavy description about fucking humps the air sometimes to the lyrics...not elaborating she's hella immature LOL 

౨ৎ The minute the two of you go out and one of your friends says how she is a simp and how you have all the control in the situation, Ellie will make sure you know that she indefinitely has the upper hand. It’s like a switch flips in her head she gets so ruthless and so mean, she doesn’t want you to forget it either and fucks you until you can’t think

You will be moaning and clawing at her back as she pounds in a rhythmic motion in and out of you, her mouth would get so filthy, smirking as her fingers rub over your lips as she slips her thumb in for you to suck,

“but …do your friends know that you cry like this under me? that you look so pathetic under me?”

“Who’s in charge again cuz’ I fuckin’ know it’s not you”

“Are you cumming? Oh no you don’t…let me see you” “What if I just stopped right now?”

Likes to edge you, no doubt.

౨ৎ a switch likes to be topped or touched but also likes to be the top

౨ৎ whimpers whenever you touch her like a puppy, her eyes get glassy and her face gets red as she lets out low mewls of your name, and suddenly it’s like you’re an angel hovering over her and your touch is an addictive drug that she never wants to stop having.

౨ৎ  Overall just the best girlfriend ever, with a combination of silliness and fun in one, a big ol’ dork that is really just obsessed with you.

© cowgirlcherrie

taglist

@beforeimdeceased @starologist @destielcore @luvrgalore @ellsss @zahraaziza @emluvselandabs @abbyily @elliestrwbrry @mossc0vered @spacewlf @as2rid @spaceshipellie @lottiematthewsceo @emonopolyman @mikasbby @trulygnomed @machetegirl109 @munsonsfairy

[citricacidprince]

...Mable stuck with bill timestuck, you say? I wonder if that would go better or worse than dipper being alone with bill.

Here to mention that I somehow only noticed your signature when it was next to fiddleford, and thought you were (rightly) calling him a prince. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to connect the dots.

Haha you’re not the first person to mistake my signature for actual writing so dw you’re good lol!

And as for my thoughts of Mabel and Bill in a Timestuck AU,,,

I may or may not have written a drabble in a mutuals DMs a few years back about a confrontation between Mabel and Bill and the aftermath of it! I also may or may not have just fixed it up and straight up doubled the word count haha-

Since I’m feeling a tad bit brave I’m gonna post the drabble under the cut for anyone to read along with two doodles I’ve done for it, I only ask that yall be nice to me since I don’t write very often and know I ain’t that good at it hehe-

Also I’m not lying this is like,,, 4707 words… I got possessed to write this haha

Before I begin!!! Important!!!

Trigger Warnings: Choking/Asphyxiation, harm to children, minor descriptions of small cuts and minuscule amounts of blood, verbal planning of commiting a murder/killing

(if I missed any please tell me!)

With that out of the way here's my stupidly long Timestuck AU drabble that's been on my back burner for years! The only thing you really need to know is that the twins time-traveled back after Weirdmagenddon of their own volition. Dipper is with Stan and Mabel is with Ford and Fiddleford. Mabel has been staying with the two for almost a month now and Fiddleford is the only one who knows she's a time traveler.

With the stage set, please enjoy!

💫—————————————🚩

It’s late into the night, Mabel is tossing and turning and can't go to sleep. Her mind is spiraling as she overthinks and worries about Bill, her brother, her Grunkles, everything. So at about 1AM she decides that she’s not going to bed anytime soon and gets up off the living room couch which she has called her new bed while staying with her younger Grunkle Ford and Fiddleford.

Despite it being the dead of night Mabel thought it’d be a good idea to just make something food related in hopes it would tire her out. Also, she figured it would be a fun idea since she knows Stanford is most likely still awake and probably hasn’t eaten in a while. She could make him something easy and sweet, like a batch of cookies, and give them to him as a gift! Who doesn’t like 1AM cookies?! If she doesn’t have the stuff to make that, eh, she’ll figure it out and make something else!

A bonus to this is that if Ford says he’s not hungry, a bold faced lie, she’d use her sweetest and biggest puppy eyes until he ate some. Maybe she could even convince him to go to bed and not stay up till 4AM!

The brunette starts making a batch of cookies in the cover of night, making sure to have plenty enough for Fidd's in the morning, and putting her entire heart and all her worries into the mix in hopes the oven would ease away the stress weighing down her mind.

Sure it took a while, but it would totally be worth it to see her young Grunkle's face light up in shock at the sight of a warm batch of cookies shoved into his face and getting crumbs on his nerdy notes!

Right as she was finishing up wrapping up three separate plates worth of cookies in a napkin with a pretty little bow, for the ✨aesthetic✨ she happily told herself, she hears a pair of heavy boots walk into the kitchen.

The voice of her, now young, Grunkle Ford calls out her name in the quiet kitchen. Just as she had expected, he was awake.

Before the excited brunette could whirl around and surprise Ford with the 1-2 AM batch of cookies she lovingly went and made by hand, his low voice rumbled out, “Could you grab me a mug? One from the cabinet.”

He sounded a little funny, like he just woke up. Mabel smiled as she could already picture Stanford’s bleary and tired face as he goes to make a cup of coffee with the mug he’s asking for. She lets out a small sound of exertion as she pushes herself onto the counter since she’s too short to reach the cabinets otherwise and gingerly opens the cabinet so it doesn’t squeak and pulls out a mug. Based on the small cracks and worn paint on the ceramic it seemed a tad old, the faded words of ‘Backupsmore 1973’ barely legible.

Just as Mabel turns around, about to lightly scold her young Great Uncle for drinking coffee at 2 AM instead of getting some rest, a large hand wraps around her little neck. She didn’t even have a chance to scream as she’s suddenly slammed into the now closed cabinet, the air knocked out of her lungs and her head spinning from the impact, a loud sound of ceramic shattering on the wooden floor echoing through the kitchen and Mabel’s ringing ears

A fearful confusion consumes her mind as she, unsure of what’s happening in her dazed state until she catches a glimpse of Stanford. Gone were the warm brown eyes she’s grown accustomed to, in their place were the sickly yellow slit eyes of a monster she knew all to well.

Bill Cipher.

“Shooting Star, there you are! I think you're getting a tad too comfortable around here! Let's fix that!"

Malice built in her throat as she spat out, her brows furrowed and her brown eyes glaring down his yellow ones, “Bill! You-”

“Ah, so you do know me! I assumed so, but wasn’t quite sure!”

The six fingered hand around her neck pressed a tad harder against the wooden cabinet behind her, making her wince from the pressure.

“Here’s the deal, Shooting Star, you’re being a massive thorn in my side.”

Her back was already aching from the impact of her getting slammed against the cabinet.

“Making Sixer second guess his trust in me with your insufferable kindness and child-like whimsy.”

Her sock-covered feet were slipping and sliding on the wooden countertop, legs uncontrollably trembling as her fingers gripped at Stanford’s large forearm in hopes of steadying herself.

“It was amusing at first but now it’s just annoying. So I need you,”

His hand tightened even more, making Mabel let out a sharp hiss of pain.

“Out of the picture.”

Mabel’s feet no longer are touching the countertop as Bill suddenly pulls her away from the cabinet, easily dangling her little body in the air and effectively hanging her. Panic instantly shoots through her and tears well up in her eyes as her airway is suddenly completely cut off, her little hands grabbing and clawing at her possessed great uncle’s forearm while her legs wildly kick at the air, too short to even graze against Bill’s chest.

Bill’s free hand raises up and idly taps his chin, as his musing over something indecisively, an wide and uncanny grin stretched across the possessed scientist’s face as he loudly questions, “Hmmm… how about… throwing you in the lake! If the water doesn’t kill you the cold air will!”

Mabel started to thrash around even harder, her heart pounding in her chest as fear coursed through every nerve in her body, her flight response in full gear as she tried over and over again to get out of Bill’s grip with no avail.

“Oooh! Or I could just tie you up and bury you in the snow! I hear frostbite is real killer these days!”

Blood was rushing to her ears; she could barely hear a word he was saying. All she could focus on was the panic bubbling in her chest and adrenaline pumping in her veins, screaming at her that she didn’t want to die.

It didn’t take long before her vision began to blur, her clawing hands and kicking feet getting more and more numb and slow with each passing seconds. She could faintly hear Bill say something about ‘throwing’, ‘roof’, and ‘classic!’ before she could feel herself almost completely clock out, vision fluttering in and out as her hand weakly claws at his arm one last time.

Just as she was about to give up completely, the polydactyl hand around her neck suddenly let go, sending Mabel unceremoniously crashing to the floor. She let in a large gasp of air, coughing her lungs out as air desperately tried to fill them once more. The brunette doesn’t even care about the small shards of broken ceramic cutting into her hands or shins, she was trying to make sure she didn’t accidentally start hyperventilating as drool and tears drip from her face to the floor with every sharp breath.

Mabel, disoriented and dazed, manages to glance up through strands of her long and curly brunette hair to see Ford still standing there with those disgusting yellow eyes, which were now staring off to space with annoyance clearly visible in his gaze.

"Geez Sixer, you chose the worst time to want your body back to 'test a new theory' huh?" He quietly mumbles under his breath, looking upset that his fun was being rudely ripped away from him.

Suddenly he stares down at Mabel, who was clutching her throat and panting heavily, brown eyes unable to stop crying. Despite this, despite all the pain and numbness that ran through her, she still found it in her to glare at the dream demon with as much animosity as she could muster while surrounded by ceramic shards and small prickles of blood.

"Well… we’ll just have to pick this up another time, won't we Shooting Star?"

The possessed body of Stanford Pines strolls towards the archway leading out of the kitchen, however before he leaves completely, he stops and whirls around with that same twisted smile Mabel vividly remembers seeing on her possessed brother’s face just a few months ago. "Oh, Shooting Star? Would you be a doll and clean up this mess? Wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt now, would we?"

And with one final cackle he left, making his way back downstairs to Stanford’s study, presumably to make it appear like he never left in the eyes of the oblivious scientist, leaving the little brunet alone on the floor to lightly grip her neck, wincing at the bruise that's bound to appear the next day.

She stayed there silently for what felt like hours but was only just a couple minutes, the adrenaline coursing through her veins slowly but surely fading away as the feeling finally came back to her numb fingers and toes, relieved that she isn’t hyperventilating anymore and she can actually breathe.

She eased herself off the cold wooden floor, her little body trembling the entire time.

Despite the feeling of spite coursing through her veins for that awful dream demon, he was right…, she really didn’t want anyone to get hurt… So instead of immediately going to fix herself up she spent the next 10 minutes sweeping up the broken mug and getting all the broken shards of ceramic into the trash.

Curse her and her big heart…!

When she was done it was about 2 AM, and it was now officially time to check the damage.

Before she left the kitchen she made sure to put the plates of cookies into the fridge.

She didn’t really feel hungry anymore.

With a couple of winces and hisses of pain she managed to tip toe herself up the stairs and to the bathroom, making sure she didn’t accidentally wake up Fiddleford by stepping on a loose plank or opening the door too loud. Once inside she gingerly pulls out the old timey medkit from under the sink and sits on the floor.

Well, technically the medkit was modern since it was the 80s…

Wah, Mabel! Not the time!

With a deep breath she gingerly treats the tiny cuts gracing her hands and shins, trying not to cry as she disinfects each cut just like Grunkle Ford taught her to at the end of the summer, plucking out mini pieces of ceramic embedded in her skin with a pair of tweezer like how her Grunkle Stan had taught her at the beginning of the summer (note from her past self, splinters are never fun).

Cleaning and applying band-aids to the cuts was the easy part, most of the bandages would be hidden under her sweater and the winter pants Fiddleford had gifted her during her first couple days staying at the shack.

It was her neck that was going to be hard to hide.

Mabel stood up and got on a step stool to look into the minor, immediately wincing at the sight of her bare neck, dark purple was already creeping in and bruising every bit of her neck. The brunette leaned closer to get a better look and almost whispered out one of the many swears she had accidentally learned from Stanford while living here.

There was a hand bruised into her neck, and it encompassed her entire neck.

She gingerly touched her neck and winced at the dull pain. Guess she wasn’t going to take off her sweater for about 2 weeks now… just 1 week if she was lucky enough…

She tentatively took a step outside of the bathroom and tiptoed down the hallway again, trying to not make a single sound. Just when she got to the steps she heard a door open behind her, causing her to instantly crouch down and hope that she was far enough down the stairs that her body was hidden from sight.

She dared herself to peek just above the top step to see Fiddleford standing outside of his room, stretching and yawning before closing his door and walking towards the bathroom Mabel just left, making the 13-year-old let out a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to see her like this.

She knew she should probably tell Fiddleford what happened, but she just couldn’t. Maybe it was that childish fear of getting in trouble over nothing getting to her, or maybe it was the fear that her young Grunkle would be blamed for what Bill did.

Regardless, despite her better judgment, she kept her mouth shut and decided to hide her bruises from everyone else in the house, silently thinking of a way she could somehow protect herself from Bill.

She could practically hear Dipper yelling at her about how bad of an idea this was, but she was too shaken up to think of anything else…

So, she kept with the plan even as she shakily slipped a sweater over her large t-shirt she wore as a night gown and fell asleep on the couch, huddled in the corner in a ball as vivid nightmares haunted her fitful sleep, showing flashes of a possessed Stanford Pines throwing her off either the house or a water tower.

She woke up the next day to the warm smell of breakfast and the soft tones of Fidd's humming a tune in the kitchen, her body absolutely aching and a tad sweaty from the combo of the sweater and the fireplace keeping the room warm.

Mabel winced as she got off the couch. Yep… her back is definitely bruised.

She tentatively walked towards the open archway leading into the kitchen, silently calming her nerves and trying to put a smile onto her face. It helped that Fiddleford is making breakfast, she loves his food.

The kicthen was so empty when she first arrived but the southern man immediately starting keeping the place stocked when it was clear that she was going to stay there for a while. He also insistent on making her a meal 3 times a day since she was a ‘growin’ lil’ girl’. Because of her memories of Fiddleford being ‘Old Man McGucket’ were much more prominent in her brain it was easy to forget that he was once a father, but in those domestic moments when he doted and fussed over her it was clear that he was a good one.

Well, when he was sane that is…

She quickly shook off the bleak memory.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts…

She let out a low breath as a wide smile covered her face, her round cheeks rosy as she happily skipped inside.

Fiddleford perked up at the sound of Mabel walking inside, smiling as immediately spoke with a fond voice, "Ey there sweetpea, sleep well?" He idly glanced behind to see Mabel in her baggy t-shirt/sleep gown as well as a sweater on top of that, making him raise an eyebrow as he playfully asks, "Did someone get' cold last night?"

"Just a little bit." Mabel playfully replied back, unable to stop the wince that crossed her face at the sound of her hoarse voice.

Fiddleford, who was already done making breakfast, immediately whipped his head around at the sound. "Honeybee, are ya' alright?"

She lightly coughs into her fist a couple times and passingly remarks, “I’m fine, it's just morning gunk! Just need some water, haha!” Trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

Fiddleford still had a suspicious look in his eye as he looked over the little lady before deciding to let her off easy with this one, grabbing a rag and wiping his hands while replying with a quiet, “Alright, if ya say so, sunshine…”

He quickly pours Mabel a glass of water and then grabs a plate of bacon and pancakes. “Fer you, made just how you like it,” Mabel sits down in her chair as Fiddleford places the glass of water in front of her and a plate of pancakes and some bacon that is extremely burnt. “Burnt in a volcano.”

The brunette drinks some water first, happy to note that it actually does ease the pain in her throat! After that she eagerly grabs a burnt piece of bacon and shoves it into her mouth, loving the way flakey black residue smears onto her fingers and the overwhelming taste of what can only be described as ‘BURNT’ fills her mouth. She muffles out, “It’s perfect!” In between bites as Fiddleford chuckles at her antics and makes himself a plate. “Yer such an odd lil’ duck, honeydew! Only kid I’ve ever met who wanna me ta’ burn their meal!”

Mabel immediately shoots back, pointing at Fiddleford with a mouth full of bacon, “Tahts cause ohther peowple are COWERDS!!!”

The lanky man lets out a full on belly laugh as he grabs his plate and sits at the table, the two beginning to talk about anything that crosses their mind.

Stanford wasn’t going to join them for breakfast. He’s usually asleep at this time or buried in whatever notes he was currently writing.

…Mabel feels a little bad that she's kinda happy he wouldn’t join them… Her throat feels like it’s constricting all over again at the thought of those sickly yellow eyes and horrid laughter…

At some point while eating, Fiddleford makes a joke that makes Mabel loudly laugh, the sudden shout of laughter causing her to wince and try to grab at her throat. She stops herself a couple inches short of the grab and quickly puts her hand back down, but the damage was already done.

Fiddleford, concern coming back at full force, puts down his fork and immediately asks with a concerned tone, "Honey, is ‘ere somethin' wrong with ‘ur neck?"

Sweat began to bead on Mabel’s forehead and she tried to immediately brush off the concern with a not so convincing, "Whaaaaat, psh, nah!"

He raises an eyebrow at the clearly nervous little girl. "Mabel, if yer' hurt I'd like to know."

She starts to fidget in her seat, fingers wrapping together and her brown eyes darting away. "Look, it's not thaaaat bad you don't gotta worry about it-"

At the confirmation that she is indeed hurt makes him sit up and shoot back, "Well tha' just makes me MORE worried bout it!"

Unable to come up with anymore excuses Mabel plays with a fork in front of her, eyes locked with her plate. Fiddleford let out a soft sigh and leans closer to the brunette across the table and rests his hand on hers, a kind smile on his face as he gently adds on with that fatherly tone that immediately made Mabel feel better, "Darling, it ain't gonna get better if ya’ don't lemme help. I promise I ain’t gon’ get mad, ya hear?"

Mabel tentatively glanced up at the southern man’s soft green eyes and could tell he meant every kind word.

So, despite her promising to keep her injuries a secret, she takes a deep breath and nods her head, gingerly taking off the thick hand-made sweater to leave her neck and bandaged up arms exposed to the world. The lanky southern man’s eyes seem to grow more horrified every passing second.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph-"

Fiddleford jumps up from the table, almost making his plate fall off while doing so, quickly rounding the table and crouching in front of the brunette with green eyes filled with so much worry and horror.

He found himself fussing over the girl who had easily wormed herself into his and Ford's hearts and found himself growing even more sickened at every bruise and cut he found, though nothing could compare to that sinking feeling of dread he felt looking at Mabel's bruised neck.

He cupped the brunette’s face and could feel tears well up in his eyes as he stuttered out a confused, "W-wha'..., Mabel wha' on earth happened-" His heart breaking trying to even comprehend what could have happened to her.

On the opposite end, Mabel could feel her heart swell at Fidd's fatherly fussing, but tried to brush it off the best she could, not wanting him to worry about her.

"I'm fine really! I just, uh… tripped down the stairs…? …Yeah! Didn't want to worry you, haha!"

Fiddleford, who suddenly stopped paying attention to what Mabel was saying, let his eyes looking closer at the girl's neck before they widened in a horrifying realization.

"I… Is tha' a hand…?"

A rush of panic suddenly runs through Mabel as she tries to come up with some excuse to throw him off, something, anything!

"Fidd’s it's FINE! I just… uh… wore a sweater that was too tight…?” Goodness she’s screwed, even she was aware of how unsure she sounded.

Fiddleford still wasn’t paying attention. Instead one of his hands lowered from her rosy cheeks and ever so slightly touched her neck with the lightest of touches. His green gaze was analytical as finger traced down the bruised skin, talking to himself so quietly that even Mabel almost didn’t hear him as he quietly began to count.

“One, two, three, four, five, s-”

The blond cut himself off with a sharp inhale through his nose as the look of worry that had previously graced the southern man's face suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a look Mabel had never seen on his face before.

It was a quiet anger. The kind of anger that's terrifying to witness as it bubbles from deep inside but you refuse to let it show on your face, even as your hands begin to tremble and your vision goes red.

Without saying a word Fiddleford stood up and stayed completely silent, unable to say a word for about 10 seconds while his face was blank and unreadable. Finally, Fiddleford looked down at Mabel and gave a kind smile that didn't fully reach his eyes.

"Sweetie, could ya' stay here a sec? I have something importan' I need tha’… discuss… with Stanferd."

After finishing that statement he gently patted the top of her brunette head and walked out of the kitchen archway, turning the corner and heading up the stairs that lead to Stanford's room, walking with such silent intensity that it kinda frightened her.

After a couple moments of staying frozen in her chair she finally managed to shake off the feeling, realizing she had to stop Fiddleford! As scary as it would be seeing Stanford again after last night's… incident… she couldn't just let Fiddleford go confront Ford without the full story!

She sprang up from her chair and winced at the pain radiating from her back. Yep! Still definitely bruised!

Mabel rushed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. She stumbles to a stop at the end of the steps as she sees Fiddleford standing outside Ford's door, just as quiet as he was downstairs. He raises his hand and gives a firm echoing knock and she could faintly hear her young Grunkle respond with a strong, "Come in!"

She hates that she shivers a bit at his voice.

She hates that she's a little bit afraid of him.

Fiddleford doesn't respond and instead just opens the door and then quietly closes it behind him. The door doesn’t close all the way which makes a sliver of light from Ford's bedroom/study shine against the floor in the hallway.

Well... Fiddleford hadn't broken any windows or started yelling, so maybe, just maybe, he's going in there to calmly talk out the problem with Ford? Well, that was more wishful thinking on Mabel's part. She HOPES they will just, talk it out, and no one will get hurt...

A loud crash and shout echoed through the hallway.

A girl could dream can't she?

Mabel sprints to Stanford’s door, tripping over herself the whole way, and yanks open the heavy wooden door as quickly as she could.

When she finally pries it open she’s greeted with the sight of Fiddleford in the middle of trying to choke out Stanford, while Stanford is leaning against one of his smaller wooden cabinets, pushing Fidds away (to the best of his ability) with his foot, clutching his very bloody nose in confusion.

Mabel rushes in and pushes the southern man away from her bleeding Great Uncle to the best of her ability but Fiddleford upon seeing Mabel finally backs off from trying to murder Ford, but the look of pure anger firmly remains on his face.

Ford looks at Fiddleford with pure confusion as he pushes himself off the small wooden cabinet, clutching his bleeding nose all the while.

"F, what on earth has gotten into you!"

Fiddleford stared back with his mouth agape, absolutely gobsmacked, before finally yelling back, "Wha'- what's gotten into ME?! What's gotten into YOU Stanferd Pines!"

Fidds pushed past Mabel and jabbed his finger into the brunet’s chest.

"She's a lil girl?! How DARE you even lay a FINGER on her!"

"F what on earth are you talking about?!"

Fiddleford roughly grabs Ford's shoulders and pushes him to look towards Mabel with a surprising amount of force.

"SHE'S what I'm talkin' bout! Stanferd Filbrick Pines who gave you tha' idea ya' had tha' GODDAMN right to even lay a FINGER on her-"

Stanford couldn't focus on the rant Fiddleford poured into his ears instead his eyes state frozen on the disgusting purple mark staining Mabel's neck.

"Mabel… who-"

Stanford knelt next to the sweet girl who reminded him so much of Stanley in his youth and felt a familiar pang in his chest. That feeling he'd feel whenever Lee came home covered in bruises. That feeling to protect… and to hurt anyone who dares to hurt them.

"Sweetheart… who did this? What happened?"

Fiddleford scoffed. "Ya should know."

Ford shivered at how cold F had sounded. Out of all of his years of knowing him, Fidds had never sounded like this.

Then the meaning of those words finally hit him.

Stanford rushed to stand up and looked back to Fiddleford's furious eyes with his own look of disbelief.

"Y-... You think I did this?"

Fiddleford's eyes didn't change in the slightest.

"Ya'. Ya' I do."

"We've known each other for years, we went to college together, I went to your wedding, you are easily my best friend. Do you honestly think I'm capable of doing something like this?!"

"I used ta'," Fidds crossed his arms. "Now I ain't so sure."

Ford didn't know HOW to feel. This felt like a betrayal but not in the way Stanley's felt. He also felt offended. And hurt. And so many other emotions that were swirling in his chest.

"How? How did you even get it in your head that I had something to do with this!? How could you look at me and even IMAGINE me hurting her?! I can't even imagine myself hurting her! She's-"

"Hand."

Ford froze from his rant.

"What."

"Yer' tha' only one who coulda' done it. How do I know? Hand."

"Ya' always go on an' on about the statistics of someone' being polydactyly. About how different ya' are."

"I want ya' to look at how many fingers are on that handprint on 'er neck, look me in tha' eye, and tell me who's most likely tha' guilty party."

Stanford froze, his face turning white at the realization. He didn't need to turn around and investigate the bruise on Mabel's neck. He now knows it had 6 fingers. When you put all the facts together, one thing is clear.

He IS the most likely person to have done it.

But there's a problem with that.

He DEFINITELY didn't do it.

He glanced back at Mabel, who seemed to be nervously pulling at her nightgown the entire time. After a moment she finally glances up, but after looking into his brown eyes for less than a second she quickly looked back down.

He didn't do it. He knows he didn't.

But if he didn't, why did she look so scared of him?

He didn't do it…

…Didn’t he…?

❔—————————————❓

Now this is a bonus doodle based on an idea I had for the aftermath of this! Stanford is stuck mulling over this in his room and when he finally leaves he notes that Mabel isn't asleep on the couch like usual. So of course he freaks out and assumes she ran away, running all over the house in hopes of finding her. He runs upstairs to Fiddleford’s room and knocks frantically on his door to get him to help him find the missing girl.

Fiddleford opens the door looking annoyed and tired. When Stanford says he can’t find Mabel and that he’s looked everywhere the southern man cuts him off by instantly replying “I know where she is.” That instantly calms down Ford but he looks confused as he asks “You do?” To which Fidd’s opens the door a little bit more to show Mabel asleep on his bed.

Stanford lets out a soft ‘Oh.’ And just stands there, looking awkwardly at Fiddleford for a moment before trying to break the tension with a weak chuckle and asking “Did she want to have a sleepover?” The blond doesn’t even hesitate to reply back, “Yeah. Because she’s scared of you, Stanford.” And closing the door on the brunet’s face.

Stanford doesn’t move for what feels like forever before he heads back to his room, feeling a little sick.

Anywho, I’m done now!!!

I’m happy and sorry you read through all of that, you can leave now! 💥💥💥

[insidemyrottenbrain]

Henry gets jealous because you spend time with Richard

The risk of jealousy - TSH

Henry Marchbanks Winter x GN!Reader

Dearest anonymous, I hope you can forgive him and his denial of jealousy.

The sharp claw of jealousy finally scratches the untouchable Henry.

I’ve always been incredibly particular about whom I associate with. The people around me need to be worthy. Now, I am well aware that my choice of words may make me sound arrogant, so allow me to explain: I want them to have shared interests, to be able to hold late-night debates on esoteric topics, while giving me a sense of belonging and consequently not tiring me out socially. I do not ask for much, really. Alas, one cannot always get what one desires.

The little group of which I’m currently a part of is… pleasant. The twins regularly host dinners which are, of course, the birthplace of many fights and arguments regarding the most trivial subjects that usually end up with Henry winning. Francis unhesitatingly puts his aunt’s house at our disposal whenever desiderium naturae strikes us and amusingly complains about some disease or other the whole way there. I even consider some of Bunny’s jokes witty on the rare occasions when he stops being insufferable. Unfortunately, they all give me a shallow sense of belonging that only manages to make itself felt in transit moments. However, Henry is different. With him, I feel content reading in silence after a long day, waking up in the same bed, legs intertwined under the soft cotton sheets he insists on buying with Apolon tugging at our lazy eyelids or simply challenging one another’s knowledge on whatever topic interests us at a given moment. A continuous childlike rendez-vous.

I do not know why I have been so platonically attracted to Richard of late. When he first joined our Greek class, he did not strike me as someone who would manage to integrate his lowly self into our complexly layered group, or even more, someone who would enjoy my presence. He was and still is flawed and ordinary. However, this normality flowing through every habit, every movement, or expression is a strange refresh in an intangible web of meticulously tangled appearances and facades. Richard is not some ancient scholar buried in paradoxical ideals, Gods-praising rituals, and glorious beliefs, but a modern human. He is aware of the current world, unisolated, present, an active participant. Not only does he attend parties but he also drinks, kisses, and loves strangers. Though an exaggeration to the unknowing eye, he seems to me quite the Epicurean in a cult of Stoics (excluding Bunny).

Despite my writings above which one might foolishly mistake as praise on my part, I must now dive into Richard’s own tendency to fictitiousness. He throws, here and there, long, lavish fabrications (with the aid of which he becomes unconsciously arrogant) and slight inexactitudes he considers too small to pass unnoticed by the attentive ear. And according to my fate and against my trusted intuition, I found myself unable to stop listening whenever he started talking about his (fake) childhood in California filled with swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents, teenage years with a new girlfriend every night, the newest dramas (if they truly do exist and are not yet other fictions) circling Hampden.

There is a quirk. I notice it now, when we’re all standing in the day room of Francis’, or rather his aunt’s, manor. Charles is playing the piano filling the room with gifts for ears, showing off as he always does, while Bunny comments on one rhythm or another, challenging him, fueling him further. Everything is normal, except for one detail that does not escape me. Henry grows more agitated with every single one of Richard’s grant histoires. Albeit, the so-called agitations are rather minuscule, but I pride myself in being able to distinguish them. A small frown, creasing his pale forehead just the right amount for it to disappear just as quickly and nonchalantly as it came, a constant rub of his hand against his limped leg, and a novel proneness to small physical gestures: touching knees, pressing shoulders, his hand on the small of my back or idly playing with my fingers. I settle on questioning him later since I know he will not show any truths of his mind in such large company. 

We share a room, since we stopped bothering to hide our relationship long ago from the others. Henry’s already in bed, his nose buried in a book, dressed in his pyjamas, his initials embroidered upon the left side of his chest; H.M.W. If I had been told years ago that I was to be sharing a bed or be in a relationship with the person I suffered the least, the one that I had to compete with in Julian’s classes, the one that knew how to push my buttons I would have died of agony. But now I’m content. I know of the infatuation rendering me blind. My life has become a continuous torture, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to live without him. Just like Zeus who vows to fulfil his promise with a single sacred nod of his head, so am I unable to change the basis of my passion. He is in all my plans. In all the joys the future holds. In the dead of night, in Julian’s lessons, in the summer by the lake, instead of my mind’s eye being fully focused on one specific task, it always switches without fail to him.

I lower myself onto the bed next to him. “You seemed troubled earlier, in the day room.” I ask casually an indirect question.

“You’ve been spending an awful time with Richard.” He responds swiftly, tonelessly, simply pointing out a fact. 

I consider my answer for a moment. “I suppose so.” I hum, just as my head hits the pillow. “Don’t you find him intriguing? He watches the news on television.”

“Intriguing?” He blurts out, closing his book and putting it on the bedside table. Clearly, I have his attention. He turns on his side to fully face me, his hair falling over his forehead and slightly over his glasses. “His intriguing part eludes me. You are wasting your time with him, listening to his rambles.” He says clearly irritated, not bothering to keep up his stoic facade. “I assure you, you would be much better spending your time wisely.”

I frown. This is unusual of him. “He is in our class, is he not? I cannot avoid him.”

“Of course not, that’s not what I am suggesting.” His eyebrows remain furrowed. “What I do mean is that he does not bring you any benefit.” He continues in a monotone. “Why must you listen to him with the same attention and interest as you listen to me?”

Ah, I see. Henry is jealous.

“Is this jealousy?” I ask attempting desperately to restrain the slight smile forming on my face. 

“You are mistaken.” He ‘corrects’ me sharply, raising his eyebrows.  “I am merely stating that I see no point in your interactions with Richard when you could gain much more from being in my presence.”

I raise a sceptical eyebrow. He acts as if I wouldn’t mourn his death in the same way Achilles mourned Patroclus’, with rage and violence.

Words are imperfect communication devices, so I pull him down by the back of his neck and press my lips against his in a pleasant normality. I feel him slightly relax against me, his hand resting on my neck.

“Henry,” I mumble as we part, forcefully stretching our souls apart. I remove his glasses and place them down next to us and his forehead naturally falls against mine “you know better than to have such doubts.”

“I do.” He mumbles back, not bothering to deny his feelings anymore. “However, it proves to be quite difficult to not have them when-” He stops considering his words. “When you plague me so. There is no day or night in which your existence takes mercy on me and does not destroy the little rationality I have left.” He lowers himself down on the bed next to me. “You inexplicably and absurdly manage to be and eradicate my sanity.” He sighs. “And it certainly does not help when you look at Richard with the same eyes you look at me.” Henry mutters.

My hand finds his and I chuckle. “I’d argue I look at him with entirely different eyes.” At my comment, Henry raises an amused eyebrow. “Perhaps you’ll stop seeing shadows where there are none.”

That is all he needs to defeat his insomnia in my arms once again and to fall prey to sleep’s vicious grasp his body indistinguishable from mine under the sheets, sharing one breath.

[tinietaehyun]

Heartfelt Desire

[KingofHearts!Yeonjun x Lost!Reader] [Wondrous Tales] [One-shot series]

Pairing: KingofHearts!Yeonjun x Lost!Reader

Genre(s): Fantasy, dark fantasy, supernatural, romance, thriller, wonderland!au, whimsical.

Contains: Profanity, mentions of poison, capital punishment, implications of injury, death, mentions/implications of claustrophobic situations, suggestive themes, possessive behaviour.

Links: Wondrous Tales Masterlist | Masterlist

A/N: It’s been awhile! Fucking finally, thanks for the patience everyone! <3

Summary: You peer around at this red, black and white lavish interior. A shudder vibrates through you - maybe you were better off with Soobin. You wonder what happened to him, everything happened so quickly. One moment he grasped your hand tightly and the next you saw him getting dragged away!

The guards shove you through a set of grand heart engraved doors and you stumble to your knees. Peering up, you see the man himself, one leg atop the other, a bored expression on his face, his eyes glimmering in intrigue.

“Ah, my darling guest, have you already fallen for me? Surely, you must have plans to keep me more entertained than that.” He smirks almost too sweetly with a flick of his wrist, “After all, you’ll find out very quickly, what happens to those I get bored with.”

“Think this one’ll last?” One of the guards who were hauling you asks his fellow guard with a snarky grin. The other responds with a sneer aimed down at you, “Mm, don’t know. They never really do. She might last a few weeks longer though, impressive enough she managed to sway the Timekeeper.”

You grunt as they tug you along like some ragdoll, speaking about you demeaningly with such condescension. You absolutely despised this, your feet were beginning to ache from all this shoving and walking, it felt as though it had been ages. Peering up at the sky, the sun was in the same place just before sunset. It was upsetting, you couldn’t even tell if time had passed or not because, well, time was dead.

A shiver passes through you as you finally spot the palace from which you’d seen as minuscule now loom over all of you. The diamond checker print path, comically large golden gates with red heart details and perilously sharp spikes.

Not to mention the palace itself, a colour palette of red, gold and white. Large spires and absurdly intricate architectural details gracing its features. Towers and domes, glass and walls, it truly was an architectural marvel that stood proud amongst the whimsical surroundings.

Certainly, it was a sight to behold. However, instead of wonder and amazement, it filled you with utter dread and anxiety instead. For you would have to meet the Red King of Hearts, the ruler of Wonderland. Someone, who Soobin had made very clear, was to be feared, cruel and selfish.

Your heart pangs with pain and misery. You really hoped Soobin was okay. Perhaps, he’d find a way out of being executed? How could Wonderland possibly lose its one and only Timekeeper? Your heart couldn’t take the thought of him bearing such capital punishment. They couldn’t possibly execute him immediately, right?

“Move the fuck along, stop dragging your feet,” the guard to your right snaps and you glare back at him as he shoves you forward. Pieces of shit, the whole lot of them! You mutter, “Fine, fine!”

Finally, you’re brought within the confines of the luxurious palace. The scale of everything intimidates you immensely. You peer around at this red, black and white lavish interior.

A shudder vibrates through you - maybe you were better off with Soobin. Everything happened so quickly. One moment he grasped your hand tightly and the next, you saw him getting dragged away!

“Keep it movin’ hun, not long to go before your demise,” the other guard snickers and your heart jumps to your throat, feeling a dreadful amount of nausea. What was the terribly rumoured Red King of Hearts like in person? Oh fuck, you probably weren’t going to even last a second!

All of you halt at a ginormous set of golden doors with intricate designs and ruby doorknobs. Oh, this must be it… The guards shove you through the set of grand heart engraved doors and you stumble to your knees due to the force.

Peering up timidly, you see the man himself, one leg atop the other, a bored expression on his face, his eyes glimmering in intrigue at your abrupt entry. The two doors shut behind you with a resounding clank, trapping you within the lion’s den.

The male’s lips quirk into a coy smile as he tilts head which was resting boredly on the palm of his hand. Uncrossing his legs, he stands with great poise and flourish, his blood velvet cape flapping behind him. Goodness…his intricate attire, he really did love the colour red…and well hearts. Rather fitting, actually.

This was the most consistent thing you’d seen in this place in all honesty; a jarring contrast to the clashing colours and whimsical nonsense outside. Oddly enough, this makes you feel even worse.

With caution, your gaze scans over his (criminally) handsome features, most remarkably his sharp eyes with a piercing gaze, his sleek jaw and lush rosy lips all complemented by raven black hair in which a few select strands hung over his forehead. The coy smile had your stomach doing flips and you releasing shaky breaths.

The clatter of his black boots echo on the checkered floor as he menacingly walks towards you as though he were a predator and you were nothing but prey. Your heart palpitates with great velocity and you can’t help but not move your gaze away from him. Your gazes lock, his gaze filled with a sly glimmer and yours filled with trepidation.

As he finally stands towering over your kneeling form, he smirks, a little too sweetly in fact as he says, “Ah, my darling guest, have you already fallen for me? Surely, you must have plans to keep me more entertained than that.” With a flick of his frilled wrist, he hums nonchalantly, “After all, you’ll find out very quickly, what happens to those I get bored with.”

You remain silent glaring up at the dramatic man. A boisterous laugh emits from his frame and he peers down at your pitiful form with a manic look in his eyes, “Oh? Cheshire Cat got your tongue?”

Your brows furrow in confusion. “Oh! You are just so adorable, look at your confused little expression, my darling. I could just devour you up,” he coos.

With a grimace, you murmur, “Where’s Soobin?” He crouches down abruptly startling you and he grins, “Soobin? I didn’t know you were so close to the White Rabbit?”

Your heart thuds against your ribcage as his piercing gaze impales you. “I really did wonder, you know, how you managed to sway that manic rabbit. The timekeeper is not easily swayed; he's always so, so, so, dedicated to being on time! To complete the tasks I set him. Yet,” he pauses with a laugh, “yet, you somehow captured his pathetic little heart and caused him to deviate off the set path and my important order of bringing any and all guests who wander into Wonderland to me!”

Another cruel cackle escapes him, “Oh? And now look! Now, he’s on death row because of who?” He questions you as if it is the funniest possible notion to ever exist. “Because of you, my darling!” You? Your eyes glaze over, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Ah, where are my manners making you about to cry on our first meeting? Do forgive me, my pretty little guest, it’s been so, so long since we’ve had a guest in Wonderland and well, I can’t contain my excitement around you. Oh, yes, yes! Introductions!”

“Darling, introduce yourself to your king.” Your king? How fucking vain! This man was infuriating! Your shakily glare in the tiniest hint of defiance. The King tilts his head observing your reaction and his gaze darkens as does his tone when his slender fingers grab your jaw tugging your face towards his, as he threatens lowly, “Don’t make me repeat myself, understood? I don’t like repeating myself. I like obedient little guests, who play their role as they should,” his fingers press into your skin, “So?”

You wince as you pry his hand off your jaw with a quiver. His personality was like night and day. This side of him was a stark contrast from mere moments ago, it scared you much more than the man with dramatic flair. Timidly, you mumble, “My name is Y/n.”

He hums in pleasant delight, “See? Was that so hard, darling? Now, I’m sure you know who I am, everyone does, but since you’re my guest, for courtesy and my own selfish desire, allow me to introduce myself,” he stands and with a flourish of his cape, he bellows, head held high with pride, “I am, the Red King of Hearts, the Ruler of Wonderland, the Apex of all here, or just for you my darling,” he abruptly crouches back down with a smirk, “Yeonjun.”

You mumble, “…Yeonjun.” How peculiar. Yeonjun grins, “How your sweet lips sound when you say my name, I do wonder what other sweet sounds I can get you to make.” A burst of warmth floods your cheeks at his crude insinuation.

Yeonjun’s gaze trails down your facial features, down your neck and your body, “Mm, I see the attire of your world continues to amuse me, ever rapidly changing I see. Though I won’t say it’s not displeasing, quite the opposite in fact.” His fingers once again cup your jaw, gentler this time, “You’re a pretty little darling aren’t you? I believe we will get along splendidly.” He leans forward, lips inches from yours, eyes darkening in a sadistic gaze, “Even if we don’t, I can fix that.”

He rises outstretching his hand with a long, exaggerated drawl, “Mm, now up, up, I don’t need you kneeling like a dog waiting for their master’s command.” His switch in tone from threat to lighthearted almost gives your whiplash. Yeonjun’s peers down at you with a grin, “Although, the view of you kneeling down like this isn’t too bad either.” With great haste you take his hand and pull yourself up with a huff.

A loud chuckle reverberates from him, “Oh you do make me laugh, that’s at least a good start,” he tugs you along with him, “Have I mentioned I don’t like being bored? I do hope you plan to entertain me as long as you’re here,” he peers back over his shoulder at you with a twinkle in his crazed eyes, “After all, your life depends on it.” A ruthless little laugh escapes his lips making your shoulders sag. Oh dear, you never really called yourself an interesting person, let alone entertaining. You were doomed!

“First, I’m going to provide the finest feast my loveliest new guest has ever laid eyes on, after all I need you on a full stomach to keep your energy up, hm?” Yeonjun delightfully utters and you feel your stomach churn, not in hunger but in fear. Now that you think about it, you weren’t that hungry. How much time passed in the outside world then?

“Hurry your step, I have worked the chefs extra hard today to make sure you have a feast upon your arrival,” he takes your arm, hooking it under his as he speedily walks along. Your feet stumble trying to keep up with him; you sigh, this was awful.

Within a few minutes, you’re presented with the finest feast you have indeed ever laid eyes on. Illustrious varieties of foods of different kinds, sizes, some whacky and some you recognise - either way they all looked delectable, making your mouth salivate at the thought of being able to eat some of this.

“Now, now, sit darling, the food will get cold otherwise and we can’t have that now, can we?” He coos ushering you along to a tufted chair at the head of the table, which was elaborately decorated. “For today, you can sit on my seat, since it’s been so, so, long since I’ve had a guest. Can you tell I’m just brimming with utter excitement? I can barely contain myself.”

With a firm but gentle nudge on your shoulders he pushes you to sit down and the servants place a napkin on your lap and you’re immediately presented with a white, gold and red rimmed plate with gold cutlery to boot. Yeonjun sits down in the seat to your right with a smirk lining his lips and muses, “Oh, you do look lovely sitting there so obediently.”

Hesitantly, you peer at the food not knowing what to pick with so much choice. You see his hand fly out, placing a plate of what seems to be steak in front of your plate and his other hand taking another plate filled with some sliced chicken surrounded by various vegetables. “Take your pick darling,” he hums.

Your eyes flicker unsurely between the two. You briefly peer back at Yeonjun who seems to have his hands clasped together under his chin whilst his elbows rest on the table and your heart sinks. He was regarding you with such interest as if every single one of your mannerisms was pure entertainment. Yeonjun’s gaze becomes coy and his lips quirk into a lopsided smirk, “Oh? Darling looking at me like that… I’m not on the menu tonight.”

Huffing, you respond, “That’s not- you-“ A chuckle escapes his lips, “Hm? Why? Am I not to your tastes? I’ve made a lot of people happy you know,” his voice takes a sultry edge as his head tilts slightly.

Your cheeks become warm and you turn your gaze back to the food. You point to one of them and he ever so kindly presents it on your plate with a sly smile, unnerving you incredibly.

“Eat up, darling. I’m sure you’ll love it.” With a clink of your knife and fork against the plate, you timidly begin eating and you notice he’s not touched a single morsel of food.

“Why aren’t you eating?” You question suspiciously. He pouts, “Oh? You care whether I eat? I can’t believe you’re getting so attached to me already. I’m so touched, such a kind heart you have.” Refraining from the urge to roll your eyes, you mutter, “It’s not that- just- it’s your feast..”

Swallowing another bite, you can’t help but relish in the divine taste. What the hell did they put in here to make something so regular taste so good? Then again, with a ruler like him, he probably expected nothing less than perfection or off with their heads!

He leans forward slightly, resting his chin on the palm of his hand and his gaze is alluring as he muses, his tone of voice changing drastically, “Does it taste good?”

You stiffen, “…Why?” He smiles just a tad too sweetly, “Don’t make me repeat myself, darling.” Looking down at the food on your plate, your breath becomes uneven. He muses with a twisted smile, “It doesn’t taste off, does it? I’d hate to punish my dear chefs, you know?”

Stammering, you drop your cutlery overwhelmed with a sense of anxiety, “N-No?” What was that supposed to mean? Taste off? Yeonjun smirks, “Oh it doesn’t? Are you just resistant to poison? That would make you even more of a remarkable guest than you already are.”

Poison? What the fuck? Nausea hits you instantly as you shove away the plate with noisy clatter and stand abruptly, cutlery scattered on the floor and you hyperventilate. What the fuck did you just eat?

Yeonjun lets out a boisterous guffaw, running his hand through his hair, giving it a tousle and adjusting his crown, “Oh did you not find my joke funny?” Joke? Was he joking?

You snap shakily, “What? Is it poisoned? Or not?” Yeonjun coos, “Darling, why would I kill off my newest toy, sorry, guest, so quickly? Where’s the fun in that? I just wanted to see your endearing reaction.”

Infuriated, you yell, “You-You sadist! I…I thought I consumed…” He gives you a smile, an uncomfortably serene one contrasting your outburst, “Oh hush now. This dish doesn’t have poison in it.”

Your eyes narrow, “What? This…dish?” He muses, “Half of these dishes do, and half of these don’t. Isn’t that fun?” He sighs dramatically leaning back in his chair, “Most guests don’t even make it past the first round, it’s so unfair, how stupid they are. You’re lucky, you chose the dish you did over the other.”

Your heart races; you were still alive this second, out of sheer luck. How fucking stupid could you be? No way in hell were you going to eat anything from this table!

“I’m not hungry- I’m not eating anything off this table!” You snap, hands trembling. Yeonjun’s eyes pierce into yours, “Now, now no need to throw a tantrum, darling. I suggest you sit yourself back down and play the game I’ve set up for you, less you face any unfavorable consequences.”

The threat lacing his voice is clear and you feel compelled to sit back down. He awaits, his gaze menacing and lips held in a twisted yet refined smile. The red heart shape painted around his left eye taunting you.

He pours you some water into the cup beside your plate and you peer at it with caution. Yeonjun snickers, “Allow me to be clear, the only thing that isn’t poisoned is the water. Everything else is merely a gamble. I want you to see this game through, and finish all the courses. I’ve skipped the starter just because I actually want you to have a chance to win. I can’t have my guest dying after waiting for so long!”

You eye the water with a grimace; you couldn’t take his words at face value anymore. Yeonjun muses with a shrug, as you don’t touch the cup of water, “Oh? Suit yourself then. I’m feeling rather parched.” He takes the cup downing it and your jaw clenches. It was indeed not poisoned.

You peer at the food across the table; this explains the sheer variety. Every single dish was a danger; you had no way of finding out which was poisoned. No wonder people didn’t make it past even a few days! With sadistic games like this? Who would? There had to be a few who managed to pass by sheer luck only to displease the king and be executed anyway.

Yeonjun places his hand atop yours, rubbing circles across the back of your hand with his thumb and you stiffen under his touch. “Hm…you look pale, are you that scared, darling? You’re almost making me feel bad for you, you know?”

“Is…Is there nothing else we can play?” You timidly question and it seems to surprise him. No one has dared to ask to play another game. All he’s heard are pitiful cries, pathetic begging and whimpering, some even boldly try to run away or some foolish guests even have tried to stab him. Yet you…you were different. Perhaps, the Timekeeper was indeed right to attempt to steal you away all to himself.

A manically delighted expression crosses his face making you feel even more unsettled. “Oh you continue to surprise me, darling. Another game? Oh I’d be happy to indulge your lovely request.” He relishes the spark of hope glimmering in your beautiful eyes, the slight flutter of your lashes.

His lips form a dark smile, how he’d love to douse that flame of hope. Very, very few had ever made it out past the Red King of Hearts’s palace. Mostly because they died! Yeonjun regards your face, your frame and he can’t help but feel strongly for you. Maybe because it’s been awhile, but he doesn’t want to let you go. Perhaps, he could keep you like a little bird in a golden cage that he could visit whenever he desired. Why must all the guests here die? If only they weren’t so incompetent.

Perhaps he could keep you until he grew utterly bored. You were oh so pretty after all, it would be such a waste. Yeonjun hums, “Darling, since I’m growing ever so fond of you, I’ll be incredibly generous just this once. I want to be entertained so, just chatting can only go so far. Why don’t you suggest a game to play?”

“…A game to play? Me?” You question shakily. He was giving you a choice. You peer around seeing the servants bewildered by his words and wide-eyed. He had abandoned this game of dangerous dining, just because you offered to play another game. Was he truly that fond of you? Gaging the servants’ reactions, you could tell this was something that had never happened before.

Perhaps, this was your chance at escape. You had to take advantage of this once in a blue moon chance! Think, think, think!

Yeonjun’s sly gaze runs over your features and he hums, “Oh I know it’s a big decision, so take your time. But that also doesn’t mean I’m the most patient man, darling.” So…did he want you to be quick or take your time?

As you grind the gears of your brain, Yeonjun observes your mannerisms, finding them rather endearing. He knew you wanted to escape. That dastardly rabbit must have spewed all sorts of nasty things to you about him! His lips quirk up into a smirk, it was very cute how hard your little brain must be whirring. There was no escaping him, no escaping the Red King of Hearts in Wonderland.

In this world, he ruled. No one goes unchecked, no one leaves and enters without him knowing. Every single thing, every single person, being, whatever it was that resided here belonged to him and him alone, without question. He leans forward resting his chin once more against his palm, especially you. His newest guest, he didn’t want you to die so quickly like the others.

Though with how you manage to seduce the White Rabbit, he wonders if you were just putting on a meek and timid facade. Whatever game you were playing, Yeonjun relished in it, so much so, he was giving you the oh so rare opportunity to decide. For once, the guest asked to play a different game, how bold indeed. If anyone else in the past had said such a thing, he’d have gauged their eyes out with the very cutlery on the table!

Such pretty lashes, glimmering eyes and kissable lips you had. All of you, just a sight for sore eyes. He hums in approval. Oh, he could just imagine you dolled up, caged in his chambers, like a pretty little bird, all for himself. He didn’t want to let you go, kill you like the others, well unless you were abhorrently boring of course, but who knows when the next guest would arrive in Wonderland!

“Your majesty,” a voice interrupts his reverie and he snaps, “What?” A colourfully absurd invitation is placed in front of him by one of the servants and Yeonjun groans exasperated. “Oh how many times more must I incinerate these disgusting little invitations he sends me?”

You eye the invite; ‘The March Hare and Hatter cordially invite his majesty for our terrific tea party!’ The Mad Hatter..the killer of time? March Hare? What in wonderland were these titles? A tea party?

‘Follow the pastel bunting or jump down the timekeeper’s burrows and see where they lead, maybe you’ll just bump into one of us and see!’

What the fuck type of invite was this? Burrows? There wasn’t even a time or place! Then again it was all because of a stupid ass invite that you were stuck here in the first place!

Burrows…Soobin. You frown. Huh, that means Soobin must have burrows everywhere across Wonderland. Your mind ticks faster as more connections form. So…he must have one to get to the palace since he does work directly under the Red King of Hearts, running Wonderland. So he must have dozens more within the palace and grounds to get to other places!

Before you and Soobin got caught by Yeonjun’s guards, you were about to go down one of them anyway! It’s bound to be a quick way to different places! You just had to find one of his burrows in the palace!

“Burn it,” Yeonjun snaps, repulsed by the invite. The servant bows retreating hastily and you meet his gaze. His angered expression immediately morphs into one of coddle and awe, “Well, my darling?”

Clearing your throat, you reply, “Hide and Seek.” He raises a brow before replying, “Hide and Seek, a rather childish game, no? Why? Are you that good at hide and seek?”

You murmur, “Well, no, but it’s entertaining, isn't that what you want? Plus…I don’t get to…die?” Your voice raises unsurely at the end.

The hall goes silent as he processes your words; his face is serious as he stands abruptly startling you. Did he see through your plan? You wanted to scour the palace, the courtyards and gardens for at least one of Soobin’s burrows. The most inconspicuous way was to indulge in a dangerous game with Yeonjun.

He hums, his fingers tapping the table, “Hm, and what do I get if I win? After finding you of course?”

You quip, “What if I want to seek first? Must I always be the one to hide?” His eyes widen slightly and the servants freeze at your words. A large cackle escapes his lips as his pupils dilate, excitation brimming within him, “Oh, oh I like you. I like you a lot. I guess that pretty mouth of yours can do more than just whimper.”

Yeonjun’s words make you flush as his intense gaze runs over you as you stand. Play along for now. That’s all you have to do.

He walks up to you with a wry smile as he cups your jaw, “You don’t think I know what you’re trying to do?” Your blood runs cold. Fuck. Yeonjun leans down, his breath against your ear, “You don’t think I know how much you want to leave my grasp?”

You glare up at him shakily. Your faces are inches apart and he muses quietly, “You’re lucky that I’m willing to even indulge in your silly games. Every single corner of this palace is lined with my guards. Don’t think I’m stupid, darling.” The way his demeanor switches like day and night has you reeling.

You murmur resolutely, “Neither am I.” He smirks, “I hope, indeed. So,” he steps back taking one of your hands in his rubbing his thumb on the back of it delicately, “Hide and Seek. I want to up the stakes. The game you want to play is a little boring. We’ll have two rounds where we swap roles as the seeker and hider.”

Reluctantly, you nod. Yeonjun resumes, “First round, you’ll be the seeker. You find me. Within the time limit of course. If you do, I’ll grant any wish you like, give you all the riches you desire,” he hums deviously, “Pleasures that you would have never experienced before, and so on and so forth.” Yeonjun’s lips form a dark smile, “If you don’t, well, that just means, I get a point.”

That’s it? Something was awfully wrong. “Next round, I’m the hider? You’re the seeker. Is it the same rules?” You question nervously. He nods, “Yes darling, if you manage to hide for long enough, then you get a point! If you don’t, well…” he releases a dark chuckle, “Well, we’ll get to that.”

You glare, “No, I want to know. What do I get if I win? Other than whatever riches and such. What if I want f-“

“If you’re thinking freedom, darling,” he begins with a dark glare as he leans down, “Forget it,” he seethes. His tone sends shivers down your spine and the deranged look in his eyes is enough to make your knees buckle.

“If…I win,” he laughs as if the thought is utterly delicious, “Then, you’re mine. You already are, but in a more true sense of the word. You’ll be mine, you’ll get the rare privilege of being kept alive. For my entertainment! See, I can’t bring myself to kill you, well, not so easily I mean. Think of yourself like a bird in a golden cage, sitting prettily waiting for me, no responsibilities, nothing, just existing for me alone. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

You peer at his unhinged demeanor and you almost feel sick. Was that his idea of fun? It almost seems like his other ‘guests’ had the easy way out through death! A shaky breath escapes you and it doesn’t go unnoticed and he smiles, “Oh? You don’t like that idea? I could just display your pretty little head on my mantle in my office instead, but I thought it’d be a shame.” You pale instantly.

You grunt, “I’d rather you not.” He hums, “Glad we agree, darling. Now close those pretty eyes of yours and start counting to a hundred. You have a generous twenty minutes to find me.” Hundred!? Yeonjun grins with a flirtatious wink as he brushes past you, “No skipping numbers,” he mutters menacingly, “I despise cheaters.”

Glaring, you begrudgingly turn around and cover your face with your hands and hear his echoing footsteps. Indeed this seemed childish. You’d let him hide wherever the fuck he wanted. You’d be under the pretense of trying to find him when in actuality you were looking for burrows.

“…98, 99, 100.” Your eyes open and you see the knights standing guard keeping a sharp eye on you. Well, presumably so, that you didn’t skip any numbers. How pathetic.

With exasperation, you begin walking around the winding and twisting hallways of the grand palace. Everything reeked of Yeonjun from the decor to the winding hallways and architecture, the colour palette and furniture. The mirror panels lining the walls, how vain was he? You see your reflection walking alongside you everywhere and it creeped you out. What a weird place.

You knew you had twenty minutes, so you had to cover as much ground of this hellhole as you could before the time was up. You were in no way trying to actually look for that maniac! As you walk around; the guards and various servants all eye you and you feel a constant sense of unease. Always being watched. Whether it be them or Yeonjun himself.

Ten minutes had passed according to the knight who informed you midway (with what godforsaken clock they had, you didn’t know). You had managed to find your way around, use pieces of furniture and decor to make sure you didn’t repeat your route in this massive place. There was still much to explore, you seemed to have covered the entire West Wing of the palace.

Not a single peep out of Yeonjun. He was not stupid that was for damn sure. You knew he was watching you. You knew he was making sure you wouldn’t try anything funny, such as escape. You were sure though, he didn’t know about your out of the box plan of using the White Rabbit’s burrows.

“Five minutes, Miss Y/n.” A knight suddenly barks and you clutch your chest startled by the sudden shout. Muttering, you speed your pace, “Fucking hell,” you didn’t know if Soobin had a direct way into the palace. Perhaps you had to think simpler. What if it was genuinely outside? The gardens.

Yes, if you skipped the East Wing and went straight for the gardens. But…you had no time. You still had the next round but, you would be the hider. Your mind whirrs trying to plan everything out; your arms crossed over your chest in deep thought.

“Oh, you’re terribly bad at this game, darling, now there’s only two minutes left,” a voice reaches your ear and you scream, stumbling back. Your eyes widen seeing Yeonjun with a dangerously sharp gaze peering down at your startled form.

“Come now, do I scare you that badly? I’m not scary.” Yeonjun smirks crouching down to your level, “What a pitiful attempt at both escape and seeking. I like your bravery, well, I should say more so stupidity. But it’s entertaining, very much so, so keep doing it,” he stands back up towering over your trembling form as he darkly hums, “I’ll have so much fun with you afterwards.”

“I was hiding in the gardens by the way, what a pity you didn’t set foot outside.” Fuck. Perhaps you should have started there. You didn’t want to be so fucking obvious though!

“At least you’re dedicated to the game, in one way, I suppose,” he dryly muses, “I was bored waiting for you darling so I came to you instead, but that does mean you unfortunately, or fortunately for me, lose.”

Rolling your eyes, you get up, “Yeah, yeah.” Yeonjun still towers over your frame despite standing and he places a hand atop your head, “How cute. You still have some attitude. A sore loser are we?” You gaze up at him and you stiffen at the manic gleam in his eyes and he releases a laugh, “I like that expression on your face.”

He leans down, “It suits you. Fear. Anxiety. Makes your face, oh so, adorable.” His voice is utterly condescending. It enrages you and causes you to shiver. The depth and tone of his voice, scratches your brain as he alluringly regards you.

Yeonjun’s fingers grasp your jaw tilting your head up more, “Keep entertaining me like this, pretty thing and you’ll have me obsessed with you. Not many have the gall that you do.” You pry his hand off making him smile amused.

“The next round.” You state with a shaken glare and racing heart. Yeonjun sighs dramatically, “Ah, yes, yes. Why the rush? Eager to leave? Not like you can, when my guards are everywhere.”

You mutter, “Isn’t that cheating? What if they just tell you where I’m hiding?” He arches a brow with a smirk, “Oh? You think I’d stoop so low.” Oh he totally would - anything to win. You know it.

With a challenging expression, you hum confidently, “Do this round without your guards. They cannot tell you where I am. Just you,” you step forward, inches away from each other, “and me.”

You can tell he’s taken slightly aback, by your sudden surge of confidence and your demand. You spot the workings of his mind as his eyes peer back into yours. You hum, “Unless…you can’t? Because you’re afraid I’d really escape? Then what threat are you? Catch me with your own two hands and…” you shakily grit and force out the words like they’re acid on your tongue, “…and I’m all yours.”

Your proposition, your intentional wording, the tilt of your head, proximity, the ever so subtle flutter of your lashes, you had to use his hubris, his own arrogance against him. “All mine? That’s rather hard to believe.”

You murmur, “Well, I’d rather be here than the Hatter or lost out there. You took the one guide I had.” This makes Yeonjun smirk and he hums, “Aren’t you a sneaky little thing?” He trails his hand up your arm resting his hand on your shoulder before pulling you against him and whispering, “I might have almost believed you, with that siren gaze and silky words of yours.”

Fuck him! “But, I’ll entertain you nonetheless. Either way, you’ll be mine whatever the outcome is,” he hums presumptuously, taking a step back and he outstretches his hand. “Without the guards it is. Allow me to inform the General. Oh, don’t try the gates, they’re locked. Don’t scale the garden fences, they have spikes, unless you like being impaled. Do you?”

Grimacing, you respond, “I don’t.” He muses, “Figured.” Yeonjun alerts his guards and the General and you feel your heart palpitate with unease in your chest. This was it. Make your way to the gardens. Scour the entire place for burrows. Prolong the game, without him finding you. Sounds easy enough, right? The gardens themselves must be huge.

“So darling,” Yeonjun begins with a wry grin, an excited twinkle in his eyes, “Let the game begin. I’ll count to a hundred, I promise I won’t skip any numbers.” Liar.

With all your might, you start sprinting. Where the fuck were the doors to the garden, you didn’t know. Okay, okay, just use the windows as a guide. Peering around you see a stretch of plants and trees, fencing and a path, this area seems to be facing the front of the palace, where you could spot the grand gates through which you were hauled through. Twisting around, you peer to your left, that had to go back to the West Wing which you had already explored. With the way the path from the gate twisted, it would be quicker to get to the garden through the West wing.

Luckily, you weren’t too terrible at directions only doubling back one or two times before using the windows and looking outside to roughly ascertain your position and remain on the outskirting hallways of the palace. Your eyes widen seeing the bustling servants and trays of buckets of fresh vegetables being carried; yes! The gardens must be nearby.

What if you asked the servants? “Excuse me?” You call out stopping one and the vibrant red and white coloured woman peers at you absurdly, “Yes?”

“Where are the gardens?” You ask with glimmering hope. She hums, “Ah, you must be the new guest. I’m sorry I cannot tell you.” You plead, “Please, please. It’s not to escape I swear, I just need to hide.”

“He’ll have my head,” she responds with a dull expression and you sigh in frustration. She peers over her shoulder down a particular hallway. You spot many other servants coming through a set of wooden doors. You smile at her; “Oh, oh now I know.” She may have unintentionally let you know. But oh well!

Making your way through the bustling servants, you shove past them through the wooden doors and get smacked by the familiar eery sunset of Wonderland. The gardens truly looked magnificent, trimmed bushes, neat soil patches, flowers of every size, shape and colour, both elegant and wacky. Your eyes widen seeing one egregiously large flower looming over the others.

The checker-print adorned gardeners peer at you with disgust but you ignore it as you swiftly make your way through the gardens following the paths and trying not to become distracted with the oddly shaped bushes- mostly hearts.

Yeonjun had probably finished counting ages ago. Yet here you were with no progress out in the open sticking out in your modern attire like a green thumb. Perhaps you had to check the outskirts, burrows to other places would be easier from there right? Well, whatever weird logic you came up with, you had no choice but to try it.

You stiffen as a voice bellows out, “Oh, my, my, I think I spot a precious little bird fluttering out in the open unsure where to hide.” Fuck, fuck, fuck! How did he know to come out to the gardens? Of course he did, he’s not fucking stupid! He probably asked around, he obviously broke his own rules? Piece of shit!

Enraged and terrified, you bolt off, hearing his deranged cackle echo throughout the garden. Oh, he was insane. He definitely enjoyed chasing you around as though you were prey and he a hunter, a little too much for your liking.

Yeonjun walks confidently in his step, how lovely you were. Making this so easy for him. So what if he cheated and asked where you went? His servants could never disobey his orders. A delightfully twisted laugh escapes his lips, or he’d have their heads on a platter.

He did say he didn’t like cheaters, but he never said he couldn’t be one himself. He only didn’t like them if it meant he couldn’t win. What king would he be, if he followed the rules like the vermin below? No, he was above the rules. And well, he wanted you. At any cost.

No matter where you were in Wonderland, he’d always get you. Every guest that lands in this decrepit place was his to do with as he pleased. His gaze follows your minute figure as you sprint off making him smile. Oh he could imagine it now, dressed in the finest gowns hands strung up with the softest silk ribbon, at his mercy.

With a giddy step, he begins walking faster. Hm, perhaps your suggestion of hide and seek was a good one after all. He always did have a little sadistic streak in him.

Panting for breath you peer around desperately. The gardens were kept in immaculate condition. Not a single burrow in sight. Had they covered them up or something? Did you become over ambitious or were you just stupid?

The crunch of stones and soil resound and you feel fear grip your lungs like a vice. Yeonjun could be anywhere, he knew this damn place better than you did that for sure. Did he catch onto your plan?

Running more, you keenly look around and you turn another corner seeing nothing to your utter disappointment. Fuck. It was only a matter of time. Even if you manage to keep Yeonjun from finding you within the time, it was a win-win for him. Freedom wasn’t on the table for you.

You freeze suddenly hearing the crunch of footsteps and immediately duck behind some hedges, covering your mouth. A twisted tune is hummed by Yeonjun who walks narrowly by, making you shiver. He was truly enjoying this.

“Oh I swear you were here, I saw that lovely face of yours just moments ago. Hm, perhaps you’re that skittish, like a little rabbit on the run from a fox?” Yeonjun utters aloud.

His voice was brimming with twisted pleasure. You ease as he walks away and you release your held breath. Fuck, that was close. Giving it a few more seconds, you slowly make your way behind the topiaries trying to remain hidden as you scour the ground. At this point, you believe you‘ve barely even made a dent into the garden. You were purely trying your luck with the edges. That just made the most sense right?

As you turn the corner to the next side, you see this side is a little more unkempt, overgrown, yet there’s still many topiaries and the path in the distance. Your eyes catch light of a few degraded streamers and a paper plate disintegrating. Huh. Perhaps you were getting close after all.

You continue making your way around, sneaking with trepidation. It was a little too quiet. You catch more glimpses of papers, broken cups and worn and torn down invites, with illegible writing and smudges. Your eyes see a worn sign; ‘Beware Timekeeper Burrow ahead, proceed with caution and watch your step. Unstable ground.’

Yes, yes, yes! You could have never been happier in your life to see a warning sign!

“Mm? Oh, I see now. It all makes sense seeing you stick to the edge of the garden,” you spin around mortified to see him approaching you with a sickening smile. “Oh darling, you’re quite the smart thing aren’t you.”

A laugh, an unhinged one emits from him, “Too bad, I’m smarter. Now, come here,” he snarls. With a piercing scream, you run almost stumbling over your own feet from fear. Oh, he was terrifying.

You hear his ragged breathing and delirious laugh getting closer, your lungs burn and vision blurs with tears. Wind whips past your face and you have to try your hardest to keep an eye out for the unassuming burrow. The soil cracks and flakes at your harsh steps, truly the ground was unstable here. Fuck!

With a curious glance over your shoulder, you scream horrendously loud seeing his hand inches from your shoulder and his manic gaze, “Got you!”

Roughly, you’re pushed down onto the ground; twigs and stones or whatever else painfully prick your back and soil stains your skin as you struggle against him. Yeonjun pins your arms down with a laugh, “Goodness, it’s been so long since I’ve been this entertained. You might become my most favourite guest I’ve ever had.”

You huff and writhe trying to escape his grasp. No, no, no! You could feel it, instinctually, you were so close! “W-What about the time-“ He chuckles his breath brushing over your face, his raven locks hanging over his eyes, “Oh, that ended ages ago. You’re good at keeping away from me you know-“

“That means I get a point-“ you scramble, your thoughts an utter mess. “So? Either way, you’re mine. It’s a tie then. What should we do about that? Hm?” Yeonjun’s lips stretch into a smile, “You’re so pretty when you try to outsmart me, you might even surpass the rage I feel right now for such a stupid move.”

Breathless, you feel your limbs ache from exhaustion, the pump of blood and adrenaline echoing in your eardrums. Not like this. His devilishly handsome face hovers over yours relishing in your defeat. No, you still had a chance. You needed to get him off you, but he had strength.

Your gaze drops to his lips, parted, panting, he was also out of breath. Were you out of your mind? Perhaps. Your gaze flicks back up to his eyes as he observes your quiet demeanor.

“Mm? What’s that lovely head of yours thinking about now?” He hums amused. You say nothing peering back down at his lips and he seems to take notice, his brows furrowing. That’s it. Confusion.

Pushing aside all rationale and morals, you tilt yourself upwards meeting your lips with his in a clumsy kiss. His eyes widen taken wildly aback. His grip loosens around your arms and you shove them away; he momentarily panics before you wrap your arms around his neck pulling him deeper into the kiss. Yeonjun freezes.

Wonderland, what a place. Perhaps you really had become insane already. Resorting to this. No matter how sinfully good his luscious lips felt against yours, no matter how lust crept into the crevices of your body. At the end of the day, your sense of self-preservation came first.

You feel him part from you breathless, desire and glee flickering in his dark gaze as he releases a breathy laugh cupping your cheek, “You’re…insane.” How ironic, his words were. You muse, “Am I?” “You dare to kiss the king?” He murmurs against your lips.

“Is that so bad?” You murmur slowly, removing his hand from your cheek. You hear the clatter of armour and he momentarily peers towards the sound. Now!

With a harsh elbow into his temple, you shoot out from under him with a brief stumble and run. For a moment, he’s dazed as his men yell bewildered, “Sire- she-!”

Yeonjun snarls with a breathless laugh, “Huh. Go get her. That sly-.” Yeonjun watches as his knights rattle after her. Though, he doesn’t seem too worried. A smirk lining his lips, his mind thinking back to your lips on his. Oh, how bold you were.

Even if you didn’t admit it, you were perhaps just as insane as he was, for attempting such a stunt. In fact, he was enraged further, because now, he really wanted you. You were no longer ever disposable. He just had to have you.

Still running, you slip here and there as the soil crumbles and gives out. Your eyes widen seeing a pile of rocks and a crevice leading to the ground. That had to be it. Without looking back, you start rolling off the rocks, sheer adrenaline pushing you through, you begin to see the cobwebbed and dark hole leading into the ground. It seemed it hadn’t been used in awhile. You didn’t even know where the fuck this headed.

You hear the knights approach. Fuck it, you couldn’t risk being trapped here for eternity. Closing your eyes and inhaling, you jump down, hissing in pain feeling the jagged stones and soil against your skin, it burned; as you slid down. Keeping your eyes shut, to avoid the claustrophobic surroundings. Dreadfully you hear the soil and ground behind you, crack and crumble and any semblance of light goes out. Oh right, the ground was unstable!

Prying your eyes open, you break out into a sprint once more seeing the passage behind you collapsing in on itself. How fucking horrifying. Tears run down your face.

Meanwhile, the knights peer from the ground mortified at the closed in burrow. Surely, you’d die? Yeonjun walks up to the sight and his gaze darkens.

“Huh, you all are more useless than expected,” his voice is eerily calm, sending utter fear through all the knights as they pale. Yeonjun crosses his arms and he hums, “It’s alright.” He gazes past the hedges through the bars of the extravagantly tall fence. Hm, this was the older burrow that Soobin used, yes? If I recall, this should go through Hatter and Hare’s territory.”

The knights peer solemnly at the crumbling burrow. Oh dear, that was a place in Wonderland everyone wanted to avoid. For that place is where one would experience death. Not that of the body, but of the mind, but of sanity.

Yeonjun hums with a flick of his wrist nonchalantly to the seething rage boiling underneath his calm exterior. His lips quirk into a sadistic smile, “It’s fine. Once she stumbles into the Hatter or that pathetic Hare, she’ll regret everything. In fact,” a chuckle leaves his lips, “She’ll be begging to come back here.”

Silence emits from the knights. Well, that’s if you didn’t suffocate to death of course.

Yeonjun snaps his head over his shoulder sending a dark gaze at the small troop of knights and he smiles a little too sweetly. “Oh, and for your incompetence to catch my guest. I’m afraid, I’m not too happy.” Yeonjun turns to face them fully and hums ruthlessly, “What good are cards that I have no use for in my deck?”

They stiffen, horror painting their faces and limbs trembling. “Savour your necks, whilst you have them, that is.” He walks past them with a dark glare and malevolent smile.

Perhaps, he’d have to take up the Hare on his repulsive invite after all. Either way, you’d find out very quickly, what a mistake it was to leave him.

Taglist: [open]

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[beneathashadytree]

HEY GUYS! LONG POST HERE, BUT PLEASE READ🙏🏽

I am genuinely appalled by the discourse ongoing in the LNDS fandom these past few days—but above all, I am severely disappointed in what had started out as one of the most inclusive and sweet fandoms I’ve ever been in. I have a few things to say, so in this post I’m trying to put all my thoughts to words. Apologies if I sound harsh, but I’m genuinely livid. Also, please ignore any typos. I’m not wearing my glasses while word-vomiting.

First off, for a fandom that is composed of mostly adults, you guys have been acting terribly childishly. It’s 2024, and yet people are still unironically shaming others for “switching up on their favs” as if a person owes 2D characters any loyalty. Let people enjoy things. The novelty of Sylus and how he’s quite literally 6 months behind the other 3 love interests makes people want to catch up on the enjoyment of him all at once. He’s still such a brand new character and concept, so there’s no wonder everyone’s hyped up over him.

I’ve seen people get genuinely mad at other players and writing whole think-pieces about this. I promise you guys, the company making this game is still benefiting whether you’re pouring your money into Sylus or any one of the previous 3. We’re all happy to have an interesting character pop up among the roster now, and we’re taking our time getting to know him. Doesn’t make any of the first 3 any less loved. I genuinely don’t remember this amount of nastiness when solo events for each of the guys used to drop.

In fact, if the popularity thing is worrying you, going off MLQC (the company’s past game) the character who was last added was—eventually, after the initial hype died down—kicked off to the sidelines in most major events and was given the least content, and was the least favorite of fans.

Secondly, and this has my blood boiling, there is an insane amount of entitlement and rudeness I’ve seen on my timeline concerning how people characterize the men—particularly Rafayel.

Absolutely nothing warrants this shitty attitude towards other creators for how they depict characters in their fics. It seems you guys feel protected behind a screen and think it gives you the right to bully strangers online. Fanfiction is for fantasizing about your favs; for letting your imagination run wild. If this were a character analysis, then yes, maybe I’d agree that inaccuracies are aggravating. However, in fanfiction, there are zero rules, especially when it comes to smut.

Sexual preferences are not equivalent to a person’s whole personality—so whether he’s written as a dom, a sub, a switch, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, this has nothing to do with his kindness, gentlemanliness, passion, power, ruthlessness, snark, or whatever minuscule aspect of his character makes up his lovely whole and matters to you.

I think this circles back to a lack of ability to separate sexual matters and personality, because how else do people interpret fics depicting him in a certain manner as them erasing his character? They might overlap, but they can very well be mutually exclusive. I’ve seen incredibly sweet and gentle men irl who were absolute doms in bed, and I’ve seen powerful and passionate men who were reduced to tears between the sheets. There is barely any correlation whatsoever, and if anything, claiming otherwise is what I consider piss-poor media literacy and reading-comprehension.

My third point is that for some reason, there have been many, many posts and replies on here where I’ve seen people just straight-up spread pure hate for the characters. Maybe this bothered me in particular because I’m an OT3 (OT4 now!) and absolutely adore all of them, but I find no logical reason for “yucking someone’s yum” when we’re talking about liking the characters of an Otome game—a genre of video games which is made to literally cater to the tastes of as many people as possible.

It’s especially disheartening to see when it’s at a time like this, when new content is about to drop, and you find in the replies of every other post/discussion at least a few people spewing hate and disgust at Sylus. Again, so many people are incredibly excited about him. Why is there a need to rain on everyone’s parade, especially in such an unsolicited manner?

This fandom originally started as a safe space for people of all races, backgrounds, genders, sexualities, and personalities to bond over our mutual love for characters. All I’ve seen on my TL lately (in terms of discussion) is negativity, and it’s such a fucking let-down. I hope whatever the fuck has happened to this fandom cools down after a bit. It’s probably exaggerated and very in-your-face rn, cause more and more people are downloading LNDS, so the probabilities of finding people being nasty are increasing. But I seriously don’t want to grow to resent this fandom and find myself distancing myself from it to protect my peace.

Let’s all remember to be kind towards other players, to not act entitled or bratty about the characters, and to try and mind our own business if we see content that doesn’t suit our tastes.