#you can just feel it in the bones of the series

[golden-cherry]

deal - cl16 (49/?)

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Reader

Series Summary: Your whole life has gone to shit. Your boyfriend broke up with you, you just lost your job and the Monegasque, who suddenly stands in your doorway, claims that it’s his apartment.

Chapter Summary: Climbing up the mountain can be very freeing.

Warnings: angst (self-doubt, insecurities, mentions of abuse in a relationship, Charles is very insecure about himself), the end is a bit fluffy, but don't expect too much

Word Count: 4.1k

series masterlist

previous part

A/N: I feel like this describes Charles well. I cried when writing this chapter. I hope you like it. feedback is appreciated.

It is the first time in years that Charles has no desire to climb the mountain on those stupid skis. 

His feet hurt, he is cold even though the jacket he is wearing is suitable for even colder temperatures, and his hands are so stiff from the frigid air that they painfully curl around his ski poles. 

The snow blinds him because of the bright sun, his bones feel heavy, somehow his mouth is so dry that he would like to rinse it with water every five meters.

But maybe that's just because he'd rather be at home in Monaco. Because that's where you are. And there is no place he would rather be right now. 

Closing the door behind him and leaving you alone in the apartment was incredibly difficult. He would have loved to put you in his bag and take you with him, but you would only have distracted him from training. 

And if he wants to be world champion one day, he can't afford to make any mistakes. 

It's been two days since he's seen you and heard your voice. In the morning, when he wakes up and gets ready for the day, you are still fast asleep, and during his training, Andrea has his phone so that Charles can collect his thoughts and stay focused. Only in the evening, when Charles is in bed, he manages to text you a few messages before falling asleep, cell phone in hand, completely exhausted. 

He misses you every second. 

Before he met you, he would never have imagined that he could miss someone he had only known for a few days so much. He had missed Annika from time to time, after all, he had definitely loved her at some point, but he had never longed for her or anyone else the way he did for you now. 

As soon as he has a moment to himself, whether it's in the shower or on the toilet or when Andrea isn't bothering him with calories or carbohydrates or protein for a moment, he misses you so much that he can almost feel the physical distance between you. 

But most of all, he misses you in the morning when he wakes up. When he is in that one second when he is neither sleeping nor fully awake. Snuggled up warm in the blanket and against the pillow, where in the evening he imagines it would be your body that he is snuggling up to. And in the morning, for a brief moment, it feels as if you are actually lying next to him, which is why the second he realizes that you are miles away from him hurts the most. 

“Are you okay?” Andrea asks, who has slowed down a little to run up the hill next to Charles. ”You're suspiciously quiet.”

Charles, who hasn't realized that he has slowed down at all, looks at his trainer in confusion. “Yes, I'm fine. Why do you ask?”

Andrea shrugs. ”Usually you're chattering away at me during training. That usually helps you to distract yourself from how exhausting it is.”

He has a point there. Charles pushes himself forward on his skis. “I don't know. This time I don't feel like you're torturing me up this mountain. It's still the same route we usually take, isn't it?” He looks around as if he can recognize the surroundings. 

Andrea raises his eyebrows and also picks up the pace. ‘We're in a completely different area, Charles.’ He points to another mountain with his gloved hand.

If his friend hadn't told him, the man from Monaco would never have noticed, so absorbed is he in his thoughts about you. The mountain Andrea is pointing to seems more familiar to him than the one in front of them. And a lot smaller. If they had taken the familiar route, they would have been at the summit long ago. 

“You asshole,” Charles curses and wipes his face. ‘Why did you choose a different mountain? And especially one that's higher?”

Andrea can't help but grin. ’You came in second in the championship this year. I'm hoping that if we increase your training, you'll come in first next season and...”

“And what?” Charles interrupts his trainer. "The whole thing is useless if my strategists and the whole team mess up so much during the race. I can train as much as I want. It won't work." He gets so caught up in it that he doesn't notice how quickly he pushes himself up the mountain on his skis. 

“Charles –”

“No, Andrea. This whole thing cost me the title. Wrong tires? Last-minute changes in the pit? What the hell?” he gets worked up. He knows that his anger is unfairly directed at the wrong person, after all Andrea is only there for Charles's well-being and not for what happens on the track, but it just comes spilling out. And he can't stop it. 

His ski poles dig deep into the white snow, which Charles barely notices. He only sees the summit in front of him and hears Andrea breathing loudly next to him as he continues to complain. 

“It's not right that I come in second because of such little things! If I had caused accidents, then at least it would have been my fault and I could have dealt with it more easily,” he says, annoyed. ”But what kind of stupid plans were these, anyway? Even a toddler could come up with a better strategy!”

Andrea, who knows full well that Charles needs to vent his anger, walks quietly beside him and lets the storm pass over him. It's not often that Charles gets this angry. And normally he blames himself, but he certainly doesn't take such serious mistakes on his head. 

Charles knows that making mistakes is an inevitable part of competition, and sometimes, they're the difference between standing at the top of the podium and finishing second. Being the runner-up in a championship can feel bittersweet – so close to victory, yet just short of it. 

Being second in the championship feels like a mix of pride and frustration. On one hand, Charles has achieved something incredible – outperforming almost everyone, proving his skill and showing that he deserves to sit in the red car with the horse on it. But on the other hand, there's that lingering thought inside of his head – he was so close. The tiniest mistakes, the small miscalculations in his strategies, or someone else having a slightly better day made the difference in the end. 

There's this ache inside of him, knowing he was almost the champion. The podium felt different when he looked up at Max Verstappen holding the trophy he desperately craved. Charles felt a lot of things in that moment – disappointment, regret and even anger – at himself, the situation, the team and at the margin that kept him from winning. 

“I could have won the title. Max will definitely win the next season too, as strong as Red Bull is. How will I ever live up to my reputation then?” He clenches his jaw. ”I feel like I'm stuck with what I'm doing now. And I'm doing my best, Andrea. I really am. But it's apparently not enough. Do you know how incredibly frustrating that is?”

Being second carries a unique weight – a strange middle ground between triumph and heartbreak. And hell, Charles heart broke with every race that put more distance between his and Max's points. He feels like a failure, like he failed his team, his family and friends. He failed his fans, that support him through every decision he makes on and off track, that defend him whenever he makes a mistake during races. 

And it haunts him. What if he had pushed just a little harder, made one less mistake, reacted a second faster? What if he made a different decision that would've outweighed the mistakes his team made? What if he became world champion in the famous red car he worked so hard to get into? The famous red car that his dad loved so much?

Disappointing his dad was the worst part of it all. It was a different kind of pain, heavy and crushing. It's not just about failing at something – Charles feels like he simply isn't good enough. Like he let someone down who believed in him. He could have been champion this year – he was so close to standing on top of the podium. What if he never gets this close to winning? What if he never holds the big trophy in his hands, dedicating it to his dad, who always wanted to see him drive in the Ferrari?

Charles' anger has been building up for so long that he doesn't know where to put it. If only he had concentrated more on the season and hadn't been so distracted by his personal problems - 

“And Annika. What a waste of time the whole thing was. I should never have gotten involved with her. I should have ended the relationship when I realized that she wasn't the one. When I realized that I couldn't give her the attention that a healthy relationship requires.”

Charles would never admit it, but Annika’s betrayal in their relationship cut deeper than expected. It’s not just about broken promises – it’s about broken trust, the foundation of any meaningful connection. It shook everything Charles believed to be true about Annika – or love in general. 

The worst part wasn’t the act itself or that he caught them right in the act, but the realization that someone he trusted with his heart made the choice to hurt him. After the break-up he questioned everything – was any of it real? Was Annika lying to him the whole time? Even after everything, the wounds linger. 

Some betrayals are survivable with time and effort, but others leave scars that never fully heal. They change people – it changed Charles. It hardened his heart, made love feel dangerous to him and made him create walls where there once was openness. 

He guarded himself like a survival instinct. At first, it was solely for protection – he told himself that if he didn’t let anyone in, nobody could hurt him. The walls became his shield, keeping out disappointment, rejection, and the risk of being vulnerable again. 

But over the course of the weeks, Charles noticed the walls he put up brick by brick didn’t just keep the pain out – they kept everything out. Love. Connection. The chance to feel something real. Hell, he didn’t even tell his Maman that he was back home in Monaco. He pushed his family away, his friends, acting cold and distant – not because he didn’t want love, but because he’s so scared of what happened when he let someone else in. 

It took Charles some time to figure out the truth, that the walls didn’t keep him safe and sound – they kept him stuck. They stopped him from healing, from growing, from experiencing the things that make life meaningful. But he was so scared of breaking them down when it took him so long to put them up, that he didn’t know what to do when he met you. 

It was terrifying, letting you in slowly and hesitantly. He’s spent so long guarding himself, convincing himself that no one except his close ones can be trusted, that it almost felt unnatural to let you in. At first, he resisted, kept his distance. But the fact that you didn’t even know who he was felt so good, made him feel safe to share his story with you and then – you stayed. You didn’t push too hard, but you didn’t walk away either. 

Surely, this friendship has had it’s ups and downs, but this is what happenes when two people, who protected themselves so much that they become too careful, too hesitant to let someone in fully. 

And instead of forcing your way through, you waited. You were there. You proved in small, consistent ways, that you’re not like the woman who made him built those walls in the first place. 

And then, without realizing it, he stopped expecting the worst. He let you see his wounds, his fears, his past, and instead of running, you stayed. You stayed with him through awkward dinner conversations about his ex, you stayed with him when he didn’t correct his family about your relationship status, you stayed when he overstepped the boundaries of your friendship. Your gentle touch, your honest conversations while burning Annika’s things. 

You stayed when he revealed to you who he really is. You see him – the real him – and don’t flinch at what you see. Little by little, cracks form in his defenses. He finds himself wanting to trust again, to love again, even though it scares him to death. 

When you look at him, it feels like sunlight creeping through the cracks in the fortress he thought were unbreakable. It was unsettling at first after being in the dark for some time. But you didn’t break down his walls in a dramatic, earth-shattering way. 

It was quiet. Subtle. It sneaked up to him in moments he didn’t even realize – they way you looked at him when he played your song on the piano in the bookshop, when you let him hold you while you cried like his arms were the safest place in the world, when you showed him that you want him for who he is. 

But even though you broke down most of his walls, he still can’t admit that you’re all he needs. 

He can’t let you in fully after what Annika did to him, he can’t let you touch him like he wants you to. He can’t let himself feel so much for you because what if those feelings he has for you – the feelings he swore he’d never harbour for anyone again – are not enough for you?

What if he gives you his all and you decide that it’s not enough? That he is not enough? He can’t tell you why he doesn’t want you to touch him, because what if you’ll see him differently? What if the things he wants, he needs, are different from what you want? 

He feels like he isn’t good enough. The scars Annika left on him made him question his worth, his value, his ability to be loved. There are moments where he feels too far gone, too damaged, not strong enough to break free from the fear of losing you that he’d rather keep you at arms length hurting himself than push you away and out of his life. 

He can’t let you touch him after Annika, because sex with her felt wrong, like he was broken because he wanted different things than her. Because he craved intimacy like his life depended on it, the safety that comes with it, but it always felt like he needed to deliver, even if he didn’t want to. It felt like a chore, no gentle touches or loving words, only demanding hands and lips and thighs and he swore to himself he’ll never let it happen again. 

If you don’t touch him at all, there’s no chance you could hurt him like that.

He’d rather give you all he’s able to give instead of letting you return anything.

“I could have waited for…”

“Charles.” Andreas‘ voice is gentle and soothing, in contrast to Charles’. When the man from Monaco looks at his friend, he smiles at him. ”We're here.”

The wind howls at the summit, biting and cold, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t feel it. He can’t feel anything except the weight that presses down on his chest. He stands there on top oft he world – and all the space in the world couldn’t quiet the chaos inside him. 

Andrea chose this route to help Charles clear his head, the mountain was supposed to be his escape, his victory. He climbed every inch of it, each slide of his skis pushing him further from the mess he feels inside. The view from the top is actually breathtaking: endless stretches of jagged peaks, skies that feel closer than ever. He should feel something – pride, accomplishment, freedom. But instead, there’s only the overwhelming silence that gnawed at him. 

For a moment, everything is still. He pulls his beanie and glasses from his head, closing his eyes and trying to ground himself in the beauty around him, but the images, the memories, everything – it all comes flooding back. The things he can’t outrun. The words that had been sad. The choices that had left him fractured and alone. 

A sob caught in his throat, sharp and unexpected and he falls to his knees in the white snow at his feet. The tries to fight it, but the tears come anyway – slow at first, then faster and harder. They burn against the cold wind, mixing with the salt of the sweat on his skin – and he can’t stop them. 

They stand for everything he hasn’t been able to say, everything he has be scared to face. He thought he could bury it, hide it behind the walls he built, behind the distance from it all. 

His hand tremble on his thighs, his chest tightening with every broken breath. His vision blurred, the edges oft he mountain fading into the background. It doesn’t matter that he’s at the top – he feels smaller than ever. The tears slip down his cheeks like a rush of a river too long dammed. 

„I’m not enough“, he whispered almost unaudibly. A confession only the mountains and his friend could hear. „I’m never going to be enough.“

The world stretched out before him, magnificent and indifferent, and in that moment, he realized that being on top oft he mountain didn’t mean escaping it all. He had climbed all this way, but he couldn’t outrun himself. The hurt, the mistakes, the weight of everything he’d buried deep inside. 

He doesnt flinch when he feels Andrea’s hand on his shoulder, gently squeezing and reassuring him that whatever he feels right now is okay. That the tears that fall down onto the snow have their right to exist after being bottled up for so long. 

The sobs faded, leaving him gasping for air in the stillness of the summit. He wiped his face, trying to wipe away the brokennes, but it lingered in his chest. His hands still trembling from the release, from the rawness that had bubbled to the surface. For a long moment, he just sits there, the wind biting at him, the emptiness inside him as a vast as the world stretched out before him. 

And then it hit him, like a sudden punch that knocked the breath from his lungs. 

You. 

Your laugh. Your smile. The way you always seem to know what he’s thinking, the way you care in the quietest ways – how you’ve been there for him, even when he pushed you away. How, despite everything, you stayed. 

He tried so hard to tell himself that he’s better off alone, that he doesn’t need anyone else to fill the empty spaces inside him. He thought he could bury his feelings, run from the truth. He has told himself that love was something to fear, something that could trap him, break him, leave him just as broken as he’d been before.

But now, sitting on top of the world, it all makes sense. 

He loves you. He always has. He can feel it in every part of him, the truth that has been there all along, buried under layers of fear and pride. It’s not something he can outrun, not anymore. He can’t ignore the way his heart always beats faster when you’re near, the way everything seems to fall into place when you smile at him, the way your presence has been the one thing that feels like home. 

The moment of realization hits him like a wave, sudden and overwhelming. It’s undeniable. 

He loves you.

Not in the casual, passing way he once tried to convice himself was enough for his relationship with Annika, but in a deeper, truer sense. It’s always been you – only you. Right from the start when the both of you stood in the small apartment. 

But the weight o fit, the sheer force of that truth, felt like it could crush him, especially when he realizes how long he’s been running from it. 

His heart races, pounding hard in his chest, but it isn’t the kind of excitement he thought would come with such a revelation. Instead, it is quiet terror. The terror of feeling too much. Of feeling anything at all. 

His breath comes in shallow gasps as the cold mountain air cuts through him. It isn’t the altitude or the wind that chills him – it’s the fear of being too vulnerable again. Of letting anyone close enough to hurt him. The thought of telling you, of exposing his raw, vulnerable part of himself, feels like standing on the edge of a cliff with no way to climb back down. 

He stares out over the vast horizon, the world stretching out endlessly beneath him, and for a moment, he considers it. The possibility of going back, of telling you everything he has just realized. But the thought of your eyes on him, the weight of the words, the vulnerability—it‘s too much. Too raw. Too dangerous.

So, he stays silent. He stays with the truth, buried deep inside of him. The love he feels for you is now his secret, locked away like a fragile thing, too delicate to share. He can‘t find the courage to let it out—not now, not after everything that had happened.

But there is something about knowing, about feeling it — just knowing that he can love again — that makes the world feel a little less heavy. It isn’t perfect, and it doesn‘t fix everything, but it is enough. For the first time in a long time, he doesn‘t feel so broken. He isn’t empty. He is filled with something — something soft, something he thought was gone forever.

Maybe he isn’t ready to tell you. Maybe he will never be ready. But the knowledge that love still exists in him — that it can still find him, even after everything — is enough to hold onto for now. It isn’t a victory, not in the way he wants, but it is a beginning. And in that, there is a quiet peace. A peace that, despite all the fear and hesitation, he coul still feel, still hope.

And that, for the moment, is enough.

[unclearblur]

The First and The Last, pt. 2

Still thinking of Matthew Michael Murdock and how absolutely WRECKED he gets for you, the girl who he lost his virginity to.

Summary: Matthew Michael Murdock has been sexually confident and cocky for years but it all had to start with someone, right? That someone is you. After a misunderstanding causes Matt to cut ties and run, years have gone by before Matt stumbles on the truth and must face the fact that he's still very much not over you.

A part 2 to this piece, because some truly lovely people wanted one and now I guess I’m making this into a series so here we gooo – there’s no fucking plan here babes I’m fresh from the fucking ER, on bed rest for the next 2 weeks so keep the expectations low ngl LOL. Hope you're ready for almost 6k words of angst and smut!

So here’s more Matt POV as a treat <3

Pt. 2 Haunted

CW: explicit language, SMUT, P in V sex, afab!Reader, sub!Matt, virgin!Matt, Matt Murdock is a warning himself ok???, mdni, 18+ this CW list is not exhaustive proceed with caution you are in charge of your own media consumption. Matt also calls Reader Angel in this because well I have a soft spot for pet names and this just fits for Matt doesn't it?

pt. 1 Revelations │ pt. 2 Haunted │ pt. 3 tba...

If Matt thought he could just move on with his life like his world wasn’t just shaken and stirred like a cheap drink without any of the sweetness and all of the burn, he thought wrong. Since the moment Foggy made his way to their shared office smelling like you, since the moment he heard that you never meant to abandon him? Leave him behind like everyone before and after you?

It's like the certainty of the tides. An overripe fruit slipping off the branch and crashing down to earth. The surety of the sun rising and falling, whether you want it to or not.

His thoughts inevitably, inescapably, unavoidably – return to you.

Matt’s pretty sure you’ve successfully driven him mad. Unearthed a piece of you carved so deeply into him he’s not sure how he’s lived until now thinking he was over you. You haven’t even done anything, you have no clue that you’ve managed to disrupt his carefully crafted façade of confidence and charm.

He managed to get through the day but if pressed? He couldn’t tell anyone any specifics. He had no idea what notations he made on his cases. No idea what Foggy or Karen spoke to him about. What clients he met with.

How could he?

With that scent radiating off of Foggy’s coat, invading his lungs and filling his mouth so thoroughly he could swear up and down on his knees that he could still taste you. After all the years, all the other women, all the other heartbreaks he’s experienced. He can still taste the phantom of you. Still knows what comprises your unique scent.

Honey soaked peaches. He couldn’t forget even after everything. No matter the other women he’s tasted, no matter the other scents his sensitive nose has encountered over the years. Yours is still the one that makes his throat run dry, his mouth water, his teeth too big for his jaws. Deceptively soft, it still manages to overtake all else. Leaves him with that gentle tremor in his hands, an ache in his chest, a ravenous hunger in his belly.

If Matt were a betting man, he’d bet that his pupils were blown wide for the entirety of his working day.

He managed to say his goodbyes, avoiding the questioning gazes of Foggy and Karen and made his way back home. The further away he got from Foggy’s coat, from your scent and all those trembling, blazing memories, he hoped that he could set aside thoughts of you.

He was so, so wrong.

When he’s out that night terrifying criminals and stalking the dark corners of Hell’s Kitchen, that bone deep ache in the shape of you still writhes in the back of his mind. He can’t help but wonder if your skin is still as soft as he remembers. If his faulty memories have glorified the sound of your racing heart. If he correctly recalls the feeling of your kiss-swollen lips sliding down his cock.

He can’t help but twitch at the memory of surrendering to the swirl of sensations and holy sin that was your cunt tightening around him until the only noises he could make were choked approximations of your name.

Matt arrives at home carrying nothing but himself and a perplexing concoction of needy desire and self-loathing. He tosses his mask to the floor, gripping his hands in his hair in tight fists. Sighing, Matt straightens up and gets ready for bed.

But even then he finds no reprieve from you. You’re a ghost that his senses conjure up even in his sleep. His mind invoking you like some wrathful spirit – but you’re all tenderness and love, sweet nectar and whispers of absolution he thought he’d never find before you. He doesn’t know if this version is better or worse. If he should hope for your anger and your tears, instead of this all-encompassing warmth that haunts him more effectively than any demon from Father Lantom’s services.

His dreams of you that night have his body twisted in his sheets, soaked from his own sweat and desire. His cock weeps and his mouth releases breathy whines as his voracious mind invokes the intoxicating sensations of you.

You and your petal-soft lips pressed against his. Swallowing his pleas for something he has yet to experience. He doesn’t know what he’s begging for quite yet but he knows that you – with your gentle hands and your tender heart and your willing lips – will give it to him.

You’re on top of him and all over him, and like a blanket you block out the rest of the world. All he can feel, all he can taste and touch and smell is you. His spinning mind coming to a standstill on its axis and the focus is you. Everything narrows down to your fingers in his hair, stroking it away from his face. Your lips coaxing his to open and let him truly taste the essence of you with his clumsy tongue. Your legs straddling his waist so he can feel the heat radiating from your pussy and making his cock pulse with need.

The sound of your heartbeat thundering in your chest in a paradoxically relaxing rhythm, the sound of your blood rushing through you, the sound of your voice telling him how pretty he is, how good he’s being for you – all of these combined paints a devastating picture that drowns all else out. Matt never stood a chance.

And when the both of you are finally naked, when he’s bared everything he is to you, he can feel the heat of his blush shade his throat all the way up to his cheeks. The smell of your combined arousal surrounds him in a heady daze – like a heavy mist of musk and honeyed peaches and Matt never knew there was a smell to desperate desire until this moment but he knows in the bowels of his greedy mind that he wants this all the time, for always.

His hands are shaking and if he could string his thoughts together he’d probably know it’s from nerves. But your hands slide up his arms and intwine them together above his shoulders and hold him steady. They’re anchor points in this dizzying array of pleasure and desperation and soul-crushing need and he clutches your hands like they’re the only things holding him down to the earth. For one frantic moment, Matt truly believes if you let go of him the world would swallow him up and spit him back out and he’d never be able to find his way back from the abyss – until your thumb strokes grounding circles into his skin. And all at once, he’s brought gently back to earth, back to you in his bed.

You brush your nose along his neck, producing a shiver that brings a smile to your face.

“You still with me Matty?” you breathe into his neck. He whimpers at the sensitivity and though his eyes are useless he closes them to concentrate on the feeling. He nods his head drowsily and you stifle a giggle against his jaw. He revels in the vibrations, this bright burst of joy amidst the headiness of your skin on his.

But then, in the next breath, you slide your pussy along the length of his cock and Matt simply melts. His thoughts white out with the heat of you grinding against him, your slick drowning his cock. He chokes on his tongue, throwing his head back against the pillow.

Gasping, he grips your hands harder and jerkily grinds upwards. You lean forward and kiss him, stifling his cries. He kisses you back, uncaring for technique or finesse when the wet slide of your pussy along his cock is producing the most debauched sound he’s ever heard and all he wants is more. 

Your lips are firm against his, however. You steady his frantic movements and gently slow him down. Your lips and tongue coaxing his to allow you to suckle his full bottom lip, to dance your tongue along his. You hook your ankles on the inside of his thighs and bear down, preventing Matt from grinding up against you and forcing him instead to match your sensual slide along his cock.

This carnal dance with you consumes him. He’s never felt so bare in his entire life – and it’s not because he’s as naked as the day he was born, crying and furious with life. The way you move against him, along him, into him destroys every barrier he’s ever meticulously surrounded himself with. You meet every depraved, greedy part of him and soothe it. You don’t force him to surrender to you, you don’t even ask him for any part of himself he’s unwilling to give. You simply offer to him everything he’s never allowed himself to want, to acknowledge that he needs, and he’s helpless but to capitulate to your sweet seduction.

Matt can do nothing else but sink into the depths and pray it drowns him.

So when you urge him to sit up and slide yourself under him? He’s defenseless. You lay there before him like an offering with your knees bent and legs spread. Matt kneels between them and runs his unsteady hands along your thighs. He grips them, marveling at the dimpling of your skin in his large hands. You’re so goddamn soft and delicate in his rough palms he wants to take a bite. Wants to sink his teeth in and never let go. Mark you as his down to the bone so you can never be rid of him. Now, more than ever in his recent memory, he wishes that he could see – so that he can trace the soft lines and curves of you. So he can know what your hair looks like against the sheets of his bed. So he can know the color of your eyes as they gaze half-lidded at him.

He always knew one of his greatest sins aside from wrath was greed but you make him want for things he had long accepted he’d never have.

He leans over you and uses his extraordinary senses to consume you instead. He listens to the rush of your blood and the strong beating of your heart. He feels the heat of your sex radiating off of you, the quickened puffs of your breath warming the air. He smells the intoxicating mix of your combined desires.

And his world on fire blazes brighter.

His breathes are long and shaky when you reach your hands out to him. He unclasps his hands from their bruising grip on your thighs and entwines your fingers together. His chest is on yours now, and the soft pillows of your breasts drag along his skin. The sensation is enough for his mouth to drop open on an exhale and he lowers his head to rest on yours. He wishes he could meet your eyes.

You shift your hips upwards and he presses his head harder into yours. Matt drags his cock along the seam of your pussy and hisses. You coo at him, smiling against his lips as your breath fans across his face. The two of you stay like this, a reversal of earlier with him grinding down into you now.

The head of his cock notches at the entrance of your pussy, already leaking and mixing with your slick. He fumbles a kiss with you, thighs already shaking with restraint. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, he just knows that he’ll do whatever you say with heaven this close.

“Just like I showed you earlier, ok Matt? There’s no rush, you have me,” you murmur into his mouth, smiling softly at his near-silent gasps. He has you, he has you, he has you. What a dangerous thought, he thinks half-crazed. He licks his lips and nods, swallowing hard before following your example and starting to push into you.

With the first tentative thrust of his cock into the heat of your pussy, Matt’s eyes roll back and his mouth falls open with barely restrained whines. The roar of his blood drowns out all other sound and Matt just knows that nothing will ever come close to this moment in time with you.

His head drops into the cradle of your neck and pants into your skin. He’s dimly aware of the sound of your smiling but he’s frozen solid from the stranglehold your pussy has on his cock. It’s all consuming, this tight wet heat that you’re gripping him with.

He had prayed earlier to drown in you and it seems he was standing at the precipice of sinking into your depths.

“You’re doing so good for me, Matty.” Your voice breaks through the surface and all he can respond with is hitching whines and sounds he didn’t know he was capable of producing. Pathetic ones in any other context but they’re all he has to offer you in the face of this mind-melting pleasure.

God, his cock is barely in you and he already feels destroyed. Surely, surely this must be the summit. Certainly, he cannot climb this mountain of pleasure any higher.

He’s wrong.

Like a galaxy opening up and swallowing him whole, the next few moments pass by in whirls of heat and flares of white-hot pleasure. His cock is buried in your pussy down to the root, his balls nestled snuggly against your ass. He can feel your essence dripping from you, can feel the pulse of your heart beating through the tight walls of your pussy and he’s driven half-mad by the thought that here you are. Wrapped around him, under him and he’ll always have you.

Matt tries – and fails – to form words for you. To tell you that he’s yours as much as you are his. That you’ve given the snarling monster in his head a taste of heaven in his drooling jowls and now his teeth have sunken in, his jaw has locked in place and there’s no chance of him letting go. He tries and fails to tell you that this, this is how you tame the devil himself. Trailing touches that leave goosebumps in their wake, praises murmured against his temple, delicate fingers stroking through his hair.

Deliriously, Matt thinks that if Lucifer were treated to the smooth skin of your body and the soaked inferno that is your pussy, he would have willingly returned to Heaven for another taste.

You drag your fingertips up the curve of Matt’s spine to rest along his jawline and chin to tilt his face towards yours. The sensation causes Matt to arch his back and jerk his hips. His cock slides somehow deeper into your pussy as it tightens around him like a vice and any words he had to offer you are choked off with a lewd moan. A throaty hum from you draws his attention and suddenly he needs more. Needs to please you. Needs to claw out more sounds from you, needs to feel your pussy tighten around him, needs to feel more of your slick dripping from his skin and branding him. Because this is his his his.

Trying to copy your earlier rhythm, he draws his hips back and then glides forward. The sound of your soaked pussy echoes in his ears and suddenly the words that were lost to him earlier come tumbling out unfettered and uncensored.

"Oh fuck- oh holy shit you're everywhere."

Matt squeezes his eyes closed and whimpers. You’ve swallowed him whole – his cock, his greed, fuck even his goddamn soul - you've taken it all. He’s given it to you because what else can he do in the face of this tidal wave?

His cock is sliding into you achingly slow and languid and sweet, just like you showed him earlier and he thinks he might just shake apart. He had thought that with his superhuman senses the act of sex would overwhelm him, overstimulate him in the worst ways but this? This deluge of pleasure and sin overpowers everything else and circles back for more. He can’t get enough, will never have enough. This flood is something he knows he’ll always find himself chasing more of.

And Matt? Matt wants to be good for you. Wants this to be good for you too – as much as this is wrecking him, he wants to experience you falling apart for him too.

“Please,” he rasps, his throat dry with fervor. He presses desperate kisses up your neck and the side of your face. He stumbles over his words as his mind tries to scramble his plea into something understandable, communicable to you. He’s trying to piece together his sanity enough to keep fucking into you and plead for you to guide him towards the end. His clumsy hands grasp onto the sheets with one and the other holds yours in a tight grip.

A breathless laugh escapes you. “Please, what baby? Gotta use your words for me, honey.” You coo at him teasingly and it takes the last of his resolve to not sob into your ear in need.

“Show – fuck! Show me…” Matt’s voice breaks and he clenches his jaw in embarrassment. He shoves his face into the pillow in a futile effort to hide it but you tut at him and the sound of your disapproval draws him back out. A high-pitched whine escapes his slipping control when he brings his face back to yours.

“Show you what, Matty? Be a good boy and tell me what you need.”

And that? That destroys him. He wants, so so badly to be good for you. All that roiling ambition and bullheaded stubbornness that got him into Columbia University despite the world seemingly doing its best to stop him is rearing its head. All of that tenacious focus is on you. He wants to be good enough because maybe if he’s good for you, you’ll stay with him and he’ll get to keep you.

 “Wanna make you feel good, angel… Wan’ – ngh, shit,” his words are slurred and he sounds drunk but he powers through. “Wan’ you to show me… Fuck, please!”

He cries out when you shift your hips to meet his thrusts and he’s too far gone to form coherent sentences for you but you understand what needs from you. You take the hand that’s still clasped in yours and drag it down to your hard nipples. You show him how to pluck them just right, strumming it in a rhythm that pleases you. His needy moans grow in volume when his combined movements cause you to gush around his cock. You’re breathing harder now, murmuring praises into his temple. He uses his whole hand to palm at your tits as softly as he’s capable of in the moment and you arch your chest into his nimble fingers.

Reaching up once again with the same hand, you shakily guide it down toward to your clit. He’s still pumping into you, in the same steady rhythm as before because you’ve already showed him that this is what pleases you best and he’ll be damned if doesn’t follow your directions. You use his fingers to circle softly around your clit and he’s amazed at how hard and puffy it’s gotten. He did that to you and the thought that he’s bringing you as much pleasure as you’ve given him makes his mind latch onto the patterns you’re teaching him to trace over your clit. Dazedly, he thinks that his fingers will remember the patterns you’ve shown him even in his sleep with how much importance his mind has attached to them.

You let go of his hand but his clever fingers continue to toy with your clit. Your voice pitches higher with praise and your cunt spasms around him.

There’s so much for him to focus on and the onslaught of pleasure brought on by your pulsating pussy drives a keening cry from his slack mouth. His breaths quicken and he’s powerless to stop his cock from driving harder into you.

You wind your fingers through his hair and capture his mouth with a kiss. He instinctively licks into your mouth frantically. Sucking your lips and plunging his tongue in a mimicry of his cock’s desperate thrusts.

“You gonna cum for me Matty?” you croon at him, breaking the kiss. He can feel the string of saliva still connecting the two of you. The string breaks and leaves the moisture glistening on his parted lips. “Want you to cum in me, Matty. Just let me have it.” Your voice is sweet and breathy and he wonders briefly if he’s stolen your breath like you’ve stolen his. You lean back in to give him another kiss, rubbing your nose along his.

Matt shakes his head wildly, refusing to cum just yet. How can he cum when he hasn’t felt you cum around his cock yet? He can feel your pussy contracting around him and the monster growling in his head tells him that he needs it like he needs air to breathe. Maybe more, definitely more.

His hand not still circling your clit claws at the sheets and he grits out, “Need you to cum with me, angel. Need you, need you, need you – God, please!” His wild thrusts can barely maintain his rhythm and it feels like his sanity is slipping away like sand through clenched fists. God he needs this, needs you.

“Then fuck me harder, Matty,” you breathe out, humming the words into his slack mouth. “Make me cum.”

With your commandment he dives forward and licks desperately into your mouth as he pumps his hips. His cock slamming into your sopping wet pussy produces the filthiest sounds. You throw your head back with a sinful groan and lift your hips to better receive his cock. It’s the most exquisite sound that’s graced his sensitive ears and he wants more more more. Heated bolts of pleasure burn low in his gut and he knows he won’t last. He’s hanging on with sharpened teeth of determination but he knows even his snarling fangs won’t be able to endure for long.

An accidental change in the angle of his thrusts makes his cock drag across the sensitive bundle of nerves deep in your pussy. He can hear the change of pitch in your cries, can feel your heartbeat begin to race harder in your chest.

“Fuck, Matty! There, so good for me baby – don’t stop,” you plead and demand at him. You grip onto the back of his neck, thumb on his erratic pulse and he hopes you can feel how hard his heart is beating for you.

An almost pained groan rips from his throat and Matt slams his cock insistently where you’ve directed him. He can practically taste your oncoming orgasm, you’re so close. Your pussy tightens around him, nearly strangling his cock in a scorching tight fist. Matt’s cock pulses and a rope of precum spurts out. His control, already slipping through his fingers, begins to rapidly dissolve. Bitten-off pleas and curses spill from Matt as he moves rapidly in and out of your squeezing pussy.

“You’re so fucking – “ Matt’s strained voice cuts off with a broken gasp before he continues. “So fucking perfect, angel. You feel so – so good. How can you f-feel this good? I can’t – you have to, have to give me it please! Need it – Christ, need you to cum on my cock...”

He needs it so badly it hurts, God it hurts. His fraying mind is a blaze of you you you.

Overwhelmed and dizzy, Matt’s head slides from where it was resting against yours to the curve of where your neck meets your shoulder. Something in his frenzied mind demands he clamp down with his teeth until everyone knows you’re his. That you’ve given yourself over to him as much as he’s given himself to you – and when a snarling, starving dog is given a juicy steak it locks its jaws and refuses to let go. You’re his.

Aren’t you?

“You’re mine, right?” He’s delirious with pleasure at this point, doesn’t know what he’s saying but he knows he means everything he’s said to you. His teeth graze tantalizing along your skin and his tongue darts out to taste your skin. Fuck him, but Matt starts drooling. “Mine, mine, mine… Say it, please – say you’re mine. You won’t lea-,” the insistent squeeze of your pussy at his words makes him sputter, saves him from revealing too much in his rambling state.

Your pussy starts to flutter around him, locking down. You wrap your legs around Matt and cradle him.

“ ‘m yours Matty – fuck, I’m yours,” you keen urgently at him. You begin to shake, starting to go rigid under him and Matt fucking loses it. He grinds down into you harder, his rhythm breaking into pieces but bullying his cock into the spot that he’s been targeting in your pussy.

“I’m gonna- gonna cum, Matty,” you stutter at him, the flutters from your pussy beginning to tighten around him even harder. “You’re gonna m-make me cum.”

He’s gonna make you fucking cum.

And that, more than anything, makes the burning heat that’s been swirling in his core burst in white-hot pleasure. Matt’s teeth latch onto the meat of your shoulder, his eyes rolling back as his hoarse sobs muffle the sound of your own orgasm.

This orgasm with you, because of you, comes molten hot and inescapable. Every muscle of his vibrates in pure ecstasy and Matt forgets to breathe. This pleasure so loud and long and violent he forgets all else but the salvation your body has wrought him.

He continues to flex into you, still swirling your pulsating clit with his now bumbling fingers. Your pussy is squeezing him like you’re trying to kill him and he thinks you will, for a moment. This glorious little death, his heart ready to burst out of his chest. He’s still pumping into you, fucking his own cum deeper into your still throbbing heat. Matt lets out a soft whimper at the sensation, prolonging both your orgasms.

There’s a sharpness to his pleasure now as he unintentionally drives himself into overstimulation to continue pleasing you – but the intoxicating fusion of rapture and pain is something that he discovers that he actually likes.

It isn’t until you pull him down into a languid, satisfied kiss that he slows down to a stop. You pull away his fingers from your sensitive clit and thread your fingers through his. You kiss away the tears that gleam on his eyelashes and return back to his lips. He tastes the salty bitterness of his own tears but underneath is the unmistakable taste of you. Matt thinks that no matter how long he lives, the singular taste of you has seared itself so deeply into his brain he’ll never forget it. Could pick it out in a crowd if he needed to.

You kiss him softly and slowly, breathing him in. Shifting to lay fully on top of you but making sure not to crush you, he carefully slips his softened cock out. Hissing at the movement, Matt blearily uses his senses to check on you. He’d chew his own arm off if in his own desperate ventures to bring you both to orgasm he unintentionally hurt you. Finding you satisfied and your body loose, he relaxes until his body blankets yours. Matt brings his head down until his forehead lightly rests on your relaxed brow. He bumps his nose tentatively to yours, a silent question.

“You did so good for me Matty,” you reassure him softly. You run your fingers through his hair soothingly, gently scratching your nails into his scalp. His body melts into yours at your praise and the petting of his head. The both of you stay like this until your breaths even out and your heartbeats return to normal.

You continue to whisper praises along his skin and his lips, making him bashfully smile at you. Matt drowsily slides down your body to rest his head against the soothing beat of your heart.

He closes his eyes and breathes you in with a long inhale. Swallowing thickly, Matt wets his lips and exhales a soft breath. Tentatively, he asks, “Stay?”

Stay the night. Stay with me. Stay forever. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Stay.stay.stay.

He knows it’s not fair to ask this of you. You have no idea what you’re signing up for with him, not really. Everyone he’s ever cared for has left him – but this time, this time he’s asking someone to stay. Knowing that they can still leave, knowing that even if he’s put his hopes and dreams and fragile heart in their hands and asked them not to hurt him, please don’t leave, please stay – they can still walk away. So this time, for the first time and hopefully the last, he’ll ask someone to stay. He’ll use his words and lay his fears at your feet and plead with you to stay.

Beg you to stay.

He’ll keep the snarling, roaring devil in his head on a leash if you stay. Keep it satisfied with tastes of you, gorge himself on your softness and your kindness until it silences everything else. He’ll be so, so good for you. He’ll try his hardest, put all that stubbornness and bullheaded tenacity to work and keep you happy. If he has to beg you on his knees, he will.

But you. Oh, you. You’re too sweet to ask that of him. And you answer him without hesitation, quieting his agitated thoughts until his heart stops trembling in fear.

You huff a tender laugh at him and he can’t help but smile back at you.

“Not going anywhere, Matty. Not unless you tell me to,” you promise him warmly. His answering laughter is bright and thrilled, and he surges back upwards to capture your lips in an enthusiastic kiss when you squeal at him.

So when Matt wakes up from his dream the next day? After having dreamt of his first night with you? Having remembered how overjoyed he was to have you with him, remembered how thoroughly and tenderly you guided him into ecstasy, remembered how you promised not to leave him unless he sent you away?

He sent you away. He sent. you. away.

You didn’t want to leave him.

Matt is laying in his empty, cold bed struggling to breathe. He’s shivering pathetically like he’s freezing but he knows it’s the vicious weight of regret trying to claw its way out of his chest. He’s covered in sweat and slick with sticky precum. He’s so shamefully hard it aches. Everything is too loud – he can hear the city waking up and it’s mercilessly playing with his senses like a spoiled child with an ugly, unwanted toy.

He pointlessly pines for the peace and joy that was prevalent in his dream-memory. He craves the comforting thump of your heartbeat in his ear, your gentle nails scratching his scalp.

He had tried so fucking hard not to think about you over the years and here he is. Unable to escape you even in the sanctity of his own dreams.

Matt brings his unsteady hand up to rub harshly down his face with a bitter sigh.

He has no one to blame but himself. Least of all you.

His head jerkily tilts as he forcibly stabilizes his erratic breathing. His cock is still throbbing angrily at him, his hard length leaking precum to drip onto his stomach. Shifting to sit up, he tries to ground himself with the sound of his own heartbeat but his traitorous mind instead summons the memory of yours.

It works. Because of course it does.

Alone in his silk sheets, Matt clenches his jaw and brings his fist to rest on his thighs. He doesn’t know what to do – with the revelations from Foggy, with these dreams that haunt him, with the sound of your heartbeat echoing in his ears.

He’s not the same boy you fell in love with. He’s not the boy you spent long nights with staying up under the guise of studying, nor is he the boy that bought you hot chocolate on cold days. His hands are rough with calluses and his knuckles are always bruised and scabbed over. Most days his body has some type of wound it’s recovering from. His voice is deeper and sometimes harsher.

The devil he had tried so hard to leash and silence has been given form and is free to roam the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at night with a much looser chain.

He’s not as soft as he used to be.

But for you, he’d still try. If you let him, he’d like to try. Please, God let him try.

He has no idea how he’s going to pull this off. His brilliant mind is whirling with possibilities, strategies forming and discarding at a rapid pace.

It’s been years and he has more experience under his belt. He won’t be stumbling around with nothing but your directions to guide him – though it would definitely help in this case. He can slip on the skin he’s worn like a comfortable coat since you left he pushed you away, the one filled with confidence and charisma. Hopefully he can lure you back to him.

And if that doesn’t work, he’s not above begging you. You didn’t let him beg you when he asked you to stay that night. You didn’t give him the opportunity – so readily agreeable to being with him. He knows he won’t have that advantage now, he’s just one of the many people in your life who have walked away from you. But he’s making his way back to you now and he’s not leaving without a fight.

Hopefully you’ll still find his dogged determination charming.

pt. 1 Revelations │pt. 2 Haunted │pt. 3 tba...

And there it is! Pt. 2 of The First and The Last! It's officially a series now babes so be ready for some yearning and pathetic pining because I like my men down ATROCIOUS *cackles off into the distance*

Please Comment, Reblog, Like, etc. - I live for your comments and your hashtags they make me so happy. I actually wasn't planning on making a part 2 but the lovely comments and hashtags?? They produced this for y'all!

Do y'all want a taglist?? Not sure how to approach that but if that's something y'all want then I can figure it out lol.

Here are the ones that asked for a part 2 or commented! Lmk if you don't want to be tagged anymore lol @jocsrecs @svtwonwoow @hellskitchenswhore @foxe @moleannan @mel-thefrog @irisintheafterglow @melodyflowersblog @sffewsfgr @starbright1002 @knight-of-the-doctor @sunflowersandsapphires @echo-ethe

As always, have a nice day babes! Drink plenty of water ya thirsty beautiful babes, eat your favorite foods/snacks, and be kind to yourselves <3

[stayevildarling]

Agatha Harkness x Reader- She‘s got away- Part 1

A/N: this is part one of a series based on this poll. I hope you enjoy. I am very open to any requests for this series or any notes. my inbox is always open🤍

tw/tags: westview agatha, female reader, very slight mention of abuse, angst, slight manipulation

word count: 2.1k

taglist:

@lunaticwhittaker , @billiebeanhoward , @lanawinters-ily , @kenzbro , @minaslittleone , @httpfiftyshadesofgay @whitelotus00 , @ninaahelvar , @paulsonsratched , @vintagepaulson , @isle-of-earle , @grilledcheeseandguavajelly , @lucyintheskywithxanax , @fanfics4world , @mymiraclewitch , @hazard-to-myself , @awritersometimes , @wastdstime , @p1pecleanerwitheyes , @queen2234 , @ihartnat , @lifebyinez , @ahsatanizgay, @laavaagirl, @wtfffisgoingon

As you stand by the bus station, the bright flickering neon lights blur your view a little. Meanwhile, all you can feel is rain, heavy and cold as you try to find shelter near the ticket booth. The place smells old, the kind of old that meant many people had moved through here before, nostalgic. You could almost feel people‘s stories, passing through on their way to a better life, getting ready to take a leap and meet someone or move for a job. But the rain reminded you of the sadder ones, the people who ran away from their life in order to find a better and safer one.

You stand beneath the flickering yellow lights, hands holding onto the strap of your duffle bag like it‘s the only thing keeping you standing . Your breathing fogs in the cold and for a moment you regret grabbing the coat you are wearing so hastily a few hours before, feeling the cold seeping into every part of your body. But you didn‘t have a plan, no time to pack properly or to plan where you are going. You just picked up the things you could, wallet, phone and some clothes and essentials before running, without looking back.

The sound of old squeaky tires causes you to look up and you sigh in relief when seeing the bus approach. The doors hiss open and you climb aboard, sinking into a seat near the back by the window, pulling your hood up and trying hard to stop your body from shaking. You glance at the timetable on your phone one more time, seeing it going through the city before heading to remote areas, some of them places you never heard of before. As the bus leaves, you decide to do some research, seeing your phone being on low battery and wanting to find the right stop to get off.

Westview. Your eyes eventually fall upon it despite how your eyes burn, wanting nothing more than to find some rest. Once you researched the population and how truly small and boring it seemed according to the internet, you settle on it, having never heard of it before. But it was perfect as it meant no one would think to look for you there.

The ride is long, hours pass in silence and even though you did manage to grab your headphones in order to listen to some music, of course your phone was by now dead and with how run down this bus is, there are no charging plugs either. And so the silence stretches for hours, only broken by the occasional murmurs of another passanger, the sound of the road beneath you. You keep your head down, seeing the city lights slowly fading replaced by a pure darkness. One that undeniably matched how you felt inside.

No matter how hard you tried to stay awake, keep your guard up and stay safe, your eyes eventually grow heavy, too heavy. You had been running for days, for years technically but never physically until a few days ago and the exhaustion lingered in your bones, the cold still seeped into your muscles and eventually your body took over, eyes closing and finally getting some rest at last. Despite it being hours later, it feels like minutes when your heart slams in your chest, eyes widening when the bus jolts and the intercom startles you.

„Westview. Last stop“ the driver announces and you are quick to wipe your face, forcing yourself to move despite how much it is aching at this point. As soon as you finally step off the bus it feels like being on another planet. The silence of the night makes you feel uneasy, always having lived in cities so far and it buzzing no matter what time of the night. As you walk through the quiet streets of the town you feel like you are frozen in time. A single main street with a few shops, a diner with a big neon „Open“ sign, a gas station that looked almost abandoned. The only noise is the quiet hum of the streetlights and for the first time tonight you begin to regret, realizing there aren‘t any big hotels and questioning whether you maybe should have planned this one a little better.

The first place you wanted to stop was the diner, feeling incredibly hungry as you couldn‘t quite remember the last time you ate, the last few days having passed in a blur. The last bottle of water you finished hours ago but you carried on, wanting nothing more than to finally find a warm place to stay, even if it was just for the night before moving on. And so first you try a motel, finding it on a map near a bus stop but as you walked to the front desk, a woman in a knitted sweater barely glanced at you from her magazine before announcing they are full.

The next place was some kind of bed and breakfast but the owner, an older man also turned you away, explaining they had no vacancies. There was no suggestion, no alternative, a simple no. And you began wondering why everyone had been so strange, considering how late it was, the fact that they would turn a young woman away without even trying to be helpful or at least offer a friendly smile.

In the end, you do settle on the diner, sinking into a chair before ordering some coffee with the loose change you had left in your coat pocket from the bus ticket change. The middle aged man serving you coffee in an apron seemed much more friendly and by the time he came around to ask if you needed anything else, some food perhaps, you take your chance considering you aren‘t only running out of options but also time. You clear your throat before speaking „Do you perhaps know any place I could stay for the night? I tried the motel and b&b but they are full“ you announce trying to keep a friendly smile and hide your desperation.

His eyebrows furrow before he questions „The B&B full?“ the edge of surprise in his tone confuses you but you simply nod. He exhales sharply before rubbing his chin, he did seem like he wanted to help you „Not much else in town, I‘m afraid“ he sighs before your stomach twists at his words. „Nowhere? I just need a bed“ you sigh in frustration before he nods understandingly. „Not unless you know someone“ he adds.

By your expression he could tell you didn‘t but before he could respond another men sitting at the bar called him over and your last flicker of hope left. It isn‘t until you put your change on the counter, grabbing your bag and getting up before there is a thud. You didn‘t notice the woman in the booth behind you until you walked straight into her. The impact sends you backwards for a moment before you bend down to pick up your bag „Sorry..“ you begin before looking up but you aren‘t prepared for who you just bumped into.

The woman is smirking, not in an irritating way, not surprising but simply amused, almost as if she anticipated this. Her hair is darkly curled, face sharp with high cheekbones, knowing blue eyes. She was older than you but not old. Her body is coated in a dark purple long coat that looked expensive, almost as if she didn‘t belong to a town this size.

„Well well“ she mutters, voice smooth but almost etched with something teasing. „You look a little lost there darling“ she chuckles which causes your throat to tighten „I..“ you try to speak but nothing comes out and she tilts her head as she scans you. She could sense the exhaustion, seeing how your knuckles are white from gripping the bag on your shoulders, dark circles under your eyes, a deep sadness behind your eyes and body trembling from what she assumes to be the cold out there. But she could see something else, something deep behind your eyes, knowing there must be more to the girl that looked so rough but beautiful at the same time.

She sighs, almost dramatically „You‘re new“ she says, not even questioning it but you assume with a town this size it wasn‘t really anything out of the ordinary to notice new faces. You nod before she carries on „I heard you are looking for a place to stay“ and for a moment you hesitate, realizing how strange it was that she listened to your conversation despite how quiet you had mumbled the words to the waiter before. „Yeah“ you swallow before her smirk deepens.

„Well aren‘t you in luck? I have got a room for you“ she smirks and for a moment you feel like running but there is something safe in her smirk, not in a threatening way but one that you can‘t quite place but by now being able to tell it wasn‘t something evil. Still every fiber of your being wanted to turn around and say no but glancing at the quiet town out there, you knew there wasn‘t any alternative, no busses now and the only option the small bus stop to sleep.

„How much?“ you ask a little hesitantly before she chuckles „Depends sweetheart, how long are you planning on staying?“ she asks and by your silence she can tell that you had no idea. You should be questioning her, where does she live? why is she offering a stranger her home? who is she? but instead all you do is stay silent and lock eyes with her.

„Not too much, definitely cheaper than the B&B or Inn, my name is Agatha by the way, Agatha Harkness“ she offers and you barely nod before she turns, walking to the door. „Come on“ she calls over her shoulder „Before you freeze to death out here“ she winks and before you can even think further your feet follow her, out of the diner, into her car and eventually into her home. Her house is on the edge of town, in a quiet street, two stories, wood and a wide porch.

After she unlocks the door she steps inside, taking off her coat and turning the lights on. You hover in the doorway, seeing how the rest of her body is equally clothed in shades of purple, some old looking jewrely coating her neck and fingers. „Well?“ she pulls you out of your thoughts and you blink before stepping inside, still a little hesitantly.

„Relax sweetheart, I don‘t bite“ she sighs as she offers to take your bag and sets it down. There is a pause before she smirks again „Unless you ask nicely“. Your stomach drops as you gulp but before you could respond, she turns around, leading you through the house, past some furniture, warm light and the smell of something herbal.

Eventually you reach a wooden door at the end of the hall and she pushes it open „Here“ she exclaims leading you into a warmly lit room, a rather large bed, a small window and a dresser. It seems like she must have used it as a guest or spare room because really it wasn‘t much but it was safe and oddly enough the woman made you feel safe. She steps inside, setting your bag down on the bed for you before walking over to the heater and making sure it‘s warm enough. „Towels and spare bedding in here, bathroom is opposite this room and you are welcome to use the kitchen at any time“ she announces with a friendly smile and you nod before watching her leave.

„Than- Thank you Ms Harkness“ you remember your manners and she smirks before she chuckles lowly „Agatha please dear“ she corrects you as your eyes meet and you simply nod before she leaves, shutting the door behind her and finally allowing you to sink into a warm bed. And hours later as you lay in said bed, listenting to the wind rattling in the older house, you can‘t shake the inner turmoil, part of you not trusting this stranger as she didn‘t seem like the kind of woman to just rent out a room.

It feels as if she had been waiting for you, as if every moment since buying the bus ticket led you right here into her home. But before you can think about it further, your body finally relaxes, feeling the cold that clung to you before leaving and replaced by the warmth of the room and covers. And so at last sleep washes over you as you feel the warmth of the strange ladies house elop you.

[chronically-ghosted]

to flame on, or just flame out

part ii of some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb

AO3 Link | series masterlist | main masterlist | marcus moreno masterlist

rating: explicit (18+)

pairing: marcus moreno x f!reader

word count: 7K

summary: can he fuck you without breaking every bone in your body? only time will tell - specifically the next five minutes because you need your hands on him. Now.

warnings: nearly 7k of just smut with just a twirling of plot because it's just more fun that way, icky gooey feelings like love (bleh!), marcus is a man who appreciates tits and i appreciate him for that, very very inappropriate use of electrical currents because behind those glasses lies a horny fucking freak, barry allen would be delighted by the use of the speedforce here, use of 'ma'am' because the voice of god told me so

a/n: all my time spent writing bad mcu fanfic has finally paid off. enjoy

"How do you want to start?"

Flummoxed. An unusual word, but categorically correct.

Marcus Moreno is flummoxed. He kneels between your thighs, his palms capping your knees. He can see how damp your thin shorts are at the cradle of your thighs and it makes his heart squeeze, hot desire dripping down his spine. What is he supposed to do with you?

Your toe against his elbow has him looking up. That smug grin makes him nervous and excited all at once.

"I think that's a question for you, big guy. You said you've thought about this. What do you do when you think about me?"

At that, Marcus chuckles. "Now I know we don't have time for all of that. At least," he runs his hands down your shins, "not tonight."

You know he's not trying to be distracting on purpose, but it stilts your breath all the same.

"We'll put in a pin in that for now," you huff as he rings your ankles with his fingers. "What do you want to do the most?"

But he's lost in thought again, the crest of anxiety breaking and spilling off his shoulders, as he examines the bones of your toes, the arch of your foot.

You know he needs this, so you wait.

"I'd like to touch you," he says slowly. "But you have to tell me when it's too much."

You nod, your heart thrumming in your throat.

From the flats of your feet, he pushes over your soft skin with flat of his palms. The knuckle of his thumb catching on your ankle bone. Then, the loose muscle of your calves, the planes of your shins. His hands grip underneath your knees and here he stops, incrementally increasing his pressure.

As always, that first flutter of pain translates to pleasure and you stifle a groan between your lips.

His gaze drifts to your face when the groan goes high into a whimper.

"Yeah, okay, there, Marcus, that's too much—,"

He releases you immediately. "Sorry." But you shake your head, reaching for him and grounding his hands onto your knees again.

"Don't—," you swallow against your dry throat, "don't stop. Keep going."

Marcus nods, that inquisitive gaze turning back to your thighs.

His fingers wander beneath the hem of your shorts, to the joint where your hips bend, dragging them inward until you feel the brush against your curly, coarse hair.

Your slow draw of breath notches up your spine. You're transfixed. His hands are so big, fingers so thick, able to span the complete breadth of your throat, you're sure of it. The sleeves of his sweater have ridden high to his elbows, exposing the flexing muscle of his forearms. They look solid, rigid in their restraint.

But his hands halt in their exploration down your body. Instead, they roam up, over your stomach, thumb briefly touching your belly button, the involuntary clench reaching all the way down between your legs.

"Not too hard?" he asks, voice low and distant, like he's asking because he is compelled, not because he's capable of listening to the answer.

You shake your head and his hands encapsulate your ribs, fingers sliding between your ribs. The hem of the sweatshirt obscures his movements from view, but not the heat of his hands.

The weight on your lungs makes it hard to breathe and you let out another soft moan. Your chest shudders and quicker than before, his hands cup the swells of your breast. He explored everything else, but knew exactly where to find what he was looking for. With a quiet gasp, you arch your spine into his hands, trying to meet his wild stare, but he won't look up. Won't look away.

"I dunno what I want," he mutters. "I've thought about fucking you while you wear my clothes and about fucking you when you are completely naked."

His thumb circles your nipple, meeting flesh with his nail on the second whirl, and you are so high, both in your head and out of it, your body throbbing for him, your gentle groan staggers into a chuckle.

"All the time in the world, remember, baby?" The spread of his hands over your chest is infinitely warmer than any heated blanket and you roll your cheek against the pillow beneath your head, drowsy with pleasure. Your arms are tucked under the pillow, stretching as open for him as you can go.

"Take this off."

You still haven't opened your eyes, but you grin anyway. "Made a decision, Sparky?"

"Yes." Heavy his voice sits in the bubbling pit of your stomach, the sound coarse, sand-speckled, thirsting for water, air — something. His voice is much closer that you remember it being, so you crack one eye open.

He hovers above you, his gaze nowhere else but you. All the breath leaves your lungs the moment you meet his eyes. Are other humans capable of this? This searing intensity that swallows up your ego and spits it out.

"Please take off your shirt," he repeats gently. "I want to fuck you naked."

You move and he's helping you pull it over your head, fumbling together. It flops to the floor and you move again, pleading silently that the press of your lips against his will settle the heat roaring in your chest —

But he sits back between your thighs and removes his glasses, neatly folding them onto your bedside table. He kneels again, in supplication.

"Show me." He says, just as softly, just as sweetly, but with all the vibrato of a rock slide. "Show me how you like to be touched."

There's a part of you that is wildly interested in voyeurism. Eyes on you at a distance, unable to feel your skin, as you take yourself apart.

But it's too much tonight. He's too much.

"Give me your hand."

"But I need —,"

"Give me your hand, Marcus. I trust you."

Without another word, he extends his hand towards you and you take it. His knuckles are dry, but his palm is warm. You drag your nails lightly over the thick vein on the back of his hand and static crackles. A light zap, but he's grinning.

"Tease." You mutter, a smile curling your lips up. You lean back fully against the pillows, your bottom inching closer to his knees. "Ready?"

He nods.

You thread mirror his right hand with your own as you both watch him cup your breast. Watch as the nipple tightens before you drag his thumb underneath it. With his nail, you catch the flint edge and nick the pink bumps.

"That —," you gasp. You're doing this to yourself, just using him, why is it driving you out of your mind? "I love that."

"You're sensitive there," he mutters to himself. "Gotta be careful."

"With your hands, Marcus, not your teeth."

His lips part, his gaze steady, direct. You wonder if he can see through your skin, your bones, your blood. The thought delights you.

"Okay."

You nod again, linking your fingers with his as you turn his hand down the slope of your body.

"I like it when you squeeze my hips. I like it when you hold my ribs. I like it when you make it difficult to breathe —,"

Your name out of his mouth is a stilted sigh, as if something sharp is jammed between his rips but he leans forward, ever vigilant, watching where and how you put his hand. You stop inches from the waistband of your shorts.

"Now, at this point, I want your shirt off too."

"Right now?" His gaze is a little unfocused, his cheeks pink. You think he doesn't even realize how hard he is breathing. You nod.

In a blink, his shirt is gone and his belt is unbuckled.

You frown. "That's cheating."

He seems impossibly wider without a shirt, his bare shoulders smattered with freckles. On anyone else, they'd probably be covered in scars. But he isn't anyone.

"I said I want to take my time with you. Nothing about me."

You can't reach high on his broad chest, so you lightly graze his tapered waist, the hint of abdominal muscles. When you reach the thatch of hair disappearing beyond the edge of his jeans, he groans.

"You're rusty, not a virgin," you giggle. "You shouldn't be this sensitive."

He huffs a laugh, his curls springing loose from behind his ears. "You have no idea."

"Then give me one."

Again, he looks at you like maybe he misheard. Or maybe you're not real. Or maybe you're going to disappear if he hold on too tight. You beckon him closer.

The bristles on his jaw tickle your hand when he bends to kiss you, your palm on his cheek. Slow, indulgent, rich kisses — against your mouth, just in front of your ear, your nose.

"How you feelin', Sparky?" Why is the sound of your voice so breathless still so surprising?

He nuzzles your cheek, tucking his nose beneath your jaw to turn your head and allow him full exposure to your throat.

"Good. Really good. I wanna keep going."

Oh, thank god.

"Do you still need to be shown?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Christ, Marcus —,"

Sometimes you wonder if this big-eyed, blinking innocence is just an act to get into girls' pants. Well, it's fucking flawless and fucking worked, to be entirely honest.

"C'mon, show me —,"

With a deep inhale that you know you will loose, you continue from where you left off; past the waistband of your shorts, the pads of his fingers ghosting over the coarse hair — a zip of static and you yelp — "I promise that wasn't me," he lies with a big giant grin on his stupidly gorgeous face — until he runs out of skin and you bend his fingers over your folds, into the wetness he made.

He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing, no longer needing your guidance to stroke up and down. You sigh with a roll of your hips.

"Are— are," he clears his throat. "Are you always this wet?"

"When you do it right, yes."

He groans, hanging his head. "I honestly don't know if I can go this slow every time."

"You don't have to be slow. You just have to be a-ah-attentive— Marcus!"

He's spread your folds apart with two fingers and is stroking the flat of his middle finger up, dipping into where you gently leak for him, through your wetness, and daringly close to your bundle of throbbing nerves.

Fuck, you almost forgot about that.

"Marcus, at the top, there's —,"

He hushes with a kiss, the barest hint of teeth. "I know what a clit is, baby. What do you like?"

Pleasure is bursting from where he touches, from between your legs, to where he holds your elbow to the mattress with his other hand.

Focused on every twitch in your face, every spasm of your throat, he watches and waits, cataloging you beneath him until he can recognize the signs with his eyes closed.

"Baby, tell me —,"

You tug his fingers from the plush of your cunt and press hard against your clit.

He doubts you mean for desperation to be so plain on your face. Lip trembling, sweat peaking across your forehead. Breath short, fast. He can hear your heart rumble with the force of a train.

"When I'm this close —,"

"You're close?"

"When I am close," you drop your eyes closed, steady his wrist, and grind against the pads of his fingers, "I just need —,"

He sees it and hoards it all away. The tremble of your thighs, the improbable bend of your spine. He thinks he sees your nostril twitch. You actually stop breathing —

It's either his name or a stunted scream that comes out of your mouth. He isn't sure which.

"Holy fuck, Marcus, that was . . ." You open your eyes to the closest thing to a smirk you've ever seen on his face.

"Good?"

"Excellent. And you didn't finger me into oblivion. I mean, you did, but no broken bones, or open wounds, so that's good — really, really, really good —,"

Pride blooms in his chest; he's usually the one babbling nonsense, and it's a sight to behold to watch you unable to shut your damn mouth because of him. Because of what he did to you.

He silences you with a kiss. Like you taught him.

That seems to ground you, settle you back into your body. When he opens his eyes, the expression on your face can only be described as gooey.

"Mhmm, hi there, Sparky."

"You okay?" He knows he's being smug but he just can't help it. This is going marvelously well.

"Very okay." You sigh, big, and he takes this moment to lick his fingers clean, watching you come back to yourself. Tangy, strong, he decides. He can't remember the last time he's tasted pussy.

"Can you take my shorts off?" You ask, watching him pluck his ring finger from his mouth. You lick your bottom lip. "They're . . . sticky."

He obliges and tosses the article of clothing away, but he remembers where they go. (In case, you fall asleep and he doesn't.)

Or at least, he tries to remember where your shorts fly. But you're naked, curls glossy, and that sight, those smells, that sound — it liqufies everything in his brain into a dribbling mess.

He is exceedingly gentle as he spreads your legs, mouth open, the tang of your release still wetting the corners of his lips.

And then your fingers smack his forehead.

"No."

"No?"

"Not tonight. If you'd just been honest with me after that night we went bowling and you'd already fucked my brains out, then who am I to stand in the way of a man and his meal?" He blinks slowly, gulping.

"Bowling? Wait — wait a second. Bowling, that was our first date."

"Exactly," you say smugly, "but you didn't, so I need those pants gone and you right up here."

You pat your low stomach, indicating exactly how deep you need him, and he goes a bit light-headed.

"Baby, I need more practice. I'm not sure I can completely control —,"

"But you did already."

"Yeah, once."

He hears your heartbeat pick up. "How many times can you come in one night, Marcus?"

"Um," he rubs the muscle at the back of his neck, "I don't know but I do know I lost count one time."

"Fuck," you sigh, sitting up, "you really are perfect."

He definitely can't control the rising heat in his cheeks. "I don't know about perfect—,"

You kiss him and he feels every fiber of his being strengthen. Beneath the smell of sex that he hopes has imprinted on his senses permanently, the rush of your perfume floods the air with every thrumb of blood in your neck.

You part from his lips, far too soon for his liking.

"Where's the easiest for you to control yourself?"

"Mhm, what?"

"Focus, Sparky." You tap his forehead again and he grins, distractedly. "In what position is it easiest for you to stop yourself from finishing?"

"Um," he tries to rattle the memories from his sex-sodden brain, but everything in there has turned to ooze. "Um, on my back?"

Your grin widens, your finger curling around a chunk of hair near his neck. He did good, whatever it was.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

"Why?"

"Because I want to feel as close to you as possible for this first time."

Oh.

Oh.

"That's dangerously close to sentimental, ma'am." You loop your arms around his neck and rock back into the pillows, tugging him down with you. He holds himself up just on his elbows, close as he can be and still see you straight. His face hurts from smiling. "Never would have expected that from an intrepid reporter like yourself."

"Don't tell anyone, I think I'm losing my edge." He ducks his head, dropping slow, marked kisses against your neck and shoulder. You smile into his hair, nails gently scratching the skin below his neck. "This guy's got me all hot and bothered and I can't think straight around him."

He pauses with his mouth over your collarbone, then bites down just enough to make you gasp. You can't help but wonder how much harder he would have to bite to break the skin, or the bone, and how easy it might be for him. Like you tearing into an apple, you assume.

"Killing is strictly against my moral code, ma'am," he says mockingly stern, noses around his bite, already purpling. His fingers circle your shoulder. "But I think I might make an exception for this guy, who's got you all hot and bothered."

"Now who's got a conflict of interest?" You tease and he laughs into the hollow of your throat. Adjusting over you, he straightens up, face serious. You're only slightly distracted by the divots his hands make in your mattress.

"Answer me honestly." You nod. He's so beautiful when he makes himself soft for you. "Do you really trust me to do this? To keep you safe, e-e-even if that means from myself?"

Your quip is ready on your tongue, the ghost of a smirk inhabiting your lips, but the gravity of his gaze plucks your flippancy straight out of your mouth.

Is it strange, then, to feel so protective of an invincible man? A man who is literally bulletproof?

Is it love that makes you worry this much?

"Yes." You comb his unruly curls back from his face, allowing the silence to let your truth sink into him. "Yes, Marcus Moreno, I trust you with my whole life."

Every part of me.

Every part you can touch and even the ones you can't.

You'd give him the organ of your heart if you could.

His head falls in the grasp of your hands, the fingers that held his cheeks now near his eyes. You feel dampness on the tips of your thumbs.

He nods.

He once told you that before Missy came along, he had been made into a weapon. Something cruel and sharp, with precision and vuglar fragility. No matter how many times his wife assured him that that life was long in his past, that as a father and a husband he had proven his immense capacity for love and kindess over and over and over again.

But that feeling, that he is only — inevitably — capable of destruction, never quite went away, he had said.

You wonder if that is on his mind now.

Marcus drags himself, kneeling again, but you take his cheek before he's out of reach.

"Hey, Marcus —," he won't really look at you, so you grip his chin and turn his entire head towards you. A frightened animal looks down into your eyes. "You deserve this, Marcus. You deserve good things. You deserve l—,"

Your voice catches.

His bottom lip trembles.

"Say it. Please. I need to hear you say it."

The knot in your throat stings. "You deserve love, Marcus. You always have."

His nostrils flare. His body lined with tension. Those words aren't enough.

And?

That bruise, the one you didn't know existed, aches because it was put there by people who you'd given your heart to and they didn't deserve it. It was put there by your father, your mother long dead, and on your own it was left to fester. Rot. It's been killing something beneath your skin for decades.

Something has been killing you, hurting you, and you didn't even know it.

But he did.

He saw it, stopped it, and in every way possible, saved you. Without powers, without his strength, without his invincibility, he saved you.

In every way that matters, he saved you.

"Marcus, you idiot, you know that I love you—,"

The words had barely left your lips before he's swallowing them down, making you taste the sweetness of your confession as he licks it against your tongue. He has your wrists pinned against the pillow as if all he wants to feel is your wet mouth on his.

You nip the swell of his bottom lip between your teeth and that grip around your wrists tightens immeasurably.

"Marcus, be gentle —,"

He plucks himself off you, horror in his eyes. "I'm sorry, shit, I'm sorry —,"

The sting in your wrists can wait. The depth of wanting in your cunt and in your heart cannot.

You continue what he started.

You yank down the zipper completely with one hand, the other ready to push both his pants and shorts down the instant they're loose.

But he has gone still above you. This means more begging, ("baby, slow down—") or he'll stop you entirely.

It's only when you see the coarse hair that you realize he hasn't done anything at all.

Glancing up at him, you worry you've pushed him too fast and he's uncomfortable or shy or — maybe he's not ready for any of this and you cruely made him do it anyway, or you — or —

"Don't stop."

It's a kind of begging, you think. Raw, unfiltered, wild — but begging all the same. His hands join yours as you shuffle his pants off together. He's breathing rapidly and you wonder, just for a second, what it would be like if he did lose control.

You lean back into the pillows, a delicious viewpoint, as his cock bobs up against his stomach. You think you may hear fabric tearing but that might just be your deranged imagination.

God, every inch of him is perfect.

He's not as long as his god-like physique might suggest, but wow, he is thick.

"When I said I'm up for any challenge, I think I underestimated you."

Marcus blushes all the way down to his navel.

His hand twitches at his side like he's thinking about covering himself, so once again, you take his hand and lead him where he's mean to go. Where you hope he'll stay for hours tonight: between your thighs.

"Oh, wait."

He takes the covers up to his shoulders before lowering himself down onto you. He seems very intent on a freckle on your neck.

"I heard it's hard for women to orgasm when their feet are cold, so I thought . . ."

You giggle like this is your first time. "You said 'orgasm'."

This time, he's the one rolling his eyes. "What are you, fourteen?"

"No, but you're trembling like you are."

"Oh. Shit, you're right. I don't mean to be."

You take his knuckles between your fingers and press light kisses in the valleys between his bones, being sure to watch him watch you the whole time. You can feel the quick pulse of his chest, his lungs snipping in air.

"Marcus." It really is warm and lovely with the comforter covering you both. The unspooling of your mind, your anxieties, your fears and anger, brought on from being touched like this — being loved like this — is already starting. Your hand on his face settles him, like you're the one who is an immovable object. Maybe you're his unstoppable force. "Marcus, the only way you could break me, or hurt me, is if you ever left me. You can't hurt me like this, okay?"

"O-okay."

"We can go as slow as you want like this. If you're close, tell me and we can switch. I'll go slow too, so you don't—,"

He chuckles, back arched, hand down between his legs. You pull your legs up and far apart, your own pulse quickening, and on the first try, he finds your hole.

Forgotten how to fuck — bullshit.

"I don't want to g-go slow just for my benefit," even with your release still coating your folds, slick as can be, he's still a lot to take. He grunts and drops his head against your temple. Another inch and you grab the curve of his broad shoulder. So full already, fuck, can you choke from being this full? "I want — relax a bit, baby, there you go — I want to fuck you slow so I can feel you. And I swear to Christ, I'll make it good for you."

There's no coherent words you can make, only gurgles and sighs. A laugh against the soft skin of your neck is strained, tightly wound.

"Baby, you can't squeeze me like that the whole time. I can't fucking move when you're doing that."

Speech somehow returns to you and you fling out your words in a gasp. "Fuck, Marcus, okay, I'm trying —,"

You've never been submerged like this. Stuffed full. His body, extended like a blanket over you, is nearly suffocating. And you like that, usually, but you know your body is panicking. Rammed this full of his cock and it thinks you're dying. And fuck, what a way to go . . .

Something in your lower body uncouples and your legs go loose. Miraculously, you can breathe again, despite feeling like his cock is somewhere around your guts.

"There you go," he murmurs. You can barely make it out he's so quiet.

You open your eyes and sensation nearly buckles you again. Marcus holds himself above you, gaze fixated on your face, and he's gently stroking your clit.

Oh. That's what that was.

You breathe out, slowly, deeply and he grins.

"Like a fuckin' bear trap down there . . ." He wets his lips, then sucks his teeth. Before you are even remotely aware of what he's doing, spit drops in a thick glob right above your pussy. He smears his own spit against your clit with his thumb and you shoot towards your peak.

"Saw that in a porno once," he mutters vaguely. "Wasn't sure if I'd like that but shit . . ."

"Please, please move, Marcus."

He blinks at you like he's surprised to see your face beneath him. "Yeah. Y-yeah. Okay. Tell me if you need me to stop."

He rocks into you and your sanity is tilted off its axis.

You can feel every inch, every slick push and pull, hear every slippery suck from between your legs. Just him being inside you has made you boneless — the best you can do is to hold on.

You chant his name, over and over and over again, his back muscles flexing beneath your flat palms, his shoulders solid beneath the roll of his hips. The bed rocks and you're pulled under.

"Open your eyes," he says. Groaning your eyes flutter open just as his thumb slides into your mouth, a reward. He compresses against your tongue and this time your eyes stay open.

Marcus is red-faced and grunting, but he stays true to his word; he goes slow. This helps, but only enough for you to find a grip around the hair near the nap of his neck and tug.

He shudders, burying his face into your throat. The next two thrusts are a beat faster and it's like you can prick your fingers on the edge of your bottomless finish. You hold him tighter to you, your legs curling up around his sides, knees pressing into his ribs. His ear is pink near your mouth.

"Faster, a little faster, please —,"

The bed officially starts to creak. His hand goes against the headboard, roughly pushing into it instead of your pussy or your throat. You claw at his forearm and he moans, long and loud.

Pleasure spins hot and fast from where his cock splits you apart, desire dancing like fireworks in your veins. Sweat drips from his throat onto your sternum and you wish he'd lick it up. The heat from the friction of your wet skin against his has reached a boiling point.

You release the grip on his bicep, register the thudding sound as the bed beating against the wall behind you, and slide your fingers under his open palm on the mattress. Half-aware you have basically put your hand in a disposal if anything goes wrong, you intertwine your fingers and squeeze as hard as you can.

Like you touched a sensitive area, Marcus groans and you feel teeth in the wet tendons of your neck.

Yes, yes, Marcus, bite me. Bruise me. Do it.

The pounding has dulled to crunching and you cannot fathom what that means for your headboard, but you nose his cheek — the bed is swaying now — and immediately he drops wet, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses onto whereever he can reach without faltering in his rthyme.

His hair smells divine, in spite of the dripping sweat and twisted grip you have on his curls.

You're set to burst.

"Marcus," you gasp, "please, I'm gonna come!"

"I know,"he whines, muffled against your throat. "I can feel it — don't hold back, baby, come for me—,"

One thrust, then another, a loud cracking sound above your head, and you gush — all over the insides of your thighs, up over your mound, against his stomach — screaming, rent apart, spilling, dripping, release like the salty breach of an ocean wave, and pleasure so infinite you can't find your body.

He makes a noise like he's been scalded, hips jerking back and out of you, cock already coated cream, and just as he escapes you, hot viscosity erupts against the curve of your ass, between the creases of your thighs, splashing and soaking your bedsheets, down to the mattress.

His subsequent whine is one of surprise and Marcus tries to lift himself up off you, but his entire arm shakes violently. He is also soft as a rabbit.

"S-sorry — I know I said — more than once — but I think —," he blinks rapidly, trying to clear the spinning, pinwheeling, neon shapes in front of his eyes, "I think I just blacked out for a second —,"

You shake your head, mouth dry, sweat and come and tears making your skin glisten.

"Don't— don't care —" you flap a loose hand at him, beckoning him back down. "Just — c'mere."

He tucks his head against your right cheek because he's pretty sure there's his come on the other.

"Just — for a second — we gotta —,"

His lungs are on fire. His head is swimming. His fucking fingers are tingling. You could have told him right now that the sky was green and he would have agreed.

"Yeah, just, just for a second, baby—,"

You're already asleep and never one to disagree with you, he follows you soon after.

You wake up to warm sunlight and a low rumbling.

Your dryer, thudding away in the minuscule laundry room off your kitchen. You, no, someone started a load of laundry.

The drowsy ache in your limbs suggests a night of cheap, box wine, but there's no headache. No puffy eyes. You don't remember drinking last night. In fact, you made it a point not to drink your break-up sorrows away because there hadn't been an actual break up —

You bolt upright. "Marcus!"

The sun in your eyes is from the open window in your living room. You are not wearing the sweatshirt or bottoms you were wearing last night, but where is he?

Everything is out of sync. Maybe you're still dreaming. What the fuck is happening and where is —

"MARCUS!"

"Sorry, yeah, I'm right here."

A large bundle of your bed sheets answers you from the hallway to your bedroom. Am I having a stroke?

He pats down the pillows and his sparkling brown eyes meet yours. He grins, waving with his fingers.

"Sorry, I wanted to be next to you when you woke up, but I couldn't in good conscious let your bedroom stay like that —,"

"What happened to my bedroom?"

The grin slides off his face. "You don't remember?"

Oh, you remember. You remember everything he said and did to you last night, and even if you didn't, that little monster between your legs definitely does. You spot a hickey on his neck and your pussy stirs. No, bad girl.

"Marcus, I know we slept together last night and it was by far the best sex I've ever had in my entire existence, but what the fuck happened to my bedroom?"

Taken entirely by surprise, he doesn't try to stop you as you wind your way towards your room.

"Best sex of your life — ever? Oh, wait, no, don't go in there. It's kinda —,"

It would have been cleaner if a bomb had gone off.

The plaster above the bed is cracked along the wall, indented and splitting where the headboard used to be. The headboard itself has been snapped in two, splinters poking out, and your entire bed caves inward, the mattress bare, as if the base had collapsed. Your metal alarm clock is stuck halfway in the wall across the room and the mirror over your dresser is shattered, its metal frame crunched and mangled. And perhaps, most surprising of it all, all of your jewelry floats against the ceiling, the metal slowly churning as if beneath an ocean current.

"— Messy."

"Yep. That just about covers it," you reply, still staring at your jewelry twirling feet above your head. He must see what you're looking at because they start to shimmer, then swirl as if sucked down a drain, where they all float neatly into your jewelry box that had been tipped on its side. Marcus closes the box with his hand and tries with some dignity to straighten it amongst the glass shards on your dresser.

"Sorry, I'm anxious and doing that helped me think all of this through."

The tone of his voice taps on the surface of your silent shock.

You don't like how he sounds at all, because it sounds like he's decided something. Something you're fairly certain you won't like.

He opens his mouth and you have your fingers pressed against lips before a single sound escapes.

"Before you fall gallantly on your sword, you need to know last night was the best night of my life." His mustache tickles your fingers, but you press on. "I love you, Marcus, so goddamn much, I hated waking up alone this morning." His eyes flash but you shake your head. "No, listen to me. I meant what I said, everything in this house is replaceable. I didn't think we'd put most of it to the test in one night but — buuut, listen, Marcus, you can't get rid of me. I'd buy a thousand more beds and dressers and mirrors before I might decide it's not worth being with you. But I won't. Ever. This is it for me, Sparky. All of my love, for you. If you want it."

He huffs against the pads of your fingers, a smile splitting across his face. He takes you by the wrist and raises his eyebrow.

May I?

You nod and he pulls his mouth free. Adoration, joy — you hope you don't need super strength to carry the weight of his gaze.

"Of course, I want it, baby." He hums. "I want all of you. Every part of you. But . . . this doesn't scare you?"

He glances helpless around the room and you take the chance to curl up to his chest. The sweet smell of his cologne is grounding, a tree taken root.

"Actually," you murmur into his throat, "I find it kinda hot."

He laughs in a way that means you know he's blushing, if you could see him. He presses gently to your lower back, his arm wrapping around you and tucking you in even tighter. He really meant it — he wants, and must have, all of you. You loop your middle finger around in a circle on his shirt.

"I'd find it even hotter if you went with me to find a replacement bed."

"You just want me there to carry it up the stairs for —," Marcus goes stiff. You pull out of his arms, frowning.

"What? What's wrong?"

Something passes over his eyes and he swallows, another decision made with finality.

"Don't buy another bed. I'll just break it again."

You roll your eyes. "Wow, what a super ego. Okay, then Sparky. What do you expect me to do? Sleep on my couch?"

"No." His gaze slips to yours as easily his hand slips between your fingers. "Move in with me."

No laugh. No punchline. But that was never Marcus's style. He never, ever did things without being intensely genuine.

"You're serious?"

"Of course, I am. I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't. Besides, this way, you won't ever wake up alone again."

As if he held a tuning fork to your skin, something inside of you ripples, expands, tries to stifle your breathing. But it only brings tears to your eyes.

"And Missy, your daughter," you sniff wetly, "she won't have a problem with it? With a complete stranger taking up room in her dad's bed?"

"One, I don't think an eleven year old actually understands what adults do in bed, much less share one." He spots something on the floor and picks it up. It's his glasses. The lenses are cracked, most of the glass missing entirely in one eye, and the frame is bent to hell. Marcus frowns. "And two, she was the one who suggested you live with us in the first place. Guess she was getting sick of all of our late nights."

With the flick of his finger against the frame, the rest of the glass shatters and spills out to the floor.

"And she knows . . ." you inhale, knowing he's inspecting his broken glasses so diligently for your benefit entirely. "And she knows I'm not trying to replace her mom. Right?"

That gets his attention. Clearly, that's not what he expected you to have reservations about. You let the silent tears roll down your cheeks as he holds you by the hands. You should get an award for this. Do they make Pulitzer's for not completely breaking down in front of your absolutely perfect boyfriend?

"What we had with Isabelle was a family." Fondly, he follows the line of your hair down your temple, twisting loose hair around his finger once before guiding it back behind your ear. To your immense surprise, he smiles. "What we could have together, with Missy, is just another family. That's all she wants and that's all I want. But what do you want, baby?"

"I want —,"

An all-too familiar siren. A faint spotlight fighting through the sun's rays. He holds you firm, frowning, a silent countdown going off in his head.

"Go, hero," you nod with your chin towards the window. But you're smiling. "Duty calls."

"But you matter more —,"

"No, I don't. And that's okay. That's probably better even. Gives me time to try to put this place back together. But honestly," your gaze flickers to the large cracked seam in the wall, "it seems unlikely I'll get my deposit back. Especially since I'm breaking my lease."

The hairs on your cheek and neck flutter, static humming in the air.

"Your deposit — you mean —?"

You laugh in his bewildered face, string him along by his sleeve and push him towards the door. "Go, get out of here. Someone needs you to save them."

And you already got me.

He touches your door frame and swings back around, as if you hadn't been shoving with all your might.

"So, when I come back home tonight — to my home, for clarification — you'll be —,"

"I'll be there, Sparky." Forget powers. His smile alone could outshine the sun. "Just come back to us, okay? All in once piece."

There's a bristle of electrical charge against your lips, a white noise buzzing in your ear, and he's gone.

Okay, now you're going to do the superhero girlfriend thing — you touch your lips and smile, glancing out into the sunlight.

It's not until you unload your first drawer — with only a little dusting of plaster crumbles in between your bra and your socks that you clear away with a rough shake — when that whisper of white noise stabilizes between the bones behind your ears.

I'll see you soon, my Chrysanthemum. I'm coming home to you.

series masterlist | part i | the end!

[bardic-inspo]

aeterna nostalgia

chapter five: taste test

Pairing: Ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride Tav

🩸Chapter Four |🩸 Chapter Six (Coming Soon)

🩸Full Chapter List |🩸BG3 Fic Masterlist

Series Summary:

Astarion’s carefully crafted empire is thrown into upheaval when his bride falls victim to a modify memory spell. Without any memory of her lover or her own vampirism, his dark consort is a threat to both herself and her sire. 

Astarion must win back her trust and affections, all while hunting down whoever sought to break the most powerful bond in Faerûn.

Chapter Summary: Naomi has words with her alleged ‘husband’.

Chapter CW: Chapter includes a brief discussion about fear of sexual assault having occurred. No sexual assault occurred.

Click here if you prefer to read on AO3

“When a vampire is created in the traditional manner…the new fledgeling instinctively understands much about the vampiric way of unlife, and about its own strengths, weaknesses, and needs. Not so the bride. Newly-created brides are generally ignorant of their own capabilities.”

-Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires

“You’ve forgotten yourself, sister.”

The voice chills her. 

Naomi’s legs dangle over the cliff’s sheer edge, clouded by the rising steam from the hot springs below. She’s spent her entire life down here in the thick heat of the Underdark, among the towering violet stalactites, in Eilistraeen temple nestled between them. 

There’s a razor thin slice of sunlight that cuts across the turquoise waters below, cast down from somewhere so high and far away, it might as well be a fantasy. Naomi’s never seen the surface, or the sun that boils above it. One day, she wants to.

She’s never felt the frost of winter, either. But she knows Calaerys. And with her brother always comes a cold dread that sinks into her bones and lingers. It always feels like she’s sitting on a precipice when they speak. It doesn’t help that, this time, she truly is.

“Then help me, brother,” she mutters numbly. “Lead me back into the light.”

His footsteps drag to a gritty stop behind her. Her shoulders stiffen as he looms, seething. Naomi’s fingers fret the neck of the fiddle poised within her grip. 

One of the priestesses had given it to Naomi after seeing her stare so longingly. Or, maybe, the woman was simply tired of seeing Naomi’s poor attempts at Sacred Flame. She’d never mastered even the simplest of cleric spells. But Eilistraee’s domain includes music, dance, and light. Not just bent knees, mumbled prayers, and blind devotion.

Today, she’s stolen away to solitude, hoping the nearby waterfall might drown out whatever mangled noise she can manage from the fiddle. She’s never played one before, and only has the faintest clue as to how. A pleasant tingle courses through her fingers as she strokes the strings aimlessly. It brings a thrumming sense of vitality that roots within her, resilient, defiant, even in the wake of her brother’s bitterness.

“I saw you with her,” Calaerys sneers. “You know she was once a Lolth-sworn.”

Naomi sighs, the seeds of a headache weighing heavy on her brow, and sets the fiddle aside. Gingerly, she inches back from the edge and stands.

“I know she was saved as a child, as we were,” Naomi answers brusquely. “I know she prays to Eilistraee every night as we do, and weaves her songs with the Dark Dancer’s praises. And I know it’s none of your concern who I choose to kiss.”

Her brother’s nostrils flare. She averts her eyes from his as she always does. As if that will protect her. Her gaze fixes, instead, to the trio of birds tattooed along his left cheek, keenly aware of the step forward he takes, and the lack of space for her to step back.

“Does our parents’ sacrifice mean nothing to you?!” He hisses. “And their parents before them? You and I are the product of generations of restraint, planning, resistance!”

Well, all that ‘resistance’ was futile, wasn’t it? Naomi grinds her teeth, keeping those words to herself. If not for this temple to Eilistraee and its followers, neither she nor her brother would be breathing at all. They would’ve died as children at the hands of the Lolth-sworn, the same way their parents did. The same way their entire sect did.

She and Calaerys are all that remains of the Reclaimants: the cult that thought they could pray their way back into Arvandor and the cycle of reincarnation denied to all drow. If only they could rid themselves of Lolth and any speck of her impure influence, daddy Corellon might decide to make them wood or high elves again in another, better life.

The pinch in Naomi’s gut is a guilty one. It’s accompanied by the twin sensation of relief she always feels when she thinks of her parents and their ilk. She wishes they didn’t have to die a bloody death for it, but she has no desire to follow in their footsteps. The temple to Eilistraee is far less exacting upon its followers.

The Reclaimants marked themselves so as to readily identify each other, and to pay tribute to the ascension they hoped to one day claim. Her brother’s bird tattoo is the same one that stained their father’s skin, or so Calaerys tells it. Their parents died when Naomi was still too young to remember them. Allegedly, the traditional marks were typically placed somewhere more easily hidden than one’s face. Calaerys’ pride wouldn’t abide such discretion.

“She isn’t for you!” Calaerys spits. “There are matches to be made here. Pure ones who have never fallen for Lolth’s tricks. You sully yourself with their filth! You stain our name!”

Suddenly, he jerks towards her. Naomi side-steps away from the edge only to be crowded against the rockface. It scrapes rough against her back, tearing the leather of her vest.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” She blurts, voice bounding off the stone. 

The thunder of the waterfall swallows the echo. No one at the temple will hear her. Naomi squirms, electric fear thrilling through her veins. Blunt force slams against her stomach, sending her back crashing against the ground. She’s too winded to fight the rope that binds her wrists.

“Get off of me!” She shrieks, twisting to no avail. 

By the time the stony ceiling above her stops spinning, it’s already too late.

The needle pierces the skin at the peak of her cheekbone. At once, it sears like hot coals. It quickly numbs into a dull, persistent poking. Naomi’s limbs grow heavy, and then limp.

Was father’s ink laced with a paralytic? Calaerys never said. She suspects her brother bent this tradition just to break her with it.

“You’ll never forget again,” Calaerys snarls in her ear when it’s done. She doesn’t need a mirror; she knows the marks he etched on her face match his own.

Naomi’s lips tremble. Sensation trickles back into her body in the form of scorching fire. The rage burns and builds in her belly, until it erupts in a broken, bloodcurdling shriek.

Calaerys seems to shudder before her eyes, the sound rippling across his skin and rushing through his ashen hair in a shockwave. For one sickening moment, his face shifts and thins. Naomi sees the polished white of his skull. His eyes are dark, vacant hollows. His skin pulls over it again like a mask. Her brother scrambles away from her, tripping in his haste to flee, pure terror painted on his face.

I’ll remember that look, she thinks, a savage smile peeling back her lips. Every time she sees her own image in the mirror, and the trio of birds tattooed on her cheek, she’ll remember all the ways Calaerys made her small. And how delicious it felt to finally see him cower because of her.

Naomi sits up abruptly, clutching the comforter to her chest. It’s so silky, it nearly slips through her white-knuckled grip. Her free hand flies to her left cheek, grazing over smooth skin. There’s no residual roughness, no lingering sting. 

Sheepishly, she lets her hand fall to her side. It was only a memory, after all. Her tattoo healed long ago, even though the ink of it endures. Calaerys can’t harm her from the grave. There’s no rocky roof above her head, only the delicate lace canopy of the massive four-poster she’s stranded in.

The luxuries surrounding her feel all at once foreign and familiar, as does the crimson stare of the vampire in the corner. He sits in a high-backed armchair with a festering frown. The sussur bloom thrums quietly on the side table next to him.

Her voyeur is displeased. 

“Was your trance unpleasant?” He asks, his voice decadently soft like the sheets she’s tangled in. He wears a deep crease in his brow and not one wrinkle on his dark brocade doublet. His silver curls rest perfectly coiffed atop his head, as if they haven’t moved at all since the last time she woke.

It’s more space than he granted her before. And still too close for comfort. She takes a brief scan of the room and finds it mostly as she remembers. The floor-length mirror is angled away from the bed, the brass frame gleaming with the silver leak of moonlight angling in from the vast, curved windows. The ornate rug, in the same shades of winey burgundy and bright turquoise as the bed, still blankets the smooth stone floor. And the far wall is still lined with dark polished shelves of leather-bound books.

There’s a subtle shimmer around a number of shelves she hadn’t noticed upon her first awakening. Dim light lines the closed door in the corner and the windowed one leading out onto the balcony. From here, she can just make out the faint banter of gulls. They must be near the Sea of Swords, though she can’t see anything in the darkness outside but a scattering of stars.

There’s nowhere far enough for her to run. Besides, his speed is uncanny. And even if it wasn’t, there’s the matter of his compulsion. The sussur bloom still stifles her magic. The only weapons at her disposal, then, are words.

“That’s a rather personal question,” Naomi says warily, “don’t you think?”

“Hm,” he hums with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Far be it from me to ask after my consort’s comfort.”

“Consort?”

Astarion’s eyes go round, like he’s just as startled by the word as she. It’s striking how the sharp angles of his face seem to soften with his shock. As if he’s someone else entirely. When she blinks, he seems to resettle again, a pitying smile lifting his lips, a knowing gleam entering his eye.

“Let’s start over, shall we? I’m Astarion. And I’m your--” 

--he breaks into an airy chuckle that sets her hairs on end--

“--husband, I suppose. It’s a rather quaint way of putting it, truth be told. A very mortal word. A bond between vampires is something far deeper. And ours is unique among them all.”

The v-word puts a frantic flare of nausea in her gut. But it’s another that tilts the room at an unsettling slant, dizziness swelling inside her skull.

Husband?!

He’s crazy. He must be. Unwittingly, her eyes flicker down to her left hand. Her brows shoot towards the ceiling.

The rose-gold band and its dainty laurel-leaf etchings are overwhelmed by the giant kite-cut amethyst at its center. The deep violet stone nestles into a vee of small diamonds that glitter around the thin circumference of a second band. If she squints, she can just see the engraving on it: aeterna amantes. It’s--

“Stunning, isn’t it?” He says smugly. “Of course, it could never eclipse or compare to your beauty, but I had to try to find something at least remotely suitable to symbolize our undying devotion.”

Naomi blinks rapidly, as if it will clear her head. As if it will make any of this make more sense. There’s a cruel humor in her alleged matrimony; Calaerys wouldn’t approve of this one, either. Reclaimants were meant to mate and procreate with other drow seeking ‘purification’. Or, if there was no unrelated, unwed member of the sect available, then with a drow deemed to be of ‘pure influence’. All in the hopes that if they failed in their dreams of entering Arvandor, then their children, or their children’s children, would be granted reincarnation. Every generation was intended to inch ever closer to reclaiming it.

But wedding a high elf? Oh no. That would be putting the cart before the horse.

Pain throbs through her gums. She grimaces at the panging reminder of her forgotten death, her fingertips coming to press against her aching jaw. Perhaps it isn’t so ludicrous that the man who apparently murdered her married her while he was at it. That if she forgot one such monumental occasion -- or wasn’t lucid for it -- she could certainly have forgotten the other.

“Yes, dearest,” he says, like he can hear her very thoughts. (Gods, can he?!) “You’re a vampire. But you needn’t grieve, nor fear the sun. You needn’t fear anything. You’ll see. Now, can we be civilized about this?”

She ogles him, flummoxed. It hadn’t even occurred to her to fear the sun, among the myriad of other terrors tugging at her. At least it explains, if only superficially, why they both can stand in it and be unharmed.

Be civilized, he says. Comply or be compelled is what he must mean. In the absence of alternatives, she reluctantly nods. 

“Good,” he purrs. A fresh ease relaxes his shoulders, his smile widening far enough, she gets a glimpse of his pointed fangs. The sight spurs an uneasy shiver down her spine. Instinctively, she shrinks back into the sheets as he stands. His smile falters.

“Join me, won’t you?” He asks, sauntering past her bedside with unsettling grace. The scent of his cologne carries past her nose, smooth as velvet, with the faint simmer of citrus. Something else cloys with it -- a faint, floral interjection that rouses a persistent itch in the back of her throat. She swallows, but she can’t seem to wet it again.

Naomi frowns as she tracks his path to the far wall, stacked top to bottom with books. As he approaches, he mutters something barely audible beneath his breath. The same shelves outlined in that ethereal blue glow reshape before her eyes, compressing their contents to form a rounded archway. Astarion steps through it into the room beyond, peering back at her expectantly.

It’s then, for the first time, she becomes fully aware of what she is -- and isn’t -- wearing.

It’s the same silver nightgown she remembers from the mirror, with the same dribbled, dark stain of her own blood along the draped neckline. Surely sleepwear has no need to sparkle so much. The billowy sleeves slouch off her bare shoulders, and the skirt’s long enough to come to her ankles. Sh hadn’t noticed how sheer it was before, when she was gawking at her reflection in terror. It’s like a veil of starlight coating her skin. Her freckles mingle with the glinting sheen of the fabric. It doesn’t so much cover her body as it illuminates it.

There’s nothing else beneath it but her.

Naomi’s eyes meet Astarion’s and narrow. She shifts, easing her legs over the side of the bed, gathering the comforter in her arms like some frouffy ball gown. She pulls it taut across her chest. The fabric practically melts against her, soft as butter. It must cost a fortune. It comes with her as she rises and crosses the room, dragging across the floor with a dull swish. She hesitates a few feet from the archway where Astarion still lingers, blocking her path.

With an exasperated sigh, he reaches into the chamber beyond and pulls out a decidedly opaque black robe. Hastily, she snatches it. At least he has the decency to turn away while she sheds the comforter and cinches the robe tight. It’s made of some sort of fur. Perhaps a bear. It’s dark as midnight, and brushes pleasantly against her neck.

“Come,” he says, stepping from the archway into a small but sumptuous vestibule. Hesitantly, Naomi follows. 

Initially, the brightness of the rooms burns. She shields her eyes with her hand, squinting against the light. It calls to mind her first expedition onto the sunlit surface. She’d relished the heat soaking her skin, until she woke flaking and freckled the following day. She regards her new surroundings with the same wariness, even after the ache from eyes fades.

It’s a stark contrast to the bedroom, where the only brightness was the occasional blue accent. The vestibule is white stone from floor to ceiling, and awash in shimmering moonlight. The same wide, curved windows line the exterior wall, with cushioned benches tucked against them. 

Ivory fur softens her bare steps, like a thick bed of snowfall. Another rug made from another exotic beast. There’s a candlelit hallway off the vestibule with a closed door on either side. Steam clouds her view of the wider chamber at the hall’s other end. She peels her attention away to her more immediate vicinity.

Instead of books on crowded shelves, two large canvases dominate the walls: a pair of twined skeletons on a bed of dark grass and pale flowers, and another of a seaside castle basking in a bloody sunrise. There’s a third space between them, where something else must’ve hung. Only a discolored, rectangular imprint remains there, now. Beneath the paintings are various pedestals with assorted treasures: a golden key, a jeweled goblet, and a silver amulet. The glint of it skewers her.

She knows that necklace. It used to live around her neck, and her mother’s before her. The icon of Eilistraee is cracked through the center, the Dark Dancer severed from the sword she holds above her head. 

Naomi stiffens, throat thickening around a raw, stinging dryness. These are trophies. Things he’s taken. Just like her.

“A-hem.”

Reluctantly, Naomi turns towards the vampire, who awaits her at a glass table set for two. There’s a porcelain pitcher and a pair of wine glasses atop it, filled red to the brim. The light-weight scent that wafts her way matches the floral notes that interrupted Astarion’s cologne before. The liquid is deep, dark, and viscous.

It isn’t wine. Her stomach sinks.

“You must be thirsty,” Astarion says with a sharp-edged smile. 

Her resounding silence outlives his patience. He shifts his feet, but it doesn’t quell the irritation in his voice. 

“Sit, my dear. Have a drink. You’ll feel better.”

Naomi raises her chin. “Aren’t you just going to make me?”

He tilts his head, his mouth forming a firm line. “We won’t be trying that again. It won’t do either of us any good. And deep down, I think a part of you knows that’s the only reason it happened at all.” He swallows, shaking his head as if to clear it. “For your own good.”

I don’t know that, or you, at all, she thinks helplessly.

Astarion circles to the table’s other side and pulls out the chair. Even with his spoken assurances,  she moves towards it sluggish and slow, drifting forward as if entranced. His knuckles brush her shoulders as he presses the chair in behind her. Naomi recoils from the touch. An anxious awareness lingers on her neck even after he takes his seat opposite of her.

The tabletop is small enough, they could easily clasp hands across it. Astarion’s wrists are half-way there, his elegant fingers folding around the stem of his wine glass, periodically twisting it. He nods pointedly towards the glass in front of her. Naomi tucks her hands deliberately beneath her arms.

“If you’re going to explain,” she says tersely, “start with how you forced me into trance.”

“I compelled you,” he says flatly. “Since I am your sire, and you are my bride, you obeyed to the best of your ability.”

Sire. Bride. Gods. Her skin starts to burn beneath her borrowed finery.

“What else has my so-called husband compelled me to do for him?”

His gaze goes sharp, and then round again. Lines sprout along his forehead and beneath his eyes. All at once, he looks aged a dozen years. His jaw slackens, lips parted around a low gasp of breath.

“That’s what you’ve been so scared of. Oh, darling. Any love we made before was entirely mutual. I’d never violate you.”

“Before..?!”

“Before you lost your memories.”

His face blurs into a smear of silver. She blinks fiercely, clearing the burn from her vision. Her stomach turns in a tumult of grief and relief. For the yawning gap in her recollection. For the harms that, according to him, haven’t befallen her. She believes him on that account, at least. Not merely because he looks appropriately horrified at the idea, but because even with all she’s forgotten, she remembers each of his other compulsions with crystal clarity.

The rest, she isn’t so sure of. 

She’s assumed, until now, Astarion had a hand in snatching pieces of her memory. That he tore them away with his teeth when he took her life. That she’d forgotten all the gorey details of their entanglement in the fog of trauma that obscured them.

Except the logic doesn’t quite latch.

Remember what you’ve forgotten, he implored when he first woke her. It was a compulsion, said with the same immutable force as the others before it. Except, it didn’t work. It didn’t take her will away. It didn’t return any memories like, it seems, he wanted it to.

If he wanted her to remember, he can’t have been the one to make her forget in the first place. But if he turned her…well, then he must’ve killed her, too. And, evidently, leashed her with the chain of compulsion that he can tug on every time he thinks it’s for her own good.

He continues, indignant now as he leans back in his chair. “You were attacked. Some vile wizard cast a spell and put you in this state. I never compelled you at all before. I never needed to. We are bonded, you and I.”

So he can’t be as powerful as he pledges to be, she thinks, if I came to harm the way he claims.

Her mind reels, but it catches on the growing sting on her throat. She winces at the sandpaper roughness of it. For a second, his gaze seems to soften with something like concern. It hardens in defiance when she speaks.

“Then I do have some things to fear, it seems,” she says coolly.

He bristles. “We’ve faced far worse and fared exceptionally well on every occasion. You’re perfectly safe here!”

She eyes him apprehensively. “What did you mean that we’re ‘bonded’?”

His mood shifts on a dime. He gestures widely with a proud smirk. “Look around you. This entire palace is ours. We share wealth, power, and so much more. My desires are yours, too. I know your needs as if they’re my own.”

Naomi stiffens, eyes skimming over all overwhelming opulence of her surroundings. Is this all she’s known while bound to this man? A few lavish rooms? Perhaps a few more? A gilded cage? His discretion and decisions about her wants and needs? The trappings might be more luxurious, but it doesn’t sound so different from the ‘brother knows best’ of her past.

No magic. No music. No life at all. The only sounds she hears are the grating hum of the sussur bloom and the steady thump of Astarion’s heartbeat reminding her that she no longer has one. Her fingernails bite into the beds of her palms.

She had her magic. She had music. Somehow, she had a glitzy little harmonica on hand in the throne room. It smashed to pretty pieces beneath the heel of Astarion’s boot. You’ll have another, he said, once you’ve come to your senses.

Is that what he expects? That she be on her best behavior, at his beck and call? That if she’s good enough, and plays her part perfectly, he’ll treat her? Like she’s some sort of--

“Drink, pet,” he purrs. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

A furious bravery thrills through her with righteous abandon. Naomi shoves the wineglass towards the table’s edge. A dark stain blooms in the snow white rug beneath their feet. Astarion watches her display with composed indifference. She goes rigid, pressing back in her chair, bracing for the burn of his ire and the compulsion sure to follow.

Instead, he merely utters a tired sigh. “So much for being civilized, eh?”

She grits her teeth. “You said you’d explain--”

“I have.”

“You haven’t! I don’t even know how we met! You say you didn’t kidnap me, but you certainly murdered me! And that’s about all I know of you!”

He inclines his head with an infuriating pout. The sultry dip in his voice doesn’t soothe; it’s a nuisance. “You may have forgotten me, my sweet, but I know you intimately.”

She scoffs. “Prove it!”

“As you wish,” he croons, eyes flickering with something unfathomable. “I know what it is you saw in reverie. You remembered your brother. How he hurt you. Didn’t you?”

A slow spill of dread sinks in her stomach, like sand collecting in the bottom of an hourglass. Unwittingly, she shakes her head.

“You told me how you danced and sang and drank the day he died. How you later came to the surface to sing in taverns and gradually made your way to the Gate. You said it was to start a new life, but truly, you had something specific in mind. You wanted to try your hand at theater.” He chuckles quietly, propping his chin against his palm. “You own one now, you know. My little starlet.”

Naomi’s eyelids flutter. “H-how did you--”

“Because you’ve told me before how you got your tattoo. I’ve lied beside you countless days and nights. I know what you’ve seen when you wake and touch your cheek. I know all your dreams, and your nightmares. All the threads that twine together to make my beloved bride.”

Such honeyed words for such a seductive fantasy. A happy one, maybe. He is breathtaking in more than one sense. Anyone with eyes would say as much about his straight, elegant nose, his high cheekbones, and the too-perfect curl of his hair. Even the velvet flex of his voice. His scent alone entices, every element of him beckoning like a crooked finger. Or coiling like a noose about to tighten.

But even this close to him, she’s devoid of any recognition, of any desire but to be somewhere far, far away. To leave Baldur’s Gate for (her own) good and never return, even after travelling so long to get here, and never seeing the stage she yearned for, or hardly any of the city itself.

He tells a pretty tale, but he doesn’t speak of the darkness that paid for it. Of the death -- her death -- that built it. And he doesn't say a thing about himself. Naomi’s throat bobs. She meets his smolder with a steely stare.

“All right,” Astarion sneers, with a melodramatic sweep of his arms. “Let’s play out this game you think you’re running. You’ve been kidnapped by the big, bad vampire. Do you think plucking his nerves like a petulant child is endearing? What exactly is this strategy?”

“Spite, mostly,” Naomi answers coldly. “Do you know what it’s like to be compelled?”

The glare he gives her is scalding. “Careful, dear.”

“How long have I been here?” She demands. “How long have I been a vampire?”

“You’ll be able to think far clearer if you drink, darling.”

Naomi’s eyes narrow. He’s so insistent on it. He could just compel her. He said he won’t. For now, at least, he seems intent on playing his part as the protective sire.

Or, maybe, he needs her to drink of her own volition. She knows little of vampires, aside from a few tawdry novels. But she recalls, vaguely, a myth warning against taking food and drink in a devil’s house. And something else about being stuck in the hells for six months each year, all because of a pomegranate.

Pomegranate. That’s the smell that’s been teasing her nose. Her eyes flit to the blood in his cup. Beneath the floral notes, the scent is tangy. Light. Luscious.

Her throat scrapes with a sudden heat. “If I do,” she rasps, “will you answer my questions?”

He purses his lips, falling quiet as he weighs her offer.

“You know,” she presses, “communication is typically key in most marriages. One would think you’d want your wife to know about her circumstances. For her own good.”

“A new vampire is a delicate thing,” he says evasively. “A bride even more so. You’ve forgotten three years in an instant. That makes you new all over again. You need time to--”

“Three years?!” She chokes.

“I think that counts as one answer, doesn’t it?” He grins darkly. “Hold up your end of the bargain, and you’ll have so much more.”

Naomi scowls. He pushes his glass across to her, gratingly slow. The blood within trembles.

“Go on, little love.”

The liquid ripples again as she reaches out hesitantly and takes the glass in hand. “What will happen if I don’t drink it?”

“I’ll give you that one for free,” he says tartly. “Vampires drink blood. If they don’t, they’ll be hungry. And agitated, and paranoid, and generally, bad company. Their mental faculties will become muddled. Eventually, they’ll fall ill, then feral, with pupils blown wide, and fangs aching something awful at the mere smell of blood. Does that sound relatable to you?”

Splat. Naomi flinches. Something wets her knuckles. She sees the moisture dangling there by a silver string and-- Gods, she’s…salivating. She wipes her mouth shakily with the back of her hand, scowling over the edge of the glass.

“I have the sense you’ve been trying to puzzle me out,” Astarion muses. “To outplay whatever villain you think you see. Let me help you, darling: having freshly fed wouldn’t have won you our little spat in the throne room, but you would have fared better. And you’ll fare better now if you stop starving yourself.”

Her gaze drops, heavy-lidded, back to the glass. If it will help, make her stronger, clear her head, then she’ll succumb to one sip. Just a taste. The scent of roses eases her eyes shut as she tilts the glass to her mouth.

It melts petal-soft against her lips with the tenderness of a lover. She gasps, long and lewd, like she’s writhing beneath one. The taste swells tantalizingly across her tongue. Soothing warmth trickles, syrupy sweet, down her throat, waking her nerves, rousing a tingle beneath her skin. The more she takes, the more taken she feels. She swears there’s fingers stroking through her hair. Good, she thinks, deliriously. It’s so very good.

The only thing better would be more. She feels the pull, as if whispered from the blood itself, coaxing her open. Take it. Take it all.

It’s then she manages to wrench away, slamming the glass down. A hairline crack sprouts in the tabletop. She pinches the stem in a vice-grip, mesmerized by the red trails dripping down the side of the glass to pool at the bottom. Only a few drops remain.

“Tell me how we met,” She pants, as if surfacing from vast depths.

For a moment, his eyes glisten. A mess of emotions plays across his face in an instant, each one vivid and fleeting. He flits through masks until he settles for a stony one. He blinks at her blankly once, twice, and then he jerks to stand, rattling the table as he goes.

“I’ll return later,” he says crisply, taking the pitcher with him, “with a meal more fitting for your palate.”

“What-- wait!” She scrambles from the chair, hurrying after him as he crosses the archway.

To her surprise, he freezes. She stops just short of barreling into his chest, a flurry of fear swarming in her stomach. 

He turns, peering down at her wistfully. “Why?”

“I-I thought we were getting somewhere,” she stammers. “I only want to know you, too. So you're not a stranger. So this all stops feeling so…strange.”

The arch of his brow is just as skeptical as she is. He searches her face while she wracks her brain for a more plausible answer. She has no idea what inspired her to rush after him when only moments before, she loathed his every word. All she knows is the sudden, overwhelming plea pressing on her mind: come back to me.

She hears it in her own voice, in her own head, but it feels starkly foreign. The yearning flares again, insistent, frantic, as he takes another step away from her. The noise that comes next puts her blood on ice. 

A deep, bestial snarl rips across the room. It didn’t come from Astarion; his mouth hasn’t moved at all. Naomi blinks feverishly, gaze dropping to see her hands clenched in a death grip around the pitcher he still holds. She gapes, aghast, but she doesn’t let go, even as she trembles like a leaf. 

Astarion merely tuts. “You’re never quite yourself when you’re hungry, love. But don’t you worry. We’ll fill you right up. Perhaps before you go for a stroll through the city streets, hm? We wouldn’t want you to make a mess out there.”

He lets go, and she staggers back, cradling the pitcher to her chest. Blood splashes over the sides, spattering at her feet, and soaking the front of her robe. It’s such a lush, vibrant color. Every drop, a precious gem. She’s so hypnotized by that ruby sheen, she hardly hears his parting words.

“There’s a bath for you, if you wish, and fresh clothes. Wear whatever pleases you. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She retreats to the far wall. Her back slides against the slick surface as she drops to the ground and lifts the pitcher to her lips. She gags in her haste to guzzle down its contents, red rivers running down her chin, tears streaming down her cheeks.

A/N: The unserious working title of this chapter was “Vampire’s First Juicebox”.

Now also feels like a good time to mention that while I may at some point continue Midnight Chimes, this fic is my primary focus, and I will be pulling in scenes/material/backstory for Naomi and her game timeline with Astarion as it makes sense to do so. This will effectively spoil what I had planned for MC, but after giving it a lot of thought, it feels important that these pieces are included in AN, as they are really vital to Astarion and Naomi’s journey in this story and I'm excited about working those elements (like the flashback included here) in.

Thank you so very much for reading! I hope life is being kind to you all. <3

[lurkingshan]

Theory of Love Episode 2: Love Actually

Let me get this out of the way right at the top: I'm so mad that Third made me rewatch this terrible movie! If you haven't seen it, I implore you to keep it that way, but here's what you need to know:

The film is a series of interconnected "romance" vignettes, most involving inappropriate relationships, laced with misogyny and homophobia and racism in pretty much every storyline, that is inexplicably beloved by the masses.

I am judging Third for liking and taking inspiration from this film, if I'm being honest. And this is the specific scene he drew from:

For context, this is a man secretly confessing his shameful crush on his best friend's wife who he barely knows (which the film presented as romantic). Third apparently connected with this man's hopeless love for someone he can't have to the extent that he decided to try confessing to Khai in the same way (after Bone reminded him of it), despite the fact that this confession was doomed to fail, by design!

And of course, this didn't work, because Khai was completely unable to receive this as a love confession in the context of their current relationship. And I think some part of Third had to know that would be the case. He knows Khai! When Khai offered an interpretation for Third's actions that fit within his framework of their relationship, Third let it happen instead of using his words to communicate his true intentions. He's not ready to succeed at this, and I think part of him finds sitting in the torment of his unrequited feelings romantic.

One of the things I like about this episode is it establishes some clear parameters around their friendship and how Khai sees it. First of all, Khai does care about Third, and he pays attention to him and tries to take care of him within the boundaries of platonic male friendship. Sure, Khai is selfish sometimes, but Third likes him for a reason. They genuinely get along, have a lot of shared interests, and Khai gives attention to Third and goes out of his way to check in with him and make him feel better (without realizing he's the reason Third is down in the dumps in the first place). They are friends, for real.

Second, Khai believes in separating friendship from dating. He has a rule to never date friends--because he knows his approach to dating around and having casual sex is not compatible with involving people he actually cares about--and he keeps these two categories of people separate in his own mind. And because of this, he is absolutely unable to process Third's desire to move from one category to the other. For Khai, Third is his most important person, his best friend that he intends to stick with his entire life. The people he dates are much more ephemeral, passing interests that he doesn't much care about as they come and go. He can't think about Third in that context, and so he won't. When Third attempts to confess to him using the Love Actually scene as his inspiration, you can see Khai finding a way to rationalize it in real time to make it something else.

And as much as I find Third's expectations for and failures to communicate with Khai a bit frustrating, I want to give him credit for trying to put himself out there. His fear about making himself clear to Khai is completely understandable, even just in the context of their friendship before you add the whole layer of his sexuality and Khai (to this point) only seeming interested in dating women. And now that he has Two to confide to and encourage him, Third did try to push Khai to realize how he feels. He just wasn't quite ready to say it with his whole chest, because this friendship is important to him, too. And as we saw when he cried watching a film about a girl who was afraid to confess to her friend, he knows he has something to lose if Khai can't reciprocate. I don't think it's an accident that his confession in this episode was half-hearted and designed to emulate a famous confession scene where there was never any chance of success.

[c-rankshaft]

This addition might be considered a little bit off topic, so feel free to tell me to make my own post if you wish OP(s)!

Elder Scrolls games seem to have some kind of disease about them that makes it so they just cannot grasp the scale of JUST HOW BAD things are. Morrowind (edited bc my dumb ass forgot about beautiful Daggerfall and I own up to my mistakes), in my opinion, came the closest, but that's another post for another time. I think one of the problems with Skyrim and the Alduin storyline is that there's not really any true incentive in the game to seek out this information. You can ABSOLUTELY play the game not knowing anything but the bare dry bones of what is going on. Then, with no incentive TO learn deeper outside of having the question in the box go from white to grey, the incentive is more found in NOT asking the questions- gets you back to the ""fun"" gameplay quicker.

This DOES allow for player character variation (say you want to make your LDB an idiot or something) alongside an easier route for people who have already played before, but it doesn't work for portraying a world that is supposedly ending, or one that is being overtaken by dragon cults. To get the gravity of that to truly WEIGH on the player, you have to make it so not knowing, like not seeking out the books or the extra dialogue, in some way disadvantages the player.

However, this doesn't really tackle the issue of the confusing and overly simplistic way they handled Alduin in the first place. As said above, there's a huge unanswered question taken from the main storyline of "What the hell was he even trying to do?" that comes from different characters implying different sentiments. Perhaps this was supposed to be an attempt at pitting many theories against each other A LA Battle of Red Mountain(?), but without any elaboration on anything and no true incentive to seek out more information, alongside the fact that some of the MOST interesting stuff on Alduin isn't even in the game at all, it all just falls flat. You don't get a coherent story OR the full weight of the situation from the game, at all.

I'm, personally, fully convinced that this is the result of suppressing creative writing/portrayal ideas in the interests of making the game marketable. You can feel as you play the game, that it was intended to hit a very very wide audience. It's designed to be easily picked up and played by literally anyone, and that's a HUGE part of where the massive success came from. It was simplistic enough story wise so that nobody ever would have a single issue understanding. Big reach = Big money, and big money is more important to a game studio than a good story. Combine that reach with the fact that they've re-released the game (arguably) 17 times on 10 different consoles, it makes it pretty clear that they're more focused on creating and adding aspects to the game (and other games currently being worked on in the series) that make it lucrative-- not necessarily new, inventive, creative, or gripping story-wise.

Basically, this post is so correct it kinda hurts a bit. There are ways to make all of this information work. They don't really bother because they'd have to put more budget into story, and what if not every single person on the planet is pleased with the story? Bad for business. Better make it as generic as possible so it sells better. Fire every writer who cares. Underpay and mistreat the rest so they can't care. Now put Skyrim on the Switch. Now put it on VR. Now add paid mods. Now encourage everyone to play your MMO. Now release paid DLC. Now add something to the Crown Store. Now release paid DLC. Now add something to the Crown Store. Now release paid DLC. Now add something to the Crown Store. Now release paid DLC. Now add something to the Crown Store.

alright i might be misremembering some things bc it's been a while since i played the skyrim mq but.... man i really wish we could've had a proper conversation with alduin near the end of the game like we do with dagoth ur. like he's the one villain who isn't some Bad Guy gone mad with power he's literally a GOD. he's literally just doing his job!!!!! of ending the world!

i don't like how he's depicted as just a generic power hungry bad guy like isn't being the world eater literally his Purpose....you even have conversations w arngeir and paarthurnax, iirc, about the ethics of killing the "world eater" and if it's okay to let the current kalpa keep going when it's supposed to end. i wish that was a moral dilemma explored more in the game. i would've loved a final conversation between the ldb and alduin where he talks to you and asks you if you know what you're doing, if you know what it means to keep this world going. discussing if it's really your choice to decide when the world ends or stays. about death, rebirth and creation. who are you to interfere with this natural cycle?

[bookwyrminspiration]

it DOES matter and DON'T you DARE take the easy way out you MOTHERFU—

[theriverbeyond]

i feel like in the cosplay community everyone is always working on a New Project. but idk. i like my cosplays. i don't have any desire to dress up as anyone but the characters I already have cosplays for. what if i don't have a new project. what if i don't want one.

[bonefall]

post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do

Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.

Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.

Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.

And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.

In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.

She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.

So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"

But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;

Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?

And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.

If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.

It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.

Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.

Or this shit,

If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.

Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.

Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.

(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)

[floorpancakes]

smth kinda fucked up about watching doumeki go from whole assedly making life or death decisions for watanuki as a desperate but firm love language every other tuesday to fucking sitting in quiet anguish with a pained look on his face with his eyebrows fucking tweaking out, still able to make life or death protective decisions sometimes but being fucking paralysed with indecision most times that don't involve immediate physical actions to the point it's clearly ripping his head and heart in two even if he still retains that refusal to give up

[prettyboykatsuki]

bnha is so overhated bro boooo

[july-19th-club]

one thing that is so genius on a craft level with the broken earth books is that the derogatory for 'orogene' is - That Way - on 100% purpose. you're supposed to feel like it's not a word to say out loud, it's supposed to be uncomfortably similar to words you've already heard and know as cruel slurs in the real world. it's a direct fucking parallel designed to deliberately give the reader that crawling feeling and it works so well i dont even feel right typing it up for a post

[quietlyblooms]

gimme a minute to cook over this bnha verse and then i'll get cracking on some starters B))

[stormyoceans]

If Sea says that as a homework assignment he has watched "Scent of a Woman" with Al Pacino hundreds of times, I will cry ugly tears and no one will stop me, because this is literally the best representation of a blind man in a movie that I have ever seen😭😭😭

Monica, tell me that you saw today's workshop!? I'm literally climbing on the ceiling from what I saw! Sea trusts Jimmy 1000% and follows him without a shadow of a doubt. I'm ready to tear my hair out from THIS!!!!!!😭😭😭😭

THE WAY THIS IS THE FIRST THING I SAW WHEN I OPENED TUMBLR AFTER AN ENTIRE DAY OF DOING CHORES AND I ALMOST BROKE MY FINGERS TO GO CHECK THE OFFICIAL LAST TWILIGHT ACCOUNT AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND THEN ALMOST BROKE MY PHONE AS WELL WHILE REFRESHING TWITTER 93648537 TIMES BECAUSE GOD KNOWS WHAT ELON MUSK DID TO FUCK IT UP THIS TIME AND NOW IM JUST SHAKING OUT OF MY SKIN YELLING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS THROWING UP BLOOD WHILE IN A DEAD FAINT ON THE FLOOR EXPERIENCING THE ENTIRE RANGE OF HUMAN EMOTIONS BECAUSE IT'S HAPPENING IT'S REALLY HAPPENING THEY'RE COMING TO US!!!!!!!!!!

i honestly have no words to express how happy i am to know that they actually had someone with a visual impairment talk about their experience and help during workshop. i know this is like.. the bare minimum but again, if we can't have any actors with visual impairments to play in the show, im at least glad they're trying to educate themselves and consulting people from the community so they can represent this story on screen in a way that's as respectful and realistic as possible

ALSO NOT TO BE THAT PERSON BUT JIMMYSEA REALLY BE POWER WALKING AROUND THAT ROOM LIKE IT'S NOTHING AND I FEEL SUICIDAL ABOUT IT. jimmy looks so confident while leading sea but also so careful as he glances back from time to time to check on him, but the thing that frankly is making me want to throw myself off a fifteen story building and is probably gonna lend me in a psych ward sooner rather than later is that you are sooo right, sea is just following jimmy along with no sign of hesitation in his steps, matching jimmy's pace so easily and walking so close to him TRULY THE TRUST THE FAITH THE BOND!!!!!!!!!

tbh i wouldn't be surprised if p'aof gave scent of a woman as an assignment to both jimmy and sea since the focus of the movie is the relationship between a man with visual impairment and a student in need of money who takes a job as his caregiver, so it can be an interesting point of view for both of them!!!! also this reminds me that gmmtv better give me a two hours long special where the entire cast shares what they watched and read and did to prepare for their roles I JUST WANT TO KNOW EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THIS SHOW I ALREADY SUFFERED ENOUGH WITH THE WAY GMMTV MISTREATED VICE VERSA THEY OWE ME ONE

[flythesail]

I think a lot of what people were saying happened "too early" in s2 of shadow & bone was really the writers saying s3 is unlikely, so this is our chance to give everyone some of what would be to come :(