Welcome to my little corner of chaos—where caffeine meets creativity. 🖤
Here, you’ll find everything from dark romantic stories and unhinged one-shots to quiet, angsty pieces that slipped through at 3 a.m. Each post is stitched together with too much coffee, not enough sleep, and an unreasonable amount of love for fictional men...usually in leather.
⸻ ✦ 𝐴𝐵𝑂𝑈𝑇 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐸𝐷𝐼𝑇𝑂𝑅-𝐼𝑁-𝐶𝐻𝐼𝐸𝐹 ✦ ⸻
Lila · 24 · Persian/Canadian · Sagittarius · Caffeine-fueled dreamer · Chronic night owl · Wordsmith of beautiful disasters.
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⸻ ✦ The Fine Print ✦ ⸻
✦ Do not interact unless you’ve read the rules.
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I hate the CN fans for pressuring infold to remove valko
The only reason I’m responding to this is to set a boundary on my blog: you can dislike the situation, but I will not tolerate any hate directed at others here.
I encourage everyone to do their research, which is exactly what I did to understand what exactly has been happening. Yes, there are extremists in the CN community, but they are not the sole reason for Valko’s call for removal. In fact, I don’t blame the majority of the CN community for being upset. Infold’s promotional content and in-game text were severely mishandled.
From what I’ve researched—and anyone with more insight can correct me if I’m wrong—the backlash seems to stem from two massive missteps. First, a storyline file featured human drug experimentation labeled with the number 0731. Both of these things are an incredibly sensitive topic in china due to the Japanese war atrocities committed during World War II.
Second, the promotional material used the idiom “letting the wolf into the house” alongside a trailer of a character entering the main character's home. In China, this phrase carries heavy connotations of real-world danger, trespassing, and sexual assault. Almost any other phrasing could have worked, but they chose this particular one.
In both instances, the fault lies entirely with Infold and Papergames. Instead of owning up to their lack of oversight, apologizing, and correcting the content, they chose to completely wipe away their mistakes at the expense of Valko.
The CN community makes up a massive portion of the LADS player base and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. Because of that, I think Infold and Papergakes should have acted with far more tact and cultural nuance.
Calling out these mistakes and acknowledging these slights against the Chinese community doesn't mean I’m condoning the extremists who have shown racism and blatant hate towards the global community and Valko. Right now, it seems the discussion has become so focused on fan infighting and Valko’s cancellation that Infold has largely avoided scrutiny for the cultural harm and controversy they've caused.
I think the best chance of bringing Valko back is by holding the company accountable for its mistakes and poor handling of the situation rather than directing our anger at the haters.
• send a few “BRING VALKO BACK” emails to [email protected] ‼️ if the cn girlies can get their attention, then so can we— but let’s do it in a peaceful, nonviolent way. “BRING VALKO BACK” shows our enthusiasm and love for this character and all the effort his team put into him without disparaging other LIs, real people and employees, and using bullying tactics.
• uninstall the game
• leave a 1⭐️ rating on the appstore; my personal reason was “BRING BACK VALKO” just to concisely get the point across. review bombing DOES hit them.
• unfollow all LADS platforms
• leave comments on their posts to express your distress for valko’s cancellation; keep it respectful
Calling all my Valko supporters! If you’re joining the protest, there’s a petition you can sign and a few other ways you can help. Let’s do our best to bring our man back ❤️🩹
I legit couldn’t believe it! I saw the news on tumblr first and thought it was a rumour until I checked the official accounts.
They did all that marketing and got so many people excited to meet him, only to backtrack because of the haters. On top of that, they stated there would be no further love interests which is bullshit. I honestly don’t understand why some people have to ruin things for everyone else. If they don’t like Valko, that’s completely fine. Then don’t spend money on him when it’s his turn.
I also saw another Tumblr blog say they’re giving Infold a few days to reverse their decision, and I’m doing the same. If they don’t, I’ll be joining the boycott. They’ve put themselves in a position where they’ve lost a lot of players’ trust. If they’re willing to cave to backlash over something this significant, what’s stopping them from doing it again when haters or anti against one of the other LI decide they don’t like something else in the game
thoughts on ormund hightower??? ngl that man makes me go 😵💫😵💫
I don’t have many thoughts on him yet 🫠 but from face cards alone, I’m very tempted to switch to being a team green supporter. The actor who plays Ormund is fine as hell.
I’m really hoping we get more of Ormund in this week’s episode, and especially some interactions between him and Gwayne. I have a very brief idea for Ormund and another idea including both him and Gwayne, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough of Ormund yet to actually write for him 🥲
Your mischaracterization of the character u write did make me cringe tons, and unrealistic reader, but your writing style is unique and dearly beloved. Have a nice day
Not gonna lie, you’re sending me some mixed signals here, nonnie 😂 I mean, fair enough, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea but you do have me curious to know which of my fics had you taking time out of your day to tell me this.
Ryan Condal and the writers have an incredible talent for sucking all the satisfaction out of a villain’s death.
HOTD SPOILER BELOW
Because what do you mean Otto Hightower died while Rhaenyra was still snot-nosed sobbing? I wanted a spectacle. I wanted a Ned Stark-level public execution. I need Rhaenyra to get it together, and I need the writers to bring back the ruthlessness that made Game of Thrones iconic.
But that’s just my opinion.
Will I still be writing for HOTD? Unfortunately yes. They got such a good cast, but the storyline has been an absolute mess 😭
forensics by: @cafekitsune
file length: 1.8k
crime: Keeping your relationship with Valko a secret was never easy. It becomes impossible when one coworker gets a little too comfortable.
case notes: Not a request but short little one-shot. I really wanted to write something for Valko before his official debut in LADS. I can't wait to meet him!
warnings: mentions of mates and claims, secret office romance, jealousy
major crimes database | lads case files | suspect files
The fluorescent lights of the EonCore Tech were usually muted by this hour, but the impending launch of the new tech line meant the entire building was buzzing with overtime energy. As Valko’s executive secretary, your desk was the final barrier between the rest of the company and the Chairman.
What the rest of the company didn't know was that you were also the final barrier between Valko and his more primitive, feral impulses. Beneath the bespoke Italian suits and the cold, calculated demeanour of a billionaire tech mogul laid a much more predatory nature that not many people got to see.
Your job description officially required you to keep the corporate efficiency seamless, managing multi-billion dollar schedules and gatekeeping high-profile stakeholders. But unofficially, your task was infinitely more complicated by another reality: you were secretly dating the Chairman himself.
Keeping things professional during the day was an unspoken rule. It meant no lingering glances during board meetings, no accidental brushes when handing over financial reports, and absolutely no acknowledging the way his amber-gold eyes darkened with a possessiveness whenever you stepped into his office to hand him his morning coffee.
Until today.
You let out a quiet, exhausted sigh, manually organizing a stack of encrypted project briefs, when a shadow fell over your desk. It wasn't Valko. Instead, it was Marcus—a senior lead from the engineering development team who had recently become entirely too comfortable lingering around your desk under the guise of ‘project updates.’
"Still working, beautiful?" Marcus leaned his weight against the polished mahogany edge of your desk, invading your personal space with a smug smirk that made your stomach turn. "A dedicated executive assistant is hard to find, but a gorgeous one? The Chairman is absolutely running you ragged. You know, if you requested a transfer over to my department, I'd treat you a lot better than he does."
Behind the heavy, floor-to-ceiling tinted glass doors of the main office, a pair of amber eyes locked onto the scene.
Valko had been reviewing the final Q3 financial statements, but the second he saw Marcus approach your desk, he stilled. The fountain pen that had been in his grip snapped clean in half from the force of the sudden tightening of his grip. His Evol flared instinctively—the liquid ink and fractured metal of the expensive writing instrument warping and fusing into a jagged, sharp spike before he consciously suppressed it.
To the rest of the world, Valko was a ruthless tech tycoon. But beneath the tailored suit, his primal instincts were roaring. A threat was near his mate.
"Marcus, I'm just doing my job," you said, your voice a masterclass in cool, professional detachment as you subtly shifted your chair back to re-establish your boundaries. "And the Chairman treats me perfectly well. My compensation and hours are exactly as agreed upon."
"I’m just saying," Marcus purred, shifting closer and resting a hand flat on the surface of your desk, his figure completely blocking you from looking at your monitor. "A brilliant mind like yours shouldn't be cooped up here all night playing gatekeeper. Why don't I take you out to that exclusive new lounge downtown? We can discuss your... long-term career advancement over a few drinks."
"Thank you for the offer, Marcus, but I have dozens of encrypted files to log and categorize before the morning quarterly review," you replied, your voice tight with strained patience as you pointedly clicked your mouse, as you leaned around him to look at your screen.
"Oh, come on. The guy’s a corporate machine. He doesn't notice anything outside of quarterly projections and market dominance," Marcus chuckled, lowering his voice into a sultry, confidential tone that made your skin crawl. He reached out, his fingers brazenly brushing against your wrist to stop you from typing. ”The Chairman doesn't need to know, and honestly, he's so detached he wouldn't even notice if you slipped out an hour early. Let me take care of you tonight."
Click.
The moment Marcus's fingers made contact with your skin, the heavy glass door to the executive office swung open.
The air in the room instantly shifted, tension that could be cut with a knife filling the room and you could feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You knew that feeling anywhere—it was the unmistakable aura of a predator approaching to mark his territory.
Valko stepped out. At 6’2 with a broad and powerful build, his tailored charcoal suit did little to hide the raw strength beneath the fine fabric. His short burgundy hair caught the harsh fluorescent lighting, but it was his eyes that instantly locked Marcus in place. They weren't their usual warm amber; they looked as if they had darkened.
"Marcus," Valko’s voice cut through the silence—a low, gravelly baritone that carried a warning edge that reminded you of a wolf baring its teeth.
Marcus froze, his smug smile instantly faltering as he hastily pulled his hand away and straightened up, his face paling. "Chairman! I-I was just finishing up the Q3 development projections with your secretary."
Valko didn’t look at the paperwork. He didn't even look at Marcus’s face. His gaze traveled slowly, deliberately down to your wrist—where Marcus’s fingers had just been resting—and then flicked up to read the slight discomfort written across your features.
A dangerous growl rumbled deep in Valko’s chest—a sound so low that Marcus likely thought it was the building’s ventilation system, but it made your heart skip a beat.
"The report belongs in the submission tray," Valko said, taking a slow, measured step forward. His movements screamed predatory, closing the distance between them until he completely towered over Marcus. "And your hands belong on your own desk. On an entirely different floor."
"I-I apologize, sir. I was just being friendly," Marcus stammered, his bravado entirely shattered as he took a frantic step back, breaking into a sweat under Valko’s glare.
"EonCore Tech pays you to engineer, not to be friendly," Valko continued in a cold tone that sent a shiver down your spine. "If I see you loitering around this desk or invading my secretary's space again, I will personally ensure your access badge is deactivated before you even reach the elevators. Am I clear?"
"Crystal, sir. Perfectly clear." Marcus didn't even dare to look in your direction as he grabbed his folder with trembling hands, practically tripping over his own feet to scramble toward the lobby doors.
As soon as the elevator doors chimed and closed, the oppressive tension in the air dissipated.
You let out a long, ragged breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, your shoulders dropping as you looked up at the towering figure before you. "Valko... you can't just threaten the senior engineering staff like that," you whispered, casting a cautious glance around despite the area being empty. "People are going to talk. If HR or the board catches wind of you breathing down a lead developer's neck over a casual conversation, they're going to start asking questions we can't answer."
Valko didn't answer right away. He turned to look at you, his amber eyes locking onto yours with a terrifyingly singular focus. In a split second, the polished corporate CEO vanished. He crossed the short distance to your desk, his large hands gripping the leather edge of your armrests. With sudden jerk, he yanked you closer.
Before you could even formulate a word of protest, he leaned down, effectively trapping you between his broad, muscular frame and the high back of the chair.
"Let them talk," he growled softly, the wilder edge of his true nature bleeding right through the fine threads of his expensive tailored suit. He buried his face directly into the warm crook of your neck, inhaling deeply. His chest heaved as he aggressively nuzzled your neck, drinking in your scent, as he consciously worked to replace traces of Marcus's lingering cologne with his own woodsy scent. "He was invading your space. Touching you. He was looking at you like you were his.”
"Valko, we're in the middle of the main office floor," you breathed, a hot flush rapidly rising to your cheeks. Despite your verbal caution, your hands automatically found their way up to his broad shoulders, your fingers digging into the knotted tension of his muscles. "The cleaning crew is still downstairs, and the launch metrics are still pulling in live data. Anyone could come up through those elevators.”
"I don't care," he murmured against your skin, his voice a low rumble that sent a thrill straight to your core. His sharp teeth lightly grazed the sensitive skin of your pulse point, eliciting a soft, breathless gasp from you. "My inner beast has been tearing its cage to pieces from the exact moment he walked up to you. Secret or not, you are mine. If I have to use my Evol to create a cage and lock that man away just to keep him from breathing your air, I will."
He pulled back just enough to look into your eyes, his expression a mix of fierce possessiveness and an endearing pout. The contrast of the powerful EonCore Chairman looking at you with those puppy dog eyes was enough to make your heart melt.
"Tell me you're mine," he demanded quietly, his thumb pressing against your chin before tracing the soft line of your lower lip. "Say it. I need to hear it."
You smiled softly, the last of your professional reservations evaporating under the sheer earnestness of his gaze. Leaning up, you closed the remaining distance between you, pressing a reassuring kiss to his lips. "I'm yours, my wolf. Only yours. Nobody elses.”
The tension finally began to bleed out of his massive shoulders, and a low, satisfied hum vibrated deep within his chest. He didn't let you pull away. Instead, he leaned into you, kissing you again—deeper, hungrier this time, intent on staking his claim thoroughly, corporate rules and consequences be damned.
You were his mate, and it was about damn time he claimed you publicly.
The sheer intensity of his kiss left you entirely breathless, your fingers knotting into his burgundy hair as he pulled you impossibly closer, anchoring your body against his broad chest.
And honestly? You were tired of hiding it, too. You were tired of hiding, the professional distance, and the insufferable arrogance of men like Marcus who thought you were fair game.
When he finally broke the kiss, his forehead rested against yours, his chest heaving as his amber eyes burned down into your own. His breathing was as ragged as yours.
"Tomorrow," Valko growled softly, his large hand coming up to cup your cheek, his thumb sweeping over your cheekbone tenderly. "No more hiding. It's time everyone knew who you belonged to."
Hi Lila, I didn’t see Gwayne Hightower on the list for HOTD reqs but if your comfortable I was hoping you could do one for him?
Like him and a Targaryen reader are forced into an arranged marriage and it’s like enemies to lovers
Thank you for whatever you decide!
Hi, love!
I’ll be completely honest, I wasn’t sure about writing for Gwayne at first. But after watching the first episode of Season 3… and that scene with Gwayne (iykyk 👀), he shot straight to the top of my favourite characters list and it had me itching to write for him!
I had an absolute blast writing this one, and I really hope you enjoy it! 🤍
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 1 · THE LINE BETWEEN LOVE & HATE · Pairing: Gwayne Hightower x Targaryen! Reader
divider by: @cafekitsune & @strangergraphics
divider by: @cafekitsune & @strangergraphics & @uzmacchiato
word count: 3.9k
synopsis: Forced into a political marriage, you and Ser Gwayne Hightower can’t stand each other. What begins as a war of sharp tongues and spiteful jealousy slowly unravels into an all-consuming obsession, proving there’s a very fine line between hatred and desire.
warnings: enemies to lovers, jealousy, arranged marriage
As a Targaryen, you were accustomed to getting your way—or fire and blooding your way through those who stood in your path. Yet, here you were, bound by a political decree to marry Ser Gwayne Hightower. A man whose pristine armour matched his equally pristine, frustratingly smug attitude.
The feeling was entirely mutual. From the moment the betrothal was announced, your interactions consisted of sharp glares, venomous masked insults disguised as courtly pleasantries, and a profound, simmering hatred.
Gwayne Hightower was everything you detested: impeccably groomed, insufferably dutiful, and fiercely loyal to a faction that viewed your family as an existential threat. He thought you a reckless, arrogant dragon; you thought him a rigid, sanctimonious knight.
When your hands were joined before the High Septon in the Great Sept, your skin crawled beneath the heavy silk of your gown, the ceremonial ribbons feeling less like a holy union and more like iron shackles. Later, at the wedding feast, when he leaned in to press an obligatory kiss against your cheek, his lips were ice. His jaw was clenched so tightly you genuinely wondered if his teeth might shatter under the strain of his compliance.
"Try to smile, my lady," Gwayne murmured smoothly through a fixed, public grin. His breath was warm against your ear, a stark contrast to his chilling demeanour, even as the lords of the realm raised their goblets in a roaring toast to your long life together. "The court is watching, and you look as though you've just been served a cup of nightshade."
"I would prefer the nightshade," you shot back, keeping your own smile perfectly, deceptively radiant for the court. "At least it would kill me quickly, rather than boring me to death over a lifetime."
Even once the bedding ceremony was announced, the two of you flatly refused to participate. When the drunken lords and giggling handmaidens finally shoved you both into your marital chambers and barred the heavy oak doors from the outside, the festive atmosphere vanished instantly, replaced by a suffocating silence.
The massive canopy bed sat heavily in the center of the room, lit by dozens of flickering candles. Gwayne stood near the edge of it, his hand hovering awkwardly near the fastenings of his breeches, his green eyes cold and tightly guarded.
You didn't give him the chance to speak.
"If you take that cock out, I will cut it off," you hissed, your voice dropping dangerously as you stood rigidly in your rumpled wedding shift. "I want no part of your seed infecting me."
Gwayne’s jaw went slack for a fraction of a second, his eyes widening in sheer shock before narrowing into slits of pure fury. Slowly, he let his hands drop to his sides, taking a single, step toward you.
"Infecting you?" he repeated, his voice pitching up at your sheer audacity. The polite, courtly knight was gone; in his place was a man whose patience had been stripped entirely raw. "You speak as though my blood is a disease, my lady, when it is your house that carries the plague of madness to the realm.”
He leaned down slightly, his face mere inches from yours, his breath hot against your skin. "Rest assured, I have absolutely no desire to plant my seed in a field as barren and venomous as you. You want no part of me? The feeling is entirely mutual. I would rather couple with a pit of vipers."
"Then we are agreed," you spat, refusing to back down an inch, your eyes flashing with Targaryen fire.
You turned on your heel, violently ripping the heavy furs off the mattress and flinging them toward the far corner of the room. “You can take the settee.”
“I will not,” he growled, refusing to be displaced from his own quarters by a defiant dragon. “These are our shared chambers, and I will not sleep on the floor like a dog to appease your arrogance.”
You huffed, climbing onto the mattress and pulling the remaining silks up to your chin. “Then ensure you stay on your side. If any part of you crosses the center line, you will find that part missing by morning.”
Gwayne let out a harsh, dry laugh, watching you adjust the pillows with furious, aggressive movements. "A charming threat for a bride on her wedding night. Truly, the Seven have blessed me with a fortunate match."
He marched over to the opposite side of the bed, ripping off his heavy, embroidered doublet and threw it to the floor, betraying just how deeply you had gotten under his skin. He climbed into the bed fully dressed in his linen undershirt and trousers, turning his back to you.
"Goodnight, wife," he bit out into the darkness.
"Go to the seven hells, husband," you bit back, staring at the canopy above as the candles slowly burned down to ash.
The first weeks of marriage were a silent war of attrition. You occupied opposite sides of the massive chambers assigned to you, speaking only when absolute necessity demanded it. In public, you traded barbed pleasantries; in private, you weaponized a freezing, unyielding silence. But hatred is an exhausting emotion to sustain in isolation. Soon, the cold resentment turned into something far more volatile.
It started innocently enough. Gwayne was down in the training yard, unarmored but sweating through his training shirt as he ran through gruelling sword drills with the City Watch. He was, infuriatingly, a spectacular warrior—fluid, powerful, and possessing a sort of grace that made it impossible to look away. You watched from the shaded gallery above, purposely sitting beside a handsome young knight of the Kingsguard.
You knew Gwayne had noticed you. From below, his jaw clenched as you laughed a little too loudly at a joke the young knight made. Testing the waters, you leaned in closer to the Kingsguard, letting your hand rest conspicuously on his silver armoured forearm.
Below, Gwayne completely missed a parry. His opponent’s blunt training sword struck his shoulder with a heavy, echoing thwack. He didn't even flinch. Instead, his green eyes locked onto yours from across the yard with a burning intensity. The polite facade cracked, replaced by a dark scowl that promised retribution.
Two nights later, at a grand feast hosted by the Queen, Gwayne executed his counter-move. He spent the entire evening in a candlelit alcove, attentively pouring wine for a beautiful, doe-eyed lady-in-waiting from the Reach. He laughed—a genuine, amused sound you had never once heard him utter in your presence—and leaned in close to whisper something that made the maiden blush furiously and swat at his chest.
A sharp, hot spike of irritation flared in your gut. You didn't care for him, you reminded yourself. You hated him. But the sheer audacity of him flaunting another woman in front of the entire court—in front of you—was a direct insult to your Targaryen blood.
You immediately retaliated by inviting a charming stormlander lordling to dance, pressing closer to him than decorum allowed. Across the crowded hall, you caught Gwayne’s gaze. His grip tightened around his silver goblet so fiercely that his knuckles turned stark white.
From that moment on, the silent treatment was replaced by a silent war. Over the next few weeks, the animosity didn't vanish— it simply began to change. the Red Keep became a chessboard of manufactured jealousy.
If Gwayne spent an afternoon openly escorting a beautiful lady of House Tyrell through the godswood, handing her a winter rose with a theatrical bow, you would ensure he saw you the next morning at the tilting grounds. You would be draped over the gallery railing, tying your silk favour around the lance of a dashing young Royce, ensuring you were caught perfectly in the sunlight.
To formal dinners where you knew he would be seated directly across from you, you began wearing gowns with daringly low necklines, only to spend the entire evening conversing exclusively with the eligible lords to your left and right. In response, he would return from the training yards dripping with sweat, purposely unbuttoning his linen shirt to expose the damp line of his chest while recounting, in vivid detail, the flattering compliments paid to him by the highborn maidens in the gardens.
It was madness. It was childish. It was the only time either of you felt truly alive. The original hatred had evaporated, replaced by a thick, suffocating tension that left you both breathless and constantly on edge. You were playing with fire, forgetting that while dragons thrive in the heat, Hightowers were the ones who lit the beacons.
The explosion finally came on a stormy night, deep within the belly of the castle.
You had spent the evening at a private supper, deliberately sitting next to a dashing southern lord who had spent the night praising your beauty. Gwayne had sat directly across from you, acting as a silent, brooding sentinel. His grip remained white-knuckled around his goblet, his entire posture radiating pure, unadulterated malice.
When you finally returned to your shared chambers, the heavy oak door had barely clicked shut before the storm broke inside.
"He was practically drooling into your wine," Gwayne snarled, ripping off his heavy velvet cloak and hurling it onto a chair. The polished, courtly knight was gone; in his place was a man possessed by a seething fury.
"Who, Lord Lannister?” you asked airily, unpinning your heavy collar with practiced indifference, though your heart was hammering frantically against your ribs. "I found him delightfully attentive. A refreshing change from the sour company I am usually forced to keep."
"Attentive?" Gwayne strode across the room, his boots thudding ominously against the stone floor. He stopped mere inches from you, looming over you, his chest heaving with ragged breaths. "He was looking at you as if he wanted to tear that gown off your back. And you let him. You smiled at him. You touched his arm."
"And what if I did?" you challenged, tilting your chin up as your Targaryen pride flared to match his rage. "Are you going to forbid me? You, who spent the entirety of yesterday afternoon letting Lady Tarly press her favours into your hand? I saw the way you looked at her, Gwayne. Don't play the wounded husband with me."
"I don't give a damn about Lady Tarly!" Gwayne roared, the sheer volume of his voice making the candles flicker.
"Then why do it?!" you screamed back, finally losing your grip on your composure. The weeks of built-up tension, the longing disguised as spite, the agonizing game—it all came crashing down in a single torrent. "Why look at them? Why smile at them? Why do everything in your power to drive me mad?!"
"Because you were already driving me mad!" Gwayne yelled, reaching out to grab your upper arms. His grip was firm and unyielding, but careful not to hurt you. His green eyes were wild, dilated, searching yours with a desperate sort of need "From the moment we wed, you looked at me like I was dirt beneath your shoe. I wanted to see you look at me. I wanted to see you care! Even if it was anger, even if it was jealousy—I needed to know I could affect you the way you affect me!"
The admission hung heavily in the air, sudden and shocking. The storm outside lashed violently against the stained-glass windows, but inside, the silence was deafening.
"You..." you breathed, your voice instantly losing all its venom, leaving only a raw, exposed vulnerability. "You want to affect me?"
"You have no idea," Gwayne whispered, his voice dropping to a gravelly, breathless register. His gaze dropped to your lips, his hands trembling slightly where they held your arms. "You sit there, so proud, so beautiful, looking at everyone in this wretched castle but your own husband. It's torture. I hate it. I hate how much I want you."
The last string of your restraint snapped.
You closed the distance between you, fisting your hands into the heavy, embroidered lapels of his doublet and hauling him down into a collision of lips and teeth. It wasn't a gentle kiss, nor was it a surrender; it was a physical extension of the brutal war you two had been waging on for weeks. It was fierce, bruising, and born of a desperate, mutual starvation.
Gwayne let out a low, ragged groan against your mouth. His arms wrapped around your waist like iron bands, lifting you completely off your feet and slamming you back against the heavy, reinforced oak of the chamber door. The impact jolted through your spine, but the pain only fuelled the fire. You wrapped your legs tightly around his hips, anchoring him to you, pulling him closer until there was no air left between you, your fingers tangling into the thick waves of his auburn hair.
His hands were everywhere now, stripped of all chivalric restraint. They tore at the intricate laces of your gown, bruising the soft skin of your hips, tracing the elegant curve of your spine with a frantic, possessive urgency that demanded a lifetime of retribution for the weeks of forced distance. He kissed you as if he were trying to consume you from the inside out, to brand his name into your very soul, and you answered him with an equal, fiery Valyrian ferocity, biting his lower lip until you tasted the faint, copper tang of blood between you.
"You are mine," Gwayne growled against your throat, his voice a primal promise as his teeth nipped at the sensitive skin right above your collarbone, marking you and making you arch into his broad chest with a gasping, breathless sob. "Tell me. Say it."
"I am yours," you gasped, your fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders, your heart frantic, your mind finally clear of any future schemes. You pulled his face back up to yours, your eyes flashing with a warning fire. “And you are mine, Gwayne. If you ever look at another woman like that again, I will burn this whole keep to ash."
Gwayne pulled back just enough to look at you, a dark, breathless, utterly ruined smile breaking across his handsome face. The green of his eyes was bright with a dangerous, triumphant fire.
"Let it burn," he whispered against your lips, and carried you to the bed.
Inside the marital chambers, the aftermath of the storm lay scattered across the floor—shredded silk, a discarded doublet, torn laces, and the heavy scent of crushed winter roses and sweat.
When you and Gwayne finally emerged into the outer corridors the following afternoon, the transformation was staggering. The icy distance that had defined your marriage for weeks had vanished, replaced by an atmosphere of mutual possession. You did not walk a step apart as you usually did, maintaining the stiff, courtly boundaries of rival factions. Instead, Gwayne’s large hand was wrapped firmly around your waist, his fingers digging into the fabric of your gown and keeping you flush against his side as if daring the world—or his own family—to try and wedge itself between the two of you.
But it was the physical evidence that truly set the whispers ablaze.
The court of King's Landing was a nest of vipers, trained to notice the slightest shift in a lord's posture or the subtle tear in a lady’s sleeve. Today, they didn't even have to look closely; the signs of your mutual destruction were proudly on display. Gwayne, usually the very picture of immaculate, highborn decorum, wore a high-collared doublet that failed spectacularly to hide the deep, purple bruises blooming high on the side of his neck. The illusion of his pristine nature was shattered further because you had playfully, yet possessively forced him to undo the top two buttons of his attire before leaving your chambers, making the marks impossible to miss. His lower lip was slightly swollen, bearing the faint, dark split from where you had bit him in the heat of your desire.
You fared no better, and you made absolutely no attempt to hide it. You had deliberately chosen a Targaryen-red gown with a wider, daring neckline, exposing the trail of marks and the faint, dark shadows of his handprints on the pale skin of your collarbone and shoulders.
The way you walked, slow and languid, spoke of a physical exhaustion that had absolutely nothing to do with sleep. Every lord, lady, and sycophant you passed in the gallery looked, widened their eyes in sheer shock, and quickly looked away under Gwayne's fiercely protective, lethal glare. The court was accustomed to seeing the two of you trade icy daggers with your eyes; they were entirely unprepared for the unified defiance that now radiated from your joined forms.
As you neared the small council chamber, a familiar figure stepped out from the shadow of a carved archway. It was Lady Tarly. She was dressed in a gown of soft, maidenly blue, holding a small silk handkerchief she had undoubtedly intended to offer Gwayne as a favour for the upcoming afternoon drills. Her face was bright with a practiced, flirtatious smile—a smile that died the absolute second her eyes landed on your husband.
Lady Tarly’s hands flew to her mouth, the blue silk fluttering uselessly between her trembling fingers. Her wide eyes darted from the deep, unmistakable bruise on Gwayne’s neck to his swollen, split lip, her expression a mix of genuine horror and mounting panic. To an outside observer unversed in the language of the flesh, he looked as if a wild animal had savaged him in the dark, and she looked as though she were about to call for a maester, the City Watch, or the Kingsguard itself.
She gasped in shock, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Ser Gwayne, by the Mother... what happened? Are you alright? Who did this to you?”
Before Gwayne could even open his mouth to offer a courtly redirection, you stepped forward, tightening your grip on his bicep. The heavy fabric of his sleeve bunched under your fingers, an unyielding, territorial hold that drew Lady Tarly’s panicked gaze straight to you.
"Ser Gwayne is perfectly well, Lady Tarly," you said, your voice dripping with a smooth, lethal satisfaction. You leaned heavily into his side, ensuring the low, daring neckline of your Targaryen-red gown shifted just enough to give the young maiden a flawless, unhindered view of the dark, possessive marks and handprints decorating your own neck and collarbone. "In fact, I don't think my husband has ever been in better spirits. Or better hands."
"My wife speaks the truth, my lady," Gwayne murmured, his tone rougher and deeper than usual, a lingering remnant of the night's exhausting passions. He covered your hand with his own, his large fingers locking yours against his arm, cementing the unified front. "I assure you, I am entirely unharmed. Though... I admit the dragons of House Targaryen are far more feral than the histories lead one to believe."
Lady Tarly’s gaze flicked rapidly between the two of you, the scandalous pieces finally clicking together in her mind with the force of a sudden blow. The colour drained from her cheeks, replacing her initial shock with a burning, mortified blush as she realized exactly what—and who—had left those violent, passionate marks. The pristine, gallant Hightower knight she had been trying to court for weeks had been thoroughly, aggressively claimed.
“Was there something you needed from my husband?" you purred, the word husband leaving your lips like a final, devastating claim of possession.
Gwayne didn't even glance at the Tarly girl. His gaze was fixed entirely on you, his jaw relaxing into a dark, smugly satisfied grin as he felt the fierce, protective grip of your fingers on his arm. He loved it. The realization that you were actively, publicly marking your territory sent an intoxicating thrill straight through him.
Lady Tarly’s gaze flicked from your grip on his arm, up to the dark marks on Gwayne's neck and then yours, and finally to the unmistakable, lethal look in your eyes. The colour drained from her cheeks, her hands trembling slightly as she clutched her handkerchief.
"I... I merely wished to ask Ser Gwayne if he required a new favour for the tourney grounds, Your Grace," she stammered, her voice losing all its previous confidence, shrinking under the suffocating weight of your stare.
Gwayne’s grip on your hand tightened, his thumb stroking the back of your knuckles as he finally looked at her. "That is most kind of you, Lady Tarly," he said, his voice deep, rough, and entirely devoid of the polite warmth he had used to tease her just days before. "But I have already been thoroughly provided for. My wife has made it explicitly clear that I am to wear no one's colours but her own from this day forth."
He leaned down slightly, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to the crown of your hair, his eyes never leaving the disgraced lady-in-waiting.
"In fact," Gwayne murmured, his eyes shifting back to you, burning with the very same fire that had consumed your chambers the night before, "I doubt I shall have the energy for the training yards today at all. My lady wife keeps a very demanding schedule."
"I... I see," she stammered, stepping back into the shadows of the archway, her eyes dropping to the floor. "Forgive me, Your Grace, Ser Gwayne. I did not mean to intrude upon... your morning."
"No intrusion at all," you replied, offering her a sweet, razor-sharp smile that promised absolute ruin if she ever dared to look his way again. "But if you'll excuse us, the Small Council awaits. And after that, my husband requires a great deal of my personal attention to heal from his... recent exertions."
Lady Tarly offered a hasty, deeply embarrassed curtsy, murmuring a fractured excuse before turning on her heel and practically fleeing down the corridor, her silks rustling loudly in the quiet hall.
You watched her go, a small, triumphant smirk curving your lips as you tasted the sweet thrill of total victory. But before you could fully savour it, Gwayne stopped walking. With a sudden, fluid movement, he turned his body, using his broad shoulders to trap you against the cold stone wall of the gallery, effectively shielding you both from the main thoroughfare behind a heavy, ancient Targaryen tapestry.
"Satisfied?" he whispered, his breath hot and ragged against your cheek as his eyes tracked the rapid, telltale rise and fall of your chest. The smugness was back, but it was laced with a deep, breathless hunger.
"For now," you countered, tilting your chin up to meet his gaze, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing you flustered. Your fingers curled tightly into the fabric of his tunic, resting right over the steady, frantic beating of his heart. "Feral, am I? Is that what you're telling the court, Ser Gwayne?"
"Utterly," Gwayne breathed, his thumb tracing the elegant curve of your jaw before resting right over the racing pulse at your throat. "And I have absolutely no intention of ever letting you be tamed."
Genuinely, what the fuck are they doing to House of the Dragon? 😭 I’m trying so hard to keep giving the show a chance because I really did love season one, but what the actual hell has been happening after that?
do you have any other fics or do u plan on writing something similar to take him back to eden? the angst is so good i’ve reread so many times
Hi love!
Do you mean if I have any other fics in general, or anything similar to Take Him Back to Eden?
If it’s the former, here’s the masterlist to all my fics, HERE.
As of now, I don’t really have any plans to write something similar, but that can always change! Right now, I’m just slowly making my way through some of the requests I received when I had them open. 🤍
divider by: @cafekitsune & @strangergraphics
word count: 7.3k
synopsis: While Jacob spends every waking moment trying to save Bella Swan, you’re left wondering when your own relationship became an afterthought. Thankfully, Embry Call is there to pick up the pieces.
For the past month, the air in the Black household's garage had been thick with the scent of grease, gasoline, and a camaraderie that didn't include you. The space was constantly filled with the clink of metal tools and the easy laughter shared between Jacob Black and Bella Swan.
You sat on an overturned crate in the corner, a half-eaten sandwich forgotten in your lap. Jacob was bent over a rusted motorcycle frame, his face flushed with excitement as he explained the mechanics of a carburetor to Bella. She leaned in close, hanging onto his every word as if it were a lifeline.
"Hey, Jake?" you called out, your voice soft and tentative as you tried to bridge the miles of emotional distance that had settled between you. "Do you want to grab that movie later tonight? The one you said you wanted to see?"
Jacob didn’t even look up from the engine. "Can't tonight, babe. I promised Bella we’d finish mounting this block. Maybe tomorrow?"
Bella offered a small, apologetic shrug, but the gesture didn't reach her eyes. To you, it never felt sincere. Ever since Edward Cullen had vanished from Forks, leaving a wake of gloom in his departure, Bella had practically moved into Jacob’s garage. In the process, you had been effectively demoted from Jacob’s girlfriend to a silent background prop—an afterthought in your own relationship.
"Hey!" Quil’s boisterous voice cut through the tension as he swung into the garage, Embry trailing quietly in his shadow.
Embry walked past the busy duo—who barely acknowledged the newcomers—and immediately zeroed in on you. He pulled up a weathered plastic bucket, flipping it over to sit right beside your crate.
“Hey," he said softly, offering a lopsided smile that instantly warmed the chilly La Push air. "You look bored out of your mind.” he held out a pack of candy, “Want half my Twizzlers?”
"Hey, Embry," you sighed, forcing a weak, flickering smile that didn't quite hold. "No... I’m okay. Not really hungry."
His brow furrowed with a sudden, sharp worry. "Everything okay?"
"Just... the usual," you muttered, gesturing vaguely toward the center of the room where Jacob was now laughing at something Bella had whispered.
Embry’s jaw tightened visibly as he glanced at Jacob, a flash of fierce, protective frustration crossing his features. He looked back at you, his expression softening into something incredibly gentle, almost mournful.
"Come on," he said, standing up and offering you a hand. "Let’s get out of this damp garage. It’s too crowded in here anyway. I’ll walk you down to First Beach; the tide is coming in. You can tell me all about how much of an idiot Black is being, and I promise to agree with every word."
For the rest of the afternoon, Embry didn't leave your side. As the grey waves crashed against the shore, he talked effortlessly, shifting from complaints about a gruelling math assignment to a ridiculous, drawn-out argument he’d had with Quil over something completely trivial. He did everything in his power to keep your mind anchored in the present, far away from the image of Jacob, Bella, and those grease-stained motorcycles.
He was funny, intensely attentive, and he actually listened to you. Every time you managed a genuine laugh, Embry’s eyes would light up, a faint flush creeping up his neck. He’d had a crush on you since the eighth grade—long before Jacob had ever even noticed you—but he had buried it deep the moment you and Jacob became official.Standing on the sidelines, acting as the supportive best friend, was a specialty he had forced himself to master. But watching the quiet, persistent hurt in your eyes lately was rapidly testing his limits.
The breaking point came three days later.
You had just walked into the Black household when Jacob caught you by the arm, pulling you into the narrow hallway before you could even reach the kitchen. His expression was strained, and he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, unable to hold your gaze for more than a second.
"Listen," Jacob started, rubbing the back of his neck, his knuckles raw from working on engines. "Bella’s coming over in a few minutes. She’s... she’s still really fragile, you know? With the whole Cullen thing. She feels kind of awkward and crowded when there are too many people around."
You blinked, a cold, heavy knot instantly forming in your stomach. "Crowded? Jacob, I’m your girlfriend. I live down the road."
"I know! I know," he said quickly, throwing his hands up in a defensive gesture. "But she just needs a safe space right now to distract herself. Could you maybe... just not come over when she’s here? Just for a little while?"
The slap in the face couldn't have been any clearer. The breath hitched in your throat. "You're banning me from your house so you can hang out with another girl?"
"It’s not like that!" Jacob shot back, his voice rising as frustration bled into his tone. "Why do you have to make everything so difficult? She’s falling apart, and she needs me right now!"
"And I need my boyfriend!" you shouted back, the sudden volume of your own voice startling you as tears of anger and humiliation pricked your eyes. "But clearly, Jacob, you’ve already picked your priority. And it isn't me."
You didn’t wait around to hear whatever hollow excuse he would try to piece together. Spinning on your heel, you bolted out of the hallway and slammed the heavy front door behind you, marching blindly down the gravel path. The thick La Push rain blurred the landscape into a grey haze, and you didn't see the tall figure jogging up the trail until you collided directly into a broad, solid chest.
"Whoa! Hey, careful—"
Large hands gripped your shoulders to steady you. You looked up through a veil of tears and into Embry’s startled face. The moment he registered your watery eyes and trembling lip, his entire demeanour shifted instantly.
"y/n? Hey, hey, what's wrong? What happened?"
The sheer gentleness in his voice broke the final dam holding back your composure. A sharp sob escaped your throat, the hot tears finally spilling over and mixing with the rain. Without a second thought, Embry pulled you tightly against him. He didn’t care that you were dripping wet or that your breath was coming in ragged gasps; he just held you, his body radiating a strange, intense heat that completely shielded you from the biting coastal wind.
"What happened?" Embry demanded, his voice dropping an octave into a low, dangerous rumble. "Did Jacob do this?"
You couldn't even force the words out. You just nodded against his chest, another sob racking your frame. Embry's grip tightened, wrapping his arms around you so securely that the rest of the world simply faded away. He rocked you slightly, pressing his chin to the top of your head as if trying to absorb your pain into his own skin.
"I've got you," he whispered fiercely. He pulled back just enough to shrug off his heavy flannel shirt, draping the oversized, remarkably warm fabric around your shivering shoulders. "Come on. Let's get you away from here."
For the rest of that evening, Embry didn't leave your side for a single second. He took you back to his place, made you a mug of hot chocolate, and sat quietly on the couch while you poured your heart out. He didn't offer any weak defences for Jacob's behaviour. Instead, he just listened, gazing at you with such tenderness that it made your breath catch, his thumb reaching out to gently wipe away a stray tear from your cheek.
Over the next week, this became your new normal. You and Embry were practically inseparable. He took you on long hikes through the dense, green cliffs, walked you home from school every single day, and made sure you never felt like a third wheel even when Quil tagged along. Wrapped in his undivided attention, you began to notice the subtle shifts—the way his eyes would linger on your lips when you paused mid-sentence, the way his hand would warmly hover at your waist when guiding you through a crowd. Amidst the wreckage of your relationship with Jacob, a tiny, unspoken spark was beginning to ignite.
Then, exactly a week after the blowout, Jacob showed up on your porch.
He looked utterly miserable. His shoulders were slumped, and heavy, dark circles shadowed his eyes. He practically begged for your forgiveness, swearing up and down that he had been a blind idiot, that he loved you, and that he would balance his time properly from now on. Wanting desperately to believe in the boy you had originally fallen for, you let your guard down and accepted his apology.
Later that afternoon, you were sitting on the grey pebbles of First Beach with Embry when you casually brought it up.
"Jacob came by the house today," you said, tossing a flat pebble into the crashing, white-capped waves. "He apologized. We... we're going to try and work things out."
Beside you, Embry went completely, terrifyingly rigid.
"What?" His voice was dangerously quiet.
"I mean, we never officially broke up, so—" You cut yourself off, turning to look at him, and instantly gasped.
The temperature around him had skyrocketed, and Embry was shaking. It wasn't just a nervous tremor; it was a violent, full-body vibration that seemed to rattle his very bones. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped, his skin was flushed a deep crimson, and a strange, low growling sound was vibrating deep within his chest.
"Embry? Are you okay?" You reached out, alarmed, to touch his arm, but he flinched away from your hand with a sudden, violent jerk.
"You're going back to him?!" Embry snapped. When he locked eyes with you, they were flashing with a wild, erratic sort of anger that sent a chill straight down your spine. "After how he treated you? After he literally threw you out of his house for her?!"
"Embry, please, it's complicated—"
"It's not complicated! He's a fool!" Embry roared, surging to his feet so fast he kicked up a blinding cloud of dark sand. He gripped his head in his hands, gasping for air as his chest heaved and his body continued to shudder violently. "He doesn't deserve you! He doesn't even see what he has right in front of him, and you just... you just let him crawl back—!"
"Embry, stop! You're scaring me!" you cried out, instinctively scrambling backward on the stones.
At the sound of your frightened voice, he froze. He looked down at you, his eyes wide, wild, and bloodshot, filled with a mixture of agony, longing, and fury. He looked as though he were about to literally burst out of his own skin.
With a choked, agonized sound that was half-sob, half-growl, Embry turned on his heel and bolted into the tree line, disappearing into the thick, dark woods at a terrifying, impossible speed that didn't seem human.
That was two weeks ago.
You hadn't seen or heard a single word from Embry since. When you finally built up the courage to ask his mother, she vaguely told you he was down with a terrible, sudden "fever," but the silence had stretched on endlessly. It left a hollow, nagging ache in your chest that you simply couldn't shake. You missed him terribly. You missed his easy laughter, his grounding warmth, and the simple way he actually looked at you—as if you mattered.
Because despite Jacob’s grand, desperate apology on your porch, absolutely nothing had changed.
You sat on the exact same overturned crate in the corner of the garage, the familiar, suffocating smell of motor oil and grease filling your nose. Jacob was currently laughing at something Bella had just muttered, his hand casually, comfortably resting on her shoulder as he guided her wrench to tighten a bolt. He hadn't spoken more than ten words to you since you had arrived an hour ago.
Your stomach twisted in a sickening, heavy wave of realization. Jacob’s apology hadn't been about fixing his relationship with you; it had been about clearing his own conscience. It was a selfish bid to erase his guilt so he could go right back to doing exactly what he wanted.
You looked down at your hands, feeling a profound, crushing exhaustion settle deep into your bones. You were so incredibly tired of being the backup choice. You were so tired of being invisible.
As Jacob’s booming laugh echoed through the rafters of the garage once more, your mind didn't even drift toward him. Instead, your thoughts pulled you backward, as they always did lately, to Embry. Your fingers unconsciously traced the hem of your shirt, and looking down at your lap, you realized you were still wearing the oversized, faded flannel he had draped over your shoulders the day it rained—the only tangible thing you had left of him.
You closed your eyes, thinking of hot chocolate, a comforting embrace that made you feel utterly safe, and the gentle gaze of a boy who had looked at you like you were the only person in the entire world.
Standing up from the crate, the clinking of metal tools and the murmurs of the garage faded into distant, meaningless background noise. You didn't bother saying goodbye to Jacob—you knew he wouldn't notice your absence anyway. Stepping out into the cool La Push rain, you pulled Embry's flannel tighter around yourself, finally ready to go look for the one person who actually wanted you with him.
You went under the guise of returning the shirt, but when you reached his house, you found him slipping out through the back door. You stopped dead in your tracks. He had changed. He had grown—impossibly so—and his long hair was gone, replaced by a dark cropped cut. He was shirtless in the rain, revealing a physique of lean, powerful muscle, and a bold, circular tattoo was stamped onto the curve of his shoulder.
“Embry?” you breathed, the name more a question than a greeting.
He froze. His entire body locked up, the broad muscles of his back tensing beneath the light sheen of rain already misting over his bare skin. Slowly, he turned around to face you.
Your breath caught in your throat. This wasn't the lanky, awkward boy who had sat beside your crate just two weeks ago. Embry had shot up several inches, his chest and shoulders filled out with a heavy, intimidating strength. The loss of his long hair made the sharp, hard lines of his jawline stand out with a newfound maturity.
“What do you want, y/n?” he asked. His voice had dropped an octave, vibrating with a depth that made your skin prickle.
You flinched at the coldness of his tone. You looked down at the soft plaid fabric clutched tightly in your hands, suddenly feeling very small and out of place. "I... I came to return your flannel," you whispered, your voice trembling. "You left it with me. Before you..." You gestured vaguely toward the woods, your words trailing off into the sound of the rain.
Embry looked down at the shirt, then back up at your face. As he took you in, his stony expression began to fracture. His eyes traced the faint redness around your eyelids and the damp hair clinging to your pale cheeks. He saw the way you were shivering, looking small and lost in the oversized fabric of his old life.
In a split second, the harsh tension left his shoulders, replaced by that familiar, fierce protectiveness that always seemed to ground you. The air between you was growing warmer by the second from the new-found heat he carried, and for the first time in weeks, the cold began to fade.
He knew Sam’s rules. He knew he was supposed to keep his distance, to keep the secret, to tell you to go home. But instead, he found himself crossing the distance between you in two long, impossibly fast strides. The heat radiating off him hit you before he even reached you—a wave of warmth so intense it felt like stepping toward a roaring hearth.
"You're freezing," he muttered, his voice a low, rough growl. His hands hovered over your shoulders for a fraction of a second, hesitation flickering in his eyes before he made a decision. He wrapped his large, burning hands around your upper arms, pulling you closer to his chest to shield your body from the biting wind. "What are you doing out here? Where's Jacob?"
Hearing the name made something inside you finally snap. The last remnants of your patience, of your agonizing willingness to be second best, evaporated into the mist.
"I left him," you stated, looking up at him with a clarity you hadn't felt in months. "He’s at the garage. With Bella. When he finally realizes I'm gone and calls, I’ll tell him it’s over. For good."
"You left him?" Embry's grip on your arms tightened, his dark eyes finally locking onto yours with an intensity that made your heart hammer frantically against your ribs.
The world seemed to stop spinning. The steady, rhythmic patter of the La Push rain died out, replaced entirely by the loud, erratic thumping of Embry’s pulse. He didn't blink. He just stared into your eyes.
He was trembling, but it wasn't the violent, explosive shaking from two weeks ago. His gaze swept over your features—the curve of your jaw, the dampness of your eyelashes, the quiet determination hiding beneath your exhaustion—as if he were seeing you for the very first time.
"Embry?" you whispered, your voice catching. "What's wrong?"
He couldn't answer you. He couldn't even catch his breath. The invisible strings that had tied him to his mother, to his friends, to his duty on the reservation, all snapped cleanly in two.
It wasn't gravity holding him to the earth anymore. It was you. Everything he was, everything he would ever be—his strength, his loyalty, his very breath—belonged to the girl standing in front of him in the rain.
It’s you, Embry thought, a wave of awe washing over him. It’s always been you.
"Embry, you're staring," you said softly, shifting slightly under the sheer weight of his gaze. You weren't afraid, but the intensity in his eyes was unlike anything you had ever experienced with Jacob. Embry was looking at you like you were the sun and he had spent his whole life freezing in the dark.
The sound of your voice seemed to snap him out of his initial trance, but the burning look in his eyes didn't dim for a second. A shaky, ragged breath finally rattled through his broad chest.
"I'm sorry," he breathed. He didn't drop his hands from your arms; instead, his grip shifted. His touch became impossibly gentle, as if he were suddenly terrified that the slightest fraction of his new, terrifying strength might break you. "I didn't mean to snap at you when you first walked up. I just... I've been through a lot the last two weeks. But seeing you here..."
He trailed off, his eyes dropping to your shivering frame. Without another word, he reached down and took the damp plaid flannel from your hands. He didn't care that it was wet from the rain; he shook it out and carefully draped it over your shoulders, wrapping it around you like a cocoon before bringing his own massive, warm hands over the outside of the fabric, rubbing your arms to generate heat.
"You shouldn't be out here in the cold," he murmured, his face just inches from yours. The heavy scent of him completely enveloped you, instantly chasing away the lingering memory of gasoline and rust from Jacob's garage. "Especially not over him. He’s an idiot, y/n. I've told you that before, but he really is the biggest fool on this entire reservation if he let you walk away like this."
You swallowed hard, fighting a sudden, fierce flush at his words. The raw sincerity in his voice made your heart skip a beat.
Suddenly, a long, mournful howl pierced through the heavy La Push fog, echoing from deep within the forest. Embry tensed instantly. The muscles in his shoulders locked, and his head snapped toward the tree line.
“I—uh—I need to go do something for a bit," he said, turning back to you, his eyes darting anxiously between your face and the woods. "But do you want to wait here? Inside? I’ll try to be back as soon as I can, and then we’ll talk, yeah?”
You blinked up at him, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I don't want to intrude…”
"You could never intrude," Embry said instantly. His voice was fierce, leaving absolutely no room for argument or doubt.
He didn't wait for you to hesitate any further. Reaching behind him, he grabbed the doorknob and gently guided you backward through the threshold, ushering you into the small, warm entryway of his house. The contrast between the freezing rain outside and the dry warmth of the kitchen was immediate, but it still didn't compare to the sheer, magnetic heat that had been radiating from Embry’s body.
He lingered for a fraction of a second, his large hands resting gently on your shoulders as he looked down at you, searching your face. Another howl pierced the air—closer this time, vibrating through the windowpanes. You felt a physical shudder ripple through Embry's frame, a sudden, tight tension bunching the hard muscles of his jaw. His eyes flashed with a frantic impatience, but the moment his gaze landed back on you, he forced his expression to soften.
"There's hot chocolate in the upper cabinet by the stove," he said quickly, his words rushing out as he stepped backward toward the door. "Make yourself some. Get warm. Use any blanket you find. Just... please don't leave. I'll be back, I promise."
Before you could even nod, Embry turned and slipped out the back door, closing it firmly behind him.
Moving instinctively toward the kitchen window, you watched him sprint toward the tree line. Your jaw dropped, and the breath caught completely in your throat. A cold spike of worry shot through you, especially after hearing that haunting, primal howl. You knew Embry was caught up in something big but you didn't know what. Yet, looking out into the empty, rain-swept yard, you realized something else: you trusted him completely.
You stood entirely alone in the quiet kitchen, the steady hum of the refrigerator the only sound breaking the silence. Wrapped in his oversized flannel, you could still smell him.
Slowly, your mind spinning, you moved over to the stove. Finding the hot chocolate where he said it would be, you set a mug to heat, your thoughts frantically replaying the last ten minutes. Embry’s sudden, massive growth spurt. The mysterious tattoo. The impossible, physics-defying speed. And most of all, the way he had looked at you right before the world seemed to stop. It felt like he had been looking into your very soul, anchoring himself to you in a way you couldn't even begin to understand.
By the time you finished your mug, sitting curled up on his living room couch with a thick wool blanket pulled up to your chin, nearly an hour had passed. The rain outside had picked up, drumming a heavy, rhythmic beat against the roof.
It was about another half hour later that you heard the back door click open.
You sat up, pulling the blanket tighter around your chest, your muscles tensing in anticipation. Heavy, muffled footsteps sounded in the kitchen, followed by the faint rustle of a wrapper, and then Embry stepped into the living room.
He had changed from his mud-splattered cut-offs to a pair of dark, low-slung sweatpants, but he was still shirtless, his copper skin glistening slightly with a fresh sheen of sweat and rain. His short hair was damp, sticking up in messy, dark tufts. He looked utterly exhausted, his broad shoulders slouching slightly under an invisible weight, but the exact second his eyes locked onto you sitting on his couch, a wave of pure, unadulterated relief washed over his face, erasing the strain from his features.
"You stayed," he breathed, a small, breathless smile tugging at the corner of his lips as if he had half-expected to find an empty room.
"I told you I would," you said softly, your heart doing a strange, nervous flip against your ribs at the sheer emotion in his voice.
Embry walked over, his massive movements heavy but entirely silent. He didn't sit on the opposite end of the couch to keep a polite distance; instead, he sank down right next to you, the cushions dipping significantly under his new weight. His furnace-like warmth immediately penetrated through your layers of blankets, chasing away the last remnants of the coastal chill. He looked at you, his eyes scanning your face with that same intense, magnetic focus from earlier, before he quietly pointed to the empty mug resting on the coffee table.
"Did you get warm enough?" he asked, his voice low, raspy, and incredibly intimate in the quiet room.
"Yeah. The hot chocolate helped," you murmured. You swallowed hard, gathering your courage as you looked at the sharp, mature line of his new jawline, then down at the striking black tribal tattoo on his shoulder. "Embry... what is going on? You're different. You're completely different than you were two weeks ago. And that howl... what's happening to you?"
Embry’s small smile faded, replaced by a solemn expression. He rubbed a large hand over his cropped hair, looking down at his own massive palms for a long moment before looking back up to lock his eyes onto yours.
"I know it looks crazy," he said quietly, his voice laced with a raw vulnerability that made you want to reach out and hold him. "I know I look crazy. I want to tell you everything. I swear I do. But..." He paused, his dark eyes searching yours, filled with a sudden, aching caution. "Before I explain the mess my life just became... I need to know about you. You said when Jacob calls, you're telling him it's over. Do you really mean that, y/n? Or are you just angry right now?"
“I meant it, Embry,” you stated, your voice firmer than you ever expected it to be, cutting cleanly through the low hum of the rain beating against the windows. “I deserve better than a guy who treats me like his last thought. I’m done waiting for Jacob to realize I'm in the room. I’m done competing with Bella for a single glance from my own boyfriend—well ex. If he wants Bella Swan, he can have her.”
You let out a ragged breath you felt like you’d been holding in your chest for the past month.
“I mean it. It’s over. I’m completely done with him.”
Embry swallowed hard. The muscle in his jaw twitched, not out of anger, but from an overwhelming, suffocating wave of relief. Hearing you say the words out loud, watching the absolute finality settle into your features, had him relaxing.
"You do," Embry whispered, his voice incredibly deep, rough around the edges. He shifted even closer, the sheer heat radiating off his bare chest completely enveloping you on the couch. "You deserve so much better than that, y/n. You deserve someone who looks at you and doesn't even see the rest of the world. Someone who treats you like you're the only thing that matters. Because you are."
The sheer gravity in his tone made your breath hitch. It didn’t feel like a sweet line from a boy who had carried a schoolyard crush; it felt like a vow. An absolute, unbreakable truth.
He reached out, his massive, burning hand hesitating for a fraction of a second in the air before he gently, reverently cupped the side of your face. His skin was incredibly hot against your cheek, but it was the most comforting, grounding thing you had ever felt. His thumb brushed just below your eye, tenderly tracing the delicate skin where your tears had dried, erasing the last remnants of Jacob's hurt.
"I've hated him for weeks," Embry confessed softly, his gaze burning into yours, completely stripped of any remaining defences. “I know he’s supposed to be my best friend, but every single time I saw you sitting in that dark corner, looking so small while he completely ignored you... it was killing me. I wanted to drag you out of there. I wanted to confess to you then."
"Why didn't you?" you asked quietly, instinctively leaning your face into his palm, unable to resist the magnetic pull of his warmth.
"Because you were his. And I was just... Embry," he said, a self-deprecating, bittersweet smile touching his lips. "But things are different now. I'm different."
He took a slow, deep breath, his hand sliding down from your cheek to rest gently on your shoulder, right over the edge of the blanket. He looked down at his own massive arm, at the striking black tattoo stamped into his skin, and then back at you.
"You asked what's going on with me," Embry said, his expression turning solemn, a sudden weight settling over his broad shoulders. "Why I changed." He leaned in a little closer, his gaze locked onto yours, terrified of how you would react but completely incapable of lying to you. "There are things about La Push—about our tribe—that people think are just legends. Old stories told around campfires to scare tourists. But they aren't stories, y/n. They're real. And two weeks ago... it happened to me."
He paused, looking down at your hands clutched tightly over the blanket.
“The legend of the protectors, of being able to turn into a wolf... it's all true.”
You stared at him, your mind racing as pieces of a bizarre, impossible puzzle suddenly began to fall into place. The massive growth spurt, the terrifying heat rolling off his body in waves, the haunting howl. If anyone else had told you this, you would have thought they were losing their mind. But looking into Embry’s fiercely honest, vulnerable eyes, you wanted to believe him.
"A wolf?" you whispered, your heart hammering frantically against your ribs. Under any other circumstances, you would have scoffed and told him he was losing his mind, but this was Embry. He didn't have a malicious bone in his body, and he would never lie to you like this. "That's why you disappeared? That's why you're so... hot?"
A small, genuine laugh broke through Embry’s serious demeanour, the familiar, boyish charm you loved instantly lighting up his sharp new features. “You think I’m hot?”
"Embry!" you huff, playfully smacking his arm to try and ignore your burning cheeks.
He chuckled softly, easily catching your wrist mid-air. His grip was entirely gentle as he guided your fingers up toward his right shoulder, pressing your palm directly against the smooth, dark ink of the tribal tattoo. Beneath your touch, his skin felt like a literal furnace.
He grinned, though a trace of that bittersweet emotion lingered in his eyes. “Yeah. Our body temperature stays around 108 degrees. And yeah, that's why I had to leave. When you first shift, you have absolutely no control. Your temper triggers it. Two weeks ago on the beach, when you told me you and Jacob were working things out... I lost my mind. I was so angry, so sick to my stomach at the thought of him taking you for granted again, that the sheer rage triggered the shift.”
You let out a shaky breath, looking from his intense gaze back down to the tattoo under your hand. “I want to believe you, Embry, but you know this sounds completely insane, right?”
“What if I prove it to you?” he asked, the playful grin fading into something earnest.
You raised a brow, your heart beating a little faster. “How?”
He held out his massive hand, palm up, waiting. “Do you trust me?”
Despite the sheer craziness of what he was saying, you didn't even have to think about it. You already knew the answer. Yes. Yes, you trusted him more than anyone else right now. You placed your smaller hand into his burning palm and let him gently pull you off the couch, leading you toward the back door.
The cool, damp air hit your face as you both stepped onto the porch. Embry suddenly stopped and cleared his throat, a rare, sheepish flush creeping up his neck.
“Uh... stay right here on the porch,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “When we shift... our clothes... they kind of tear to shreds. So I need to get out into the yard and...”
Your eyes widened slightly, and you quickly cleared your own throat, looking anywhere but his bare torso. “Oh. Okay... staying right here. Not moving.”
Embry offered a reassuring nod and jogged out into the yard, vanishing behind the thick trunk of a massive tree at the edge of the woods.
You stood on the porch, shivering slightly despite the oversized flannel still draped over your shoulders. The heavy scent of rain-soaked pine and wet earth hung thick in the air. The wind picked up, rustling the dense canopy above and sending a scattering of cold droplets onto your face. You wrapped the plaid fabric tighter around yourself, your eyes glued to the spot where Embry had disappeared.
Your heart was a frantic, drumming rhythm against your ribs. Part of your mind was screaming at you, insisting that this had to be a joke—a bizarre, elaborate coping mechanism for whatever severe illness had actually kept him isolated for two weeks. People didn't turn into wolves. It was a physical impossibility, a total violation of every law of nature you had ever been taught in biology class.
But then, your palm still tingled with the memory of his skin—that impossible, scorching heat. You thought of his sudden, massive height and the drastic physical changes that had occurred practically overnight. The sound of wolves howling and how he didn’t seem afraid to run into the woods.
Above all else, you trusted Embry. With your whole heart, you trusted him. He had never lied to you, never dismissed you, and never made you feel like an afterthought. If he asked you to stand in the rain and believe the impossible, you would do it.
The woods fell quiet again, save for the rhythmic patter of raindrops hitting the leaves. You pulled his soft flannel even tighter around your shoulders, breathing in his scent to keep yourself grounded.
A sudden, sharp rustle of ferns broke the silence from behind the tree.
You blinked, leaning forward over the porch railing. "Embry?" you called out, your voice a tiny bit breathless. "You okay?"
For a second, there was nothing. Then, a low, deep huff of air echoed from the shadows of the trees, sending a vibration right through the damp ground beneath your feet.
The sound didn't come from behind the tree where Embry had stepped, but from a dense thicket a few yards deeper into the shadows of the woods. You stiffened, your breath hitching in your throat as the leaves parted.
Your entire body froze as you stepped backward, your eyes widening to the size of saucers. Emerging from the thick undergrowth wasn't the boy you knew.
Your mind blanked, completely unable to process the sheer scale of what you were looking at. It wasn't just a wolf—at least, not any wolf that existed in textbooks. It was massive, the size of a horse, with a heavy, muscular build that looked entirely designed for power and speed. Its coat was a striking, sleek grey, dappled with dark spots along its back that mirrored the exact shade of the overcast sky above. The animal moved with a quiet grace, its enormous paws sinking into the soft mud without making a single sound.
Every human survival instinct screamed at you to run, but then the wolf lowered its massive head. Its ears flopped slightly back in a remarkably submissive, familiar gesture, and those deep, intelligent, velvety dark eyes locked onto yours. There was no mistaking them. The earnest, protective gaze that had comforted you on the beach, the look of absolute devotion that had made your stomach flip in the kitchen—it was all there, shining through the gaze of the predator before you.
"Embry..." you whispered, the name slipping from your lips in a breath of pure awe.
Hearing his name, the massive grey wolf let out a soft, high-pitched whine. He took a slow, deliberate step closer, keeping his head low to the ground to make himself look as small and unthreatening as a horse-sized wolf possibly could. The heat rolling off his thick fur hit you in a wave, instantly cutting through the chill of the rain.
The sheer absurdity of the situation faded, entirely swallowed by the realization that this was him. This was the boy who had shared hot chocolate with you. The boy who had held you on the beach while you cried.
Slowly, you stepped off the porch. Your trembling hand reached out from beneath the sleeve of his flannel. You held your palm open, waiting.
The giant grey wolf didn't hesitate. He closed the remaining distance, gently nudging his massive, wet muzzle directly into your hand. His fur was incredibly soft, but beneath it, his skin was scorching hot. A shaky, amazed laugh bubbled up in your throat as you closed your fingers, burying your hand into the thick, dense fur behind his ears.
Embry let out a deep, rumbling sound that vibrated right through the soles of your shoes—a canine version of a purr. He leaned heavily into your touch, his massive eyes closing in pure, unadulterated contentment as you stroked the top of his head.
"You really weren't lying," you breathed, a brilliant, genuine smile breaking across your face as you looked at him. "You're just a giant, overgrown puppy."
The wolf opened one dark eye, giving you a look that felt distinctly like an affectionate, Really? before stepping even closer. He rested his massive, heavy head right against your shoulder, his radiating warmth wrapping completely around you in the rain, finally claiming the place he had wanted to be for years.
The two of you stayed like that for a few quiet minutes, your fingers buried deep in his incredibly soft fur while he soaked in your touch, leaning his massive weight into your side. Finally, he pulled away with a soft huff, giving you one last lingering look before melting back into the shadows of the trees. A few moments later, the brush rustled again, and Embry walked out, back in his dark sweatpants.
“So, now you know,” he said, running a hand through his short hair, his posture suddenly turning incredibly nervous.
You stepped closer to him, a soft smile breaking through your lingering shock. “Embry, that’s... insane, but amazing. You turn into a giant wolf. If the ladies around here knew, you'd become some kind of supernatural heartthrob.”
Embry let out a loud, breathless laugh, the tense line of his shoulders finally dropping as a deep flush crept up his copper neck. Even with his intimidating new height and the fierce tribal tattoo stamped onto his shoulder, he still looked exactly like the boy who used to blush whenever you caught him staring at you in the school hallway.
"Oh, yeah, definitely," Embry joked back, his deep voice rich with amusement as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Nothing screams 'heartthrob' quite like tearing through all your favourite clothes and smelling like a wet dog half the time. I'm sure the girls will be lining up around the block."
"Hey, don't underestimate the appeal of a guy who can act as a literal human space heater," you teased, stepping directly into his personal space. The rain was beginning to pick up again, but the sheer heat radiating off his bare chest was more than enough to keep the chill at bay.
Embry’s laughter slowly subsided, his expression softening into something incredibly warm. He looked down at you, his dark eyes tracing your features with that same intense, magnetic focus from before.
"I don't care about any other girls, y/n," he said softly. Then, he paused. His expression turned deeply intense, his pupils dilating as he stared down at you. That same supernatural stillness from the kitchen returned, trapping you entirely in his gaze. "There's... something else. Something I need to tell you."
You went quiet, sensing the sudden shift in the air.
"The elders call it imprinting," Embry continued, his voice dropping to a low, reverent whisper. "It doesn't happen to every wolf, but when it does... it changes everything instantly. It’s not like a normal crush, or even regular love. It’s like the universe suddenly pulls the ground out from under your feet, and it's not gravity holding you to the earth anymore. The only thing keeping you anchored, the only thing keeping you sane, is one specific person."
Your breath caught in your throat as his words sunk in. Your mind flashed back to the way he had stilled the exact moment you told him you were completely done with Jacob. The profound, soul-deep look that had passed over his face on the porch.
"Embry..." you breathed, a realization washing over you in a wave of sudden warmth that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the air. "Is that... did you...?"
"The exact second I looked into your eyes after you told me you left him," Embry whispered, reaching out to take your hand. His grip tightened with a fierce, possessive tenderness. "The last strings tying me to everything else in the world just snapped. It's you, y/n. It’s always been you. I don't belong to the pack, or to this house, or even to the earth anymore. I belong to you."
He stepped even closer, completely shielding you from the falling rain with his broad frame.
"Whoever you need me to be—a friend, a protector, or something more—I am yours," he vowed, his eyes burning with an absolute devotion that made your heart soar. "I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you never feel like an afterthought ever again."
The raw, unfiltered honesty of his confession brought fresh, sweet tears to your eyes, but for the first time in weeks, they weren't born from pain. The hollow ache that Jacob had left in your chest was suddenly filled to the brim with Embry’s heat, his devotion, and the absolute certainty that you were finally exactly where you belonged.
You didn't say a word. Instead, you leaned forward, closing the final inch of distance between you, and buried your face into the warm crook of his neck. You wrapped your arms tightly around his broad, muscular shoulders, holding onto him like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
Embry let out a low, shaky sound that was half-sigh, half-growl, and wrapped his massive arms fully around you. Lifting you effortlessly from your feet, he carried you back inside, sinking down onto the living room couch and pulling you completely onto his lap. He held you so securely against his chest it felt like he wanted to press you right into his skin, burying his face deep into your damp hair as he breathed you in, grounding himself in your scent.
Outside, the La Push rain continued to pour, washing away the ghosts of the past and the cold neglect of the garage. But inside, wrapped securely in Embry's arms, you had never been warmer.
Hii! Can I request you to make a fic where the supersons get a new addition to their duo which is reader??
My idea is that jon becomes friends with reader, dami gets maybe a bit jealous (platonic) then eventually they figure it out and now reader is part of their little duo??
I'm really sorry if this sounds weird, this is my first time requesting 😭 thank you do if you manage to write this!❤️❤️
No, no, not weird at all! It was actually a really cute request, and I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you for sending it in. 🤍
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 1 · FILE 80 | THREE'S A CROWD · Suspects: Damian Wayne & Reader & Jon Kent
forensics by: @cafekitsune
file length: 2.8k
cri
forensics by: @cafekitsune
file length: 2.8k
crime: Damian gets jealous of you and Jon's budding friendship
case notes: To my nonnie who requested this, I hope you enjoyed!
warnings: none
major crimes database | dc case files | suspect files
The dynamic between Jon Kent and Damian Wayne was already a finely tuned machine—or, more accurately, a chaotic storm of optimism and brooding cynicism. When Bruce and Clark decided that you should join the training rotation, Jon was ecstatic for having a new member. Damian, predictably, was not.
Getting along with Jon was an exercise in absolute simplicity. The boy radiated a genuine, golden-retriever energy that was impossible to resist. Within forty-eight hours of your first shared patrol, you and Jon had become thick as thieves. You both shared a love for bad fast-food runs after patrol and a mutual appreciation for not taking everything so seriously.
"I'm telling you, the third-floor window is always unlatched," Jon insisted, hovering a few inches off the Batcave’s floor as he tossed a batarang upward, catching it effortlessly. "We don't need to slice through the security grid."
"And I'm telling you, if Batman finds out we bypassed his multi-billion dollar grid by using a loose window, he'll ground us until we're thirty," you replied, leaning against the main console while typing a sequence into the mainframe. Your fingers danced over the keys, bypass codes humming in the background.
Jon laughed, a bright, booming sound that echoed off the damp cavern walls. "Fair point. He’d probably add extra sensory alarms just to spite us. Hey, after we finish this diagnostic, do you want to hit that diner in Metropolis? The one with the curly fries and the milkshakes?"
"Only if you're paying, Boy Scout."
"Deal!" Jon beamed, his cape fluttering with his excitement.
It was easy. It was fun. It was everything a partnership should be. But as you and Jon high-fived, a sharp, familiar shadow loomed from the upper gallery of the Cave, glaring down at the two of you with palpable irritation.
If Jon was an open book written in bold font, Damian was an ancient, encrypted codex locked in a titanium vault, buried beneath a layer of permafrost.
From the moment you joined the rotation, Damian treated your presence not as an asset, but as an administrative error he was forced to tolerate. Every attempt to bridge the gap was met with a wall of aristocratic disdain.
"Hey, Damian," you called out later that afternoon, tossing a spare grapple gun in his direction as he walked past the training mats. "Jon and I are heading out to grab some empanadas. Want to come?"
Damian caught the heavy tool mid-air without a glance, his sharp green eyes not even bothering to look at you. "I do not consume street food, nor do I possess the time for frivolous excursions," he replied, his voice clipped and venomous. "Some of us take our duties seriously."
"Right. Cool. More for us," you muttered, the warmth draining from your face as you turned away.
On patrol, it was even worse. He didn't just ignore you; he actively shut you out.
"I've got the eastern perimeter covered," you announced over the comms during a freezing stakeout at the Gotham docks. "I can drop down and flush out the smugglers toward you guys."
"Negative," Damian’s sharp voice cut through the static of the comms. "You will remain on the high vantage point and observe. Superboy and I will handle the physical confrontation. You lack the training for a standard pincer movement."
"Damian, I've literally done this a hundred times—"
"I said negative," he snapped, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Do not let your unearned confidence compromise this mission."
Through the earpiece, you heard Jon’s soft, defensive sigh. "D, come on, she’s got a great angle from up there—"
"Tt. I am the leader of this unit, Kent. My orders stand."
You stayed on the roof, your jaw clenched so tightly it ached against the wind. It wasn't just that he didn't trust you; it felt like he resented the very air you breathed. Frustrated and exhausted by the constant wall, you began to withdraw, leaving the banter exclusively to Jon and fading into the background whenever the three of you were in the same room. You figured it was easier to just be Jon's friend and Damian's reluctant colleague.
What you didn’t see, however, was the view from beneath the domino mask.
Damian Wayne was not jealous. He was a Wayne, an Al Ghul, the heir to the cowl. He did not possess such petty, pedestrian emotions.
At least, that was the lie he told himself every single time he watched you and Jon share a laugh.
From the shadows of the training gallery, he watched as Jon showed you how to properly brace your core against a kinetic impact. He saw your hands brush, saw the easy, unforced way your shared laughter filled the cavernous room. He watched as you handed Jon a specific brand of soda after a gruelling session, knowing exactly what he needed without a single word being exchanged.
It was an infuriating, invisible tether that seemed to grow stronger between the two of you every day, while Damian remained firmly outside of its reach. Jon had always been his partner. Their dynamic was forged in a volatile, sacred understanding—a balance of light and shadow. Now, Jon had someone else to share jokes with, someone who didn't threaten to throw him into the sun every time he made a mistake.
More frustratingly, Damian found himself entirely unable to break the cycle. Every time you approached him—with that quiet, hopeful look in your eyes that slowly withered under his glare—his defence mechanisms locked down. Years of League of Assassins training had taught him that vulnerability was a death sentence, a target painted on the chest. So, when you offered tea, he bit your head off. When you offered an alternative opinion on battle plans, he asserted cold, rigid authority.
He was pushing you away, and the further you drifted, the tighter the knot of resentment coiled in his chest. He was being left behind, and he hated it. He hated Jon for being so effortlessly likeable, he hated you for fitting in so perfectly, and most of all, he hated himself for caring.
The breaking point arrived on a rainy Tuesday in an abandoned STAR Labs warehouse on the outskirts of Blüdhaven. A rogue cell of Intergang mercenaries had managed to acquire a cache of experimental destabilization tech, and the three of you had tracked them down.
The fight went south quickly. The mercenaries weren't just heavily armed; they had deployed a localized dampening field that fluctuated erratically, intermittently shorting out Jon’s Kryptonian powers and scrambling your own tech.
"Jon, watch your six!" you shouted, ducking beneath the blinding arc of a glowing plasma blade and sweeping the legs out from under an armoured mercenary.
Jon groaned as a pulse of red energy caught him squarely in the chest, dropping him to one knee. "My ears are ringing..." he gasped, gripping his head. "I can't fly!"
Damian dropped from the rafters like a hawk, a whirlwind of cape and cold steel, neutralizing two men instantly. "Get up, Kent! You are a son of El, act like it!"
"He's hurt, Damian!" you yelled, firing your grappling hook to yank an armed guard away from Jon's blind spot. "The field is too unstable. We need to fall back and disable the dampener!"
"We do not retreat!" Damian snarled, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, volatile heat beneath the mask.
Instead of holding the line, he launched himself at the lead mercenary. His strikes were uncharacteristically sloppy and aggressive, fuelled entirely by weeks of simmering, unvented frustration. He wasn't fighting with his usual cold and clinical style, he was fighting with all the rage and frustration that had been building up for weeks.
"Damian, wait! It's a trap!" you screamed, lunging after him.
The lead mercenary smirked, slamming his palm onto a wrist gauntlet. The massive experimental generator in the center of the room groaned, a blinding wave of localized gravity expanding outward in a violent pulse. It slammed directly into Damian’s chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward through the air like a ragdoll.
Without thinking, you lunged forward. You tackled Damian mid-air, using your own body armour to absorb the brunt of the impact as the two of you crashed violently into a stack of heavy metal storage crates. The structure collapsed instantly under the force, burying you both in a cramped, dark alcove of debris as the warehouse’s automated emergency blast doors slammed shut with a deafening thud—completely isolating you two from Jon and the rest of the facility.
An oppressive silence descended, broken only by the low, dying hum of the generator and the ragged sound of your own heavy breathing.
"Ugh..." Damian groaned, shifting slightly beneath you. He tried to sit up, but a heavy steel beam was wedged directly over his torso, pinning him flat to the concrete.
"Don't move," you wheezed, feeling your badly bruised shoulder throb. "You might have a concussion. Just stay still."
Damian’s eyes snapped open in the darkness. As his vision cleared, he realized with a jolt of fierce, pride-wounding clarity that you had shielded him. You were currently knelt over him, your muscles straining as you used your own back and arms to keep a heavy sheet of metal with a jagged piece of sheared metal from piercing his chest and crushing him.
"I did not require your protection," Damian hissed, his voice trembling slightly from a mix of physical pain and sheer, defensive anger. "I had the situation entirely under control. Your interference was reckless and utterly unnecessary."
Something in you finally snapped. The weeks of cold shoulders, the biting remarks, the constant, exhausting rejection—it all boiled over in this cramped, dusty darkness.
"Shut up, Damian! Just shut the hell up!" you yelled, your voice cracking under the weight of your frustration.
Damian froze. No one, except perhaps his family, ever spoke to him with that level of unadulterated fury.
"I am so sick of your garbage!" You pushed harder against the sheet metal, your arms shaking violently. "I have done nothing but try to be a good teammate to you. I have tried to respect your boundaries, I've tried to help you, I've tried to be your friend! And every single time, you treat me like I'm a disease you're trying not to catch!"
"You are a distraction!" Damian fired back, his defence mechanisms flaring blindly to protect his bruised ego. "You and Kent spend half your time idling and gossiping! You do not take the mission seriously!"
"We take it perfectly seriously! We just don't think we have to be miserable to be heroes!" You looked down at him, your eyes fierce and blazing even in the gloom. "Jon is my friend because he actually lets me in. You? You keep everyone at arm's length so you can sit on your lonely little throne and look down on us. Well, guess what? I'm done trying. If you want to hate me, fine. But don't you dare say I don't care about this team. I just saved your life, you ungrateful brat."
Damian stared up at you, completely paralyzed. Your words cut through his carefully constructed armour, slicing clean to the core of his deep-seated insecurities. He looked at the fierce determination in your eyes, the dust smudged across your cheek, and the way your entire frame was trembling from holding the crushing weight of the debris off him.
He realized, with a sudden, sinking weight in his chest, that he had entirely miscalculated. You weren't trying to replace him. You weren't trying to push him out of his brotherhood with Jon. You had genuinely, honestly just wanted to be his friend, too. And he had thrown it back in your face simply because he was terrified of a rejection that was never going to come.
The silence stretched between you, heavy and suffocating.
When Damian finally spoke, the venom was entirely gone. His voice was small, stripped of the Robin persona, leaving only a fourteen-year-old boy who didn't know how to ask for what he wanted.
"I do not... hate you," he muttered, looking away to stare at the collapsed crates beside him.
You let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. "Could've fooled me."
Damian swallowed hard, his gloved fingers clenching into tight fists. "I am... unaccustomed to sharing. Kent and I have an understanding. When you arrived, he immediately gravitated toward you. You possess a warmth that I do not. I believed it was only a matter of time before I was deemed redundant to the dynamic."
You froze, staring down at him in absolute shock. The pieces suddenly clicked together with perfect, jarring clarity—the glaring, the biting remarks, the fiercely territorial orders.
"Damian..." you said softly, your anger evaporating into a profound sense of disbelief. "Are you... jealous?"
"Do not use that absurd word," he snapped weakly, though his cheeks flushed a deep, visible crimson even in the shadows. "I am merely stating an observation regarding team cohesion."
"You're totally jealous," you said. Despite the heavy metal pressing into your back, a small, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of your lips. The sheer absurdity of the terrifying, lethal Robin being insecure about a friendship was oddly endearing. "Damian, Jon talks about you constantly. Half our conversations are just him complaining about how hard you make him train, followed immediately by him saying you're the best strategist on the planet and how you two are best friends.”
Damian blinked, his eyes widening slightly. "He... says that?"
"Yes. And for the record, I never wanted to replace you. I wanted to join you guys. I thought we'd make a great trio." You groaned as your arms trembled violently under the relentless weight of the debris. "But it's kind of hard to form a trio when one of them acts like a total prickly cactus.”
Damian looked at your straining arms, then up at your face. A strange, unfamiliar warmth bloomed in his chest, and for the very first time, he didn't feel the urge to fight it or push it away.
"I am... told that I can be difficult," Damian conceded softly, the words tasting foreign on his tongue—the closest he would ever come to an apology. He raised his hands, placing them against the heavy steel beam pinning him, preparing to lift. "Perhaps... my assessment of your capabilities was premature. Your reaction time today was... adequate."
"Adequate?" you chuckled, despite the strain in your muscles. "I'll take it."
"On three," Damian said, his green eyes locking onto yours with a newfound sense of shared purpose. "We clear the debris. Then we assist Kent."
"Sounds like a plan, Robin."
Before you could count down, a muffled explosion rocked the warehouse. A split second later, the reinforced blast doors were torn completely off their hinges with a horrific screech of tearing metal. Light poured into the dark alcove as Jon Kent flew into the breach, his eyes still glowing a faint, dangerous red, his face a mask of sheer panic.
"Guys! I got the dampener offline! Are you okay—" Jon stopped dead in his tracks.
With a coordinated grunt, the pile of debris exploded outward as you and Damian lifted the crushing weight together, throwing the heavy metal side. You both stepped out of the settling dust, coughing slightly and brushing the grime off your respective uniforms.
Jon looked between the two of you, hovering mid-air as he braced himself for the inevitable yelling, the mutual glares, and the suffocating tension that usually permeated the room whenever you and Damian were forced into close quarters.
Instead, Damian turned to you, crossing his arms, and muttered, "Your form on that lift was acceptable, though you rely entirely too heavily on your lumbar. I will instruct you on proper deadlift technique tomorrow."
"Oh, great, more training," you said, rolling your eyes, but there was a genuine, easy laugh in your voice. "Can we get those curly fries first?"
Damian sniffed, adjusting his cape over his shoulder. "If Kent is paying, I suppose I can tolerate the grease."
Jon’s jaw practically hit the floor. He looked at you, then at Damian, then back to you, completely bewildered. Slowly, a massive, brilliant grin spread across his face, his blue eyes lighting up with absolute joy.
"Wait... are we all hanging out? Together?" Jon gasped, floating a foot higher in the air. "Like a real team?!"
"Do not make it weird, Kent," Damian grumbled, though he notably didn't walk away. Instead, he took up his position right at your left side, while Jon happily descended to hover on your right.
"Oh, come on, I’m excited!" Jon grinned, nudging your shoulder playfully. "I’ve been trying to get you two to get along for months. Who knew a near-death experience was all it took?"
You laughed, shaking your head, while Damian merely offered a sharp, albeit entirely harmless, tt.
As the three of you walked out of the ruined warehouse and into the cool Gotham evening, the old dynamic was officially dead. The Supersons duo was officially a trio.
Hey, I just finished take him back to eden…that was the best thing I’ve read by far. Like omg I needed this before my 8 hour shift 😩. Like in a way I understood Bruce but at the same time I just wanted to slap some sense into him. And the part where Clark and Bruce get caught was soo funny ngl. Like straight up acceptance of Bruce liking men (like yes we support 🙂↕️). But there was times where I genuinely felt so bad for the mc :((. Honestly it was an incredible experience reading your work. So much so that I had to follow you. Thank you for taking the time in planning and writing this fic out. Genuinely appreciate the awesome writing you did. It almost feels like a crime for me to have finished it as fast as I did. Have a wonderful day💐💐
First off, this is such sweet feedback about my work, so thank you so much 🤍
I really tried to keep everything as balanced as possible. I think I mentioned it in every part of that story, but I genuinely did not plan for it to end up as long as it did. The more I wrote, though, the more I realized that if I wanted everyone to fully understand Bruce’s perspective (and hopefully forgive him a little), there needed to be moments that showed his side of things, the miscommunication, and how everything had ended up the way it did.
At the same time, I didn’t want it to be pure angst from beginning to end. As much as I love making everyone suffer, I think those softer moments are what make the angst hit harder in the first place. There needed to be a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel, otherwise it would have just felt relentlessly sad.
