Hello, Call me Caedis (she;her;hers)! Here is a way to navigate my tumblr page which is dedicated to (purely hobby) writing. Content is potentially 18+ so minors DNI. Hate will not be tolerated here. I do not take requests currently but please drop some asks if you'd like!
You can also find me on AO3 @ Papaver_Decervicatus
Cura ut Veleas❣️~ Caedis
A terrible fall leaves our long suffering protagonists alone, at long last. Finale!
CW: Obsession, stalking, canon typical violence, intrusive thoughts, unsanitary wound care, and general weird sexual overtones!
AN: We are finally here! I need to get dumped more often, it makes me more productive with this shit.
Okay, real talk, thank y'all so much for being such a wonderful community. The support on this silly little story of mine has genuinely helped me work through some pretty serious sexual trauma. For everyone who's been holding their breath for this, happy Friday. Without further ado, the DEN in Cat/Mouse/Den, the first part written but best saved til the end I think ;).
PSA weird mouth shit happens with a bullet hole, just so you know!!!!
Love y'all to bits! Cura ut veleas, "Care that you are well." Your dearest author, Caedis.
PS I can book bind so if you'd genuinely be interested in purchasing an author bound book, I may consider it! I am also working on a smutty epilogue but who knows when that comes out.
PREV | Final Part, Den | 4.6k words | König POV
“Is this your idea of a fucking mating ritual?” Mouse spits out after she comes to.
König sighs and feeds the meager flame between them a little more foraged wood, wood that he had to gather from hanging tree branches. It’s rainy this time of year, wet logs from the ground won’t do to keep them warm. The rain picks up again and he hears the creek roar to life next to the little cave he’s dragged them into. Her company has abandoned her, leaving her to rot in no man’s land with fractured ribs after a terrible fall from a cliff face.
He saved her, and sliced up one of his own after he pushed her off. Dove in after her. Took a fucking point-blank shot from one of her fucking comrades and acrid spit is the thanks he gets?
“Ja.” He chuckles at her side. He’ll take it.
She rustles to life next to him and he brings a large hand down to quell her thrashing, she will only hurt herself more in the struggle. He expects her to say something, to screech at him to get off of her, to take his gloveless hands away, something. Anything.
She doesn’t. The dull aches he knows she’s feeling must keep her placid at his side, cushioned with the makeshift nest he’s made her out of dry leaves beneath his soiled outer shirt.
Instead, fantastically, like in all his dreams, she sighs at his side.
Mice are prey. They thrash about even when they’re weak from the fight. They are fixed in their misunderstanding of giant hands trying to relieve them from traps and further harm. Perhaps this mouse knows he is here to help.
She is so clever. Maybe that’s why he wants her, and desperately at that. Maybe that’s the reason he searches for her in the trees, on the buildings, anywhere, and everywhere. Maybe that’s why she’s the only thing he ever thinks about in his cold bunk. Maybe that’s why he’s become obsessed with saving her, even if it means killing his own.
It is an obsession, König knows better than to kid himself any differently at this point. He tries not to think about how her skin is somehow softer than he’d imagined- no, dreamed, fantasized- that it would be.
“I can’t believe we survived that fall.” She says. He feels her voice in her stomach with the hand that’s still on it. Gloveless, bared in treatise towards the treachery that is her. Her body, her soul, her… beneath his hand and between her legs. The stuff of his dreams, but now’s hardly the time.
“Neither can I, Mäuschen.” He soothes. She sighs again, but this time it doesn’t go straight to his head and heart the same way, it’s punctuated by a mean hiss. Clearly, she’s hit something just by breathing, the sound makes him nauseous to think she may be hurt. Or, hurt worse than she is at the moment.
“May I check?” He asks. It feels strange to ask her when she’s right here, but she didn’t reach out first. It’s only right he does something to give her space if she wants it (and if she does he might just die on the spot.)
“Check what?” She responds but she’s not mean. Genuinely confused, she must know his jittery, much too-large hands have done all they can to give her whatever healing and relief he can wrench from them. The fire crackles. She’s yet to look at him, to look at this pitiful attempt at shelter he's made for her. To see that he has braced a nasty gash from her left armpit to her middle torso with his one true protection, his ghastly hood. He is more naked with her than he’s been with a woman in years. No woman he’s laid with has seen him with it. No woman he’s seen with it has seen him without it. She’s the exception to every single self-imposed rule he’s set.
He’s earnest. She does not know.
Something is fitting about that, that the sniper he’s spent so long chasing, who always finds him, misses the biggest detail of them all.
“Lung fluid. If you’ve punctured a lung I will set aside my own injuries to take you to help.” It’s half the truth, he’s sure he’d go anywhere he possibly could to try to get her some sort of attention for her wounds, but he’s also damn sure that SpecGru and KorTac each want at least one of the unlucky pair dead. He would take those chances with her company in a heartbeat, as much as he hates them for leaving her. If it meant she was safe, he’d do it a million times over, deliver her into the undeserving hands of those damned comrades of hers. Maybe they’d even shoot him on the way, put him out of his misery so he can pretend to be some sort of martyr for her cause, for her life, for his love for her.
“You’re injured? How badly?” He knows then that she hasn’t punctured a lung because her voice alarms with clear worry, bright and caustic and leaking somewhere at his spinal cord. She’s worried. For him. He’s mostly dried off from the river they fell into, he shivers all the same.
“Quiet down, Mäuschen,” he assures her, stroking a thumb over her navel. Her skin, even now, is dreamily smooth. He can’t help but have his mind wander to the prize beneath it if he could reach it. If he could make her hum and sing around him. Just how good she’d sound to beg him oh please my king, please more, more! He shakes the stubborn fantasy from his head.
“Answer my question, König.” She is stern. She is feisty. He wants so badly to taste her, have her, eat her whole. He wonders if she thought about it. About him. He still strokes her abdomen. She is still yet to refuse him. Some rabid part of him keens and flutters at the thought that she’s yet to outright refuse him. That part of him is also staunchly terrified of that refusal, he would never dream of going against her wishes. He’s waiting for it to come crashing down, this little den of dreams where the two get to exist so close.
“Ner ein kugel. In the shoulder, among- other things.” He says. Perhaps he’s too scared to really tell her in a way that she understands that that bastard of a sergeant actually got a shot into him. That she probably has something to worry about. No. Tonight is all about her, he thinks, how he wants their first time to be. All about her, her, her. As his life has been since this cat and mouse game started all those months ago, as his life will continue to be until he has her in his teeth permanently or he’s euthanized like the lame barn cat he is.
“Keep lying down, süße,” he whispers, again disguising some integral part of his belief system into an old tongue she doesn’t quite know. As if a rose by any other name, and some such.
“JUST ONE BULLET?” She screams.
The blood drains from his face.
The clever mouse has learned his secrets. Knows his tricks. Has found a fucking Duestch Grammatik somewhere and started studying his ways. For what? Maybe some fucked up mating ritual, some evil and sweet and mad and strong part of his mind sings.
Before he can stop her she’s flung herself up off her little bed and she goes to grab at something, groping around the barely illuminated cave.
“My vest, where’s my vest?” She says, frantically, eyes wild and lungs heaving. Her little outburst has taken quite the energy from her little frame but his heart sings a little. Still fighting. A good sign, he smiles to himself.
“On your 8.”
She doesn’t turn to him, instead, she grasps her vest and starts tearing through the pockets muttering something incomprehensible. She turns it inside out in her angry daze, finally settling on a little pack. One he missed.
“Damn it,” she mourns, opening the tin with a satisfying pop. “Gaz must’ve used the last of my Gause.”
“What are you doing?” He asks.
She looks at him
“König, I’m going to help you.”
The first thing she says to him without the hood is his name. They are by the fire in this little love nest he’s made for her after falling 10 yards into a fucking River and she sees him. The real him.
And she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t think twice about it. He’s practically naked, only in a torn-up pair of boxers as the rest of his clothes either rest to dry or are wrapped around her body, his Engel, to keep her even a little less hurt than she is. He’s beaten, bruised, and bloody, his hair splays wildly over his eyes and neck. His shameful scars are all on display.
Not to mention, he could not be more emotionally naked if he tried.
And the first thing she says is his name.
And the first thing she thinks is to help.
He would die for this moment to happen again. He would have a hundred bullets through his heart and head to have even a fraction of this moment.
His world has come crashing down. The world? What world? It’s just her. In this cave. Just her.
“Please, please,” Mouse begs him, tears in her wonderful eyes, a sob somewhere in the front of her chest, clutching a little med-pack to her breast. The breast that his hood obscures in a fragile attempt at care. “Please König, you’ve done so much. Let me be useful. Let me help you,” she whimpers.
He doesn’t say anything. No words, not in German or in English or the other few languages he knows come to him. He’s lost in her eyes and the sulk of her lips and her fingers trembling around something that may give him even the slightest reprieve.
She wants to be useful to him. She cries, begs him to let her be of use to him. To be good for him. To make him feel better. She must be an-
“Engel,” he whispers hot and desperate when he finally finds some sort of words. He scrapes them from the corners of his blown-to-bits mind and he hums with pure adoration in his blood. He reaches out to her and for once in his life, loves his hands because they can take the tears from her cheeks. He loves his hands. They can do that. They can fix little prayers of tattered cloth to her bleeding bits. They can touch angels and the angels? This one, at least, leans into the touch. He loves his hands. He loves his hands. He loves her cheek. He loves-
“Here.” She crawls over to him and he sits at attention, suddenly terrified to move because maybe he will break the dream. Surely this is a dream. Surely this is heaven. Surely she is an apparition and god has sent one last mockery his way before he bleeds to death like he deserves.
He’s dazed and confused when she asks something about any non-soiled cloth he has. The storm outside rages and he thinks she guesses the answer before he can give her the words to say he’s given her wounds all of it. Didn’t even think about his. Why would he think about his blood? Her blood was right there, it means more than his blood. Why care about his blood?
She pulls out a little scalpel head and wire and suture tongs and a metal stick of some sort from the tin box she cradles in her small hands like a prayer. She affixes the edge of the blade, beautifully he might add, to its base and places it in the fire. She’s sterilizing it, he realizes, which will do very little to help her work. The light from the fire isn’t enough and he’s still bleeding with no cloth to clean him in sight-
“It’s shallow and mostly in one piece. You’ve got an Angel on your shoulder, big guy.” She laughs at her little joke, probably realizing the poor phrasing.
He realizes, somewhat deftly, that that was the shoulder he carried her on to this shelter. He needed the other one to maneuver around the brush and twigs and mud in the storm.
“I did.” He confirms.
“You do?” She gently corrects.
“I did.” He confirms.
She laughs and leaves him to his little slip-up, a slip-up he knows she will think is due to him translating in his head before speaking. It’s not a slip-up. He does not dare tell this seraphim that, however. Not when it’s her feather-light touches, her small fingers, her bright eyes promising him something akin to love, to help, to support. She is so kind.
“I’m going to clean it.”
“With what, Maus?” He asks.
She swings her legs around his hips and straddles him as he sits cross-legged. She doesn’t even have the shame to look at him and apologize for what she’s doing or what she’s about to say.
“Tongue.”
It’s probably the adrenaline.
That’s got her acting like this.
Like a rabid animal. Climbing all over him. Promising to lick his wounds clean. To keep him sort of satisfied. She’s bold.
He knows it’s bad, but it’s going straight to his cock.
He is more than fine with lying to himself and saying it’s also the adrenaline.
If she notices her effect on him, she doesn’t say anything as she lowers her pretty mouth to the wound about to eat him alive.
“This is highly unsanitary,” he weakly protests, straining painfully against any semblance of normalcy or decency he has left in his ragged body. She looks at him and suddenly he’s shy all over again. She’s manhandling him, they’re practically naked, and she’s promising to put her mouth anywhere near his anything, and as much as he wants to beg her for it, he can’t help but turn away in shame.
“Yeah. Well. You’re bleeding out and if I don’t get a handle on this I won’t have a big strong man to take care of me.”
Her ‘Big strong man’ comment goes exactly somewhere where it should not and he has to fight the urge to rut her into the ground like a stray who’s just found an entrance into an apartment with a house tabby in heat.
She has the audacity to squeeze his shoulder playfully and he hisses. She apologizes with a little sigh and she sits down in his lap a little bit to reach behind her for the heating metal. She tenses as she sits down, the spread of her legs meeting right on what is decidedly not his foot or hand or a tree branch. But she doesn’t maneuver herself out of his lap, off of his… body part. Instead she gathers her suture supplies and continues.
“No amount of blood rushing to-“ she bites her lip to think of the word and he wants to bite it for her- “more intimate places,” he hums apologetically and in concurrence with the wording she’s chosen, “is going keep blood from coming out from that. Saliva is the most sanitary thing I’ve got unless you’ve got gauze and hand sanitizer lying around.”
“I used it all on you,” he offers weakly. Like cats offer their owners dead mice hoping it’ll please them.
“I figured.” She sighs, not unlike a cat owner who’s sick of throwing dead mice into garbage cans but who still can’t bare to stop natural instincts when they’re supposed to mean love and support coming from an alien species.
She seems a little shy again, that demure attitude that initiated this fatal attraction. That lulled him into thinking that she was just like he is.
She sucks in her breath and her breasts bounce and he’s sure he’s going to hell because he can’t help get turned on by it and
“This’ll hurt.” She warns.
“Be gentle. It’s my first time,” he chews on the laugh at the end of the joke, worried she will turn him away when they’ve only now just gotten started.
“Oh baby, this is just foreplay~” she sings and attaches herself to the wound like some weird porno vampire and claws at his back like a wild animal while lapping at a bullet hole.
He screams.
He literally screams.
She’s not like him at all.
She’s worse.
Rough hands tangle on her soft, soft skin and he shakes and shutters at the hot sensation of her warm, warm, warm mouth inside him. An inversion on how he wanted their first close quarters, skin to skin contact to go. He wanted to be tongue fucking her, but he also wanted them to be you know. In a bed or something relatively normal and not totally life threatening.
He didn’t think he could get harder or fall further in love. In the blinding pain of her lips and tongue inside his skin he finds he’s so, so, so wrong, and he thanks all the silly little angels and gods he doesn’t believe in that he’s made it this far. The site will most likely get infected. He doesn’t care. He’d die happy.
He whimpers when her shivering form takes itself from his shoulder and she rips and tears and sews him up with blinding speed, accuracy, and precision. A true sniper, she found her spot and fucking stuck to it and in just a moment she finished her job and won the goddamn war. He’s not bleeding when she’s done with the twine and he has half a mind to pull the suture to get her lips on him again.
She tucks the bullet chunk into his hood after licking it clean. It rests between the curve of her soft breasts, covered in her spit. She takes it like a prize from his broken body and in her softness she keeps it close to her heart. He has never been so envious of metal as he is now.
For a second time today he wants so very badly to get shot again if it means he has even a hope in hell of getting treated like that.
“Jesus, König, are you okay?” She whispers, when she comes back down to earth after her outburst. She’s soft and sweet and worrying her pretty little head over him. “I’m sorry I know that-“
He doesn’t let her finish.
“Thank you.” He says, sad and pathetic and breathless. He sort of feels like he did when he lost his virginity, when he came after a pitiful 7 thrusts and did not get a call back from her. It’s a terrible comparison to draw, because he has not cum in his boxers at the sight and sensation of a madwoman leaching at a fucking bullet wound of his. It’s almost a shame he hasn’t, he chides in his head.
“Kleine mäuschen,” he sing songs in some sort of adrenaline, blood loss, bliss. “This has been some fucking mating ritual.”
He looks up to see her wiping his blood onto the back of her hand. She swings her hips off of his body and he mourns the loss of her body heat and his hands unwind themselves from her body. She sits next to him, gazing at the fire, where he must crane his neck to see her fully, suddenly conscious of her presence and maybe her near nudity.
“Keep your strength and keep it in your pants,” she huffs, but her tone betrays how weak she is as she looks into the blaze. The blaze he made to warm her body and dry her clothes. The blaze that’s maybe as much comfort as he can give her. The blaze that illuminates her eyes like he sees them in his dreams, when he gets to touch her and not huff and sigh at least 40 feet away making sure that no one on their opposing sides gets too close to her. The blaze that she revels in, the blaze that she looks like the goddess of as the bruises on her body flicker to life with the breath of the flame.
“I’m sure we don’t have all that much food and our,” she pauses on the words. They are supposed to be enemies, he thinks to himself. Yes, but enemies do not make love nests in the woods and patch gashes and suckle blood and dance around erections and thrive on heated stares that started from some chance battlefield encounters. “Companies,” she settles on “will presume us dead. Bodies are a low priority. We’re on our own.”
I never want to go back. We could stay here forever, he wants to say while gathering her into his arms like a doll he can sew back together. She’d make a good ranch wife, somewhere in the Ötzal Mountains he climbed as a child, where he longs to go back to and live. They could live far far away from people, find new little nooks, create their very own burrows, she could use a rifle to hunt for food and he could build a cabin. It would be bliss. It’s also a fantasy that requires them to get out of here alive.
“So we are.” He says instead of the terribly romantic talk he wants to lob her way. She is still sitting up, but she’s fading fast, she’s shivering from a fever and threat of hypothermia even without her soaked clothes on her body. He presses a weary hand to her forehead. It burns hotter than his heart for her. “You’ve caught fever. You should rest.”
“You’ve caught a bullet. You should rest.”
“Let’s rest together.” Is what he offers, and she doesn’t even fight. He brings his canteen to her lips and she drinks it with abandon and his heart goes straight into her throat with how it flexes at the effort. She doesn’t fight, she even eats a little something he foraged and triple checked was edible, out of the palm of his hand as the new water he fetched boils on the fire. No, his rabid little Maus hasn’t the energy to fight him or his warm embrace, she simply sinks into his back as the fire crackles and she lets him take care of her. She lets him pet her hair and even braid some of it, and in return she drums delicate fingers on his thighs and sighs into his arms.
This could be the rest of my life and I wouldn’t mourn it, he thinks. Okay, all this and if he could settle between her soft thighs and make her beg and cry with his tongue on her wet center. Wouldn’t even need for her or him to touch himself, he’d do it all for her and never ask for anything in return so long as she’s alive and he gets to touch her every once in a while.
Eventually, the world outside the cave crawls darker and darker even with the storm clouds after a couple hours of idle work for survivability. He takes her in his arms to the little bed he made her and she squeaks much like a mouse when he picks her off the ground with him. He kisses her cheek and whispers “hush, meine kliene Mause,” and he’s sure that if she ever cries he will burn the world to make her smile again. He lays his back down onto the leafy bed. She stays in his arms, on top of his torso. He’s never been happier to be built broader than a barn when he finds that she can fit comfortably on top of him.
He nearly chokes when she goes to move, he worries she’s finally come to her senses, that she’s thrashing out of his monstrous grip and is going to try to kill him for his insolence of touching an angel such as herself.
Instead, she scoots lower on his chest to avoid her handiwork on his shoulder. She kisses the spot in apology for any harm she might have caused. She, of course, has caused him no harm and only joy.
He pets her head and his eyes prickle with tears.
“Not how I imagined our first night together to go,” her faint voice offers up from his arms. Now he knows she’s high on some internal chemical because he’s never imagined that she would say something like that out loud.
Of course she’d thought about it. This game of cat and mouse, of relative protection, of eyefucking on the battlefield would not have commenced hadn’t she thought it from the moment the two were forced into contact. Or maybe, that’s just what he told himself to keep his hands down his own pants at night instead of inside some miserable fucker’s guts with a knife.
“What did you imagine?” He asks, hoping it was something like he did. Like hot breaths, like tongues clashing, like traitorous desertion, like the taste of love, like adrenaline and hormones that give way to entangled limbs far past the break of passion, like resting like two corpses in one coffin.
“Doesn’t matter.” She says. She means I can’t get us riled up like that right now but he knows and she knows that he knows but it’s a sweet thought. That she cares enough about a second night to let the first one go to shit if it means that maybe, next time, there is a next time.
She strokes a soft thumb against his pectoral muscle. She closes her eyes with an ear pressed to his heart. “My dreams always end like this, though.” She sighs and nuzzles into the warmth of his chest. He bites back the urge to pull her even closer, all too aware in her fragile state he may hurt her.
He laughs, suddenly taken aback by how romantic and bold she’s grown. She winces and hisses on his chest, jostled around like a wet rag doll and he apologizes with a kiss to the top of her head and a settled chest.
“Ja?” He asks.
“Mhmm.” She hums, soft and sweet nearly glowing against his skin.
“My dreams too.” He hums back.
Her fever will break sometime in the next 6 hours, the rain might not though. He thinks if he needs to, he will go to the stream while it’s raining and catch fish if their rations are not enough to sustain two people for however long it takes for rescue or the health to crawl out of here together. His mind races with worries and anxieties but he’s content in the knowledge that they’re both alive. Wilderness training was the one thing he truly excelled at, and his clever little mouse has brought enough supplies in her vest packs to give him the chance to provide for them both. But mostly, it’s that-
She’s alive. And from everything she’s doing, every pass of her thumb, every sigh of her lungs, every minuscule little gesture she offers him- she wants her “big strong man,” to be alive with her.
There’s hope.
“We will figure it out in the morning.” She says. And he doesn’t miss that she says we and not you or I or me and you. Now that she’s in his arms, she seems unwilling to separate the two of them. Even in words.
The storm rages on.
The fire flickers.
The morning is in 8 hours.
The world is in his arms.
The heart in his chest beats at the same time as the heart in hers.
AN: This is the quick story a personal friend wrote based on Cat/Mouse/Den! I actually vastly prefer his writing to my own because I feel like it fits König's POV much better. Everyone tell him how good it is in the comments to fluster him <3
He walks along the base of a gradually sloping desert-esque hill, with trees and high rising scrub against the base of the hill, up it, and maybe even over it. The occasional tree, large stone, or elsewise normal scenery slowly passes him as he patrols. Then the wind catches him.
He sucks in a breath, and takes in the scene in, in a different way. The smell of acacia, a light rain from this morning, and something else. It's different, not new. Out of place. The smell lingers in the back of his throat. Makes his arm hair stand.
‘Ich geisteskrank’ he thinks, (I’m insane)
He closes his eyes, for a few seconds, as another whipping wind rolls down the hills, breaks around his form.
And this time he closes his eyes, and breathes in deeper. And he catches it again.
“No closer.” A cool, flat tone, from the radio at his hip. There's almost an edge of excitement or thrill on the end of the words that come over the radio. It's her. Of course
So all he does is lean back on a small boulder, just less than a yard behind him. It's funny how no matter where the line is drawn, it seems to always be in a comfortable place. Maybe it’s that he could make himself comfortable in her presence, anywhere. Maybe that she makes sure he’s comfortable wherever he may be. But he does stop, and he takes up post. And she watches closely as the tension seems to leave him.
His shoulders drop, half a foot, from where he holds them. He slouches a little. He even rolls his neck, to stretch. And as he does, he stops, about halfway up his right shoulder.
She can't see it perfectly from over 70 yards. But he's making eyes at her. The crisp desert air, or maybe a lucky delusion, brought her right to him.
“Hallo, Maus.”
His voice is high. It means
“I missed you so”
“König.”
Her voice hides her eagerness. It means
“You made me wait.”
But she continues
“Don’t move a muscle.”
It means
“I missed what you look like.”
He draws his favorite knife, and rolls it around in his hand, idly. He cant think of what to say, but and it's eating at him instantly. Like hes running out of time. Like she’ll shoot him for his lack of etiquette, or for worse- boring her. In an antsy fervor, he wracks his brain for something clever. Impressive? Entertaining? His hands move on their own accord, and start passing the blade back and forth. It snaps from hand to hand, almost moving so fast it can only be seen on departure and reentry from one palm to another.
“Das es not my first place to pick on vacation. Yet we’re both here?”
Her eyes roll back into her skull, and after a second of him wanting to cut out his own tongue, she throws him a rope.
“Just enjoying the pool, maybe the view too. It's not half bad.”
Her smirk is audible.
‘I am going to explode’ He thinks. But it comes out as
“Have you tried the uhh… mini bar? Or the breakfast?”
“No, I haven't, I've been sleeping in.”
She’s maybe slept half an hour in the past 24, not wanting to chance missing him. “Is it any good..?” She entertains the idea. In her mind, she doesn't imagine it being a bad place for such amenities, or at least how much better it would make things.
It goes on, and they play pretend for a little.
It's hushed, and quiet, and statements usually finish with “It would be nice.” But it makes a good pass time, as they draw up and design the perfect little vacation together. And, eventually the sun sets, and two shadows head to camp, and report nothing. No imaginary hotel, or imaginary margaritas, or even imaginary golden orange sunlight that creeps through imaginary curtains as the twilight spreads across the arid landscape.
AN: Hello everyone! Wow, life has been a straight up doozy. Unfortunately, I ended up having to leave where I was because it was not safe and my whole life went on pause for a good 8 months while I was at my previous place.
I just wanted to let everyone know how much this community means to me. At my absolute worst, believing I deserved the ways in which I was being hurt, I would look at all the lovely things people have said about my writing. I just wanted to take a moment to say, no one should be hit by a partner under any circumstance. If they tell you it was an accident, it was not if it happens multiple times, especially not if it happens repeatedly in the same way. It's hard to see when you're in it, but I promise you deserve better. No one should have to face public humiliation for how they dress from a partner. No one should be told that their trauma is inconvenient by a partner. If your partner ever says "I do not respect you, I don't even like you," please do not stay to try and make it work. Nothing you do can be enough for those people, but every single one of you liking/sharing/commenting/enjoying this story has shown me that I am enough. I am now safe, in my own apartment, free from that experience. And I want you to know, you all gave me an incredible amount of strength in ways I will never be able to repay you, so I may as well just update the damn story! But enough about me, lets get back to it!
This chapter has been in editing for a literal year (whoops!). I hope the length, the angst, and the next two chapters make up for it!
Prev | Pt. 6, Mouse Trapped | 5.1k words | Next
The heavy footfalls echoing closer to her position in the compound throb in time with the blood pooling in Mouse’s wrists bound above her head. She hears them approaching with a certain determination that she’s sure unlike the dozens of other sets, these are determined to reach her. It’s only been three hours inside this dark-lit room in a KorTac black site. Her stakeouts are, at minimum, twice as long. Even so, her contorting muscles ache as she awaits her interrogator with bated breath and low hopes.
She’s gotten out of a lot of things over the years, getting into even more than she can remember. Everyone’s luck runs out, she won’t hold her breath this time. The footsteps stalk ever closer, and every nerve in her body alights in pure prey instinct. She wants to gnaw and chew and bite and scratch at whatever comes through that door, she wants to run or crawl or flee with every fiber of her being.
She takes a desperate shuddering breath in and an equally labored breath out as the thundering steps stop somewhere behind her.
She must seem unaffected. Unfrightened. Uncaring. If she has any hope of getting one over on her captor. She will not even entertain the thought that she will get tortured.
The door behind her opens after a series of three, heavy, multi-spring locks, are undone. She can pick them later with the multitool she’s kept on her person, strapped on a hidden thigh garter beneath her pants. Each key has 7 pins, 21 pins total. She can crack one in 15 seconds if she’s smart about it. Locks will take under a minute total, adding that to the 23 seconds that it will take to undo her gear to get to the pick it-
The figure behind her does not move to get closer to her. Instead, it looms ominously behind her. The air in the room gains an otherworldly oppressiveness like the devil himself has just frozen her to her spot in the ninth layer of hell. Suddenly, she feels arctic cold as the locks all slide back into their places.
Trapped. She thinks, chewing at the inside of her lip.
The hulking mass behind her only takes one full step, and its back is now nearly flush with hers. Its head is somewhere much higher than her own. She feels the warmth of another person and she has to fight her animal instincts to get closer to it and beg for salvation.
The figure takes an inordinate amount of time inspecting her holdings, crouching, craning, but never touching, around her confines. She studies the black wall in front of her with serious intent to remain composed. Its uniform smells distinctly of over-sanitation masking any human scent- likely the wearer so often got into bloodbaths that repeated cleanings have made the thing over-saturated with bleach.
She lets out a stutter of breath when one massive hand reaches down to her shoulder. Despite her clothing and the tac gloves, the touch burns and she wants more.
“Guten abend. Wie get est ihnen?” König asks softly.
Only fucking König would ask how a captured prisoner was doing like he was asking his dinner date how her day was.
I’m doing fucking shit, thanks for asking, King. She thinks.
He gets closer, bending down and nearly resting his chin on the opposing shoulder to where his hand dwarfs her entire shoulder blade. He is so close if she were to turn her head, she could nuzzle into the soft fabric of the hood that covers his face and spills onto her form. He is so close, that she can smell the remains of a cherry-flavored cigarette on his breath hidden behind the freshness of stringent aftershave and tea-tree hair oil above the nauseating smell of bleach from his uniform. He is so close she could bite his fingers and taste some of his blo-
“I asked you how you were doing, Maus.” He whispers her name with a false sweetness that makes her stomach flip. She steadies her traitorous heart with a fake huff.
“Hmm,” She hums, tossing her head playfully to the side where his hand is. Her cheek nearly rests on the course fabric of its covering. “I’d be doin’ much better not tied to the goddamn ceiling.”
She expects a sharp backhand for that one, or at the very least an amused refusal. To her infinite surprise, neither happens. The giant devil on her shoulder lets out a gentle chuckle and retracts his body, but not after a gentle squeeze to the sore muscles between her neck and arm.
“But of course, Fürstin.” He says, voice sweet as honey and laced with a smile she can taste behind the hood.
She feels a massive hand tenderly embrace itself around her right wrist and she hears the hollow cla-chck of a knife being unsheathed. She stops studying the wall just in time to catch the glint of a knife cutting the paracord used to affix her to the metal hook above her head. He brings the 3 odd feet of now limp rope, along with her hand, to her left hand, but before he does anything “Lean back a little,” he says, and she does. She stops leaning back when her ass hits his thigh and she shudders with just how desperately fucked she is. He ties her right wrist to her still-hanging left wrist, both now not entirely above her head.
He tugs on his handiwork, and seemingly satisfied, he reaches down to put his arm without the knife in the crook behind her knees. He stills experimentally, anticipation practically dripping from his now motionless fingers.
“Are you going to be a good girl?” He purrs, holding the knife tantalizingly close to the rope from which she is still hanging. She lets out an indignant puff of air.
“Only one way to find out, my majesty…” She purrs back.
She can feel his diaphragm rumble with a jovial ‘Mhmm’ that fades into a satisfied laugh in response.
In one fluid motion, he cuts the remaining chord and she falls into his waiting arm. With the same grace she so admires on the battlefield, he swoops her into his arms in a bridal carry. She gasps tucked into his warm body. Yet again, his body shakes when he laughs at her little outburst. Her face flushes and once again as he gets onto his knees and gently deposits her onto the ground.
The cold concrete of the floor digs through her tac pants as she sits sideways, König sits cross-legged in front of her. Her tied wrists lay in front of her body. She tries to catch her breath. He looks at her with some emotion she’s never seen in his eyes before, pupils dilated leaving only a thin, icy ring clinging to the bloodshot white. In the dimly lit room, she fails to catch her breath.
He sighs looking at her hands. He puts his own up, palms to her as though promising a frightened prey animal he means no harm before he can pluck it from its trap.
Without a word, he takes her bound hands in his and gently rubs at the purple flesh.
And like a fool who believes in God, she unfurls her fisted hands into open palms facing the stars she cannot see as if in prayer. She doubts God could hear, or care for, her prayers in this futile box of a room with eyes on her the color of God, or at least a cloudless December sky.
If she’s praying by opening a vulnerability to him, it seems König prays back, the way he cradles her hands like he’s sculpting her out of clay. She’s infinitely thankful for his combat gloves in this intimate moment, full-on contact would be all too much to bear in this awful circumstance. His eyes smile as he regards their hands, a satisfied rumble somewhere in the front of his chest as the normal color returns to her flesh.
“You need to be more careful, mein mauschen.” He says, looking at her like a prince looks at the portrait of a long-kidnapped princess. He regards her with the same care as a boy, growing up in a castle, deciding the portrait of a local maid girl, long locked up in a tower, will one day be his bride. His tone is whistful and tacitly anxious. Despite this, the implication of a smile does not leave his paradoxically fire-hot ice-blue eyes.
She is more than capable as a soldier, as a tactician, as a sniper. She has gotten into and out of traps just like this one before, and really, when Gromsko needed cover to patch Reyes up in the field, she didn’t really think about going to help. Out of her depth, she still ran at the chance to abandon her post in the hopes of helping others, a decision that had her snatched and thrown into this little box with the thing she both runs from and to in equal measure.
If it were anyone else, she would yell and spit and cuss about how she can do it. She’s done it on her own. She’s a sniper for Christ’s sake! She’s supposed to do it on her own, she doesn’t need any pity cover. She’s capable. She doesn’t need some surly giant telling her what to do.
“I’m sorry.” Is what Mouse says.
Because it’s not anyone else.
It’s König.
König, who has risked his life to save hers more times than she can count. König who tells her awful jokes in the dead of her shift to cheer her up. König who prays in the shape of her callsign gauged into soft birch wood. König who has never once doubted her abilities as a tactician and a sniper or talked down to her for it. König who keeps her company from far away and promises to always come back.
König who looks at her like she is worth the world, König who treats her like a princess more than an enemy soldier.
König, who she’s set free from this exact position before. König, who may just be her knight in shining armor. König, whose hands have yet to leave her wrists in his quiet supplication, fingers whispering apologies for what others have done.
“Nein.” He tuts, voice soft and reverent, hands now retreating from hers. “I am sorry,” he confidently, if quietly, declares, eyes still affixed to her battered flesh like his stare could undo any damage done. “I should not have let them capture you. It is my fault.”
He’s not her keeper. He’s not her knight in shining armor. Hell, he’s not even her fucking comrade, he’s on the other side of this pointless war and he’s got the nerve to apologize and take blame for her situation? She wants to rip the words out of his mouth, angry and sorrowful all at once that he’s taken any responsibility for her well-being.
Instead of the things she wants to shout at him, she stays quiet. She knows better than to correct her captor, all too aware of the distinct power dynamic in the little interrogation room she’s in. This is still war. He is still her captor. There is nothing to be done here.
She sighs.
“Don’t do anything stupid on my behalf.” She whispers, a sad smile tugging at the corner of her lips, like a trapped animal begging a child not to get attached in case the glue is too strong. After everything, she’s gotten quite the soft spot for the man, she would hate to get his hands messy while trying to free her. (Despite the fact that he’s done so, many times before.)
He chuckles, eyes everywhere but hers. He’s begun to rap-tappa-tap at his thighs with his fingers, a tell she’s come to notice is his way of thinking while anxious.
“It is too late for that.” Their eyes meet and at once she understands.
Because I know you’d do the same for me, her own words echo in her head. She swallows building trepidation rising in her chest like the tide. Just how is he planning on keeping true to such a promise?
“This is quite the mood shift from the last time we saw each other,” she gives a pitiful little giggle to him. At once his eyes alight with some sort of silent battle, a war of wills is waged in an instant. Ice-cold-fever-hot eyes narrow menacingly at her.
“I hate seeing you trapped.” He says, and her heart, whatever doesn’t reside in his chest already, lodges itself thick and pulsing in her throat. Mouse blinks away confused tears, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeved shoulders.
She has nothing to say to that. She thinks about the tears she cried in the shower when she realized his mark in her was fading. She thinks about warming her cold fingers pressed into her thighs all night, imagining instead he was warming her hands. She thinks about his teeth proudly displayed on her neck. She thinks about his hands holding her down. She thinks about the solid expanse of his chest as he promises her the world. She counts every joke he’s ever told her like the faithful count prayer beads. She clings to this idea of him like fog clings to a mountainside, ever-present and yet intangible.
She throws these ideas deep buried into her subconscious, trying desperately to call any sense to mind. Fear settles back into the forefront of her mind, confusion taking a backseat. She worries about how to get out of here- without König getting harmed.
“What’s the plan?” She whispers.
“What? Not going to talk me out of it?” He laughs voice thick with sad irony.
“I’m not looking a gift- soldier? In the mouth.” She sighs.
He looks thoughtfully down at her hands and wrists that he’s still holding. He pulls in a rough breath and it hisses out through his teeth.
“You’re in luck. It’s a shift change. It’ll be…” he lets go of her hands and fully stands. He peers down at her through tragically thick, romantic lashes, he’s very nearly almost charming the way he regards her from on high. Almost being the key term as his stare turns cold and he squints down at her. “Messy.” He settles on. “If you’re coming, don’t delay now.” He holds out a hand to help her up.
And what choice does she really have? Stuck in this room, always minutes away from death, with only one plan of even halfway reasonable escape- she takes his hand.
And they dash.
This is not a thought-out affair like Mouse’s rescue of Konig had been. This is quick, it’s sloppy, and it’s not really romantic. He’s tugging hard on her arm doing his best to make her keep his pace as they dash through empty hallways- occasionally taking an unorthodox passageway to, maybe?, avoid camera surveillance. Konig doesn’t say anything as they twist and turn through the labyrinth, he just picks her up or seizes her shoulders if he wants her to stop. To his credit, it works, and ice-cold adrenaline runs through her spine every time he grabs her with enough force to hurt her if he just wanted to.
But he doesn’t, doesn’t hurt her, doesn’t get sloppy so they get caught, doesn’t do a damned thing except run with her hand in his through the dim hallways, lit exclusively with blood red signs denoting “EXIT”, “ARMORY”, “M-D BA-“ (apparently KorTac does not give enough of a shit about the med bay sign to have it replaced), and anything else worthy of note- which is to say just about jack and shit, respectively.
What feels like miles of corridors passes her in quiet seconds- flashes of what her mind could construe as pictures and memories whirl by, her only true anchor to know where she’s been and where she will be in the direction that Konig pulls her through the labrynth.
He breathes as heavy as an ox when they come to a hallway cut-out in front of a little station where a lone man plays solitaire on the table. He casually picks at his teeth with a knife as he thumbs through his discard pile, nonchalant to the peril he will certainly be in should Konig decide to take exception with the man.
Konig pushes Mouse’s shoulders down so that she’s kneeling, and her bones hit the floor with a heavy clack. Konig shouts “Was is das?” as he yanks her up roughly. The man at the table discards his cards and rushes up, coincidentally leaving his knife on the table.
Betrayed? He’s fucking betraying me? Mouse’s mind races as she tries to think of a single reason Konig would abandon her in the hands of another man, one that sees her as a prisoner no less, and she has half the mind to bite his dick off where she stands in incensed anger. She’s too dumbstruck to even attempt a fight when Konig takes the rope she’d
“Lieutenant. I caught this one escaping.” Konig states sternly to the man who comes over to check the now kneeling Mouse.
The unnamed man looks her over, the arms of a behemoth holding her down, and he graces her with a sardonic grin.
Prey,
Prey,
Prey,
I am prey.
“Oh, so it’s this one… If I remember correctly,” the man says, laughing over her trembling form, “she’s quite the war prize.” König’s grip on her shoulders, holding her prone on the cold concrete, tightens just a little.
“She got out of her confines, I’m moving her.” He says with all the authority of a man given the mandate of heaven.
“Say, Colonel,” the man speaks, and Mouse only registers for half a second that is König’s rank before she meets his gaze. Only his eyes are visible from his plain baklava. They look hungry, but not quite the same way König’s ice-cold eyes receive her image. He looks at her like he’s planning on taking one bite. König’s breath stutters as the man comes closer and attempts to touch her face. König yanks her up before he gets the chance, hands pinned behind her back.
“Could I convince you to give me, oh say, I don’t know… half an hour with her? I can’t imagine the ransom or intel would be worth any more than her cu-”
Mouse promptly headbutts the man square in the nose, and blood sprays on the nearest wall as she fights out of König’s grip to get a better chance at knocking the man unconscious. He reaches for a throwing knife somewhere in his pocket and he brandishes the blade towards her face and she almost entirely dodges the quick glint of silver aimed at her neck. She feels a shallow cut on her cheek but she doesn’t stop thrashing. He sputters with rage and tries to say something but only frothed red liquid comes out of his mouth.
König laughs mercilessly, still restraining her fighting against his grip, kicking and screaming in barbaric rage at the audacity of this man. Without missing a beat, König grabs the man’s hand with the wildly swinging knife and she hears the acrid cra-ckkk of bone splintering in flesh. He screams in pain and his eyes well with tears streaming down his bloodied mouth.
“She bites.” Is all König says before he plunges the man’s knife between his ribs. He drops the knife and grabs her hand, fingers sticky and intertwined. He looks at her with the most romantic sincerity imaginable, cold eyes smiling after just having killed a man over her honor.
The blood everywhere is almost killing the mood.
The key word is almost and suddenly Mouse is thankful that König’s strides are twice the length of hers because she doesn’t have time to consider the way his thumb gently strokes her hand. The way he was all too happy to kill a man for even considering hurting her. The way his frigid stare thaws for a moment when he looks back at her, suddenly warm like a sunny afternoon in May, enveloping her body like a soft bed of straw, safely tucked away in someone’s barn.
They escape through some back exit and he holds her up by the hips as she scrambles over the chainlink fence with all the skill of a veteran climber. Before she can chastise him for what is obviously a bit more of an amorous touch than is necessary, she hears gunfire behind her as her feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence. Three shots, then one from König, and silence.
He scales the wall and hits the ground with a slight grunt. She can’t hear what he says, the ringing in her ears (whether from the gunshots or his close presence) obscures it, but she gets the memo as he grabs her hand again. They run for what feels like another 2 miles through as the world alights around them. The leaves on the forest floor go from grey to beautiful shades of thousands of different coffees, all with differing amounts of milk to the taste of their owners. The evergreen trees gradually grow greener and greener with every passing moment.
She hears a little twig crack and she stops dead in her tracks. König stops, too.
The coo of a solitary mourning dove sounds. The creature looks at the two starcrossed escapees with an odd knowing before it takes off from the ground, leaves scattering behind its tailwind.
And suddenly, the world takes its first breath in pale, premorning light.
And it’s quiet.
“We’re even, now.” She says, standing in the forest outside of the base. She breathes in the smell of rotting leaves and blood and gunpowder with more thanks than she ever has in her life.
König doesn’t respond. In the morning sunlight, he studies her with a renewed vigor. His worried gaze settles on a bleeding cut on her cheek, the one dripping into her mouth ever so slightly. She licks at the blood idly, his eyes widen and he looks away hurriedly.
He gives an anxious sigh and a curt soldier’s nod.
She watches him with her own newfound sense of dismay as he rifles around his pockets for something.
She stops breathing.
Her heart slides clean out of her chest when he presents the minuscule thing in his massive hand. He holds his- no, her- whetstone to her, in a flat palm facing upwards.
Her breath does not return to her lungs even when her eyes prickle with tears.
Is he saying goodbye?
What little she can see of König’s face furrows more desperately as she stares down at the offending gift like it was a decapitated rat that the cat brought in.
“It’s yours.” Is the explanation he lands on after an eternity of silence. The sun is rising, nothing is certain, they cannot be using whatever fleeting seconds they have wasted on goodbyes. He must know this, he stares at her nearly ready to get on his knees and beg her- for what? She doesn’t know. She thought he would beg for her but the key to that hope died in the shape of that little pouch that holds her soul in it.
“No. It’s yours.” No, I’m yours. Her weak voice wavers, like a leaf fluttering about until it inevitably hits the ground.
She doesn’t give him the time to think out whatever stupid thing he wants to for allowing her to get hurt as she launches herself around his shoulders.
König nearly stumbles backward as her arms wrap around his neck. On instinct, he grabs at her sides to hold her up in the air and prevent them from crashing back into the earth. Even if he weren’t, she’s sure she’d feel like she was floating, locked in a warm embrace like a scar holds the memory of a cut.
She loves him more than she can stand, and as ever cruel and ever-giving Fortune would have it, he is more than happy to hold her up. She clings to him as she clings to the trees she climbs for her vantage points. In the rising sky, she remembers the ravine. She wants to forever be caught in his eyes but not his arms, because she does not know how she will ever be warm again without his embrace. She wants to scream and hit him and cut his chest open instead of pulling away, she wants to enact violence on his person for daring to make her love him, for his audacity in caring for her, for his everything. It would be so much easier if he didn’t care if one of them died if she didn’t have to think about what came next.
She shakes with fury.
She is so sick of following orders. Of listening to men telling her what to do. Of re-tracing the line between duty and desire. Of contextualizing and rationalizing everything she does on the axis of “me” and “my orders”
But most of all, she’s miserable that she can’t break out of her battle line no matter how hard she tries. She wants König to just tell her to stay, to give her the order so she doesn’t have to decide if she wants it, and all the implication of what that means for her fucked up obsession with him. She wants the easy out, she doesn’t want the blame. She wants him to figure it out. She wants him to tell her to stay.
He says nothing, he just breathes deeply, like she is air and like she matters to keep tethered to him. Like there’s anything worthy in her. Like she’s important. It only makes her angrier to think he’s so gentle when she wants to tear through his flesh and climb inside his rib cage instead of being forced to say goodbye.
She gives one last shuddering breath before she unwinds her sore hands from the anchor of his strong shoulders.
“You’ve saved me,” she whispers, wrenching her way out of his equally mournful grasp. He shudders, holding her tighter.
“No, you’ve saved me,” he whispers back into her ear. She doesn’t know what that means but she figures she doesn’t want to know when his massive hand finds the weak spot between her neck and shoulder and starts soothing little circles into it. She thrashes violently against the little spell he scries into her skin. She wants to stay. She wants to go. She wants him. She wants to be wanted by him. She doesn’t know what to do with a heart full of foreign wants and no direct orders to follow, so she thrashes out of his grip with all the ferocity of a mouse about to snap its neck getting out of a trap.
After a moment more of thrashing, he drops her to the ground.
Her fingers linger in his as she untwists her body from his, dancing away in the dying leaves. Their hands are connected even after the embrace. His warmth haunts her the same way the cold side of the bed haunts a widow, his eyes sting the same way a rusty cut does.
With the last of her willpower, she finally takes herself from him but the look he gives her makes her sure he understands: she could never go anywhere that doesn’t end with him. She gave him the whetstone that sharpened the knife that gave her the scar, and now some part of her will always be a result of his action. The blood loss isn’t helping her scattered thoughts and she’s only reminded of her worn-out physical condition when more blood leaks into her waiting mouth, soft lips parted and waiting for him to say something, anything.
“Promise you’ll find me?” She asks, soft and fragile, waiting for the world she’s placed on his shoulders to shrug to the ground and shatter into millions of pieces.
“Always, Mäuschen.” He replies, quiet and reverent, like he doesn’t know how he’s going to make it work, but equally cannot imagine a world in which it doesn’t.
She runs back to her base in the early morning light, sprinting like a nymph on a war-hunt through the trees, escaping an ill-fated encounter with an undesired suitor. Except it’s quite the opposite, she feels her heart beak with every hollow footstep she makes, unparalleled by his own sprinting after her.
She runs away, but her heart stays in his pocket, in the shape of a little whetstone.
She cries the whole way back. When she collapses on her bed after her debrief she imagines his hands messaging hers (and other things…) and his arms pressing her to him like he might fall apart the second he lets go. She thinks about the smell of him- like salty sweat and spruce aftershave and stinging tea tree. She bundles herself into the covers and prays that when she wakes up, she will have wound herself into his embrace and not just some discarded cloth around her body and separating her legs.
Her bed is impossibly big, and she wakes from it all hours of the night, hands not able to reach its edges like they never have before. The sheets are a paradoxical limbo of desperation: simultaneously as cold as a glacier and hotter than a forest fire. She dreams she’s stuck in a burning house until the roof caves from the animated flames and a blizzard pummels her into the wreckage.
From the nothing, two massive hands grip at her fragile sides and hold her up. She stills in the protective grasp of something the size of a mountain, it whispers the sound of a radio in her ear. She sinks into it and wakes gasping, only to realize she’s been asleep for not even half an hour and the dream repeats when she wrestles whatever fitful rest she can out of the nighttime. Each time she wakes up, tears stream down her cheeks.
She cries.
Because she’s not home. She will never be home, not if he’s not there.
Mouse is free to do anything she pleases. Unbound, untrapped, and unburdened, in theory, nothing hinders her.
In reality, she’s already dead somewhere in the trap of cold blue eyes, sharp knives, and strong arms.
It does not matter that she has been the one chased. Now there is nowhere he could ever go without the largest part of her carried with him.
Once you get this, you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly. Then you have to send this to ten of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool~)🤭No pressure
My hair
my eyes
my personality
my tits (ITS AN OPEN ENDED QUESTION LET ME LIVE OKAY)
My sense of humor (yes my delulu ass cracks myself up all the time)
Ahhh! Thanks babe! I’ll do a funny one and I have some down time so I’ll have a teaser up for the next chapter of CMD because this just got me in the right mood to show what I’ve been laboring over for months.
1. My story telling ability. I’ve always been a story teller and I’m very happy to be able to share my fantasies with others who enjoy them!
2. My charisma. I’ve always been a charismatic person, even as a child I won like daycare awards for story telling and making friends with everyone. It genuinely helps with my social anxiety- if anyone struggles with social anxiety I cannot recommend just getting out and talking more! It helps, I’ve even landed a couple of really high profile research opportunities and jobs based on being able to shoot the shit at an exceptional level. (Take art history courses, landed me my job as a research assistant to a CEO and a boyfriend!)
3. I am resilient! The Dean of academic affairs, during my lowest point ever, told me she was astounded that I didn’t just lay down and die and that she was so proud of me for even getting out of bed, let alone getting straight A’s that semester. In fairness, it took a lot of work but I’m much better on the other side!
4. My passion! I have a great sense of trivia and style not only in conversation, but in creation. I’m a very creative and passionate person and I do a lot of art-stuff. Next semester I’m back in book binding which I cannot be happier about. I’ll have to dig up my old wood block print to show off at some point… so proud of it!
5. My body- all of it. I’ve fought too many tearful, sleepless nights agonizing about 5-6 pounds in my stomach or whatever. My cup size is large, cumbersome, and causes a lot of backaches. My ass does not fit in most clothes. I have a stomach that goes outwards. I have scoliosis so I tilt. My face is a little lopsided from numbness due to a multitude of surgeries. I’m not perfect by any means, but I’ve worked hard to love the space I inhabit- I’d rather be overweight and happy than underweight and “beautiful” all the while having seizures from lack of nutrition. My boyfriend says I’m built like a Roman Venus statue with the tits and ass pumped up to 11. Can’t complain about that!
And positivity is absolutely essential. I encourage the following (and everyone!!! I’d love to know what my followers also love about themselves!!!) to participate.
read the first line of this and my thirsty ass's (ass'? ass's? idk) first thought was "...only four???"
ty for taggies @glossysoap @ohgeesoap @femalefemur @the-californicationist
FOUR FICTIONAL CRUSHES
DMITRY BALE my current rare editon blorbo - something about that one-paragraph description mentioning he got shot in the back and learned to walk again and re-enlisted and leaving a storied military career after reporting corruption and his little lowkey humble confident little nod in the gif below just GETS ME GOING and also talking with my beloved @obsidiangravity about how kind his eyes look and ANYWAY MOVING ON BEFORE I FURTHER CONTINUE WAXING POETIC dont get me started on his biceps and his brother bonding unique dialogues with his twin minotaur and GOD HIS VOICE SO FUCKING HOT JUST THE RIGHT DECIBEL TO MAKE ME C-
2. ANDREI NOLAN - this one is sort of involuntary i had one ONE sex dream with this bitch guest-starring a while back to my surprise and waiting for this one to run its course (I keep telling myself this and it's been weeks)
bonus gif because voice actor nikolai nikolaeff also happens to be very hot
3. FARAMIR - king among men, fight me. no further explanation needed.
4. PHILLIP GRAVES - I blame fanfic for this one and of course the infamous fucking cheek sucking scene
as you can see to qualify as my crush you need to either A) be a chill calm mature hottie with high character and morals or B) absolutely unhinged chaotic evil war criminal, now taking applications for fall-winter 2025
Soooo. Mine are a bit weird and all over the place. But these are definitely at the topppp.
1) König, obv.
This one needs little introduction. But you will notice a pattern, I go for shy psychopaths.
2) Viktor League, not Arcane.
This distinction is important as I do not like what arcane has done to Viktor and I do not like Arcane. The saving grace here is that there is so little on original Viktor that I can totally just imagine that Orianna worked with him during the fissure crisis, her lungs collapsed and she accidentally abandons Viktor, he uses her research to turn him into a robot, and they meet again as robots and angst and memory loss and general torturous levels of pining and painful suffering.
What can I say? I love an accent and someone who is shy, and psychosexually obsessed with another (or maybe me???)!!
3) Goemon Ishikawa
He’s definitely my most normal pick, he is a trained assassin and weirdly obsessed with traditional Japanese living and being a samurai and he’s one of the world's most wanted thieves. But yeah. He’s surprisingly normal. I think I like him because he flusters easily, is a man of few words but is still a man of his word, and he’s just generally an intelligent fighter and person.
Hello everyone! So, some bad news. I am currently not sure where I’m staying so I’ve been couch surfing, which has not helped the update schedule. But how would yall feel about reading a Mouse X König snippet that a friend of mine wrote?
He and I have been friends for years and he’s been such a blessing to my writing and my situation. Let me know if there’s any interest! I actually consider his writing style closer to König’s internal dialogue because it’s typically choppier than mine is.
As always, Cura Ut Veleas! Care that you are well ❣️
anyway the actual point of fandom is to inspire each other. reading each other's fics and admiring each other's art and saying wow i love this and i feel something and i want to invoke this in other people, i want to write a sentence that feels like a meteor shower, i want to paint a kiss with such tenderness it makes you ache, i want to create something that someone else somewhere will see it and think oh, i need to do that too, right now. i am embracing being a corny cunt on main to say inspiring each other is one of the things humanity is best at and one of the things fandom is built for and i think that's beautiful
This is what happened when a fanfic site is profit driven. Wattpad sucks 😞
The email from Wattpad is so condescending imagine pressuring writers to update and work while they are doing it for free and fun. Also the discovery? Algorithm? Of Wattpad looks like a stressful popularity contest 😑
Hey I just wanna quickly say that you only get these if someone reports the story. I've barely updated on Wattpad in the past two years and haven't gotten any of these, mostly because I don't even have an audience over there who has the potential or drive to report my fics. So, corporate greed is bad, yes, but it's also readers being buttheads
Hmm, that's interesting! You know what happens if someone reports a story for being incomplete on AO3? Jack shit, because not churning out content for your fun little hobby is not a reportable offense on AO3! And that's because, unlike Wattpad, AO3 isn't profiting off of your work, either directly or indirectly, and so when readers are buttheads, the AO3 abuse mods ignore them, instead of sending out weird automated messages harassing writers for daring to have a wip.
If anything, this seems like a wattpad design issue, if incomplete works were obviously marked then it wouldn’t be an issue that people start reading them because they would know. If they do have that feature, though, then the user base is just unaware and hostile towards writers. Which is still a culture issue on behalf of wattpad’s management. I just don’t know how you could screw up free entertainment that badly.
