For some reason stories of ectopic I MEANT CRYPTIC pregnancies keep shaking up on my fyp, so now I'm thinking about reader not knowing she's pregnant and going into labor on an op?? Obvious cw for birth and babies
Oh, and I'm using this for the alternative prompts for Whumptober "Hold my hand". Again, not my best writing but I have salmonella poisoning so cut me some slack
Like, you're in the middle of nowhere and just got done slaughtering a bunch of hostiles when all of sudden pain in your stomach erupts so bad you think you've been stabbed.
Gaz rushes to your side as crouch down, gasping softly. His hand run across your body, making sure you're okay. When he finds nothing broken, you're both confused.
"Maybe your appendix ruptured?" He suggests, brows furrowed in worry. You shrug as another God awful cramp rips through your stomach.
"Fuck." You swear, grabbing his arm, "Kyle-"
"I know luv, we're calling for evac." He coaxed you to the ground, sitting down and maneuvering your head into his lap. He works your helmet off, running his fingers through your sweaty hair as Soap keeps guard beside you.
You groan as the cramps get worse and worse, budding in intensity and frequency. Your eyes grow wide as you feel the sudden urge to bear down, and everything clicks into place.
"Pregnant." You gasp, "Kyle i think I'm- mmmmm." You close your eyes as another cramp, no, contraction, starts.
35 minutes later Kyle's holding a squalling baby boy to his chest as medics frantically try to stabilize you on the flight home.
"Fuckin' hell." He swears, "There's no way." You just groan in response, curling your hand around his as you give into the urge to bear down. Soap crouches down and fumbles with your gear and pants, fingers shaking as he yanks them off as fast as he can.
"What do you need me to do?" Gaz asks, panicked.
"Just- hnmmmm." Your using all your energy to keep from screaming, "hold my h-hand."
Meeting a cute girl, one who captures your attention. Demands it, maybe, or perhaps her personality is just so magnetic? By the time you're leaving the place you met, you're giggling like it's the first crush you've had in ages.
Meeting at her place. Leaning in and kissing. Getting lost in her eyes. Running hands against her side, feeling her movements mirror yours. You swear she whispers her own name at least once, but, all it does is bring forth another dose of those soft, lilting giggles from both of you. Or one?
Everything getting a bit foggy. You're not sure if it's from the exposure to something, to her, or your mind running wild. The sort of shared breathlessness, barely held tension. The risk of snapping turns to an audible crack.
Lost in the embrace. Folding over and breaking against the shore of one another again, and again, and again. Cycling through well-learned touches and brushes, rough and gentle and everything in between, until you start to forget where "you" end and "she" begins.
Which sounds ridiculous until that shoreline becomes one, slow, rolling hill. Indistinguishable. When you try to find where it separates into two selves...well...it slips through your hands like wet sand.
It only makes you want more though, only makes each moment more intense. "There doesn't need to be an 'end' or 'beginning'", she says, "there only needs to be us". Don't worry about which came first. Focus on how good it feels to be tangled and messy and whimpering and shuddering and melting and...
...Looks like both of you forgot again. Which was on top? Which on bottom? Does it matter? You'll both take turns feeling it out. Every sensation, every feeling, every emotion.
Sharing and pressing and lost amidst each other. Or, really, amidst one. By the time both of you have orgasmed several times over, welts and bruises and claw marks and bites, it's impossible to know. It only makes you both snicker thinking about it now.
What a joy it is to look into another's eyes and know it's you staring back, after all?
Bit the bullet and did the power-hungry ending on my exploratory playthrough to get it over with. I always love my boy, but he does very much turn into a bastard. Wrote this very quickly as a quick exercise because I hated that I had no dialogue that felt right. Anyway, enjoy the trash. Nothing explicit happens but a lot of dubious, awful shit is implied so please read at your own risk. Spoilers, obviously.
“And of course, I couldn’t have accomplished all this without you, and one wicked turn deserves another,” His eyes flash crimson beneath his pale lashes, glowing ominously in the firelight. “So tell me, my love, what is it that you desire?”
He expects her glossy elevator eyes and a seductive smile. For her to reach for him with her soft, little hands and pull him close, aching to feel him– to taste him in all of his newfound resplendent glory. To offer her neck in submission, pleading for him to change her, to become like him, to sit at his side eternally as he rules from his throne on high as his most beloved spawn. His first and most revered creature of the night. His queen.
But she doesn’t.
Her brows furrow, the corner of her lips tugging inward as she purses them. It’s not the reaction he was expecting, to say the least. He frowns as he inspects her expression, trying to suss out exactly what it is that plagues her. She looks worried– anxious, even. She pulls her gaze away from him, stepping back away from him ever so slightly, staring at the dirt for a moment before speaking.
“I just wanted you to be happy, Astarion. You were always so afraid, so paranoid that something or someone was going to come for you in the night. I never wanted you to have to worry about that ever again.”
“And now I don’t,” He arches a pale brow. “Isn’t this what you wanted, my love? We’ll never fear anything ever again.”
He feels her uncertainty vibrate the air around him, a sense of unease that permeates through her pores. It is not love and adoration and undying loyalty that she offers, but trepidation.
“I know. I know it’s everything you ever wanted, and I’m happy for you, but it just seems like–”
“Just seems like what?” He cocks his head, narrowing his eyes at her.
“It seems like it’s changed you somehow. You’re– you’re different,” She reaches a tender hand up to caress his cheek, and he fights the instinct to lean into her touch.
“I am different,” He insists, his voice raising slightly. “Power beyond imagining. There has never been a vampire such as I am now. I feel it coursing through my veins, practically bursting at the seams with it–” That familiar habit crawls up his tongue, and he slips the words before he even thinks them over. “And we did it together. I’m untouchable now, and thus, so are you. It’s our world to take, darling. I love you. Isn’t that what you wanted so desperately?”
There’s a twinge of something he doesn’t quite recognize from her. Hurt, or perhaps… disappointment?
“Asto, I never wanted to strongarm or manipulate you into loving me. I care deeply for you, but that’s my burden to bear. I never wanted more from you than you wanted to give.”
“Then what did you want?” His lips curl downward into a frown, and he closes the gap between them that she created, stepping close enough to her to have her shifting.
“I just–” She pauses, her words hanging heavy in the air and on her mind as she says them. “--I had hoped you would have let go after killing Cazador. Realized that you don’t need power everlasting to be happy. I guess I thought you would have learned something from all of this–”
“Learn what, exactly?” His tone shifts, his words pointed and cruel as he spits them out, fists furling at his sides. “You naive, silly little girl. You’ve no idea what it’s like– what the world is truly like. You dare to condemn me after what I’ve seen? You’d judge me for taking strength where I find it? Strength that I use to protect both of us? To save your pretty little neck from all those creatures who seek to spill your blood? You dare pretend to understand?
He feels it through the tadpole— The whip and lash of barbed grief against her heart, ripping through her chest like a fanged maw. It's enough to almost bring him to his knees, but if it wasn't for their bond, he wouldn't have the slightest idea. Her face hardens and she betrays nothing at all: a slow blink in his direction, emotionless face creaseless as porcelain, not a thing betrayed—
—Save her eyes. There's something in her eyes that tears at him. Panics him. He cannot place it but fear creeps up his spine, taking hold in his brain. Something disappears from them as he speaks and they glaze over, empty and melancholic. As if she is letting go.
She shakes her head, the column of her throat twitching ever so slightly as she hard-swallows. "You're right. I— I don't. I'm sorry," She turns her eyes from him, and her expression hardens into something unreadable entirely. "I'll leave it then. I don’t want anything from you. Enjoy your power, Astarion. You’ve– you’ve earned it."
There is something unspoken in her words that batters at his brain, panicked and flapping about as a freshly caged bird. He prods at their connection and feels her recoil from him— feels her retreat into the recesses of her mind, severing their connection where she can, and blanking him out where she cannot. She is locking him out— and he realizes that it is perhaps for good.
His lip curls as she turns from him without another word, walking away, abandoning the conversation— abandoning him. There's a flash of sanguine rage and a pulse of power not entirely his own yet and his hand extends of its own will, fingers grasping at her throat and drawing her again, nails digging into the same flesh he'd once caressed so tenderly.
"Don't you walk away from me! Don't you ever turn your back on me again! Do you understand?"
Fear. That's what's in her eyes now. Not fear of him, but fear of what he has done. Of what she has allowed him to become. She searches him for a trace of the man she'd cared for, the man she shed blood for— both hers and countless others— to save. All she finds is a twisted mockery of it. The man she has helped him become— if a man is what you can call him.
She has created a monster, and now he has turned his blood-red gaze on her.
"Astarion—"
He feels her pulse in his palm, rabbiting away in her ribs, the scent of her rushing blood palpable in his lungs. The very same scent as when she stares down a pack of howling gnolls or a murderous cultist with a knife to her belly. It is a scent that so often fades when he is near enough to her for comfort, but it is more powerful than ever as he bears down on her now.
"That's not how this is going to work, darling," He hisses, yanking her so close he can see himself in the whites of her wide eyes. "You are never to walk away from me again. Am I clear?"
The force of her rage hits him, edged with red, raw disgust. Her lip twitches, eyes narrowing on him as the malaise of her mourning is devoured by a tidal wave of both her pride and her indignant anger. "I am not your servant. You do not command me."
"Is that so? Isn't that what you wanted? Hmm? To lose yourself in me like you told me once upon a time? You wanted me to care for you– to love you– and I’ve told you that I do. You sought something from me and now you dare to turn your back on me?"
"I wanted to be with you! I cared about you! You're not some toy to be played with or some vessel for pleasure! I never wanted anything from you that you didn’t willingly give!" She stumbles over the words, shame seeping through her like a thick, viscous ink. "I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what he had done to you—"
"And it doesn't matter," He sneers, sharp eyes locked on hers. "You gave yourself to me that night, did you not? You saw me through everything standing at my side, cut down as many bodies as I, handed me the knife I used to carve Cazador's skin, gave me your eyes so that I might sign the contract that pledged my soul and countless others to the hells, and now you dare to pretend your hands are clean as you point a finger at me?"
"I wanted you to feel safe! To never have to look over your shoulder in fear ever again! To never again have to sleep with one eye open like we do now, just waiting for the creatures that stalk the shadows to swoop down upon us! For the first time in your life, I wanted you to know for certain that you could kill anything that threatened you or your freedom! I never wanted to tear down Cazador's tyrannical throne only to place you upon it— but it seems that's exactly what I've done!"
Something in his body snaps, and his reaction is a visceral, violent scarlet slash of fury. He squeezes her neck, baring ivory fanged teeth down on her as he would a prey. "Do not ever compare me to him!"
Her eyes are wide with fear– with disgust– as she croaks out the words from beneath his palm.
“Look at yourself, Astarion. Am I wrong?”
He looks down at her, at the woman he claims to love as he chokes her and she suffocates on his power, her bruising throat flexing in strain beneath his steely fingertips. He can just barely make himself out in the dewy sheen of her eyes as they begin to water, and what stares back at him isn’t a man– it is a monster.
Something in him shatters like glass, the last threads of his sanity slipping away through his fingertips. He is too far gone now to turn back, too lost in the red mist to find the light.
But he will not wander it alone. He will never be alone again.
"I am whatever I say I am, and you are what I say you are, and you will do as I command. Your place is at my side, now and forever," He challenges her, fingers squeezing tighter on her throat as he breathes in the sweet, saccharine scent of her terror; the palpating, rocketing pulse of her thrumming heart. "And you will acquiesce to me. It’s not a request."
"Don't you dare presume to order me about like I'm your slave!" She claws at his wrist, trying to wrench free of his grip. “I never agreed to that!”
“You don’t have to, my love,” He leans down further, pressing his forehead to hers. “Because I have decided for you.”
“You do not get that right!” She snarls, baring her own teeth back at him.
“Oh, but I do, darling. But I do. You don’t seem to grasp how this is going to work, so allow me to explain it to you.”
He shoves her hard to the ground, releasing her throat only to leer over her from above, stepping on either side of her body. Her will is iron, but the flash of fear across her face is unmistakable.
“You gave yourself to me, and I intend to keep what is mine. Your body is so fragile– so frail– You’d never survive without me, and I have no intentions of letting you go now that I have you. So you will stay by my side always. It’s what’s best for you, my little love, and you belong to me.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Yes,” He says firmly, as if scolding a small child. “You do.”
“I don’t have to obey you!” She hisses.
“Not yet, perhaps.”
Horror grips her and realization takes hold. “You wouldn’t, Astarion. You can’t do this–”
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” He bends his knees, leaning down as he brushes the hair from her neck, thumb stroking tauntingly over her pulse point. “I wanted you to come willingly. I wanted you to ask for it, accept my gift of your own volition. But you’re a foolish, willful girl. You don’t know what’s good for you, do you? So I will show you.”
“After everything? After everything you’ve been through? After everything we have been through?” Her voice breaks, and with it, her heart. Her strength slips away, and he can feel it swallow his senses in a wretched black void, sending him drowning him in her abyssal anguish– her betrayal at his hands– but he shoves it down and locks it away. Something he cannot place claws and tears at his own heart with a need so violent it almost sends him reeling, something begging him to stop, that this isn’t right– to her of all people– but he silences it. He will not lose her. He will not.
Even if he must place a collar around her neck to keep her and keep her leash pulled taut.
And what she has to say about it is of little consequence.
“This doesn’t have to hurt, my sweet girl,” He says softly, flicking his tongue over a fang. “But I know you like when it does.”
“Astarion, please! I don’t want to have to hurt you–”
He laughs, vicious and cruel, cackling like a hyena over carrion. “As if you could! I’m untouchable. The very power of the night bends to my commands, and so too shall you. Even your blood sings for me, eager and ready and willing. Begging for me,” He places his hand softly on her chest, just above her rips, feeling the gentle pump beneath. “You want this, even as you play coy. You want to belong to me. So I will give it to you what you desire.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself?” A single silver tear slips down the gentle curve of her cheek.
He blinks at her, and for a moment, he freezes upon seeing her tears and she can see a glimpse of him in there. Somewhere deep and far, screaming and thrashing and desperate against his own might, fighting a war against his very nature. He looks at her with the same eyes that revere her, crave her, love her– but above all, honor her.
For a fleeting moment, he is the Astarion she loves. His lip trembles and quakes and the urge to hold her is overwhelming. To comfort her. To hold her close and keep her safe and protect her, to strike down all her fears with his bare hands. To love her.
And yet he is the source of her pain.
“Yes.”
And then he is gone again. The light goes out and his eyes become inky black pits, nothing in them but her own miserable reflection as he leans down ever further, his warm breath against her neck as he teases her throat with a fang.
“Give yourself to me, now and always,” He whispers, blasphemous and terrible as it runs a shiver down her spine. “By my side now and forever. It’s all ours, my love. Everything we lay eyes upon. We can have it all. Wealth, power– each other. Centuries upon centuries stretching into the endless horizon of eternity. I want it all, and I want to share it with you.”
She could raise a hand to him. She could try and fight him off with tooth and nail and flame. She could kick and crawl, scramble away back to the safety of camp. She could–
But she doesn’t.
“I don’t want this, Astarion. A beloved slave is still a slave. A diamond collar is still a collar. A leash held by someone you love is still a leash. I love you, but you can’t force this. Please–” She exhorts, trying to swallow back a bout of fresh tears. “Please don’t do this. Not to me. Not to you.”
He inhales raggedly, hand slipping up to her cheek to cup it, savoring her warmth one last time.
“I have to. I won’t lose you. Not now, not ever. Not to age or blight or foolish notions. I cherish you, and I’d see you safe.”
“A gilded cage is still a cage.” She closes her eyes, hand furled in his doublet.
I gotta ask bc its been killing me trying to draw this idiot: how do you draw Johnny's naturally pouty look without making him look sad all the time? Bc I can't get his dumb adorable face right and I love how you draw him sm
i think the secret is his Hot Boy Bummer eyes and his tiny blond (angy) eyebrows. i don't tend to draw his eyebrows very far from the lids of his eyes which i think adds that intensity to his expressions
but sometimes he gets to raise his eyebrows and look super goofy
Hythlodaeus, or his memory, meets Emet-Selch in Amaurot.
a short ffxiv fic about memories, ghosts, the distant past, and the oncoming future. cw for implications of suicide. also on ao3 at /works/50178766
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Emet-Selch does not visit the city of Amaurot for pleasure; if anything, he comes there to be unhappy. He wanders the streets alone, ignoring its inhabitants when he does not avoid them altogether, and spends most of his time there not revisiting the past it represents, but merely wallows in his private grief at its passing.
Even Hythlodaeus, once his close friend and companion, rarely sees more than a glimpse of him when he does return to the grand replica of the city he once called home. He does not mind this. He knows, after all, that he is no more than a shade of the real man whom Emet-Selch had known, and he understands that he cannot help but be yet another reminder of grief.
Yet, Hythlodaeus, or Emet-Selch’s memory of him, still lives on in him, and there is a powerful instinct deep in his essence - in what, were he truly alive, he would call his soul - to offer some succor, some kind of comfort to his friend. He knows, as little more than a ghost, he cannot give it, and so he keeps his distance. Still, he can’t deny that he longs to try.
So when he feels that strange sense of clarity that comes whenever Emet-Selch is near, he follows it like a moth to a flame, and hovers at the edge of his presence where he can be readily found, if only his old friend will seek him out. He does not go to him, as he would have once, in the long-distant past when he was alive, but waits patiently for Emet-Selch to come to him, ready to provide what little semblance of companionship he can. He will never be the real Hythlodaeus, but sometimes, perhaps, he can be enough, even if only for a time.
The times when Emet-Selch does come looking for him are rare indeed, however; and so it is, as always, something of a surprise to see him come around the corner and approach.
He looks so small and fragile, in the mortal form he wears these days, no bigger than a young child, but he is always unmistakable, the familiar color of his soul recognizable even from a distance. It is clear to see how heavily the weight of his many years of grief rests on his shoulders; even when he speaks, his voice is tired and drags slowly from his lips. “Hythlodaeus,” he says, by way of greeting, and bows his head.
“Emet-Selch,” Hythlodaeus replies, and does the same in return. “It is good to see you.”
“You’ve been waiting for me,” Emet-Selch observes shrewdly, raising an eyebrow.
I am always waiting for you, Hythlodaeus thinks, but he does not say it. “You have certainly taken your time in coming to visit,” he says lightly instead. “I would almost think you didn’t want to see me.”
Emet-Selch blinks and looks away, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. He has always been so easy to read, if only to those few he calls friends. Hythlodaeus may be no more than a reflection of a memory, but Emet-Selch remembers him as sharp and perceptive, someone who knew and understood him well; to his eyes, Emet-Selch’s unmasked face is still as open as a book.
“But you are too busy for idle chatter,” Hythlodaeus continues. “You must have a good reason to come find me when the Convocation surely has need of you.”
He does not know how Emet-Selch would respond, if he knew that Hythlodaeus was aware of his nature, so he has never confessed it. He dutifully plays his part in the charade, as if he doesn’t know that the Final Days have long since come and gone, and left Amaurot in ruins. He pretends that, like the others, he still awaits the Convocation’s word on how to save them, and does not let Emet-Selch see that he already knows they will fail.
And Emet-Selch does not notice the difference. “Yes,” he says, “I have something very important for you.”
How odd: this is something new. Emet-Selch has visited with him in the past, engaged him in conversation and even turned to him for comfort on the rare occasion he lets show how much he needs it — but he has never brought Hythlodaeus a gift. “Oh?” Hythlodaeus asks, tilting his head. “What’s that?”
Emet-Selch reaches into his fur-lined coat and pulls out a bag, tied shut with a leather cord. “Here,” he says brusquely, and holds it out at arm’s length.
Hythlodaeus drops to one knee to take it very carefully. It seems tiny and impossibly delicate in his hands, though it is simply sized for a mortal vessel to carry. Curious, he pries it open and peers inside to see something that glitters faintly under the nearby streetlight: a handful of colored stones.
“Ah,” he says softly. “You’re giving this… to me?”
“Of course I am,” Emet-Selch scoffs, haughtily lifting his chin. “Who else do you think I would trust with something so important?”
Hythlodaeus regards the gemstones thoughtfully while he considers what to say. “These hold the Convocation’s memories, do they not?” he asks at length. “Won’t you be needing them?”
He knows more than that about the crystals in his hands, but he does not dare express it. After all, he should not know or understand what Emet-Selch is now, nor the work he has long been engaged in to restore the world as it once was. There is much that he does not fully grasp, but he is sure the stones are vital to that work, and if Emet-Selch is giving them to him now…
“I will,” Emet-Selch replies, but will not look at him. “I only need you to hold onto them for a time.”
Hythlodaeus has always known when he’s lying, and this is no different.
Emet-Selch is a fiercely stubborn man, and always has been; the last few thousand years have done little to change this. He does not tell Hythlodaeus much – not this Hythlodaeus, who should not know the half of what has befallen their people and their home – but what he does let slip hints at grand plans and ambitions, at the great magnitude of the work he has undertaken to see it all restored, and in all this time he has never wavered in his commitment.
But something has changed – in him, perhaps, or in the world he now inhabits, the world which exists outside of this illusion of Amaurot. His resolve, so strong for centuries upon centuries, is faltering. Hythlodaeus hears it in his voice, sees it in the way he carries himself. He may be a stubborn man, but even Emet-Selch has his limits, and he is tired.
What would the real Hythlodaeus say, if he were alive? Would he offer reassurance? Encouragement? Would he convince his friend to keep fighting, even under the weight of all the burdens he carries now? Or would he give Emet-Selch a chance for the rest he so desperately needs after all this time?
Hythlodaeus doesn’t know. He examines the stones, carefully turns the bag over into his open palm. There: a glint of a color he knows, bright and warm as a flame in his hand. He laughs to himself, holding up the stone between two fingers. “Of course,” he says softly, and looks up at Emet-Selch, still smiling. “How very like you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emet-Selch replies, looking pointedly away. Another lie.
Hythlodaeus turns the stone so that it catches the streetlight above them and shines it back like fire. He does not know, exactly, what became of the woman to whom it belongs, only that she never returned after abandoning the Convocation. When Emet-Selch speaks of her, rarely, there is still bitterness and anger in his voice, even after all this time. And yet – he will not allow her to be forgotten, even now. How could he, when he had loved her?
He had loved Hythlodaeus, too, before his death, and remembered Hythlodaeus as someone who loved him; so he remains, even as a ghost, love lingering in his pale shadow of a heart. He holds it deep within his chest and knows Emet-Selch can never return it. He tries to spare his friend the pain it would cause him to show it, and wonders how painful it would be if he did not know of his nature, did not know to love him quietly and from a distance.
Would it be an act of love to accept this gift, and take the burden of memory away from him? Would it be an act of love to ease the weight on his shoulders for a moment, knowing that some part of him does not intend to return for it?
He doesn’t know the answer but he knows this: Emet-Selch is weary of his grief, and is ready to lay it to rest. He does not want to lose his closest friend – but Emet-Selch is not his friend, and it would be selfish to make him further endure that pain and sorrow he has carried for so long, simply because Hythlodaeus does not wish to be alone.
Emet-Selch did not remember Hythlodaeus as selfish when he conjured up the memory of Amaurot. And, besides, when he is gone, so too will Amaurot disappear, and its inhabitants with it. Hythlodaeus as well as all the rest.
“I will keep them safe,” he says, finally, and returns the stones to their bag. “Until you return.”
For a brief moment, so short that, had he even blinked, Hythlodaeus might have missed it, Emet-Selch smiles.
