Pages of You, a Drarry 1980s Muggle AU: Fic Now Complete!
Harry stares at the scrawl of neatly slanted handwriting, imprinted on crisp white paper that hadn’t been torn from a notebook like his own.
He slumps back against his pillows, reads the letter again, and his grin grows so wide that it actually hurts his cheeks.
He’s definitely royalty. Has to be.
When he sits up again, he grabs the yellow notepad from his desk, bites the lid off of his black biro pen, and he starts scribbling.
Summer, 1980. Harry is floating between university and becoming a Real Certified Adult. He’s not ready. He really isn’t.
In a desperate attempt to have the Best Last Summer ever, he takes a casual job at his godfather’s bookshop in London, starts an illicit pen pal affair with a wordy posh boy that he’s catching feelings for, all while dealing with the son of Sirius’s business rival, one Draco Malfoy, insufferable know-it-all extraordinaire.
A story about trying to figure out who you are, where you’re going in life, and who you want to take along with you.
Drarry (with background Wolfstar) | Rated E | 102k words
A/N:This is really late- like wow, I am a slow writer
Lucifer:
It’s a simple day spent with him out in the market, a simple explanation that he just needs to get out of the house for a moment, and with a frown pulling at the corner of his lips, and ears hot as he mentions that he doesn’t want to be alone. Of course, you couldn’t deny him, so here you are with him, arm in arm, as you walk through the dense sea of demons and others alike. Lucifer has you pulled close to him, taking each step in a slow pace to extend the time he has with you. You don’t seem to mind, clinging close to him, your head turning and peering at all the stores that you pass by, and of course, he could offer to go into one, make a mental note of what had caught your eye, but he rather have you ask for it, looking up at him with a sheepish grin and nervous lilt in your voice. But you never do, choosing to walk arm in arm with him, exchanging small talk. Passing by a bakery, you stop in your tracks, and he comes to a slow halt, turning to you and with a sheepish grin, and you tilt your head over to the shop. Without you uttering a single thing, he nods, holding the door open for you.
Still in Devildom, it’s common to find things that you’ll find less than appetizing. You’ve expressed it before- cringed and paled when something that looked so odd came before you. He’s managed to find food that you’d like- an imitation of flavors back from the Human Realm. At least, the pastries are something that you find that you can stomach even if you have the habit of taking a quick picture of it first. He’d never understand the need for it, but you take a picture of him and you together afterwards, and he quite likes that part. You ask him about a menu item, and he hums, his attention to you as you question the baked good that contains a “soul” and he waves it off- an imitation or perhaps a part of a soul from a being long dead. And then you question something that has him giving you a raised look. Would you- or rather your soul ever show up on a menu? He doesn’t know why you would ask something like that- it’s not as if you’d- and midway through his sentence does the realization of you being human hit him. It’s a cold feeling that washes over him, one that makes his skin crawl and twist at his stomach. Suddenly, he’s lost his appetite.
You’re beside him, sleeping peacefully, and unbothered by the fact that he’s still awake. He won’t cry. It’s inevitable that you will die. He knows that. He’s threatened you more times than he would care to admit. He knows you can die, and that you will. And yet, it doesn’t stop the horrific loss of breath, something stuck in his throat and vision being blurred. Lucifer can’t lose you. Not you. He’s been perfect. He should be allowed to have you, to keep you with him. His hand covers his mouth, tears slipping between his fingers, and eyes closing shut as he lets out a muffled cry. His chest shudders, and he wants to cry. You’re lying beside him, asleep and unknowing as Pride collapses into feeble crying, whimpering and trying to make himself smaller. You won’t be here one day. He shakes himself. There’s no use crying over it. Not now. Not when you’re still here. Not when he can wake you and cause you worry. He wants whatever time that you have with him to be nice- to be something worth remembering and he knows that if you were to find him crying, you’d never go back to sleep- you’d never stop looking at him with such sad eyes. He can’t be the cause of that. Not anymore.
With a whisper, a candle lights beside his nightstand, and then the room glows in a faint orange hue, as he rises from the bed. He is entranced by the still flame, and he remembers the Reaper’s Cave. He remembers your candle. He hadn’t expected to see it- he wasn’t even searching for it, or perhaps he was, but he hadn’t yet realized it. He didn’t want to see the horrific truth that perhaps it was already nearing the end, but there it was. He stared at it for a second and now it haunts him. Going back would prove to be a pain, but he’d do it for you. He’d lift his candle and pour his wax onto yours. He’d stain his hands if it meant that you’d get just a little bit more time. There would be consequences, but it’s nothing he couldn’t handle. He could handle whatever it is as long as you’re there by his side.
He can’t fall asleep and he goes to his study papers in a neat order, and his pen uncapped. The chair creaks under his weight, and he grabs at a sticky note, scrawling the pen over it, and it remains untouched, pure from the ink and indented from the tip of the pen. The pen goes into the trash and Lucifer takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and his hand curves over his mouth. His vision is focused on the opposite end of the room, fixated on the door, waiting for the handle to turn and for you to appear with sleep caressing and making you appear so much softer. He waits for you to wrap your arms around him and lull him back to bed, your lips nothing more than a phantom against his neck. But you never appear. The door remains closed and he remains alone in his office with his vision growing bleary and eyes beginning to burn with tears. His tears curve down his face and drip onto the desk, sullying the pristine wood. His shoulders shake, and he’s crying alone in his office. And he hopes, so selfishly, that you would sense him and come rushing to his aid, and yet, he’s alone. He grieves for a future love lost, and his chest hurts, hollow and ruined. And he wonders how it was you, a human, that could have stirred such emotions in him, enough to make the vision of Pride glossy.
[WIP] ✨✨✨ My love affair for Gladio with majestic hair continues
Writing! Writing! Kicking off my rest days with something for my friend :) Sort of a self-imposed writing challenge, too, because I only have 30min to write this thing, to this BGM.
Quick Fic Pick 48: soothing a shield
He’d wake up and be surprised, he thinks, the thoughts still groggy and sleep-torn around the edges, if this had been any other day in any other life – and that would be a poor life indeed, if it didn’t have the quiet steady presence of Ignis Scientia in it.
As it is, Gladio can’t feel any kind of chagrin for waking up and not noticing the arrival of that presence in his rooms, in his bed – can’t feel anything but admiration, and that fierce abiding other thing that he can’t name but that roosts in his chest like splendor, like unfurled wings, like looking directly at the surface of the sun, as he leans up into the clever nimble knowing fingers scraping so very gently over his scalp. Tangling so very softly into his hair.
He sighs, and gets a quiet chuckle in response. “I haven’t woken you, have I?”
“No, no,” he laughs back. “Pay no attention to me. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“You do realize that for me to do this,” swift tug on a bare handful of strands, “I have to pay attention to you? So you’re asking me to do the impossible. I cannot ignore you. And I don’t want to stop touching you.”
“Gods and Astrals, Ignis,” he mutters, and if he weren’t already lying down, he thinks he’d be floored by the sheer depths of intensity in Ignis’s words. “Okay. So. I’ll shut up and you can do whatever you want to me.”
“Do be careful with what you offer; I might find myself in a shameless mood and decide that I wanted everything.”
“You know you’ve already got everything I’ve got that I can give you.”
He opens his eyes, when he’s done speaking, and he feels the pound of his heart in his chest – he sees the skitter of swallowing, in Ignis’s throat, almost as if in response.
He’d say it over and over again just to get that reaction again and again.
What he gets is something entirely wordless, something that tears him very thoroughly and sweetly to pieces, and then rebuilds him, puts him back together with the emotion that shivers in Ignis’s voice: “What I can give you of myself, you’ve had and you’ve held all this time.”
Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover what he feels, that clogs in his own throat and won’t come out in any kind of words: all he can do is reach out to Ignis’ shoulder. Is pull him down into a kiss, and he keeps his eyes open as he does, so he can appreciate the beauty of him, the graceful curve of him in his pinstriped shirt and his starched collar and the dents worn into his temples by his ever-present eyeglasses.
All too soon, however, Ignis pulls away with an amused tsk. “I was trying to do something here, you know.”
“Other than – wake me up?” He hopes he looks suitably – predatory, when he grins with all his teeth and all his heart.
“Oh, go on,” is the soft laugh he gets in return, and again those hands are moving in his hair, and this time he figures out the careful sifting and separating and parting movements. Gathering, plaiting, and he wishes every strand of hair were a new live-sparking nerve, so he can feel Ignis, so he can get lost in the movements of him.
Ignis hums, very quietly, as he works.
He almost expects to fall back asleep, soothed and petted and cared for as he is – and he does sort of drop into calm, like plunging into warm water, like floating in a sweetly whispering sea, the voices of the waves and the lilting rhythm of Ignis’s hum, of Ignis’s hands.
And all too soon Ignis kisses him on his forehead and says, “All done,” and he has to sit up and – that lets him face the mirror just aslant of the foot of the bed, and there’s enough of him and of Ignis visible to see – the smile that isn’t quite a smile, the hands smoothing those gloves back on.
The braids in his own hair, precisely placed and perfectly woven, that don’t tug on his scalp at all even when he turns his head from side to side.
Where Ignis has found the dark-green elastic bands securing each neat plait, Gladio has no idea – green that’s almost black.
He points them out to Ignis, who coughs. Spark of mischief and something sharper in his eyes. “You don’t want to wear that color?”
“I absolutely fucking do.”
And he reaches out in his own turn to Ignis’s hair, still impeccably styled. “I don’t know what you could wear that’s mine, though. If you wanted to do something like that.”
“Then kiss me: I’ll wear the impression of you all day long.”
“Not subtle at all,” he laughs, and does exactly as he’s told.
*GASP* What a lovely surprise!! So wonderful and beautiful, I just love the idea of Ignis being the one to braid his hair *sobs* Such a loving moment that is so perfectly them and gives me so many feels
“Then kiss me: I’ll wear the impression of you all day long.” Excuse me while I go cry.
In your room, there’s a walk-in closet full of clothes, stocked with everything in your size, and in your style and you suspect that Billy must have hired someone you’ve worked with before to put this all together.
He keeps an arm wrapped around you this time, and you try to dig your heels into the ground when he begins herding you toward a helicopter.
“You’re kidding right?” You begin trying to shake his grip, “Just let me go, I’ll go back and tell everyone I panicked, and I won’t have you arrested.”
He grins down at you.
“If Ward Meachum touches you, I’m going to peel his skin off.”
The Yearly Anvil Holiday party is in full swing, you’re doing everything in your power to make it on the nice list this year but your Boss has other ideas.
Warnings:Smut, 18+, Breeding Kink, Boss x Employee dynamic
Writers Notes: Yes I wrote a holiday themed oneshot in the beginning of summer, and for that i apologize. *mood board will be added later
Snow had started to fall onto the crisp streets of New York adding to the soft glow of the night. Softening the harsh lines that usually were synonymous with the city. Sounds of laughter and people talking were blanketed by the calm hush that accompanied snowfall, fat flakes began building on the sidewalks a sure hint towards a blizzard later in the night.
You rubbed your hands together in a fruitless effort to warm up, blowing whatever hot air was still in your lungs onto your frozen digits as you stepped out of the limo and made your way to the ritzy hotel Anvil had rented out for the evening Holiday party. A doorman smiled at you holding the large golden door open for you to step inside.
Warnings: Forced marriage, kidnapping, being sick.
A/N: I had originally planned to finish this mini series before posting, but I could really use the encouragement to continue it, so I’m posting the first part today, also I have no self control.
~
“You call it hope — that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire.”
-Edgar Allan Poe
~
The veil pulls at your hair when it’s pinned to your bun. You don’t say a word, simply grimacing in discomfort as your stylist steps back with a smile.
“Oh my god, it’s gorgeous.” She breathes in awe and you give her a smile, trying to feel as excited as she does.
Your smile falls when she turns away.
On the vanity, your phone vibrates.
“Twentieth time this morning,” she comments, “Sure you don’t want to check it?”
You are a long forgotten god. A small girl leaves a piece of candy at your shrine, and you awaken. Now, you must do everything to protect your High Priestess, the girl, and her entire kindergarten class, your worshipers.
The stone was immovable, in the past. Indestructible. A spire of granite no mortal hand could even alter.
But mortal hands build clever tools, and these last few hundred years I have lived in dread that they will break this, my sacred stone, the last link that preserves me, a faint shadow of a forgotten god. While my sacred stone stands, I do not, quite, fade away.
I am in a park, now, clipped and tamed, my forests long gone. But they landscape around me and my stone, admiring its beauty, so I do not complain. While they take pleasure in the stone, I am safe.
There is a playground a few lengths away, and the laughter and happy shrieking rouse me a little from my sleep. I watched over children, once. It’s nice to hear them again.
But I don’t truly awaken until the Offering is made.
Little hands touch my stone, with curiosity and a sort of reverence that only the very young feel now. For a child young enough the world is still a mystery, and even an ancient granite stone provokes wonder. So I stir, when she touches the stone, becoming hazily aware.
And then, solemnly, the child places a tiny colourful object in the roughly shaped alcove in the stone’s side, the place where offerings were laid two thousand years ago and more, and I awaken. Many people have put things in that alcove, of course… to take pictures, usually, these days, or putting a lost object where it will be seen. Merely to place an object in the alcove isn’t enough. A true offering is given as a gift, with intent.
Two identical infants lay in the cradle. “One you bore, the other is a Changeling. Choose wisely,” the Fae’s voice echoed from the shadows. “I’m taking both my children,” the mother said defiantly.
Once upon a time there was a peasant woman who was unhappy because she had no children. She was happy in all other things – her husband was kind and loving, and they owned their farm and had food and money enough. But she longed for children.
She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and followed all their advice, but no child came.
So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest, to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into the old well there, and she wished for a child.
“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice, a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”
She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may set conditions.”
“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”
“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”
“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate, plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You will have what you ask for.”
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