Written About The Love Of My Life, Paired With My Favorite Painting, Romeo And Juliet By Frank Dicksee.

// 18+ themes //

Carlo had been unnervingly quiet for the last few minutes or so, an event that had served as something of a warning about the undead man in the past.

In following that foreboding familiarity, a small part of you that withstood the passage of time and turned a cheek to circumstances which had virtually undone any apprehension of danger insisted the warning be heeded, while the rest of you reeled from the remembrances of pleasure his hands had tattooed onto your skin, stressed over the glaring lack of regret inked between those lines and most of all; struggled to comprehend how comfortably the decision to give yourself to him had settled in your brain.

“Is something wrong?” You questioned calmly, as though the brunette didn’t have your inner peace ground to dust.

His shoulders shrugged, nonchalant to downplay how far he’d let himself wander into his own head. “I was just thinking…” he raised a hand to toy with the hair that framed your face, an admiration in the delicacy his touch met you with that made your entire being feel warm and languorous.

“Of?”

Propping himself up on one elbow, he leaned closer to get a better look at you. Amber brown eyes gleamed as they swept across your features in the low lamplight of the bedroom. Even after everything he’d done to you while blanketed in the dark, tasted you, bitten you and taken you in ways which should’ve erased the very notion of feeling shy about something as innocent by comparison as a stare, that bashfulness he had a talent for calling to you answered without delay.

“How beautiful you are, and how I wish I could keep you, truly make you mine…” his voice was light, vulnerable, a rare side to the standard deep and semi threatening sound. The single other time in memory he’d sounded like that was when he’d told you he loved you. His words here were just as jarring.

Of all things for him to be doubtful on, whether you were his or not was an interesting choice, albeit sensical considering how this relationship had started between you, and that’s without taking his complicated past into account.

But it should’ve been obvious you weren’t the type to present your body to just anyone, there had to be meaning beside the lust and the person you shared yourself with had to be thought of as special to you. And as much as you’d once hated him with a passion, Carlo had slithered his way into that consideration with alarming finesse.

“You just spent the last three hours making me yours.” You reminded him with a playful glance, lightening the mood to set his troubled state at ease.

It worked, of course it did, his inability to resist your vivacious spirit personally acknowledged by the man himself on a handful of occasions.

Carlo huffed a breath through his nose, the corners of his mouth stretching up to form a small, amused smile. He’d known you for a while now, yet the things you said hadn’t run out of their flair for subverting expectations. “I’m greedy,” he admitted, a smug lilt to it as if that were a desirable trait, and perhaps in him it was. “I’d like forever next.” 🎭🥀

// Pfff, had to edit so much blood off of his face to make him look like he hadn’t just murdered a bunch of people, another add to his charm, really.

“I really like this character from this thing and I also really like that character from that thing…but what if they liked EACH OTHER?! WHAT IF THEY KISSED?!”

And that’s how crossover pairings happen. Beautiful, just beautiful.

This shot ✨

I am not meant for casual love. I was born for soul consuming love and obsession.

May my blighted soul be enough to end evil's reign, and may those shaped by the purity it desires be spared. 🦋

Hope Estheim stood at the edge of Bodhum's sea, the salty air breezing across his face and sleepy twilight waves lapping at his feet doing less to relax him than he remembered it able. While disappointed, this was not a recent or unexpected development.

The latest attempt sat alarmingly low on the list of things he's made to help calm his thoughts, consumed by a certain ex-soldier, and he was running out of known comforts. That looming blankness making up the rest of the page evoked a barely restrained panic that only one solution may truly put his stress to an end.

All Hope wanted to do was pull Lightning Farron close and confess his long-harbored feelings for her. Feelings that had taken too many sleepless nights to come to terms with. Adoration turned crush, and evolved into something which confined him in misery.

Now that he wasn't a puny, stuttering, short-stack and possessed the ability to tell her without making a fool of himself, it's the one thing he's thought about most for the last two years. Despite the impulse nearly driving him out of his mind, he always cowered from the opportunity to reach out and try.

Understandably so. First off: this was Lightning. The chances of him ending up with a bloodied nose if she didn't reciprocate these feelings were high. Secondly, and the more paralyzing, making the first move might cause irreparable damage to what they have at present.

The bond with Lightning that he's managed to achieve wasn't grown in a day. It was slow going and they'd had to overcome many adversities before getting to where they are. Laughing together, confiding in each other, supporting each other and trusting one another wholeheartedly, that was a blessing he'd climbed mountains for.

He cherished being with her and the others more than anything else in the world, their shared trials at the start of their journey as l'Cie formed an unshakable fellowship between a group who otherwise would've parted ways with a sneer, and that bond only strengthened as time went on.

What if this is what strains it? Breaks it, even. Especially with the rosen-haired warrior.

The threat of destroying his current relationship with her just to quell this longing has trapped the young Director in a petrified stalemate. No matter what; he cannot lose her. He knows he could never recover if he did. In honest, while he loved everyone in their found-family, Hope considered Lightning his best friend, and she the same. He should be happy with that, shouldn't he? That should be enough for him, right?

His sea-green eyes closed tightly in despair, chin tucking toward his collar in a bid to protect himself from the brunt of the truth as he realized... it wasn't. It never would be. Not with the incessant pressure in his chest when he's next to her, or the burning desire to get closer. Not while his hands itched to hold her, to touch her and thread through her delicate pink hair. When the struggle to hide how much he cares for her, how much he always has, was so near to ruining him; what they have now was already over.

The sickness of it all was beginning break the cement hardened onto his lips. For his own sake, his suffering would be bitten behind them no longer. Lightning would know by next they met, she had to, before it killed him.

The darkening tides were up past his ankles now, the surface of the water at his skin trembling to show his failure in keeping that panic at bay. Another affliction his throat had become too tight to swallow down.

Suddenly he felt fourteen all over again, small, weak and breakable, watching and waiting for the impact of his fragile world crashing onto him. And just like back then, Hope Estheim was so deathly afraid.

I just really like this blurry shot of him in the trailer. 🎭

My beloved 🤎

“I wasn’t meant to ache, nor built to shed a single tear. Yet here I stand, appearing such a pitiful thing.” 🎭🦋

Gustave ♥️