Kaaras needs to be in control. As he's faced with more decisions, more events the workings of which he doesn't understand, he feels this control slipping. He needs to face the fact that he may not know everything, and may even not know exactly he is himself. Iron Bull and Dorian can help with that. Rated for future chapters.
Cullen is more than happy to make an appearance at the conclave at Seeker Pentaghast's request. How was he supposed to know that a simple favour would change his life forever? AKA The Cullen as Inquisitor AU I have been thinking about for some time.
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -Andre Gide
In which Cole isn't a desire demon, but thinks it might help if he was.
Cassandra stumbles across a secret literature-exchange society in Skyhold. She disapproves, of course. Deeply. (That person who keeps prompting for crossovers with characters out of Varric's novels? Not her.)
A terrible portrait of the Inquisitor is painted for her birthday. She thinks it's atrocious, Krem thinks it's a little hilarious. Drinking ensues to help cope.
Dillon and Ziggy must fight their way across a city of sex-bots and pheromone-induced citizens to rescue their captured teammates. Things don’t go quite as planned.
Bull and Dorian flirt poorly, get together, and make no promises at all. Spoilers for Bull's personal quest and Dorian-related happenings, that there is a dragon in Crestwood, and that Dorian hates the cold. He was raised on ancient and expensive bottles of Aggregio Pavali. He knows how to judge the legs and the terroir, how to talk about each in sublime company until they surrender to his superior grasp of alcoholic poetry. He prefers the brutish ale. It does a better job of getting one drunk.
Letters Dorian never sends to Halward Pavus frame a short story in which Dorian develops a resistance to being poisoned by Vitaar, among other things. For years now, Dorian has maintained a collection of half-composed and unsent letters home, the sorts of missives one writes in one’s head when one isn’t able to sleep.
Cullen and Dorian's friendship deepens. Cullen is a romantic. Dorian is literally cold. Cullen is no longer certain what he would consider surprising. Mages and Templars working in perfect cooperation, perhaps. Evil and corruption disappearing into the ground along with the blight, blood magic falling so far out of favor it ceased to be. A united Thedas: that would be a surprise.
Cullen isn't as slow to catch on as everyone thinks. He's just slow to act on it.
The longest is the journey home. Dorian's continuing sojourn in Skyhold is interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected letter. It sets him on an uncertain course to face matters of his past, present and future.
Matters come to a head for the Bull and Dorian on an otherwise routine mission.
THOMAS is the gladers' one hope of escaping the maze. He's also a brain in a jar.
Okay, team, let's go steal the Earth.
So Brian's driving and ingenious use of that vault to take out their pursuers in the big chase scene at the end was pretty hot. Dom thought so, too. After Brian comes back and saves him and they drive off together, Dom makes him pull over and they have dirty, sweaty, rough sex on the side of some deserted road. and Brian is the one in complete control of Dom...maybe Dom just climbs right on top of Brian and takes a ride...
A frog, a sorcerer, a sword, a porch, and a conversation in the dark.
The slow love song of Josephine Montilyet and Cassandra Pentaghast, on the side of running the Inquisition and saving the world. Each story is standalone but they might be best when read together.
Some choices, once made, cannot be taken back.
"Once upon a time in Fire Country, O my Best Beloved, three Ninjas went on a D-rank mission to retrieve a Cat..." A tale in the style of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. Very silly.
Team 8 in a quiet moment during the timeskip, with lots of speculation about the origin and nature of the Aburame clan's bond with their kikkai. Fluffy enough to rot your teeth.
Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it. Love is as strong as death.
Kakashi held up a hand. “We’ll pretend this never happened.”
"One has to wonder if it's all the perverts you're attracted to, or just the crazy ones.”
The dust settled slowly. Dirt coated the bodies strewn about like discarded clay dolls, clung to Naruto's skin like another layer of clothing. His blood pounded in his ears like frantic drums, and the sickly sweet metallic scent of blood hung thick in the air over the muted undertones of upturned earth. His fingers hurt from where they were clenched tight around the scrap of green fabric. He took in one choked breath, then another. Only forty seconds had passed.
Shikamaru was never napping in this particular area of the forest ever again. In fact, he might never set foot outside his apartment if given a choice and the ability to sneak quietly away without being spotted by the two high-level jounin below him. They looked to be distracted, but there was no way in hell Shikamaru was risking being caught catching them at what they were doing.
Temari couldn't bake worth shit. It was commonly known among the village that Temari wasn't exactly a girlie-girl, but before their marriage Shikamaru'd had no concept of just how much the traditional wife he would be.
Gaara's breath breezed soft against Lee's thigh. "Hold still." Lee did her best to stop moving, but it was difficult.
Gaara calls the shots; Lee gets the attention; but Sakura inevitably gets what she wants.
"Temari, if you make me kiss him, you will regret it." Gaara's voice brooked no opposition.
The first time rain and Temari’s visits coincided, she stood in Shikamaru’s garden for three hours before coming in, soaked, shivering, and grinning from ear to ear. Her clothes were plastered to her body, every curve revealed, ponytails weighed down and dark with water, dripping all over the floor of the entrance with complete disregard for the mess.
Temari and her family, before and after the demon.
A musing on the social and legal construction of childhood in hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical.
Sakura at work, because damn it, medic-nin should be scary to fight.
“So what the fuck even was that last night,” Letty said to Mia, the next morning, after the guys went off to the garage. “Do they do this—” “All the time,” Mia said.
The Narutostuck world is a fusion wherein I have jammed Homestuck characters into the Naruto universe and am pretending they were always there. Basically the Land of Space (Uchuu no Kuni) lies to the west of the Land of Wind (Kaze no Kuni), separated by a great desert; its capitol is the village of Hidden Time (Kouingakure no Sato). For the past century or two, it has been ruled by the Condesce and engaged in an endless war of conquest on the continent across the western sea; recently, however, a rebellion led by the Sufferer succeeded in overthrowing her and establishing a new social order in which discrimination against humans and discrimination by blood caste are officially outlawed. Meanwhile, over in the Elemental Countries, the plot of Naruto has reached some sort of good-guys-win conclusion. Now the people on both sides of the desert are tentatively trying to establish some kind of normal diplomatic and trade relations... but the Condesce and her chief supporters were never caught, and are still seeking to restore their rule.
Some villains have the kinkiest superhero traps.
It was seven forty four PM, not that Iruka was watching the clock at all. He'd be an idiot to watch the time and expect Hatake Kakashi to show up for a date at eight o'clock.
Spring fever can be a distracting ailment, even for Shinobi.
"...any of your parent’s friends have any kids of less than, say, six years of age?" "No, not that I know of." "Huh-huh.” A suspicion suddenly crystallized in Tsunade’s mind. Between her fingers, her punch glass started to crack.
Lee's face was full of serious enthusiasm until he realized it was Kakashi who had answered his knock, and then the young Genin's expression changed and he gave Kakashi The Look. The Look clearly stated 'I don't understand this and I'm not sure I like it, since I'm wondering if you didn't seduce Gai-sensei with some impure wile, but as you are now Gai-sensei's Dearest One, I will jump in front of a kunai for you'.
"The art of love will be my challenge. We are going to measure our prowess as men. I challenge you to a battle to determine which of us is the better lover!"
She's the extractor, not that she looks it. Most people walk on by her without realizing that she can–and will make their lives agony beyond their imagining to get what she wants. She comes in looking like little more than a florist's daughter: low necked shirt, mesh, a short skirt and a bundle of flowers wrapped up. Her gloves are long and made of thick leather which the poison can't quite get through. She plucks a hybrid rose and examines it a moment. Let the prisoner think a geisha has come to him; she's had training in that manner as well. Unlike Sakura who wore her heart on her sleeve, Ino could be the honeypot, the poison thorn.
This day may have arrived sooner than she originally thought, but Yoshino couldn't have said she was all that surprised.
In the aftermath of war, Temari stands beside him, steady. And Shikamaru finally understands.
After Hobbs caught them in Rio, they didn't get ambushed, and they didn't get away. (AU diverging from Fast Five.)
Obito snatches up the abandoned bottle, jogs three steps, and hurls it with all the force he can manage at the back of the white-haired litterer’s head, snarling, “Hey, asshole! It’s called recycling!”
“Oh my god, Obito, I don’t care that you keep turning our roommates into mindless zombies devoted to serving your will, but in the name of everything holy, at least stop putting them in thrall when you're singing Taylor Swift songs in the shower.”
Orochimaru gets one more chance. Just maybe, it will be enough to save him—and the entire world as well.
