zahlibeth

yes & no by natalie wee

finding alyosha

***unedited and very unfinished*** (rebel kings mc, cam/saint/alexei, rated e - posted here because it's unlikely to ever be completed, but this fic means the world to me)

“No.”

It was a stupid thing to say – a waste of their time and mine that I despised on principle – but some long-forgotten part of me needed to fight even if I could not wield more than a single syllable, and I spent several seconds staring back and forth between the two men I loved more than I knew how to love myself. They wore very similar expressions, their concern probably indistinguishable to most, but the questions in their eyes differed, and it was unfortunate that I did not have it in me to answer anything they might have wanted to ask.

I had questions too, but my chest tightened around the words, and I chose to leave them there.

The subsequent silence was not uncomfortable, though it gave me the opportunity to realize they had spoken about this when I was not around, and if nothing else, that knowledge made me want to kill a man who was long dead. There were heavy things I should continue to carry alone, and it didn’t matter that I would refuse to believe the same about what I held on to for Cam and Saint – neither one of them deserved my worst nightmares, or even a few of my best dreams.

Admitting that I had those good dreams at all would only serve to weaken my stance, and I was already halfway to my knees. I shook my head until I had to look away.

“I know it feels like this came out of nowhere,” Cam sighed. “But can we at least talk about it?”

“We are talking right now, no?”

“I don’t know. Kind of seems like Saint and I are talking, and you’re mad at us.”

Surprise pulled my face into a quick frown. “Mad? At you?”

“He’s not mad,” Saint murmured.

He was sitting on the floor just in front of where Cam and I rested on the couch, Jonah purring away with his head tucked against Saint’s leg, a kind of contentment I understood well. I had Saint’s fingers intertwined with mine, and I squeezed his hand now, though perhaps it was Cam who needed the reassurance of my touch more. I was not convinced it mattered when I was already sure I would give myself to him sooner rather than later, and until then, I could do little but continue some part of a conversation I did not want to have.

“Mad is too simple for what I feel, and I do not think I would be mad at you anyway. Frustrated is maybe a better word for it. I am disconcerted. Agitated.”

Saint studied me for a moment. “Like when there’s a mess.”

“That is precisely what this is—a mess,” I shrugged. “You have suggested that we travel to Russia together, to a home that is no longer mine and has not been since years before you knew me. I do not know why you want to go, and I cannot parse the reasons why I do not.”

another great ship dynamic is "characters who are deeply traumatized and haunted by nightmares are finally able to get a peaceful night of sleep in each other's arms"

lost in a place that i call home

(rebel kings mc, saint/alexei, 3683 words, rated e, a very quiet moment between them when saint is cold and tired and aching)

happy birthday, @zahlibeth

I was cold and wet and tired and sore, and none of it was a big deal, and everything about it made me mad. I’d been stupid too many times, all day and night maybe, and my need to make a good decision is what had me steering my bike away from the house where Cam and Alexei would be waiting for me. There was no doubt they’d keep me warm and dry and let me rest and soothe every ache, or they would give me space if I asked them for that instead, but I guessed that was my whole problem, and why I was resigned to at least a few hours alone in my van.

I didn’t often have the words to ask them for anything, and they shouldn’t have to suffer from my silence.

You do not make us suffer, wingman.

On a better night, I might’ve listened to the kindest noise in my head, but too many others were louder now, and I was still so angry that I’d been caught in the rain after leaving my jacket with my bike, and that I’d fallen when I was supposed to be so fucking good on my feet, and that, without having made any conscious decision about it, my van had become the second best home I had. A chill sped through me then, as painful as all the cuts on my body that shouldn’t be hurting me at all, and I became foolishly afraid that the cold could be enough to break me into pieces before I had anywhere soft to land. Then I wound my way past trees I knew better than the sound of my own voice, and I had the thought that dying among them would be an honour somehow.

I wasn’t dying. Not even close. I knew what that felt like, and I knew what it was like to have a reason – two of them, really – to survive, so of course I wasn’t dying.

I was just miserable. And I was hiding from the men who’d made me want to live.

It was only another minute before the trees opened to the stretch of land where I kept my van, and when I sensed everything change around me, I cut my engine in the dark. The familiar roar quickly fell quiet, and I begged for the kind of miracle I didn’t believe in, but nothing else gave itself away until I left my bike and helmet under stars I didn’t stop to thank, and I stomped across the muddy ground. Trusting in instincts that had already failed me today left me cursing myself, but as tempted as I was to claw at a hundred new scratches across my scarred skin, there was no point in trying to convince myself to let the bad night go when I was suddenly sure I was about to learn that lesson from someone else. I rounded the bonnet of my van to find the door open, and my brain hurried to make me understand that my inability to track anyone’s arrival suggested that Alexei had come here without Cam.

That meant something important to me, though I couldn’t say why, and I wasn’t quite dumb enough to try in the first place.

(read the rest of AO3)

“are you seriously playing with his hair while he’s drinking your blood” you will never understand a warrior’s bond

no thoughts only hcs of characters falling asleep easily around people they trust

Looks very comfy

bring all the lovers to the fold

(rebel kings mc, cam/saint/alexei, 3953 words, rated e, pwp - but with feelings! - because of a line dropped at the end of saint's song)

“Is a strange thing, for you to continue to say no to me.”

Cam must have rolled his eyes – I knew that even when I could not see him from where I was standing in front of the dresser – and I waited until I had put away the neatly folded jeans in my hands before I turned to smirk in return. All of it was cute, this simple household chore and whatever else we were doing together, but I had more on my mind than a lifetime of domestic bliss in a home we called ours, and that had been true long enough for Cam to understand what I was referring to now.

“Pretty sure we haven’t said no,” Cam argued, a pile of socks in front of him. “We just haven’t said yes yet.”

“There is a yet?”

He snorted. “Isn’t there always a yet with you?”

“Yes.”

Something inside me, already calm, settled further at the sound, the answer not mine. I’d tracked Saint from the moment he had stepped out of the bathroom, freshly showered minutes after Cam and I had done the same, but while his appearance was no surprise to me, I was plenty grateful for it. I was also grateful that I was the only one of us to have bothered with a shirt, the other two wearing nothing but sweatpants that belonged to Cam, Saint’s slung low enough on his waist to make my mouth water.

The sight of Cam had made me hard a while ago.

“You know that admitting as much will only ensure that I continue to ask,” I said, reaching for Saint’s hand to pull him closer. “Unless, perhaps, I will get what I want tonight?”

Cam dropped an armful of perfectly paired socks into a drawer and shut it with his body before he joined us, coming to me for a filthy kiss while I held onto Saint, everything about it familiar as it slowed, and Saint began to kiss us too. It was a chaotic moment I had never managed to mind, this thing we did every so often but never for long, my mouth open for whatever I could take from two men at once until it became just strange enough to make me smile and back away. Saint’s fingers were still threaded with mine and Cam had a fist in my shirt, but they needed each other too, and I did what I could to ignore Cam’s whispered question before Saint hummed in response and kissed Cam so deeply it might have made me envy either of them if I wasn’t already sure I would be next in line.

I was ready when Saint tugged me away – he was the furthest from selfish, but I would fall into his arms forever if he were to ask – his kiss expectedly devastating while Cam pressed his chest to my back and promised bruises where his fingertips met my hips.

“It’s still not a yes—not for that,” Cam told me, the tip of his tongue at my ear and gone again. “But we’re gonna try something else.”

(read the rest on AO3)

all bloody knuckles, longing for home

(rebel kings mc, saint/alexei, 2221 words, rated t, an alternate pov and extension of their first meeting in devil's dance)

I didn’t fuck up often. Not with this sort of thing. I’d always been very good at my job.

But when Ghost – or Teddy or the accountant or the Russian or the man Cam repeatedly fucked while I stood close enough to hear them come – approached his car and found me crouched on the bonnet, lying in wait, I knew I had made a mistake.

And I didn’t understand why it felt so good to get caught.

I’d placed a tracker on his car the night it had been parked at Angel Cottage, but he had it somewhere on him now, and when I jumped down to greet him, I kept my hands curled into fists just so I wasn’t tempted to go searching for it. The very thought of touching him made me angry when I so rarely reached for anyone I wasn’t gonna make bleed and already knew I wasn’t eager to hurt the beautiful man who relaxed something in me that my president had wound tight years ago. They were nothing like each other – Ghost slim while Cam was broad, pale while Cam was dark, and damn near invisible while Cam was the only person I saw everywhere – but I stared anyway, confused about why he was angry too.

He'd been expecting me, and once he’d admitted that he’d lured me there, I figured I would get an explanation soon enough, plenty patient about it even when I was the one who struggled to speak. He stepped closer while giving me the same patience in return, and I forgot how to mind having someone near me while we went back and forth about my tracker, whether Cam knew it existed, and a little about how much my president and I should trust a man we barely knew. The conversation was fine, but I smoked a cigarette because it seemed safer than thinking about how strongly this man smelled of Cam, and when I asked his name, he told me without trying to lie.

It bothered him that I’d thought of him as Ghost, but I hadn’t figured out which part of that hurt.

I couldn’t make it matter when I was too busy rolling Alexei around on my tongue.

He gave me plenty of time to do that too.

(read the rest on AO3)

to derail the mind of me

(rebel kings mc, cam/alexei, 4455 words, rated e, set during/after reluctant renegade but with no major spoilers after devil's dance)

I flexed my hands beneath their wraps and had enough time to wonder why I hadn’t thrown a hundred punches already, correcting the problem a second later when I unloaded on the bag in front of me. Without slowing, I slipped right and took something out on it, then slipped left and did everything I could to start all over again, and if I growled when nothing felt better by the time I ran out of breath, I could only blame the middle of the night for why there wasn’t music to drown out the sound. Maybe there weren’t enough brothers around to hear it anyway.

Saint, Mateo, Embry, and Nash, radio fucking silent for too long. God knows where because someone decided their president shouldn’t be the one to receive a location pin.

Rubi and Locke, halfway to nowhere by now, with weapons and medical gear in tow. Prepared for things I wasn’t told about because someone decided it wouldn’t do me any good.

Decoy and River, watching over Orla until Nash and Locke returned.

Folk, keeping a distant eye on me.

Alexei, somewhere.

Fuck, help had been the last words from Saint’s mouth before his call dropped, but I couldn’t do that from where I stood, and I hoped it was Saint pissing me the fuck off by locking me down. I feared it was Nash.

I hit the bag again. Kicked it for good measure. Wiped the sweat from my brow and went back at it until Saint’s voice wasn’t on a cursed loop in my head, the irony of wanting him to shut up not lost on me. It was laughable, actually – literally so – and I collapsed against the bag just so I wouldn’t fall to the ground, my body shaking like it wasn’t done knocking the shit out anything within reach. In an attempt to sate it, I backed up and rolled before landing another minute of punches, finally fading into a weak jab or two, my forehead pressed to the vinyl one more time. I think I muttered something about it being a cunt but I couldn’t manage any more than that when an interruption came from the shadows.

“Is it because they have chosen to leave you in the dark that you have chosen to remain there?”

(read the rest on AO3)

"she lets me hit 😏" she lets me lick her open wounds

OT3s are just like, “You know the thing where one character kisses another one while pressing them up against a wall? But the wall…is Jeff.”

My favorite thing about this post is seeing everyone’s different OT3 tags. I do not recognize ANY of them and they never seem to repeat. Everyone’s just out here investing their Love and their Thoughts.

i’m sick of love triangles in media. everyone’s polyamorous now. i have decided. stop fighting and just all kiss each other

in my broken body i stay

(rebel kings mc, saint/alexei, 2340 words, rated e, set shortly before the epilogue in saint's song)

It had been a while since Saint and I had escaped to his van together – or since he had escaped and I had followed in shadows that so rarely hid me from him – but there was a birthday gathering at Angel Cottage, plenty of brothers joyfully drunk or stoned or both, and Saint had gone in search of the quiet that belonged to him more. A celebration meant for a dozen other occasions might have left Cam with enough of an excuse to run away from his own home and join us, but on a night spent honoring any of the other men he loved, Cam wasn’t going anywhere.

He didn’t want to, he didn’t have to, and every now and then, his sense of obligation let Cam be.

I did not know what it was that let me have these hours alone with Saint, but that was one of the few questions I would not dare to ask.

We lay entwined with each other beneath blankets that would always smell of him, all earth and smoke and trees, and we’d been silent since the moment we’d reconnected under the stars, naked because we had no reason not to be. It remained impossible to tell whether we would fuck in the hours we had ahead of us – the decision would be Saint’s to make – but I had no complaints about the way were kissing, and something devastating passed from Saint’s tongue to mine suggested the night would be important regardless.

Both of us were patient enough to wait and find out why.

His mouth stayed gentle against mine, warm and open and more honest than someone like me deserved, and however foreign it still was, I tried to be all of those things in return. We rocked together some, the relief worth it even if it was never meant to be more than that, and I memorized the very specific heat from where his palms pressed against my perpetually cold skin, hoping he understood that his touch made it better whether my temperature changed or not. Saint was powerful in ways he did not know, but the chill in my veins had had a head start he was unlikely to ever fully overcome. Cam would always fail at that too, though perhaps being unable to fuck it out of me that first night had left him resigned to that fact long before he knew he loved me.

Eventually, Saint’s kisses slowed, becoming something almost lazy as he gave us time to breathe in between each one, our bodies still close and not when he lifted his hand toward my neck, his fingertip drawing a tender arc from one collarbone to the other and back again. I could not decide whether it was an accidental thing or his best attempt to start a conversation, but I supposed it wouldn’t matter if I wanted to talk about it anyway.

“I will never ask you to touch me the way he does.”

Saint’s green eyes were wide when they met mine and his finger stilled. An accidental thing then. “It’s more than touching.”

“What you and I are doing now is more than touching,” I noted, shifting my hips to remind him of as much. “When you kiss me, it is more than a touch. When you fuck me in this very small bed of yours, it is more than a touch. The more is not what bothers you, wingman. You have done more than touch me many times since the night you stood in Cam’s room and bandaged a cut on my shoulder.”

His back and forth resumed, the same whispered caress as before, his response only mine to feel. I remember.

“It is the how that troubles you, no? How I want him to touch me until it hurts.”

(read the rest on AO3)

men love looking at each other lustfully while covered in blood, It’s how they bond

I do love when two very fucked up people are in very fucked up love with each other