i know a substantial number of people stopped following dracula daily after johnny harker got out of the castle so lemme just check out a thing. fandom population census, if you will
pls reblog if you are still actively following dracula daily/have read dracula before <3 thank
Ghostie I may not have watched it but I am an ex-mormon sooooo
any secret lives of mormon wives watchers on here?
i’m on season 2 and shits actually crazy
My favorite thing about Dracula Daily Tumblr Edition is that we have all gone from "look at our good friend adorable woobie Jonathan Harker discovering spices" to "RIP HIS THROAT OUT, J-HARK, YOU'VE GOT THIS."
Me at @ghostslollipop btw you're great <3 <3
It’s common knowledge that Bilbo WILL stab a bitch
Ghost thinks he's cracked the code when he gifts Johnny an ultra complicated lego set for Christmas. Something to keep his hands and mind busy for a while.
He's watching, with terror and awe as Soap burns through a 1000+ pieces in an hour, with half a bottle of whiskey in him - drinking more while he's at it. He smiles the whole way through, though - and Ghost gets a tipsy peck on his cheek. Which might or might not have made the whole endeavour worth it.
"Thought that might keep you busy a while longer." he admits later, when he's deep into his own cups.
"Ach, dinnae sound so disappointed Ghostie, not'ing in there tha' can explode. Can work fast and sloppy."
Ghost just spent an hour staring at Johnny's hands and the concentration painted on his face. He knows there was nothing sloppy about that assembly. But he has to admit that compared to Soap's usual jobs, this is bound to be rather calming.
His eyes meet Price's over in another corner of the room. And the message, conveyed by a single raised eyebrow is clear. Ghost is not to add explosives to any gifts, even if it would make Soap very happy.
So naturally the next time - at Johnny's birthday - he slaps down a timer and a fully assembled lego set.
"Better get it done in time Johnny. And no cheating."
The way Soap's face lights up at the implication that there might be a bomb in his birthday gift should be concerning. But all it does is make Ghost wish there actually were some.
Johnny is a good sport about properly disassembling the marzipan compromise inside though. And just to prove he can immediately rebuilds the legos into the other figure they can form - taking a shot every time he has to look at the manual.
And when he carries his way too drunk partner to bed, Ghost vows to apply for Christmas leave. Which is something he hasn't done since...well for a long, long time.
Johnny, being the man that he is, never questions why they are going to spend Christmas in the countryside. A small cottage barely worth the name, as far away from other people as you can get on the Isles.
He just takes the chance to kiss Ghost every chance he gets, enjoying the fact that their isolation means he's getting an unprecedented amount of mask-free Simon.
"Got a surprise for you out in the shed, sweetheart." Ghost whispers when he catches Soap from behind while the man is about to open a bottle.
"Sounds like what a serial killer would say to lure ye into the open."
Ghost decides not to ponder that. With the reality of their jobs that answer... more than he's willing to argue right now.
"Should wait with that until you've had the surprise." he says instead, gently taking the bottle from Soap. Who for the first time frowns.
Ghost relents and they bring the scotch to the shed.
When Soap sees what he cooked up, he whistles low, no need to confirm that what he's seeing is the real deal.
It has taken all of Ghost's knowledge about explosives to craft the abomination. The two lego sets combined with a new third one, 6 sets of cables - all the same colour, and of course a live charge inside.
Johnny goes all still. Stalks closer like he's trying to get the drop on the inanimate object.
Watches it from all sides before turning to Ghost, "Do Ah need to follow protocol?"
His voice clearly tells him he hopes he does not have to. Ghost once again feels vindicated in his choice to move them out here, just pressing the bottle back into Soap's hand with a smile.
If this is what takes them both out then it's already worth it for the unhinged grin it gets him. Johnny's feral joy is infectious, and when he finally steps away raising his hands like he's expecting a crowd to cheer, Ghost honestly couldn't tell you how much time had passed.
He doesn't get a chance to ponder it either because the next second he's tackled by a full grown Scot with a half empty bottle of scotch in his hand and taken clean of his feet.
And if he hadn't already convinced this had been worth it, then the way Johnny makes sure to say thank you certainly is.
They do not make it back to the cottage for a good long while.
(This whole thing was inspired by my dear beloved @dismightyman who's singlehandedly holding it down in the Ghoap trenches with me)
Bilbo, knowing for a fact Thorin doesn't know what flowers mean to hobbits: Can I braid some flowers in your hair?
Thorin, knowing for a fact Bilbo doesn't know what braids mean to dwarves: Oh of course, what a nice gesture of friendship.
Gandalf, a few feet away: Are they getting engaged before realizing they love each other back????
I AM VIBRATING THIS IS SO GOOD!!!!! I JUST WANT TO TREASURE IT LIKE A RABID DOG WITH ITS CRAPPY LITTLE TOY THAT IS ITS BABY
knight!ghost x reader. hand-waving details. all vibes, as usual. cw: noncon touching, manipulation
After years beneath your mother’s watchful eye—less a daughter than a jewel kept safe under lock and key—you are at last released.
Invited to accompany your elder sister to court following her marriage to the esteemed Lord Garrick. Your first steps beyond the confines of home toward something far grander. The world opens before you like a storybook.
It’s a rare opportunity for a young lady of gentle birth. The kind of chance your mother spent years safeguarding you against, fearing the pitfalls of courtly life. An opportunity your sister now extends like a gift.
You intend to follow in her footsteps. To make the most of it.
As his carriage ferries you across the countryside, Lord Garrick indulges in his role as guide and guardian. He names estates and their residents you pass, calling out their banners and bloodlines, reciting them from memory like a living codex, its margins filled with his own notations and stories from years of soldiering in the King’s service and court.
Most names you know from lessons or gossip: daughters and sons married off, the odd spoiled reputation and scandal, matriarchs and patriarchs pulling strings. But being the sheltered girl that you are, one name catches your thoughts like a burr.
Lord Garrick slips a miniature into your hand. It is no larger than your palm, with rich watercolors painted on smoothed ivory: a large man, almost comically set in the tiny frame.
His skin is pale, his eyes a warm, untroubled brown. He wears a slight smile, and his armor gleams with the seal of the King.
“An old comrade—Sir Simon Riley.”
You run a thumb over the edge. “Is he as handsome as his portrait?” you ask, shy as a girl should be when entertaining fancies.
Lord Garrick only grins. “He is, dear one.”
“And noble? Chivalrous?”
“The very image,” he assures. His wry expression is lost on you.
You are too steeped in fantasy to notice. Already imagining the weight of his hand around yours, already composing the vows he might whisper when he asks you to dance. Him, tall and solemn. You, breathless and giggling.
You do not yet understand how generous portrait artists can be, the choices they make to soften a mouth or warm a gaze.
When you arrive, you trail in your sister’s shadow, a daisy behind a rose, trying not to stare too openly at every knight that turns his helm. Try not to appear too eager.
You curtsy. You dine. You take your place among the constellation of other young and unmarried ladies, each one a little star burning with her own hopes.
Time passes. You thrive. You charm. You are granted permission and invitation to winter beside your sister, a small victory. Come spring, you’ll be presented formally.
On the morning of the first frost, Lord Garrick finds you in the solar, where you sit with your companions and needlework, your thoughts pleasantly idle.
“There’s someone I’m due to introduce you to,” he says. “Sir Riley.”
He offers you his arm, and you take it. He guides you through the winding halls, past tapestries older than your bloodline. The keep quiets as you tread through an unfamiliar wing. The room he stops at is narrow and dark, the hearth cold, the shutters drawn.
It rouses an unsettling feeling in your stomach. A wrong note, a song sung off-key. Doubt prickles, fine as thorns. The chamber is too plain, too tucked-away for an introduction.
But the man you’ve come to love as a brother—steady, kind Lord Garrick—pats your hand, and the doubt recedes, momentarily quieted.
He bids you wait. He’ll fetch Sir Riley himself.
You let him go with a wobbling smile.
When the door creaks open again, it is not Lord Garrick who enters.
It is Sir Riley. You know him at once, though the helm conceals his face. Your heart skips.
“‘eard you been wantin’ to meet me, girl,” his low voice rolls thick like smoke. Heavy, like the blade at his hip.
You do not move. The knight fills the doorway as he did his portrait frame. Your hands knit loosely before you, trembling.
“It’s…an honor, sir,” you manage. Your eyes dart toward the door, hoping Garrick will follow, show his face. “I wasn’t expecting…That is, I thought Lord Garrick would–”
“Thought he’d stay? Look after you?” Sir Riley asks, stepping inside. “Nah. Garrick’s a busy man. ‘Sides, if it’s lookin’ after y’need, no one’ll do better.”
The door shuts with a click, and the bolt sliding shut might as well stick between your ribs.
You offer a smile, trying to summon the composure that’s served you well in the halls. Yet even your propriety has teeth, and it gnaws at the edges of your nerves. This isn’t how introductions are made. You know that. A lady does not meet a man alone, knight or not, not without a chaperone.
And yet here you are.
He moves further in, slow and certain, untroubled by the circumstances and its consequences. He unfastens one gauntlet, then the other, metal clinking as he sets each piece aside.
You step back, heart kicking against your ribs.
“I only meant…we’ve only just met, and I’m sure your time is better spent elsewhere—”
He says nothing. His fingers move next to the clasps at his shoulders. One pauldron. Then the other. Each piece comes away with unhurried care, as though he has all the time in the world.
The bulk sloughs off like a shell, revealing more and more of his frame until only the breastplate and helmet remain. You realize then that you’ve backed into the wall.
“I should go,” you eke out. “I’ve no doubt you’re very tired from your duties, and this isn’t right—”
Sir Riley laughs, rough like the scrape of flint.
“You’re a nervous one.”
He reaches up and unhooks his helmet, slow as sunrise. When it lifts off, you are not prepared.
He is not unhandsome, no, but he is not the man in the portrait, either.
His nose has clearly been broken more than once and healed crooked. A jagged scar bisects an eyebrow with a fleshy knot on the end, mirrored by another that pulls taut across his lips. His skin is a map of violence—keloids, silvered cuts, and pitted lines all speaking to a life earned inch by brutal inch.
He tilts his head, eyes catching yours. Rich brown, as the painting promised—but the warmth there is tempered with something else. Hunger. The kind you’ve spied in the King’s hunting hounds. Not the gentle yearning or tender longing you had quietly imagined for yourself.
“What’s wrong? Kyle said you found me pretty, pet.”
The word—pet—snaps like a ribbon.
In its reverberation, you feel the whole truth of it: you are very much alone, and Sir Riley is very much not what you were told.
You open your mouth, but no sound comes. You are caught between alarm and something stranger. It burns low in your belly, confusing and unwelcome.
You look at him again, truly look this time.
And realize: perhaps the artist hadn’t lied or embellished. Not entirely. Perhaps the man in the portrait once matched reality, before war carved itself into his skin. Before duty hardened whatever youth he’d once had.
You try not to flinch when he steps closer, but your body betrays you—a stiffening of the spine, a renewed tremor in your limbs.
Sir Riley notices.
He watches you the way a wolf watches a fox kit or rabbit. Clearly delighted by the prey he’s cornered. He lets the silence sit, lets your discomfort curdle before breaking it.
“You’re more beautiful than your picture,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
Your mouth dries. There aren’t many portraits of you beyond your family’s walls. Yet months ago, Garrick had insisted on one—a secret commission, a memento for your sister, a gift. All before your invitation to court.
You never questioned what became of it.
“I—I should go.”
You move to slip past him, but he doesn’t allow it. One step, and he cuts off your path with his bulk, the door now out of reach. Trapped between the edge of the room and him, the air tastes different—ash and smoke, hay and wet dog. It wrinkles your nose.
You try again. “Lord Garrick—he didn’t say—he never said you—”
“Yeah?”
He smiles. Not kindly.
“That I-I,” you whisper, heart beating hard enough that you’re sure he must hear it. “That I’d be alone. This isn’t right—”
“Not alone, pet,” he shakes his head. “I’m here, aren't I? I’ll see you well looked after.”
Without pause or permission, he takes your hand.
You could faint.
Your bare hand disappears, swallowed by his callused palm. His thick knuckles are as battered as his face, broken and reset countless times. His thumb brushes the inside of your wrist and applies a brief and slight pressure, just enough to remind you of his strength.
You jerk instinctively, a soft tug.
He doesn’t let go. Instead, he brings your hand to his mouth.
“No need to shy from me,” he rasps.
Your breath catches.
(You really could faint, but a deep, sharp fear urges you to stay upright. Awake. That to fall now—the alternative—)
He kisses each of your fingers, one by one, unhurried. His lips are cracked. Chapped. Your skin burns under each press. You can’t move. You should, but your feet fail.
He smiles into your knuckles. Almost fond. “You’re shaking.”
You don’t answer. Can’t.
“You don’t know what to do with yourself now, do you?” he drawls. “Bet you had a whole story in that pretty little head. Knight in shining armor, riding in to sweep you off your feet.”
His grip tightens, and he leans in, breath fanning over your cheek.
“Want me to do that, pet? Sweep you off your feet and take you away?”
Your heart screams no.
But nothing comes.
He watches you in that awful silence—measured and methodical. Like he’s trying to decide what to do with you first. His hand, still curled around yours, begins to move again, with new purpose.
He lifts your fingers and guides them toward his face.
You resist, weak and instinctive, and he overcomes it with barely a flick of his wrist.
“Go on. You’ve been staring.”
Your fingertips brush the ridge of the scar across his lip. It’s rough, raised, healed poorly. You flinch, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he shifts your hand higher, until your touch ghosts over the thick welt at his eyebrow.
“Ugly, isn’t it?” he asks, almost amused.
Your throat tightens. “No—no, I—”
He clicks his tongue. “Don’t lie. Don’t like liars. You scared?”
You are. You’re mortified, shaking with it now—caught between a girlhood fantasy and the brutal reality of the man standing before you. There’s something violent in your own confusion. In the heat crawling down your neck and into your chest, in the tears prickling hot behind your eyes.
He sees it. Of course he does.
And he pounces.
One blink, and then his mouth is on yours without ceremony. It’s a brutal kiss, a claiming thing, harsh and sudden and full of heat. Devoid of the romance you once imagined.
You gasp, startled, but his free hand comes to the back of your head, fingers spanning your skull to hold you in place. He doesn’t let you pull away. He licks into your mouth and steals the air.
It’s too much. He is too much.
When he finally pulls back, your breath is ragged and your tears have finally broken free, hot trails slipping down your cheeks. The horror of what’s just happened crashes over you all at once, like a bucket of cold water sloshed down your spine. Your legs nearly buckle.
He stares, thumb wiping spit from your chin.
“There she is,” he says quietly, near reverent.
You stand there, unmoving. Caught. The pounding of your heart drowns out every thought, each beat frantic, panicked. A bird slamming itself against a windowpane in desperation. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know what you’re allowed to say. The room grows smaller by the second, the walls pressing in.
He studies you, a delicate thing worth examining up close.
“Didn’t think you’d be this sweet,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Garrick said he had a girl for me. Said you were pretty. Polite. Court-bred. Figured I’d ‘ave to steal into your rooms, take some insurance to make you mine, you know. But Garrick said there’d be no need. That you’d behave. A proper good girl. That what you are?”
His eyes flick over your features—warm cheeks, wet-eyed, lips parted in confusion and fright. His thumb grazes beneath your chin.
“Look at you. Shakin’. Precious thing. ‘Course you are.”
He kisses you again. Harder.
No longer exploratory, no longer testing the waters. His moves as if owed. He takes and takes, lips dragging against yours, breath hot and heavy through his nose. Teeth sink into your lips, imprinting themselves on the pith of your mouth, sucking your tongue. You whimper, but his hand is already sliding down the line of your throat, splaying wide to feel your pulse.
Another panicked noise makes him smile.
He sighs. “Didn’t guess you’d be this soft. Bet you’re soft everywhere.”
Then—
The door bursts open.
A gasp of startled voices—servants. They freeze in the doorway, wide-eyed at the sight of the two of you locked together.
Panic explodes inside you. You jerk back from him, gasping, desperate to speak, to explain—this isn’t what it looks like—but you never get the chance.
Sir Riley doesn’t release you. His arm tightens, his grip anchoring you in place. He turns toward the intruders, unbothered and unashamed. Cold.
In a few short, lethal words, he promises consequences. He names each one of them—their roles, their kin. Swears they’ll feel his hand and blade personally should they utter a word of what they’ve seen.
They flee. Mute. Terrified.
When the door shuts again, it’s like the last breath is sucked from the room.
You’re a mess. Shaking, weeping, mouth swollen and burning. You are ruined. You know it. They will talk. People always do.
With the cuff of his sleeve, Sir Riley dabs your cheek, and then your chin. A mocking taste of the tenderness you’d dreamt of. He hums, too soft for the wicked glint in his eye, and tips your face back up with two fingers beneath your jaw.
“What a predicament we find ourselves in, hm?” he murmurs against your damp skin. “How fortunate that Garrick and I already ‘ave an audience with the King.”
He plants a chaste peck on your cheek.
“Dry your tears, pet.”
He smiles. A pleased shape that rekindles the hunger in his eyes.
“By spring, you’ll be Lady Riley. That’s a promise.”
He was deeply human. Not immortal like Legolas. Not immune to the allure of the ring like Gimli. He doesn't possess Gandalf's wisdom or the innocence of Merry and Pippin. He had a Sam-like loyalty in him, but he didn't grow up with a Frodo to be loyal to in his formative years, and so he learned to be loyal to himself. Nobody handed him a quest, a divine task to fulfill like Frodo. He didn't know the love of a good dad. His honor was never hailed like Aragorn's. If he displayed goodness and kindness in his childhood, it was never praised, only disparaged as a weakness. His father valued him, yes, but never as a person or a son, only as a trophy, a marker of success. He made real mistakes, succumbed to the draw of the ring.
Even so, he came to love and care for the hobbits with the kind of love he needed so deeply and never got from Denethor. He came to love Aragorn as a brother even though he would never be as widely beloved and his heroism never as widely known. He recognized his mistake, and he lamented it. And when the moment came at which it most counted, he sacrificed all of himself to protect the hobbits, to fulfill his duty and right his mistake, but most of all because he loved them. And they loved him too, enough to hurl themselves at the orcs even though they were hobbits of The Shire.
Boromir was defined not by his swipe for the ring's power, but by this love and heroism. And in his dying moments, Aragorn made sure that Boromir knew that his honor was as true as that of Aragorn himself.
style swap
haha knives am i right? age: can join the military, cant legally drink
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