#And crush their sinew between your teeth

[gaunt-and-hungry]

Let's eat god.

[1800titz]

LIQUID SMOOTH | Best friend’s dad

age gap. 6.9K on patreon

You tell yourself, it’s not because he’s older— not the way you linger in the crows feet by his crinkling eyes when he beams like sunshine, or the way his hands look (not the way, you know, he knows how to please a woman inside out)— but because he’s him. You tell yourself that you aren’t chasing after the placeholder in the shape of the mangled wound you have (need to fill it), and still spend your time taking insubstantial surveys on the internet— daddy issue symptoms in your search bar. (The results are always the same.) (The downfall, culminated, is that he fills a gap— but you’ll never admit it.)

preview

His mouth is a dogged line under his scruff. Mullish— like even in the insober dew coating his eyes, Harry feels that ripple of the undertow. Wrong— right— you want him to chew into your collarbone. Latch on, never let go. 

Something just for him— anything— trapped in the orbital chimera of an impermissible wet dream, all consuming.

He doesn’t, but he tucks his other hand along the side of your neck— fingers at your nape— palming, swallowing, huge (sacrosanct; you freeze, lungs clotted, and let him, let him, let him—), and he pastes his mouth to your jugular. His stubble scratches an itch that stems from pool parties, your gaze coasting the pool decking to savor a glimpse of his supine shape, thighs split, on a chaise lounge in six-inch inseam trunks. 

It’s wet. Muricate, his tongue drawing a hot, slick line. Hungry, sloppy; a roily forerun to a bastardized rendition of lovemaking. Animalistic, nearly— drooling along your neck before taking a bite.

And you think, maybe— bastardized rendition of lovemaking— he’s going to fuck you like this. Tuck his fat cock deep behind your navel on the creaky couch in the garage, hammer up, in, until you’re mewling, dripping all down his balls. Until your orisons feel like crumbled, shedding stars across your shoulder blades. 

Thinking is a rickety concept. Exhausting, feels like wading through the slush of a knee-deep morass, clinging to bald cypress; conversation starters, what-ifs, contemplating mini-skirts over teeny gym shorts. And you wonder how long he’s felt it too. How long his fingers have been aching to find purchase in your proscribed, soft sinew, how long he’s been waiting to score scorching lines along the column of your throat with his tongue. A while, maybe, you decide. He clings like it’s centuries, scrapes with the blunt flats of his teeth like it’s eons.

You stick to his lap like it’s a plinth, mold around his thighs, split legs, and it’s molten. Fever in the blistering revelation, forbidden, denim rough against the skin bared under the flimsy length of your sleep shorts. He paws at your ass, climbs the stretch of your thigh to seal curvature in a palmful, and under you, he’s achingly hard. It makes you ache.

The way Harry licks a stripe across your throbbing pulse, the soft ridge of your jaw. The way his nose grazes your blistering cheek, still tingling from the liquid courage you found in tequila off the hutch. The way it bumps your own, once, twice, and then his mouth slots to yours. Hungry, wanting— throes tangible in the way you angle your head to let him consume, let him tangle his fingers in at the hair on your crown. Let him lead, roll slick into the gap between your teeth until you taste tequila, tongue, the dirty oneirism in the heat of his bulk under you, finally coming to fruition. Your fingers twist into the fabric under your hands. 

He says your name against your teeth. A surly, gravelly sound, like a cosmogyral confession— everlasting, recurring duplication along stardust, again, and again, and again, in every ulterior crevice of the cosmos where another version of this exists. Meant to—

Be. 

He says it again, like a plea. Eyes creased, crushed nephrite, like he’s begging under the notch of his eyebrows. And he’s still clinging like wet paper, like you’re— 

“Fuck,” Harry slurs. Peels away. Shakes you with the purchase he finds on your shoulders, shoving— away. “We can’t— I’m. Fuck.”

You fall in love with your best friend’s dad along the coast of Hurghada.

A trip you take over the summer months, highlighting the obelisk of an incoming senior year at university, dangling in the misty limbo between semi-childhood and something closer to his own footing. Meddle in the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes when he grins in your direction from under the callused awning of his palm against his brows.

You’re twenty-one, and he’s older. 

The kind of older that’s trussed to the unbudgeable anchor, something that festers under your footing— rooted in an issue that isn’t plaited with the seedy, broken thing inside of you. Something that makes him untouchable, throes in the noose of a friendship you plucked up mid-semester from study sessions at the crack of dawn and overpriced, cardboard coffee cups bought on campus. 

It’s perilous footing— tiptoeing along the crumbling bridge of what this was, what it’s become, and dry rot crackles in the flame that swallows the comfort (irreturnable) of pretending that he doesn’t make your guts itch. That you don’t wallow in the gazes he spares you, that you don’t cherish the nights you spend awake with him in the kitchen when the sky is still everdark, carving a world out of a dyad in the dead of night over murmurs across the peninsula. The shockwave of his eyes on you, his soft, sleepy voice (husky, rumbling), blistering under your skin, whitehot like thunderbolts rippling across the aether. You always pretended that you didn’t go back to your best friend’s hometown, every break off, to soak in the deluge of your derelict obsession, and now—

You face the revelation that you’re in love with him along the coast of Hurghada— cataclysmic, uneasy in the way that this puppy crush has metastasized. Grown staunch, irreversibly loyal, searching for him in every man that looks your way at a bar, miles out of his radius. Trailing across the cobble in a burnt orange alleyway off the nook of bars, latched onto the rigid muscle of his arm, the way your best friend is, on the other side. Only for you, it’s different. So different, for you, it’s—

Sloppy steps, head pasted to the sinew there, eyes half-mast. You tip your chin up and stare—

You realize then, but it starts long before. Starts as an ache in your gums to gnaw in the first time you meet him. Swells in the seal of your bubble when you catch glimpses, collect them, like trinkets— shirtless in the kitchen over the stove when you emerge in the morning, climbing out of the jacuzzi while you’re sprawled on the sunbed, the first time he taught you the geometrics of pool, strategy in the aim, on the table in the garage. So respectful. Abiding, untouchy, daughter’s best friend ingrained like crime-tape scratched into his bones, off limits, to the forerun of every action. 

You fall in love with him somewhere in the gully between Hurghada and peanut butter pancakes, and now—

Now—

Now your stomach is churning, because his hands are cupped around your forearms— brassbound, aborting— pressed to his pecs, and his head is turned to the side like he can’t look at you. Like he doesn’t want to face the origin of the taste on his teeth.

Stupid—

Stupid. Finding debauched bait in vinyls and hard liquor, sleep shorts short enough for his eyes to crawl, wander, loose enough for his fingers to slip under, and now…

Join the taglist here

general taglist: @satelliteky @harryonce @unhnnn @whoreforhrry @giitterysuits

@harrrrystylesslut @watermelon-medicine @ashmary @freedomfireflies @naj-paj

@samanthamattingly4 @ambivalenza55 @ivegotthecinema @deftonesangel @slelling3

@sunny-afternooon @silkgrove @nuggetdean @aprlmuse @lillefroe

@triski73 @babegoals @nooneinvitedfascistbarbie @gemofthenight

[moondirti]

animalic (5)

← chapter four // series masterlist

pairing: miguel o'hara x f!reader rating: mature word count: 3.4k summary: an unwelcome confrontation warnings: enemies to lovers, violence, blood and injury, mentioned death, fighting, angst, morally questionable characters, miguel o'hara is not nice notes: this chapter caused several headaches and i don't even like the end result, but i can't pick at it forever sooo. enjoy!

While you’ve never been renowned for making the most accurate of assumptions, there are certain patterns you’ve come to expect in order to have survived this long. To never have a glass of orange juice after brushing your teeth, or maintain eye contact while being threatened. That a kilogram of antimatter produces ten billion times the energy of chemical combustion upon annihilation, and that any quantity larger than that should not be contained.

Of such paradigms, you’ve noted only one to be entirely reliable. That a spider-hero would always fight crime, whatever the greater good. 

“Absolutely not.”

You might’ve been mistaken. 

“Those people are in danger, O’Hara.” You strain, trembling against the cough battering your chest. Your diaphragm spasms with every stride he takes, crushed against the curve of his broad shoulder, desperate to make up for lost breath. 

He lets the plea hang, countenance obscured from your view. With the way he carries you now, all that meets your eye is navy – navy, and the bright red geometry stretched over the brawn of his back. The nanotech suit warps to fit every muscle, glinting as they push forward to meet the sun. And it dips, right between his shoulder blades, lining a clear contour of the anatomy he fails to hide. A dosser of intercostal sinew. Tapered laterals, cinched to curve at–

Your core broils uncomfortably, and his grip tightens around your knees, levelling up to the degree of his treatment thus far. After slinging off that rooftop, he’s made sure to keep you particularly close, like the effort could prevent your powers from manifesting. Like you could make it happen. 

(Though, he doesn’t know that you can’t.)

But he’s smarter than that. If nothing else, it serves as a cautionary gesture. A reminder. You’re disarmed – quite literally – the only force between your nose and the sidewalk being the behemoth of a man whose body you’re strewn across. And, if you could control it – transcend the material at any given whim – it would be the extent and end of your efforts. Not with the neon webs binding you, nor your clear lack of skill. 

The wind quivers with the distant sounds of calamity. You’re drawn back to the very real situation at hand. 

“You make for a lousy excuse of a spiderman if your first instinct isn’t to save them!” You raise your voice, hoping to be heard over the sirens that blare towards the destruction. By counting them as they pass – two, four, six – you’re able to assign a severity to it. But it isn’t, won’t be, enough. You’d heard the screeches; primordial, clawing out from beyond the capabilities of an ordinary threat. You’d felt them – seeping into your bones, grating the spongy marrow – until Miguel had gathered enough obduration to reel you in the complete opposite direction.

Speaking of– 

You tilt your head upwards, surveying the street down which he runs. It’s deserted, yet the presence of its civilians is slower to leave, a molasses that slinks towards locked doors. It’s thick with an apathetic acceptance, bordering on resignation – bitter and not unlike your own resting inclinations. You’ve never known an evacuation to happen this fast, especially this far out from the scene; people are stubborn like that, refusing to face what isn’t in front of them. That is to say, they might be used to it.

“You’re not even going the right way, dickhead!” 

Of all things, that makes him stop. 

(Of course it does.)

Your form flops uselessly as he turns to make sense of his surroundings. There’s the sign – 30 St and 7th – which should give any New Yorker an idea, but he doesn’t linger on it. Instead, he shoots a web to wrap around the railway of a fire escape, propelling the both of you onto an accompanying balcony. Swallowing the bile that swells along your throat at the sudden jump, you shoot him an incredulous look, which he chooses to ignore as he drops you to the floor. 

His mask retreats, hair bouncing upon escape from its smothering embrace. For all that he tries to hide his pinched lips, you sense the scepticism emanating off him in waves. 

You take a moment to stew over it, examining him while he calculates the path of your previous chase. From the convenience, to the corner, and into a nearby store lot. Perhaps he hadn’t been paying notice – which you sincerely doubt, considering the efficiency with which he treats everything else. Could he really be unfamiliar with the layout of a city his job is to protect? Or–

It occurs to you steadily, washing up on the fringes of your arrogance; a realisation in pieces.  

Nueva York. 2099. 

A metropolis. Likely one with no grid system. 

Your cackle beckons his attention, severe stare snapping to your grin.

“We’re on Seventh.” You specify.

He cocks his head, nostrils flaring. Warning or question – you have a hard time deciphering the difference. 

“The convenience was on Sixth and Third. You know, third avenue, East of Fifth?” You push it, spurred by your awareness that he, in fact, does not know. 

“¡Ándale pues! What exactly is your point?” 

“We continued down east until you bit me, judging by the way the sun hit the lot upon rising. But now, we’re on Seventh, on the other side of Fifth.”

His jaw clicks, pulsing in irritation. You toe the line of what you can get away with, how long you can drag this out before he decides you’re not worth the trouble. 

“West. You’re heading West, and–” Wriggling, you adjust your posture into one more reflective of your current pride. “If you have any hope of finding that day pass, then you’re gonna need to go back.” 

The bid translates, weighty, bubbling like the arid smoke off nuclear strife. He processes it, understands – you watch as it unfolds in that intimidatingly intelligent glare – yet the circumstance takes a while to establish itself. Even when it does, he doesn’t grant you the satisfaction of a full blown breakdown. No. His hands just find his hips, chin sloping to the sky.

“No puedo más, no puedo más, no–” 

You probably shouldn’t rub it in any further. 

“Since it’s on our way–” 

"No." He snaps, voice laced with a prickling irritation that sears through his supposed indifference. The heat of it greets you, wiping the simper that had begun stretching your cheeks. “You must think this is some game, and while that might explain the shit you’ve pulled in the past, I have a responsibility. I can’t interfere with their canon.” 

“So, what? You’re just gonna let them die?” 

His expression lifts, brows rising expectantly, like he’s imploring you to shut up without his verbal confirmation. 

Right.

It starts like a taut bowstring, straining as it verges on release. 

On one end, there’s Apollo; drawing his arrow, a god amongst men. The direction with which he aims his weapon can be seen as prophetic – plague was always meant to befall the crowd at his mercy, their fates little more than a thread of mass design. Some call it righteous – epithets dedicated to his name – agreed upon by the same men who claim that rational means right. Some craft sculptures in his visage, this muse of the kouros, likening stone to flesh and deluding the observer that the two can be synonymous. Nietzsche, Bernini. You, yourself, had managed to believe that the muscle rippling below you could be anything but an Athenian tragedy. 

You linger on how startlingly poetic it all is, and the string pulls tighter. You’ve never claimed to be a hero, but you have the instinct, just the same. He, on the other hand, seems entirely dismissive of the urge you assumed would wreck him too. 

(Partially your fault. You know better than to expect the obvious from him – that’s his pattern.) 

As the two of you veer closer to the havoc, the arrow discharges, striking the tension that’s kept you still thus far. When it snaps, it shatters, congealing to form a beset of sounds, sights, fear. Heaving sobs from a limping group of friends – the middle one rapidly losing blood from what you can tell. The pungent clog of burning debris, fed by the ash that lays suspended, mid-air. The painful creak of metal collapsing in on itself, peppered amongst the constant buzz of radio static. Miguel curbs to a stop, hidden in the notch of an alleyway, and uses the cover to reposition you in his carry. You go from slung over his shoulder to laid across his arms – not quite bridal style, but a placement similar enough that he retains a solid hold of you. 

His mask comes back up, concealing the cynicism that had begun to creep up onto you both. You scoff at the unambiguity of the action, the parallel it poses to the reality at hand. He blocks himself to the obvious, the avoidable. 

Glowering, you trace his line of vision to the encompassing wreckage. The street appears hauntingly familiar, thrumming with the hurried echoes of a recent memory. It lacks the colourful components – the vivid signage, the star speckled windows – yet, you recognize it all the same. The very avenue you frantically traversed only hours ago. Your companion, too, begins to grasp the truth, and you find yourself biting your cheek, a twinge of unease settling in as the revelation hits you: that perhaps you had divulged too much, far surpassing the realm of personal gain. 

Yeah, the day pass is here. And you can only hope that he won’t find it.

For now, though, it appears to be the least of your worries. 

A crimson creature prowls along the fringes of the decimated ruins – deliberate, relaxed, like a predator with its teeth already halfway dug in its meal – circling a man clad in a lab coat. Its size is menacing enough; standing at seven feet, with limbs as thick as pipes. Yet, what truly strikes you are the protruding bulges flanking either side of its jaw, and the white, emblematic eyes gazing out from upon its face. 

“Spider-person?” You whisper, not so much looking for clarification as you were putting the possibility out there. Miguel is unwavering, dead-set on waiting the interaction out. 

“Something like that.” He affirms. 

“Y’know, I remember you, doc!” The creature jibes, its inflection nearing maniacal. “You sat on my jury! Yes, yes. Hard to forget a shiner like that.” Laughing, it points to the balding patch atop its victims head. He trembles, bowing in a silent cry. 

“O’Hara–” 

“Wraith.” He warns. 

“Sixty seven years! Not even you look that old, ‘course you don’t understand how damning that sentence was! But you see, I got lucky. Some higher being must’ve taken pity on me, enough to grant me this miracle of a symbiote. Mhm, yeah–” He skips closer to his prey, considering him in the new light. “‘Cause now I can do things like…” A sharp blow echoes. The glassy spear, red as the flesh it extends from, skewers through the doctor’s chest, a spout of blood following through on the other end. “This!”

Miguel’s palm slaps over your mouth, knee supporting the portion of your body he releases whilst angling you away from the scene. You’re thankful for it, despite the overwhelming anger you bear against him. You’ve no trust in the horror that wracks you suddenly, all at once. It launches you back to that convenience, the robbery. How powerless you had been to stop the clerk from dying out, your hoodie fruitlessly wedged to her neck. You’d been spared the grief so far – the blur of the last day tamping to little more than an aching numbness. Yet you should have appreciated that it couldn’t last; guilt is far too familiar a prospect for you to have expected it to let off so soon.

(Your mistake.) 

“Oops. Did that go through your heart? My bad, doc.” It howls, stuck in its own stand-up routine. “You’d been doing your… erm– civil duty, sure.” The loud squelch of gore triggers the imagery for you, regardless of your averted gaze. The limb-turned-spear being pried out from between his ribs, caked in bits of tissue. 

Dead. You could’ve prevented it. 

He could have. 

From behind the veil of unshed tears, you watch as he ponders the risk of retracting his hand. You betray nothing, blinking back the hot dismay from your eyes, and instead meet his regard in cold defiance. Slowly, as though your apparent sensibility means anything, he removes the muzzle. 

You contemplate screaming, to coax the creature from the group of people it has surrounded and make it Miguel's problem to handle.

Then, you remember your rather unsavoury predicament. How prone you are to harm with your limbs locked; you aren’t the best in combat, but you still could’ve stood a chance at survival if it wasn’t for your restraints. 

Your captor reaffirms his grip, tucking you to his figure as he creeps up to a corner. His back remains glued to the brick wall, obscured in shadow. The stance is primed – far from the hesitant sidle he’d adopted before. It isn’t hard to figure out why; you see it too, buried under a pile of trash bags, on the other side of the road. Purple, luminescent. 

The day pass. 

As if on cue – choreographed by a sadistic deity with no favour for anyone involved – you glitch. 

It doesn’t last long, but it’s enough for you to fall to the ground, erupting in a pained groan. The creature twists to lay its terror on your curled frame, shaded by a man who – despite his vast height – is dwarfed in comparison to its colossal self.

“Better start learning not to ignore my spidey sense! I’d felt you tiptoein’ over there,” It growls, neck stretching in preparation for attack. 

“We’re not here for you.” Miguel urges. 

“No? That hurts my feelings, and here I was thinking you wanted to be friends.” At the feral rip of its taunt, it lunges, tearing through the space separating you. The spider-man, in turn, dodges the barrelling assault, swinging in a blur of motion to a wreck not far off. You thank God for his flashy suit; the creature seems to forget you completely, pivoting to charge at him again. 

You force yourself to look away, sickened at the unhinged savagery with which it thrashes. There are people still around, crippled by quickly debilitating injuries, the paramedics meant to aid them now amongst the lost. This is what you wanted – the opportunity to help – and of course you’re still hindered by the asshole who’d refused you in the first place. Desperation weighs heavy on your chest as your eyes scan the spoilage, seeking anything you could use to cut yourself free. And there, you catch it – the sharp end of a broken gutter, its jagged edge catching the afternoon sun.

Using your heels as anchors, you push yourself across the coarse pavement. It isn’t a long way, thankfully, but sweat already starts to dampen your shirt by the time you reach the potential lifeline. Angling yourself, you press the webs to the serrated metal, ready to start shoving. That is, until you remember Miguel; how he sat on your legs, his talons performing much the same feat. He made sure to hold your wrists apart, so you didn’t suffer damages he didn’t intend. 

You remedy your approach, arms straining to separate, then thrust downwards. The telltale signs of your success come as pops, like elastic bands splintering. Then, it’s the easing pressure on your skin, irritated and surely marked in places where the binds come undone. 

The makeshift blade catches your elbow once you’re halfway down, burying deep enough to touch bone. The world narrows to the searing intensity that blazes up your nerves, eclipsing all else. You almost forget your goal, your brain stirring signals to pull away, but the fight that rages in your peripheral is only growing more barbaric. Alarmingly, Miguel is losing. 

If he dies, you’re next, and it’d all be in vain. 

Biting your tongue, you stifle the pain and continue pressing. The gutter inches sideway, ripping through flesh and web like butter, the sleeves of your top mangling at its lip. Miraculously, you stay awake for the time it takes to finally get your arms loose. It’s harder to preserve that triumph when you sit up, though, dizziness distorting the plan of action you’d set for yourself. 

(Get… get the people to safety. Then, your legs. No–

Free your legs, get the people to safety. And… what? 

The day pass. Yeah.

But Mig–)

Your body moves with an unsettling disconnect from your own command. Unable to fully grasp the dissonance, you blanch in bewilderment as you navigate the clearest cut path through it all. A dance in a mechanical rhythm; pulling the webs off your calves, running over to the nearest civilian, and helping them up on their feet. And again. And again. 

There’s a boy, young enough that you worry he doesn’t understand you’re harmless. His cherubic face is coated in a grey layer of dust, disturbed only by the tear marks that run from big eyes. His foot has been crushed, stormy blue blotching his knee. You dismiss the agony of your numerous wounds and crouch to pick him up, hugging him to your chest. 

New squadrons of emergency services trickle in, careful to leave their sirens off as they round the corner. It’s an odd enough choice that it distracts you from the child’s fingers, which dig into your abrasion for purchase. An ensemble of prospects occur to you. 

When you hand him off to an awaiting EMT, it clicks. 

What’d the creature call itself? A symbiote? 

(You haven’t always been science-oriented.

Freshman year of college, you’d joined as an undeclared major within the school of arts and architecture. ‘Course, you only had your general education requirements to fulfil at the time; useless classes that fit your self-imposed four day weekend, meant to do fuck all as your tuition went to waste. Needless to say, your ambition had been directed at more carnal pursuits. 

Then, there was astronomy. It’d awakened your curiosity for the cosmos.

Astro 8, to be exact. Life in the Universe. Your post-midterm lesson had been on a recently discovered,  space-faring civilization. Symbiotes – they were called – based on the initial assumption that they thrived in mutual beneficial relationships with other lifeforms. But the projection that flickered for its class of drowsy students entailed another truth entirely. Darkened bullet points in big, bold letters. Known weakness. 

Fire, and sound.)

You sprint towards a nearby cop car, its door wide open and the driver's seat vacant. It’s instinctual, devoid of consideration. A singular objective dominates you, beyond the day pass – to kill that thing. Not for Miguel, who’s choked in its gnarled hand. Not for yourself, or your deep-rooted desire for heroism. No. Just for them – the boy and that group of friends, the doctor who still lays dead on the scene. For the sake of this world, and to reconcile the life you took just last night, as if such a trade-off could absolve you of the weight of your sins.

Stepping on the gas, you accelerate abruptly, gaining speed with every pothole you drive over. It looms ahead, crouched in front of a hollowed-out apartment complex, suffocating the futurist spider-man and vibrating with glee. If you can align it – aim and time it just right…

You activate the wail siren. Your hypothesis is validated when it screeches in response to the racket, throwing Miguel off to the side. 

Good. He won’t be collateral.

You grab a gun from the cupholder on the dash, throwing it on the pedal to keep it down, then jump to the backseat. 

The impact is seismic; a violent convergence of metal and brick and brawn that sends shockwaves rippling throughout your being. You become captive to the merciless momentum, forcefully propelled against the leather cushions. Chronic whiplash shreds upon the vulnerable muscles holding the weight of your concussed head; its talons raking through the fibres, pulling apart the once sturdy tissue. A relentless ring envelops the cacophony of noise, and silences it into one, tender hum. 

You’re hauled out the window, detained in the embrace of some unspecified form, which settles above you for cover as the building comes crumbling down. 

Or – not unspecified. 

That mix of patchouli and musk.

Your consciousness turns to black as you're buried beneath the rubble.

chapter six →

follow @moondirti-archive and turn on post notifs to be alerted of future updates!

[thoughtsafterdark]

The Sun's Lover

Sometimes I gaze at myself in the mirror and my mind bends and buckles against warring thoughts and I wonder if I was meant for more.

Sometimes I feel a breeze in the back of my mind

Sparks of errant electricity

A brief glimpse into something other, something hidden

Something on the tip of my tongue and the edge of my olfactory bulb

Colours I can smell, feelings I can hear, thoughts that have no shape or form. Older than my life, than language, than war. Certainties that tease and caress and seduce but leave me dry and gasping like incubi in my sleep.

That leave my tongue sloppy and lazy like tar black molasses squelching between teeth

Thoughts that taste of longer tongues and darker mouths and sharper teeth on a planet circling twin red dwarves, of methane marshes and hexagonal prism eyes that sparkle like blood red rubies

Words slurring together and thoughts hazy as they come back down to a body that feels paper thin and husky like maple seeds in the wind

I think of the wrath that dances just beneath my skin

The bile that churns and rushes to my face, eyes like daggers, lips fixed in a snarl at the slightest insult

I think of my pride, that squirming bag of worms that lights fires in my blood and how it wars with my desperate craving to belong

I watch them from the safety of my window like a xenoanthropologist. How they love and laugh and touch eachother. How they slide against one another like well oiled gears in a way I have never been able to. I think of the eldritch way in which I care, with a gaping maw and drooling lips, with twirling rings of eyes and 6 pairs of wings, with claws that burrow deeper and squeeze tighter the harder they try to leave me.

And I think to myself, girlhood is not so much different to godhood. A self-satisfres ied sadistic existence hiding a crushing singularity of loneliness, topped with pettiness and boredom.

I wish you would come to me in my waking hours and take me away from this place

Steal and hide me away in palaces of sand and moonstone

I can put up a good fight. I’ll run and scream and beg you to stop, make sure to drag out the thrill of the chase. Isn’t that what pretty nymphs are for?

I see my bitterness reflected in the ozone blue of your eyes, the hardness and cruelty shot through with marble strands of gold

Your skin is a thrumming pool of pure power, an atomic bomb bound in sinew and nucleic acids, ready to turn me to a pillar of salt

Your fingers coax the most bittersweet of melodies, leaping and thrumming from string to string like acrobats. They say the best musicians make the instruments sing, but I’ve seen you make lyres moan and weep

I remember the old stories, of girls turned to laurel trees, of wounded pride and donkeys ears. I remember the blood of the Myrmidon spilled outside the walks of Illium. I know you are a wrathful, self-righteous whore, with greedy fingers that leave bruises  in the dips of hips and a silver tongue to match. Your fathers essence is strong in you, stronger even than it is in him. Nuclear fusion and supernovae to his ion and electron arcs. What is a thunderbolt in the face of the sun’s core?

That is how I know you would understand, I know you would thumb at that gaping festering wound inside my heart and bring me corpses instead of flowers. A plague in just the right place, so they can die slowly, in agony. Nuclear wastelands instead of jewellery. And then afterwards you’d smile that chesire cat smile at me, all satisfaction and faux-inoccence, and we’d wear our best skins and most beautiful masks and dance amongst the stars next to the hunter ripped to ribbons by hounds at your sisters command compose ballads, and study the healing arts and crafts but not so well the grey eyed bitch curses me with eight legs and congratulate ourselves on our own brilliance. Spin lies out of ambrosia and nectar and pretend we are good and just, exactly what the mortals deserve

 Fuck me with your fingers with a fierceness you wouldn’t dare use on your precious lyres, piston into me the way the women in my grandmothers village gut fish (rhythmically, ruthlessly, with the sun beating down on leathery skin and the weight of 6 mouths to feed and the memory of your husbands knuckles shattering teeth), reach up into me and wring the neck of my womb like a newly ripe peach, yank it out of me until it lies pulsing and glittering and full of seed, uterine arteries spewing blood. I want to feel you burrowing upwards until I am impaled on your divinity, until you push upwards into my heart and lungs and your hands are peaking up out of my throat. Turn me inside out and wash me clean until my mortality burns away like a chrysalis and I am reborn in your image.

My ascension is a spectacle that leaves many breathless and many more blinded. “I am the goddess of lost potential” I whisper into the crook of your neck “of promises unkept and grudges nursed. Of doorways and bridges and the space between atoms. Of longing and regret and moments lost.” And then you’d smile that ridiculous smile of yours, like you’d seen me like this always, glowing and thrumming with possibility – and this confirmation is somewhat amusing.

“Pithanotita” you’ll declare against the shell of my neck and the rightness of it reverberates deep deep down, beyond the skeletons of cells that no longer exist and multi corded DNA strands, as if you have struck my very resonant frequency and my de Broglie wavelength sings with the joy of being seen. Not a name but a constant, a universal truth. Phoebus I’ll counter, and I won’t bother using a mouth, though the smirk will be implied. Possibility and Poetry need no lips to speak to one another, we are two sides of the same coin. You’ll laugh out loud then, delighted at my audacity. Only your mother calls you by her mothers name. And I can pretend just for a moment that we might last. The first of our kind to have eternity.  That we won’t end up tearing each other to pieces. The sun and his unlikely lover, regret.

[pursuitseternal]

✨The conclusion to “In the Monster’s Shadow:”

Ascended Astarion x Shadowheart | E | 1.9K

🎨 by @weaveandwood

Summary: A battle won, a celebration for two companions in the Ascendant’s bed.

CW: HEA Smut, so many in-game callbacks, light/dark imagery, top!Shadowheart, one vulnerable Ascendant

Previous Ch | ao3 link | Masterlist

Only silence filled the halls of the Crimson Palace now… that and the last remaining sizzles of radiant magic on undead flesh.

So many charred corpses, but none of it slowed the two of them down as they raced back upstairs. The Selûnite and the Ascendant, the monster and his saving light.

The last few plates of armor clattered at their feet as the door burst open to his bedchamber. Shadowheart panted one last spell to heal their minor wounds. “Te…curo…” she rasped between fanged kisses, the words barely audible as he devoured her lips and tangled his tongue with hers.

“Shade,” he murmured into her lips, “my darling.” Arms pulled her impossibly close, molding her curves into the hard planes of his body.

“We did it, we saved the city,” her voice was airy, breathless and light as she pulled him towards the cool silk sheets of his bed. “And you were… magnificent,” her praise was instantly devoured on his hungry tongue as it delved deep.

Astarion followed her down to the bed, pausing only to pull his sullied silk shirt over his head. He was a cage of strength, a crush of sinews and muscle as he covered her body. “More than that, you did so much more than that,” he growled into her mouth, resuming their kiss with even more zeal. “You saved me, saved my sorry soul when I could have died alone…” he paused to smirk down at her flushed face, “again.”

“As if I’d let anyone harm you,” her own voice a low growl. “That’s my task to undertake.” Magic dancing on her fingers, she tore into his leathers, unlacing and yanking them low enough to free his cock. That alabaster, rock-hard length was flushed from all the blood he had consumed, throbbing from the thrill of battle. Lust… bloodlust… it was all hers to treat as well, Shadowheart delighted. And now he was hers to heal, to tend, to fuck—she grinned as she pulled the last vestiges of clothing off her curves.

Crimson eyes roved her form, and Astarion chuckled, letting her press him into the downy bed, those supple thighs straddling his waist. “Who would have thought that the little Cleric of Selûne could handle my darkness,” he mused, nails digging into the crest of her hips to guide every slick drag of her cunt over him. Base to head.

“Are you so quick to forget I was raised in darkness?” she braced her hands on the bed, her silver braid falling over her shoulder. “I embrace the darkness…” she grinded on his length, deliberately catching every inch beneath her. “I savor its taste… I own it,” she raspeed, her own voice thick with lust. “For no darkness frightens me, not anymore. And now, I own your darkness as mine.”

Fingers clawed into her flesh as she finally sank on his cock, seating him so deeply, it stole his undead breath. A forced, wet exhale, and his hips snapped up to every grind that swallowed him whole. Warm and wet and welcoming, she accepted him. No need for threats or rewards or punishments, if he closed his eyes… he could be laying on a bed of moss in the Emerald Grove, or back in the downy sleigh beds of the Elf Song, with little more than hope, zeal and a tadpole to share between them.

“Darling,” he growled, all his might summoning to pull himself upright in the bed, to have her bounce on his lap. Wet and wild and lewd and lovely. Her cheeks were bright and flushed. “The healing to my burden, the light to my dark, the shadow to my brilliance…” he punctuated his praise with thrusts that pulled deliciously inside her, filling her until there was no line between where one ended and the other began. “With me, you will flourish, and I will have everything I never knew I needed,” he groaned as her mouth trapped his in her blunted teeth. “With you, I am complete.”

Her green eyes glinted with mysterious light, a strange combination of pride and hopefulness, of nostalgia for what once was and an eagerness for what would come. “Moodmaiden, I swear, I’ll be here with you, Astarion…”

“Lord Astarion,” he corrected, thrusting up to spear into her, a ruthless quirk to his full lips. “Or My Lord, Vampire Ascendant if you prefer.”

A breathless laugh as she bounced on him bubbled from her smile. “I’m not doing that, Astarion,” she chided back, squeezing his cock punishingly hard in her walls with every buck. “Be glad I don’t call you leech, or bastard.”

The vampire beneath her just gripped her by the throat to pull those insolent lips against his. Devouring, consuming, his warm breath flooded her senses, a tidal wave that possessed her, claiming her inside and out. “How about I call you mine?” He growled. His fingers flexed in playful time with each buck and thrust of their hips.

“Mine…” she gasped out the word, her sex slamming down on him faster, that coil of her pleasure snapping taut. “Maybe I want something more…”

“With me?” He chuffed, his voice thick with lust as he arched beneath her undulating curves. “You demand more of the Ascendant? Dangerous business that…”

“Cut the nonsense,” she laughed, swallowing a moan as he bottomed out inside her. “You’re hardly dangerous, more of a danger to yourself as you have always been.”

“Are you certain your goddess will allow you to pursue something more?”

“Selûne bids me enter into the darkest shadows, even if they belong to a monster like you.” Her voice lilt playfully, her body stilling on him, forcing him to stay right at that edge of orgasm. A growl in his throat, and he tried to grab for her waist, eager to take control, even from the pillows of his bed. But two cool Mage Hands of her own conjuring just caught his wrists and pinned him down.

“Aww, what a good boy,” Shadowheart commented, somewhere between praise and taunt.

The sweetest of gasps slipped from her teasing mouth as he raised his hips fully off the bed, pushing her up with all his Ascendant strength. His chuckle, rolling and deep, mingled with her whimpers as his cock head pushed against her cervix. “Not always good…” he preened. “Sometimes I’m great.”

“All that Ascendant power and your jokes are still just… pathetic.” Shadowheart rolled her eyes, panting a laugh all the same. “Don’t make me cast Silence, now that I have my magic.”

Astarion answered with his own volley in return, he thrust mercilessly up into her, back arching high enough to drag his length inside her again. This time, she rode him back, thighs shaking as her body grew tired. Tired from resisting his charms, worn from the battle that had raged below in his palace halls, and spent from an earnest chase to find actual release with him for once. She let those Mage Hands disappear, the warm pads of his fingers and palms caressing up her thighs to guide her undulations. He controlled her with reverence, gripped her with adoration. The pulsing of his heart echoed in her chest, his eyes devoured every detail of her blissed out face, her wanton blush.

Those walls of hers fluttered, clenching to grip him as she shuddered. So alive, so filled with light, so fucking wet for him…

“Hells,” he groaned, that wall of his own pleasure bursting as he hurtled towards his orgasm. Warm breaths whined from his throat, needy and desperate and loud until she closed her lips over his in a kiss.

“If I call you… my lord… will you come?” Shadowheart rasped in her flushed rapture, her breasts bouncing as she leaned back, a new angle to let him watch his cock disappearing into her, beneath that patch of softest curls on her mound.

He growled, low little rumples that broke into high-pitched whimpers of desperation.

“Come on… little lord… come…” she purred, a hand pressed on his clenching abdominals.

Those hips snapped up harder, slower, and urgently as he burst inside her. Coming hard, he spilled over and over again, hands pushing her down with all his strength. His tongue pressed at the corner of his mouth, his face scrunched in a look of ecstacy, eyes shut and squinting, nostrils flared to take deep breaths that scented the mix of their cum as he caught his breath. “Well… darling,” he crooned, voice cracking as he tried to regain some semblance of control. “Consider yourself well and truly taken… my con—”

Her warm, still trembling hand closed over his mouth. “No… none of that same consort shite you gave Tav.” She scowled, softly but noticeably. And for the first time, she said that name without causing a wretched feeling in Astarion’s gut. “Companion,” Shadowheart corrected. “I will be as I always have been to you, Astarion. Lord or not, I will be your companion.”

He gave that impudent grin. “Well, as long as you will also share my bed, I have no objections to calling you whatever you so desire,” he taunted in that purring and playful tone as she slid off his cock to lay in the crook of his arm. “You will stay here with me?” His question hung heavy in the air, his lithe fingers twirling through the errant strands of her bangs. “You will remain at my side… and in my bed, won’t you?”

Subtle, just the faintest of flickers, Shadowheart recognized vulnerability in his tone, in his face. The veneer of the Ascendant cracked, that loneliness glaring at her through the hole her light had punctured.

A deep breath, one to inhale his scent, his musk, and that faint whiff of undead, and she cupped his cheek in her palm. “Yes, I will…” She watched as his face eased into that subtle arrogant mask. “…But I will also leave it at times.”

His bushy silver brows shot beneath his curls. “What? Why?” Two singles words a piece, each rife with pain, with longing.

A slight tilt to her head and she explained. “My duties towards the Moonmaiden bid me leave. Your black soul isn’t the only one in the world, you know.” Her lips smirked as he rolled his eyes. And before they could open in protest or to whinge, she shoved a finger over them. A finger he instantly suckled to scrape against his fangs and curl around with his tongue. “Besides, leaving your bed will only make it more delightful when I return.”

Her finger pulled free with a pop, his own hand guiding it. “When you return… I quite like the sound of that.” He flashed her that fanged grin, rolling to crush her beneath him this time, his cock already hardened once more from the slightest taste of her fingers and the faintest glimmer of affection in those green eyes. “Say you’re mine, my darling…” he purred, or at least he tried to, his voice rough with longing and need to feel alive and not… alone.

Those arms wrapped around his neck, an embrace that healed and comforted, as well as aroused. “I’m all yours…” she smiled so fucking sweetly, “until morning at least.”

Author’s Note: And there we have it… I hope you enjoyed.

I love light/dark, redeemable monsters. I hope the sweetness and vulnerability was a nice balm to the dom/sub tones leading into the conclusion. And, while this fic has reached its end, this pair will be special to me and I’m sure see the page again 💞

Love to my readers,

Pursuits

[chaoticallyfragmentary]

Dabi X Reader

Here’s a little Dabi fluff because he deserves to be loved. Drops mic, walks off stage

Walks back, whispers  “contains kissing and making out. Do not read if that is not your cup of tea.” Scurries back. 

Dabi didn’t merely have bruises. He was eviscerated and then stapled up with everything misaligned, held together by threads of grief and rage. The more he lets you see of him, the little shit with deep, wary ocean eyes, mind like a lightning strike and a wit to match, the deeper you fall. He was a tragedy in making. An unfinished thought. An abandoned book. Here’s the awful thing about people like you daring to love, it gave you something to live for.

You both’ve outrun your demons for now. So, tonight he is here, a blush faint on his cheeks, as a battered old radio played to itself, a romantic tune, wavering in and out beneath a gentle pall of static. His eyes are unguarded and open, revealing the fragility underneath. He is the Dabi with his arms around your waist and your head against his chest. The Dabi whose smirk wavers into something a little soft, a little lovesick. He is the familiar swell in your chest as he twirls you in the abandoned factory, moonlight your stage, voice a little husky as he hums under his breath. You reach up, peppering soft kisses along his jaw and for the first time in what feels like a millennium, Touya laughs. It is warm and golden, like slow dripping honey. Dabi made ice look good but now you know, he makes warmth look even better. “I love you.” the confession slips out, like it was meant to. Dabi halts, looking at you, agony on the brink. He drops to his knees as you hear a breath, a rough strangled sound and then he bursts into tears. Blood coating his hands as he buries his face in them.

“I’m sorry—Touya, hey, Look at me love, please. It’s okay, I-” He practically pulls you into his lap, crushing you against him like he wants to hide you in the hollow of his chest. Your breath stutters as you realize he was blubbering confessions of love into your skin. You take his face in your hands, thumbing across the apples of his cheeks, the staples cool against his warmth. All the moments before this, all the errant impulses to touch and taste and kiss him pale in comparison to the want and need barreling through you. It shreds every ounce of self control that you might have left.

“Can I kiss you, Touya?”

Dabi could taste his heartbeat, thudding against the back of his throat as your hand slides along the side of his neck, into the back of his hair. He nods, an equally near-reverent yes breathed straight through you.

His eyes slide shut as you whisper his name and place a barely there peck at the corner of his mouth. His eyes whip open with impatience as you drop a kiss at the other corner of his mouth. A greedy want of him clawed against your ribs as you finally pull his bottom lip between your teeth, your nails dragging against his hair, his groans and your whimpers leading towards a spiraling loss of control. He knew he was going to experience spontaneous combustion as both of you delve in deeper, harder and more frantic, your chest burning, lungs on fire. He nibbled and sucked, the bruises bubbling underneath your skin, your hands dragging him even closer as you are nearly debilitated by the force of your desire. The kiss slows, with gentle nips and breathless sighs. He looks at you with something akin to hope, a lot like your undoing, at ease in a way you’d only ever seen him with you. Dropping his voice to a low whisper, finally a smirk tugging at his mouth, he whispers “I love you too doll,” the sound brushing up against you, making its home in sinew and bone.

Falling in love with him was tangled bedsheets and smudged make-up, like a quiet sigh that slips out concessionary and pleading. It is the stillness in the air before a storm, the knowing smirks and the late nights out, fishnets and leather jackets, forest fire and smoke. It is the random acts of kindness and the glow of city lights, the soft whispers and the faded photographs. It is the eye-rolls and lips dripping sarcasm, the silver moonbeams and the empty ballrooms, the slow kisses, warmth that rages like hellfire and arms that feel like home.

[lipstickghoulie]

I don't know what "You know what it is, bitch" is but now I'm dying to know more 👀

So, this USED to be the working title for a different fic draft but I repurposed it for this one and now it’s a very soft, weirdly sweet Minthara + body worship fic. 😂 Sometimes I move titles around or will just reuse a draft title if I complete the original fic that had it. Anyways, here’s a snippet:

A sharp exhalation of air left your lungs unbidden. Her head went from burrowed between your breasts to jerking up, her sharp eyes flicking up to meet your own. Minthara was never one to shy away from eye contact with you; her gaze as steady and intense as anything she did. It made you feel dissected and opened up for her scrutiny, all sinews and raw, twitching feelings like she could take your pulsating heart in her palms and crush it without a second thought if she wanted to. You wouldn’t be surprised if she had done it to others before you.

You’d let her, you think. You’d let this woman wreak violence upon you until you were nothing but a smear of blood on her high cheekbones and deadly flash of white teeth. The thought troubled you less than it should.

“I could have lost you today,” Minthara mused out loud. The low murmur of her voice rasped through you like the edge of her sword scraping against bone and it made you shiver in a way that was all pleasure and no fear. “That is unacceptable.”

A slow, careful trailing of her fingers over your sides called for your attention. Fingertips that have doled out poisons and death in countless ways move over your flesh and up to the bottom of your ribs like she wishes to count them, make sure that you’re whole and here and hers.

[snakebonesgames]

FLESH HOME

Exploratory writing to begin my own disgusting fantasy heartbreaker, FLESH HOME. You are a Human, but that doesn't mean much.

Impulse.

Human never meant anything. A nonsense prefix on a worthless base. 

You’re Human. Your body is fragile, driven by

Impulse.

A desire to grow and expand and recover and rebuild. You feel it all- every microscopic connection your brain and soul makes to your nerves. An infectious web of senses and reactions that beats to the rhythm of 

Impulse.

Your mother fought in a war. Her mother fought in a war. Her mother fought in a war. You go to war for the highest bidder, anything to make a change, to leave a lasting impact. You’re drawn to destruction, an

Impulse.

You’re on the battlefield. They don’t give you armor, there’s no purpose. You adorn yourself with memories, skins and entrails and children’s dolls that bind into your soft skin. 

Fire.

Sinew snaps and frays as enemy blade cleaves through the surface and strikes bone. You cry out in pleasure and snap shut your jaws around the hilt, crushing it with iron teeth. 

Impulse.

Muscle wriggles and writhes from the wound as it reaches for new mateiral, a foothold in a painful world. It finds torn hilt leather and bent bloodied steel and draws it in. 

Assimilation. 

Metallic wire slides between ligaments, lubricated by burning blood. Old hide is drawn over the wound, sealed by platelets gone feral long ago. 

IMPULSE.

Impulse binds steel to vein and transforms blood to flame. With each wound, the flesh that remains reaches out for scrap to patch the damage. The ticking clock of your biology calls for more material. 

Your flesh is your home. Make it your own. 

[fiendishartist2]

it's your conclusions that make mine delusions– tma

Jon's feet dangled underneath him, hanging limp. Papers fluttered to the floor, forgotten in the mad scramble between the two men. Jon's hands rested loosely around Tim's wrists, just above where his fists were twisted into Jon's collar. With his back against the wall, Jon was trapped completely under his co-worker's wrath. Tim stepped closer, crushing a lazily written report under his shoe.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Stoker?" Jon asked lightly. Tim's nose scrunched with disgust as Jon's smirk widened enough to bare teeth.

"Stop smiling," Tim snarled, "Stop fucking- what is wrong with you? Why are you here?" Although his grip on Tim's wrists remained deciptively gentle– hands poised so that fingertips just brushed skin– Jon's expression grew hungry. Entertainment flickered behind dark irises; Tim got the sense Jon was relishing in his desperation.

"I work here." Jon answered simply, unbothered despite the way Tim's knuckles dug into his throat. Tim barked out a mirthless laugh.

"Not the same way the rest of us do. Prove it- prove you're trapped by- by whatever is wrong with this place. Go ahead, Sims. Say it." He goaded, hoping Jon would rise to the bait. Jonathan Sims was perpetually level-headed, but Tim was at his wits end.

He wanted this puppeteer wearing a human face out of his life– out of all of their lives.

"Personally, I don't have any desire to leave. I'm quite happy with this job." Tim growled, rearing back and slamming Jon into the wall. The back of his head hit the damp drywall with a satisfying crack. Jon blinked rapidly, dazed.

Tim's blood pounded in his ears; he wanted to hurt this thing under his hands and he couldn't bring himself to care anymore. It was destroying his friends, creeping like a crawling rot into every nook and cranny of their minds. Slowly, it invaded– a sweet croon here, a sharp discouragement there; watchful eyes and cutting words hidden behind an open kindness that came from the confidence of security. It felt safe picking them apart sinew by bloody sinew.

Sasha was ruining herself and wouldn't listen to reason. She ran headfirst into any situation she thought would give her leads, not even bothering to tell anyone when she was in danger. She was working longer hours, talking to people in her office in secret, stashing tapes and statements in odd places he and Martin wouldn't look. Every new statement plucked from the mess Gertrude left behind sent her on a spiral, clawing for any connection to latch onto– and she latched onto Jon's words like a woman drowing. When Sasha ducked away from conversation with Tim and Martin, Jon was at her elbow, whispering in her ear. When she eyed Tim with distrust, he could feel Jon's gaze burning into the back of head. When she continued to pull away from anyone who could anchor her to reality, Jon was right there, pulling her along.

Jon's breathing was becoming laboured. Tim pressed more weight against his chest, egged on by the slight give of Jon's ribcage under his forearms.

"Kill me," Jon choked out. Tim lurched back a step, allowing Jon to take a deep breath that left him with a dry cough. His grin split his pockmarked cheeks, "Kill me, right now. Get it over with. That is what you want, isn't it?"

"You're sick," Tim spat. He pushed against Jon until he wheezed, "You're a sick little creep and I- I want you gone. Leave the Institute. Run into traffic. Anything, just- just get out." Jon's beaming smile wavered, eyes fluttering as consiousness was squeezed out of him, "If I ever see your face again-"

"Tim!"

Tim startled, dropping Jon's collar and letting him crumple to the floor. The anger drained out of him instantly, leaving a hollow in its wake.

He stared down at the man at his feet; Jon's narrow back was shaking.

Shaking with laughter.

Jon's boney shoulders jumped up and down, breathless snickering wracking his entire frame.

He peered up at Tim through spidery bangs. As if on strings, his lips were pulled into manic smile, eyes alight with joy. Hysterics were carved into every crease of his face.

"You can't. You will never be rid of me." He whispered, voice pitchy with wonder.

Someone pushed Tim aside; he stumbled out of the way without even turning to see which of Jon's victims it was. Red faced anger entered his sight, made fuzzy by the film of haze filling his brain.

Helplessness squeezed like a band around his chest; no one would believe him about Jon. Not Sasha, too paranoid to see the problem right in front of her. Not Martin, who would give and give and give to a monster who could only take. Not Elias, who had let Jon into the Archives in the first place.

"-at is your problem, Tim?! What could /Jon/ have done to-" A tinny voice buzzed beneath the rapid gallop of Tim's heart.

Jon was right– Tim couldn't do anything. Nothing would keep Jon from weaving his web around all of them; all he could do now was watch as the threads tightened and tightened until they each snapped under the tension.

Something bumped– shoved his shoulder. Salt and pepper hair left his vision and, instinctually, Tim's eyes traced the monster across the room.

From under Martin's arm, Jon pressed his face into his shoulder. Crocodile tears soaked into the soft, well-worn knit of Martin's favourite jumper. In stark clarity, Tim zeroed in on the hand that raised behind Martin's back.

Jon waved at him slowly and deliberately as he was led gingerly into the breakroom.

[itsgeecheebitch]

TITLE: Until Darkness Descends

CHAPTER: 25

FANDOM: Final Fantasy XV

PAIRING: Ardyn Izunia x Reader

SEC PAIRING: Gladiolus Amicitia x Reader

AUTHOR NOTE: Sorry for the late update, my previous phone decided to give me the middle finger a few days ago, resulting in me losing majority of my data as well as my notes for this story. Fortunately I had the foresight to upload the plot outline on Google docs, but I did not have the foresight to do the same for my chapter outlines and chapter summaries. I actually finished writing this specific chapter I believe ten days ago, but I wasn't able to edit it until now. Between working many hours, and my old phone going kamikaze on me, I just didn't have the time to proofread and upload. The edits aren't perfect, I didn't change much from the first draft so it might sound choppy in some areas, I just wanted to put this chapter out there

    Bits of sand crushed beneath his leather boots as he walked away. An angry mixture of emotions rolled off of him like smoke from a heated pipe. Ardyn gnashed his teeth, his fingers twitching at his side, as he ventured towards the airship outside of the resort. It seemed the years did nothing to quell his desires for you.

      When he looked at you all he saw was his late wife, the woman he vowed to start a family with, the one he planned to spend the rest of his life with. It irked him to no end. The magitek troopers greeted him at the door, their mechanical bodies whined and clicked as they moved. He took a seat in the copilot chair, the weight of his circumstances sinking his shoulders into the ground . 

     Seeing Gladiolus touching you, kissing you, whispering sweet nothings to you, caused his hands to blacken with the beginnings of the scourge. Ardyn took a deep breath, the black web receded from his skin. He kept an eye on you since you left Insomnia, watching you from a distance to ascertain if any part of him still held affection for you. 

      Unfortunately he still did. His stomach turned and he wiped his hand down his face. Clicking on the ignition, the metallic craft roused from its slumber with an incessant whine. Today marked the end to Insomnia’s reign, the day he looked forward to and worked towards since the moment he accepted the scourge. He had no intention of wallowing over you during this promised day. 

      The aircraft elevated off the ground and made Ardyn feel truly weightless as gravity fell away and collided with the desert ground. He’ll find a way to silence those maddening feelings inside of him. He will destroy Insomnia, end his brother’s lineage, and destroy you. If the past 2,000 years taught Ardyn anything, it taught him that he was a survivor, he will survive the gods, he will survive the Lucis Caelum bloodline, and most importantly he will survive you. Once all is said and done, once the world that forsaken him was reduced to smothering ash, he will find a way to end his immortality. 

       Two days passed in the blink of an eye. On the previous day your friends collected the gems and just as you expected, the quest was harrowing at best and dangerous at worst. Fortunately they returned with only minor injuries and didn’t require your services. You were in bed when the sun peeked through the window and touched your closed eyes. 

      You woke up with a groan, the tendrils of sleep releasing you from their tenuous grasp. It was only six in the morning but you didn’t feel very tired, so you got up and made your side of the bed. The cream colored curtains that framed the window danced in the breeze as you left the resort room.

      Last night prince Noctis elected to spend the night at the resort instead of in the caravan. You felt the difference. The tendons and sinew that made up your body didn’t feel pulled taut from sleeping on a hard cheap mattress, and you felt refreshed despite only receiving six hours of sleep.

       A gentle breeze caressed your cheek as you entered the restaurant section of the resort. The scent of salt was in the air and you inhaled a lungful of the refreshing aroma. There was nobody in the restaurant save for you, allowing you to hear the waves and the seagulls soaring above.

       Taking a step onto the boardwalk, you enjoyed the tranquility that settled over the sandy beach. In the distance you noticed a man approaching the regalia. His pointed sandy hair and black jacket made you realize it was Ignis. Cupping a hand close to your face you shouted, “Hey Ignis.” The man turned around in time to see you wave. 

      He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as you approached. “You’re up early, going somewhere?” 

      “Just to the supermarket.” He said. A warm breeze tousled your hair, delivering Ignis’ earthy sandalwood cologne to your nose. “Altissa is currently experiencing a surge in food prices. I thought it best to reserve what little we have and amass resources before we set abroad.”

      “Mind if I join?” You asked. You had nothing else to do but traverse the beach until the rest of your friends woke up. Not to mention, the idea of conversing with Ignis one on one was an appealing thought. He was your adopted brother, and had been for the last six years. While you and Ignis weren’t best friends you did harbor a sort of fondness for him and wanted to nurture the family connection between you.

     He turned towards the regalia, its purple and ivory design was glistening under the morning light. “If that is what you wish then I would appreciate it.”Without another word you entered the car and Ignis took off. Your hair whipped about and snapped at the wind like a bunch of angry snakes. In the east, the adolescent sun bleached the changing scenery in shades of yellow. 

      You sighed and relaxed into the warm seat. The engine rumbled beneath you as stared at the world barreling by at hyper speed. You watched the glittering ocean, the ripples of waves rolling over the greenish blue surface. A lungful of air expands your ribcage, free of the toxins and pollution that was present in the air back home. 

      This was nice. A part of you missed the outside world, the orange soil, the crystalline ocean, and the clear air. Insomnia was a pleasant city to grow up in, it was wealthy beyond compare, and was home to some of the most impressive pieces of architecture in the world. But nothing could beat the outside world, being able to travel wherever your heart took you, and not being limited by city walls. 

       “I’m gonna miss this once it's over.” You said. “It feels nice being outside again without…you know.”

       “Are you referring to your venture as the child of light? I’ve been meaning to inquire you on that. How was that like?” Ignis asked.

        You brushed wisps of hair out of your face. “Stressful.” You answered. No matter how many years have passed you would never feel comfortable enough to divulge everything you went through during that time of your life. It was a festering wound you treated in silence. While you knew your friends wouldn’t see you any differently, you just couldn’t get yourself to open up about it. It was personal, the memories still brought goosebumps to your arms. 

         “Didn’t have much of a childhood, too busy being mommy and daddy’s wallet. But it had an upside to it, I was able to meet you guys.” You said, deciding to gloss over the more gruesome details. 

         “And we are fortunate to have met you, Aera.” Ignis replied. “I believe I could relate to your woes a bit. Being the son of the former advisor hadn’t left much room for a childhood. I had to grow up quickly and assume my role, as was determined by my predecessors. It is a burden that Gladio and I share. But it isn’t without its merits. I wouldn’t have forged the relationships I have today if it weren’t for my lineage, and I am grateful to serve my country.” 

          Fifteen minutes later you and Ignis arrived at the market. The place was bustling with a healthy crowd, chatter filled the air and drowned out the pop song that was blaring through the speakers. You took a step into the brightly lit market, the mouth watering scent of freshly baked bread and herbs grabbed you by the nose and led you through the aisles. In twenty minutes you and Ignis had a cart filled to the brim with food, fruits, chips, and canned goods, courtesy of your selection. 

         The other half of the cart resembled a community garden, courtesy of Ignis. “Let’s see,” you took the grocery list from Ignis . Most of the items were crossed off save for one, “the next thing on the list is…tomatoes? We’re getting a lot of vegetables, don’t you think?” 

       “Perhaps, but they are a means to counter the prince’s rather…specific palate.” He reasoned.

       “That’s a nice way to put it, think he’s actually gonna eat it?”

       “So long as he doesn’t see it, he will.” Ignis answered. You chuckled, imagining him mincing vegetables and hiding them in Noctis’ meal. 

       “The lengths you go to ensure his health. Well, I’ll go see if I can find those tomatoes for you”. You ventured towards the produce aisle once again, a myriad of reds, purple, and greens captured your attention as you looked for the fruit in question until you found it. Ripping off a plastic bag, you approached the pile of tomatoes and wondered how you were going to package them with one arm. 

        Your fingers twitched slightly, the feeling gradually returning to your paralyzed limb. Opening the bag with your good hand, you spread it wide and dropped five tomatoes into it. Reaching for the sixth one, it slipped from your fingers rolled away on the polished floor. You grabbed your bag and chased after it, feeling very much like a child running after their runaway ball. 

       It slammed into a barrel and you sighed when you reached. Before you were able to slip it into your bag, static erupted from the radio atop the barrel. The words, “breaking news”, pierced through the white noise. 

       One of the men sitting beside the radio increased the volume, allowing you to hear the broadcast more clearly. A woman’s voice broke through the speaker and oozed through your bones like acid. “The city on the hill in shambles. Witnesses report seeing pillars of smoke rise from the city of Insomnia. On the inside an even more grim reality is taking place, fires ravage the streets, buildings are crumbling to the ground. Our on site team has captured an image of the Citadel in flames, which you could view on our website at K7News.com. More on this story after the commercial break.”

       A black hole exploded into being in your gut, sucking the color from your face, leaving ashen terror where a smile once was. The tomato rolled away from your trembling hand. 

[moondirti]

a pearl

Still scarred; you don’t think he’s ever not been. Still scarred, yet vivid enough to accept a gentle caress he said helped muffle the phantom pain. He’d tell you the stories as you did (hardly ever pleasant), and you’d cherished them enough to remember.

But the John that pistons into you now does so with muted malaise, a concoction that clusters too heavy on his tongue to fully form words around.

pairing: Captain John Price x f!Reader rating: explicit (18+ mdni) word count: 2.5k summary: what follows bloodshed warnings: angst, seriously - angst, canon typical violence, gore, allusions to childhood abuse, lots of unresolved feelings, hurt/comfort, a happy ending (the bare minimum), rough sex, marking, p-in-v notes: i have nothing to say for myself. there's no plot, just vibes. sorry (not). very much based off the mitski song of the same name.

It starts a little something like this– 

Moments caught in the rhythmic flicker of a bedside lamp; golden, dim, dark. Golden, dim, dark. Pink flesh, blushed in foreign warmth, mottled in crops of chestnut hair you can’t help but run your fingers through. It’s sticky when it presses to you, slicked in half-dried sweat and the brine of a sour mission. You lick the salt from his collarbone, trying your best to place a firm kiss to it against the bludgeoning thrust of his body. 

He fucks you like he hates you.

Not always. No. 

But tonight, and in that perennial week that trails behind him when he comes home, he does. He finds you, supple enough for the two of them, with a restrained agony swimming in florentine eyes. It bleeds into blunt fingertips (calloused, too. Barnacles that rub rough on your breasts), staining you across the chest. You feel it in your lungs, scraping bone to marrow, your ribs a collapsible cage of sponge. And with the way he bears his weight on top of you, you think you just might. 

It’s entirely too much, violent in a way you don’t find behind a plate carrier, the heavy security of a gun in your arms. Vulnerable – some crushed flower, one might say. Ripe with gallons of water at its centre and nothing to use it on. You’re plucked, right off your stem, your petals caught between teeth. 

His hands stay planted on your hips, pinning them down to a sleep-soaked mattress while he plunges into you. One, ten, fifty times – years together and you’ll still never grow used to how thick he is. His cock is splitting, cleaving your cunt into two halves, filling you until a mushroomed head meets the gummy wall of your cervix. It falters then, nestled in that sweltering heat, before pulling back out to bruise you again. 

And you take it. Your own limbs remain wrapped around his back, curved to fit rippling muscle, your nails digging into the sinew. You could push him away, should you please, you’re far too familiar with this routine to kid yourself into believing he wouldn’t listen to consent. Fight and watch as he reluctantly breaks away, turning to less delicate vices; a Maduro cigar, toasted. Scotch with a water back, neat. 

But you cling to a sweet nothing he’d whispered to you once, crowded in the back of his old Audi Q5, his beard abrasive on the soft stretch of your neck, trailing desperate kisses. 

Bloody christ. Can live off you alone, sweetheart. 

It had held some semblance of truth then, caught under bad weather with the sky open to the heavens, a great cataclysm of rain pelting down on the car. A revenant vow, no witnesses; something for just the two of you until the day’s promised wedding – a novel, diamond-encrusted band, thin on your ring finger. 

(You now wear both his and yours on a chain around your neck. His embellishments narrow down to those dog tags, the ones that hang over you when you fuck – silver slips the only indication of the man beneath the uniform, a body to be brought back home once it’s been bled through.)

Younger. You remember it distinctly; right out of SAS training, his skin a canvas for memorised marks. You’d been able to map each one to its source; rings of red concentrated at the wrist, cigar shaped but not self inflicted. Silver lines on his knees, founded atop the Brecon Beacons from his long drag assessment. Scabbed knuckles that never seemed to heal, not since he’d punched through a concrete wall the night he decided to leave home. 

Still scarred; you don’t think he’s ever not been. Still scarred, yet vivid enough to accept a gentle caress he said helped muffle the phantom pain. He’d tell you the stories as you did (hardly ever pleasant), and you’d cherished them enough to remember.

But the John that pistons into you now does so with muted malaise, a concoction that clusters too heavy on his tongue to fully form words around. You imagine it tastes bitter, bitter and much like the ichor that blooms to your cuticles. You don’t expect him to reel those horrors back with him – the sight of a dead mother after his executive order to shoot all potential hostiles. You know he’d much rather find sanctity here, with you. But he bends under the perceived punishment you inflict, groaning when you carve crescent shaped divots into him; and it comes clearer to you than anything else. 

His burden as Captain finds him far beyond the field. You’re just not made privy to it. 

You let him express it in the only way he can.

It goes a little something like this–

You don’t ask, despite the named tension that floods the chilled bathroom. 

He lets you shower first. Actually, almost commands you to, murmuring the words into sex clogged air while he cradles your quivering thigh. He waits until you find your strength again, nudging a tear away from your cheek with restrained tenderness. He guides you while you make your way, his touch smoothing from the small of your back to your shoulder, where it clamps down to steady you.

You can’t pinpoint the expression that twitches beneath his moustache as he does. It’s much too complex under the varicoloured delirium that clouds you. You see, you hear, you feel and smell and taste the oceanic headiness at the back of your mouth, yet none of it crackles back to your synapses where you can properly process his disquietude. 

So, you whimper a little asseveration in place, the sound of it lost amidst hissing pipes when he sets the shower for you. 

I missed you.

Maybe he doesn’t hear it. Maybe it’s drowned in the same chasm that eats him alive. But his eyes catch yours before he turns to leave, and they flicker with the light reflected off the faucet. Or, you’re tricking yourself, and it’s recognition of something he can’t reciprocate. 

By the time it takes you to clear your throat, he’s gone – off to his spot on the balcony, no doubt, stretched on an armchair you’d bought especially for him. You’d set a Maduro box on the coffee table between his seat and yours. 

And you can smell it on him when he returns. 

He must time it so you’re already out when he comes to wash up. You check it on the watch he’d discarded by the sink – forty five minutes to the second, a gratuitously long stretch to press on sore legs, but the water had been nice. He’d known the exact temperature to turn it to. 

(He used to avoid the spray during your times together, too. 

Any hotter, eh? It’s barely blistering.

You were the one who insisted on joining.

And kneaded your reddened flesh when you asked him to moisturise your back.)

His baths are militaristic in comparison to yours – he’s always in, soaped, and out before you get to your hair. You’d teased that he does it to avoid those grim thoughts that taint deluge silences – the ones no one is immune to. Perhaps you’d been on the mark.

So, you don’t ask. But you try and bear through ten more minutes upright, standing in front of the mirror, a towel around your bust, untangling the jewellery that’d been neglected in his absence. 

You hardly get through your wedding chain when he finishes, picking at the same stubborn knot. 

“You’ll get sick,” John gruffs, padding up behind you. You move over for him to reach the towel rack and pointedly avoid the large mass in your peripheral, hanging between thick thighs, nested in chestnut curls.

“If rearranging my guts wasn’t enough to ail me, then what harm can a bit of cold do.” You jibe. He gives you a grunt in response, tucks a corner into the wrap around his waist and sticks his hand out.

“Let me see that.” 

You blink, looking up at him for a split second, before handing over the chain. The bathroom provides a brighter luminescence than the glow of the hazy bedroom. 

It’s then you notice a hardly healed cut on his shoulder, sutured with black stitching. 

And one on his chest. 

And leg. 

A purpling bruise, stippling the expanse of his abdomen, furling over the side of it to darken into black. 

You’re caught like that – staring, hands at your chest – for far too long. If he realises, he doesn’t say, pulling at gold strands until something gives. 

But his elbow tucks closer to hide the discoloration, the gesture veering on childish insecurity. Though that conclusion rolls between your teeth; a pearl that won’t dissolve and is much too large to swallow. Things can never be so simple with John. He fits the world in ways you’ve spent your entire marriage attempting to figure out – like a sole jigsaw piece, made with no greater picture in mind.

(You cut yourself to suit it, sometimes. He changes shape before you can catch up.)

The action is an inclination you can never fully acknowledge, then; not until it’s you racing to see what can heal first – your body, or your mind. So you single in on the bulk of his arm instead, expanding thew with the movement, choking back the stone lodged in your chest. It becomes easy to lose track of time like this, returning to your perpetual dysthymia. 

You’re only snapped out of it by the smokey gravel of his voice, somehow simultaneously full-bodied and edging on a whisper. It pops like wet wood on a campfire, seething with an undercurrent of resignation, like it’s aware of its failure to fully fuel the kindling heat. 

(You still feel it though; like a deafening salvo in the chamber of your hollowed gut. Butterflies turned gunpowder. It holds the same effect.)

“Here.” 

And he hands you your necklace back, unravelled.

Brushing your teeth, you point to the hickeys decorating the column of your neck, then at his own wounds. 

“Look, we match.” 

His reflection tenses, the razor pulling away from his jaw. John opens his mouth – knuckles blooming white, clutching the edge of the sink – then snaps it shut upon scanning your foamy grin. 

He goes back to lining his mutton chops, his lips pursed in a grim line.

Maybe you should’ve stayed quiet.

It ends a little something like this–

Moonlight filters through sheer curtains, ballooning with the tranquil breeze. You left the window open to allow some air while he finds his rare sleep. 

You’re usually the first to knock out, but you stay awake on certain nights, these nights, stuck on vigilant duty against forces you can’t quite keep at bay. You know where he keeps his guns – taped to the sides of dressers or under a chair. They aren't anything you need. No. Now, you weaponize your hand, spread flat and smoothing over a coarse head of hair. You brush the strands that stick to his sweaty forehead and pull down the duvet when you notice his continuous battle with the heat. 

Then, the nightmares start. 

It’s subtle at first. No stranger would notice. 

You cradle his forearm and his pulse quickens under your thumb. Doldrums, a war cry. His body thrums with awakened adrenaline as his pupils thrash behind fluttering eyelids. It’s an unsettling tremor that vibrates through you, the mattress, the still midnight where things tend to find their peace. You bite your lips through it and hope the worn-film memories go easy on him. 

His breathing breaks into a stuttered pace. He’d forgone a shirt, clad in just plaid bottoms, and his chest gleams with a thin layer of cold perspiration. It shakes with him, rapid inhalations, his lip twitching while his body tries to regulate the instinctual fear. Your touch never leaves his head, your other, freer hand wrapping around twitching fingers. 

And so begins the paralysis. The purgatorial state where nothing exists outside of stifling sheets and the distancing sounds of fusillade. You can tell when he comes to uneasy wakefulness – wavering in and out of a fight long since filed away in manilla cabinets – when his digits go rigid underneath yours. He gasps in one final, drawn-out convulsion, assured in his survival, before his eyes snap open to the present. 

He grabs your wrist and flips you over in the split second afterwards. 

You can’t help the scream that pitches at the assault. It’s not the first time this happens, but never has he been so quick to act. 

“John–” 

“Fuckin’- Fucking hell.” 

His inflection warbles, still a victim to whatever profound helplessness overtook his dream. 

“Are you okay?” You lament into the scant space between you. His nose brushes yours. You can feel the red-hot distress radiate off him in waves. 

“Y-You… Affirm– Yes. Yes, I’m solid.” Though his eyes don’t meet yours. 

You nod. He doesn’t let go of you. 

“Water?” 

“Scotch.” 

“You’re not going back to sleep?” 

“No.” 

He flinches when you caress his cheek, brushing over wrinkled crows feet. 

“You need your rest, John.” 

“You haven’t slept, either.” The reaction holds more venom than he likely intends. You use the lowlight to memorise the way he appreciates his anger, the hissed admonishment echoing back with full force. Before his brow can crease again, you place a tentative peck to his chin. His jaw ticks at the movement. 

“I will if you do, yeah?” He doesn’t agree, but his shoulders drop with an exhale. “Let me go, I’ll fetch a bottle for you.” 

His face bows, a retired concession. It’s a side of him you hadn’t had the privilege of seeing, not until your first morning together, post-honeymoon. 

(I have to go, love. My flight’s in an hour. 

Stay. Just ‘till I fall back asleep. 

He had.)

You’d miss it if you had stayed basking in the thought. His lips, chapped and bitten and cracked, brush over your knuckles when he pulls away. 

You smile like a fool on your mission for refreshments. And, on your way back from the kitchen, you clasp over the rings on your necklace. An old habit, a happy tick. 

(You almost drop the water when you feel only one; your classic, round diamond ring. 

But you find his adorning his finger when his left hand reaches for the bottle.

You hadn’t noticed he’d taken it off the chain.)

The next morning, he tells you about Serbia and the calamity that brought upon new disfigurements. He grieves it in between thrusts, burrowing his head into the crook of your neck, his grip unabashedly bruising on your breasts. So we match, he echoes.

Still scarred. Always will be. But he dives deep into the personal upon remembering the comfort in your low hums. 

(Your nails circling the marks on his palms - he’d told you about his dad two years in.

It helps. 

What does? 

When you trace over them like that.) 

A week after every return to his house, John finally settles and rediscovers home.

taglist: @yeyinde @guyfieriii @nqberries @kkinky @ravenhood2792 @allekat1988 @rattlemyb0nes @simonrileywife @melancholyy-hill @sexlapis @s-u-t @sweetybuzz25 @hypernovaxx @glassgulls @superbafango @eternallyvenus @thoticious @noassparetime

join the taglist!

[poeticjackalope]

the crushing anxiety of being a bad person am I a bad person??? more than a crush its a dismemberment.

snapping sinew, and bone splintering into bone, and muscle, and flesh, blood parting and pooling between organs as I scoop through toxic sludge slicked body and brain, searching for the good in me. marrow seams between the grooves of my fingerprints, evidence that I was here destroying something again againagain

knawing on tendon, grinding teeth to chalk, animal with nothing worth saving in it. what am I? what am I? plunge cracked nails into the insular cortex and dig dig dig for what I'm looking for what I don't have what I'm missing.

stop thinking about thinking about thinking, maybe then I'll think through all of my thoughts before I let them gurgle up and spill out into this hazardous mess on my shirt. on the floor. on your shoes. I run round and round like a stupid fucking rat in a cage except I'm a me in a cage and there's no cage because I've made up the idea of it myself and honestly a rat would be so much smarter than this.

look at my eyes and find the truth sewn into the lines on my face and tell me what I really am. or hold my hand and embrace me slow and tender and lie to me so I can die like this and know you're lying for my sake.

[venstm]

"Is that... really you?" Natsuo's hand clasps over his jaw as though it might subdue the taste of bile sitting in his throat, the thump of his heart in his chest. It can't be... it can't be right? his mind echoes, remembering the heartwrenching days of watching his father scour the mountain and the fury that has burned within him ever since knowing it was because of their father that he had lost his brother. That their family was little more than a hollow skeleton of fragile bones, lacking any of the sinew of a true nurturing, welcoming environment. His head is full of static, the jots attempting to join, but they won't - he can't - all he can do is watch with his cursed, inherited face, and hope that this is not a lie.

He doesn't think he could handle his heart breaking a second time. "Toya..."

His  brother  the  revenant,  clawing  up  soft,  damp  earth  and  dragging  his  ravaged  body  out  of  that  freshly  dug  grave.  He  was  an  abhorrent  thing,  the  child  that  natsuo  remembered,  if  he  did  at  all,  was  nothing  but  a  cadaver  now,  rib-cage  crushed  beneath  the  heel  of  a  remorseless  society  of  heroism.  Back  then,  when  blunt  nails  had  abraded  against  his  scalp,  when  his  world  closed  in  on  him,  suffocated  him,  natsuo  had  pleaded  with  him  to  drop  it,  to  go  back  to  sleep.  Is  that  why,  as  recognition  ebbed  into  abject  horror,  something  akin  to  joy  sparks  against  his  withered  heart.  ❝  it’s  been  a  while, little  brother. ❞  the  rasp  of  his  voice  is  baleful,  the  warmth  in  it  resembling  a  devastating  fire.  Still,  dabi  falls  in  step  with  him  as  if  it’s  casual,  that  this  fortuitous  encounter  didn’t  swell  with  malice.  An  arm  drapes  over  his  shoulder,  drawing  him  in  for  a  half-embrace,  the  heat  that  emits  from  his  palms  as  they  idle  against  his  shirt  a  reminder  of  the  malevolence  that  boy  had  come  to  embody.  If  natsuo  so  much  as  flinched  it  would  be  over  for  him,  his  older  brother  showing  not  even  a  modicum  of  remorse  for  reducing  one  of  endevour’s  children  to  smouldering  ash. 

❝  come  on,  you  know  as  well  as  i  do,  toya  is  dead,  remember ?  ❞  a  cruel  inquiry  that  pitches  into  soft,  harrowing  laughter.  ❝  isn’t  that  what  dear  old  dad  told  you  ? ❞   rancour  seethes  between  his  teeth  like  billowing  smoke,  the  tilt  of  his  head  innocuous,  every  other  part  of  him  poised  for  destruction.  ❝  surprise  natsuo,  your  big  bro  has  been  alive  all  this  time.❞ 

[moxiewritings]

Bhood harassment

In the dimly lit chamber of the abandoned warehouse, the air hung thick with the scent of metal and ozone. The three figures—Avalanche, Toad, and Blob—lolled about on makeshift couches, remnants of a past life before the Brotherhood had claimed this space as their own. Avalanche, his skin a shade of blue that matched the hue of his aura, picked at a bowl of stale popcorn. Toad, all sinew and slime, flipped through the pages of a gossip magazine with a flick of his long, sticky tongue. Blob, his body a gelatinous mass that defied gravity, chuckled to himself, his laughter bouncing off the concrete walls like a muffled drumbeat.

Moxie, the newest member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, sat quietly in the corner, her eyes flitting between the TV playing an old sitcom and the trio of boys across the room. Her heart raced as she listened to their hushed conversations, hoping they wouldn’t turn their attention to her. She was young, unsure of her place among these seasoned outcasts, and she knew she didn’t want to be the butt of their jokes.

The TV's laugh track echoed in the room, briefly overpowering the murmur of the old refrigerator in the corner. The flickering screen cast a ghostly light over the faces of the three boys, painting their features in an eerie, otherworldly palette. The silence grew heavier, until it was shattered by a snicker from Toad.

SUMMARY^1: In the Brotherhood of Mutants’ warehouse hideout, Avalanche, Toad, and Blob relax, while the young and anxious Moxie observes from the shadows. The atmosphere is tense, filled with the smell of ozone and anticipation.

"Hey, Moxie," he called out, his tongue darting out to catch a rogue popcorn kernel that had flown his way. "You still crushing on our fearless leader?"

Avalanche and Blob chuckled, their mirth a coarse rumble that seemed to resonate through the very air. Moxie's cheeks burned, and she hoped the darkness would hide her blush.

"Hilarious," she said, hoping her dry sarcasm would ward them off. She flopped back in her seat, her gold eyes still on the TV. It took effort to keep her fox ears still,; prevent them from twitching in the boys' direction. Her tail twitched uneasily.

But Toad wasn’t easily deterred. He hopped over to her, the magazine slapping shut with a smack. "C'mon, spill the tea. We've all seen the way you look at him." His eyes gleamed with mischief, and Moxie felt a knot tighten in her stomach.

"What, with my eyes? How am I supposed to look at people, dumbass?" she shot him a glare, fighting the urge to get up and go to her room. That would all but confirm their suspicions, wouldn't it?

Blob's laugh grew louder, a deep, rolling sound that seemed to make the floor tremble beneath her. "You know, like you're about to throw your panties at him," he said, his voice thick with amusement.

Moxie's grip on the armrest tightened, her nails digging into the worn fabric. She had to admit, there was something about Magneto that drew her in. His power, his conviction, the way he could command a room—or a battlefield—without saying a word. But she'd never let them know that.

SUMMARY^1: Toad teases Moxie about her crush on Magneto, the Brotherhood's leader. Moxie tries to act indifferent, but her body language betrays her. The tension in the room escalates as Avalanche and Blob join in the laughter, making Moxie feel even more self-conscious.

"You guys are just gross," she retorted, trying to sound bored. "You know he's like, fifty times older than me, right?"

Avalanche smirked, his teeth glinting in the TV's glow. "Age is just a number, right? Besides, I've seen the way he looks at you too. Like you're the last slice of pizza on Earth."

Moxies's heart skipped. Her ears betrayed her by swivelling in Lance's direction. Could it be possible that Magneto-

No, she told herself. Avalanche was just being an asshole. Of course.

Of course Avalanche noticed her momentary slip. He leaned in closer, his dark eyes gleaming with a smugness that made Moxie want to punch him. "Oh, you do like him!" he crowed, and the other two hyena-laughed in response.

"Don't you guys ever think of anything else?" she sighed. Despite her best efforts at nonchalance and indifference, she felt a blush burning across her cheeks.

Toad leaned closer, his slimy skin brushing against hers. "Oh, we think about plenty of things. Like how wet you'd get for him."

Her body jerked away from his, eyes huge. Had he actually just said that to her? "What the fuck, Toad!"

Blob's laughter grew, a deep, bass rumble that seemed to shake the very walls of the warehouse. "Don't worry, Toad's just being Toad." He reached out a gelatinous hand to pat her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

Moxie stood, her tail lashing behind her. "I'm going to bed," she announced, her voice a little too loud. "Alone. Thanks for the... enlightening conversation."

SUMMARY^1: Moxie deflects the teasing by pointing out the age difference with Magneto. Avalanche continues to provoke her, suggesting Magneto might reciprocate her feelings. Toad's crude remark causes Moxie to storm off, feeling violated and embarrassed.

The boys' laughter followed her as she stomped off, the sound of their jeers bouncing off the metal walls like a cacophony of echoes. She could feel their eyes on her, and she knew they were watching her every move. The heat in her cheeks didn't subside until she'd slammed her door shut, the echo ringing through the warehouse like a gunshot.

She didn't leave her room until the next morning, and then very reluctantly. Breakfast was in the kitchen, and if she didn't show up, someone was sure to ask why.

Making her way downstairs, her entire mood was immediately turned upside down when she heard Magneto's deep voice conversing with everyone in the dining hall.

She hurried into the room, glancing around until she saw him; large and strong and bold, her hero, her leader.

"Sir!" she called excitedly, hurrying to him. "You're back from your mission!"

Magneto looked up from his plate of untouched eggs, his gaze piercing her. "Moxie," he said evenly, his voice a mix of authority and curiosity. "How did you sleep?"

Badly, of course. She'd been too angry and embarrassed from the boy's teasing to manage more than a few hours. "It was alright," she fibbed. She couldn't keep her tail still; it wouldn't stop wagging at the sight of him.

"Just alright?" He raised an eyebrow, his silver hair catching the light as he did so.

She turned away, face heating. "It's not important," she insisted. "You're home! How was your mission?"

SUMMARY^1: The next morning, Moxie emerges from her room, eager to avoid the previous night's embarrassment. She overhears Magneto's voice and rushes to the dining hall. Despite her efforts to play it cool, her excitement is palpable.

Magneto's gaze softened a fraction. "It was successful," he said, his voice low. "But it's always good to come back to... a warm welcome."

She was warned by his words, by his presence. She excused herself and made a plate of her own breakfast, waiting for the dining hall to fill with more mutants before slipping back into the room, sitting in her usual spot in the corner. She watched contentedly as Magneto spoke to everyone.

The dining hall was a bustle of activity, with mutants of all shapes and sizes grabbing food from the long table. Plates clanked, silverware scraped, and the occasional burst of flame or telekinetic movement made the air crackle with energy. The banter between the members of the Brotherhood was sharp and often biting, but there was a sense of camaraderie underlying it all.

Avalanche bumped her table with his hip, and she startled, looking up at him. He grinned.

"You look happy," he teased, speaking quiet enough that only she could hear. "Now that Daddy's home." He reached and gave her ears a condescending pat. "You gonna go offer to be his cute little pup?"

Moxie's eyes narrowed. "Don't," she hissed, keeping her voice low. "You know he's not like that."

Avalanche leaned in closer, his smirk unwavering. "Oh, I know," he whispered. "But you are, aren't you? Maybe I could help you out."

Moxie's teeth ground together. "Don't you have better things to do?" she hissed.

SUMMARY^1: Moxie joins the others for breakfast, still nervous from the previous night's teasing. Magneto's presence comforts her, but Avalanche continues his provocative behavior, hinting at a potential romantic relationship between her and Magneto.

SUMMARY^2: In the Brotherhood's warehouse, Moxie, Avalanche, Toad, and Blob interact with growing tension. Moxie's crush on Magneto is revealed and teased by the others, leading to her embarrassment and retreat. The following morning, she overhears Magneto and joins them for breakfast, feeling both comforted by his presence and awkward due to the previous night's events.

Avalanche leaned in even closer, his breath hot against her cheek. "Maybe I'd like to do you," he murmured, his eyes flicking down to her chest before meeting hers again.

She fought hard not to react. He wanted a reaction, she knew. Anything she did or said would fuel his fire. Her options were either to ignore him, or go wild and beat the shit out of him... And she definitely wasn't going to do the latter in front of Magneto

"I'll pass," she said quietly.

Avalanche's smirk grew wider, but he didn't push further. "Your loss," he said, turning away. She felt his eyes on her back as she retreated to her spot in the corner.

Moxie's appetite had vanished, but she forced down a few bites of her breakfast. She knew she needed to keep her strength up. Being part of the Brotherhood of Mutants wasn't all fun and games; it was a serious commitment to their cause. And despite the teasing, she knew Avalanche and the others respected her skills.

She kept herself busy for the rest of the day, working hard in training and in her studies. She'd really made decent progress since joining the brotherhood.

Gambit led sparring practice that afternoon. When he paired Moxie to spar with Lance, of all people, she bit back a groan. Fate was a bitch.

She stood across the mat from him, the gym full of a dozen other pairs sparring to their best effort. She dropped into a crouch.

"No powers this time!" Gambit reminded the class. "Remember, this is strength alone."

SUMMARY^1: Avalanche makes an inappropriate remark to Moxie, which she dismisses. Despite the harassment, she focuses on her duties within the Brotherhood, maintaining her composure. During sparring practice, she's paired with Lance, a member she's not particularly fond of. Gambit enforces a rule of no powers, emphasizing physical strength.

Moxie and Lance circled each other, eyes locked. The tension from the previous night still hung heavy between them, but Moxie knew she had to focus on the task at hand. The room was a blur of grunts and thuds as the other mutants practiced their hand-to-hand combat, each trying to outdo the other.

With a sudden burst of speed, Lance lunged at her. She barely had time to react, her reflexes kicking in as she rolled out of the way.

"Is that all you've got?" she taunted, a fiery spark in her gold eyes.

Lance smirked, his aura crackling around him. "You want more?" He took a step closer, his movements deliberate.

Moxie's pulse quickened, but she didn't back down. "I can handle whatever you throw at me," she spat, trying to ignore the way his gaze lingered on her body.

Lance chuckled, his aura flaring. "Oh, I'm sure you can," he said, his voice thick with innuendo. He feigned a punch, and she dodged again, her eyes never leaving his. "But can you handle this?"

Without warning, he kicked out, aiming for her midsection. Moxie blocked it, the impact jolting up her arms. She stepped back, her eyes narrowing. "You think you're funny, don't you?"

Lance's smirk grew. "Just keeping things interesting," he said, his aura crackling with mischief. He took another swing, and she ducked, his fist glancing off her shoulder. She could feel the heat of his breath, and the way his eyes raked over her. It was infuriating, but she knew he was just trying to throw her off her game.

SUMMARY^1: During sparring, Moxie and Lance are tense due to the previous night's events. Lance attempts to provoke Moxie with his actions and words, but she remains focused and dodges his advances, showing her combat skills and resisting his psychological tactics.

"Why don't you focus on fighting and less on trying to get into my pants?" she snarled, throwing a punch of her own.

Lance's eyes lit up with amusement. "Why don't you focus on keeping your guard up, and maybe I'd have to try harder?" He ducked her swing and landed a light jab to her ribs, making her grunt.

Moxie's cheeks flushed with anger, and she could feel her concentration waver. His smugness was like a knife twisting in her gut. She launched herself at him again, but he was ready for her, blocking her every move with ease. His smirks grew wider with every hit she missed, and she could feel the other mutants' eyes on them, their whispers and snickers a low hum in the background.

Lance's movements grew bolder, his punches and kicks landing more frequently. She stumbled backward, barely catching herself on the ropes that lined the sparring mat. Her eyes searched for an opening, but every time she thought she had him, he'd slip away, his smirk growing more infuriating with each passing second.

And then it happened. In a blur of motion, Lance grabbed her wrist, twisting it painfully before flipping her over his shoulder. She landed hard on her back, the wind knocked out of her. Before she could react, he was on top of her, one hand around her throat, the other pinning her wrists above her head.

SUMMARY^1: Moxie confronts Lance about his inappropriate behavior, but it only fuels his smugness. He continues to push her buttons, landing successful hits during their spar. The situation escalates until Lance manages to overpower her, pinning her to the ground and leaving her momentarily stunned.

Moxie's eyes went wide, a mix of surprise and anger. She bucked her hips, trying to throw him off, but his weight was too much for her. His aura crackled and danced around them, a blue halo that made her fur stand on end.

"Do you yield?" Lance's grin was feral, his teeth flashing in the harsh gym lights.

Moxie snarled, furious, thrashing underneath him. She flashed her fangs. Her claws lengthened, but she couldn't reach him.

"I said, do you yield?" Lance's grip tightened, and she felt the first hint of his power pressing down on her, his aura crackling more intensely. His knee pressed between her legs. When she again tried to buck him off, the friction shot heat up through her core.

Her eyes searched his, looking for a way out of this embarrassing predicament. But instead of finding cruelty or amusement, she saw... something else. Something that made her heart race even faster. Desire. He was just as affected by their proximity as she was.

"Yield," he whispered, his voice low and husky. His hand around her throat was a gentle caress rather than a firm grip. "Come on, Mox. You're just embarrassing yourself."

He pressed his knee more firmly between her legs, rubbing. The whimper that left her drew a few glances their way.

The humiliation of being heard, of being seen, brought tears to her eyes. "I yield!" she snapped, so furious that her body shook violently. "I yield, so get the fuck off me!"

SUMMARY^1: Moxie finds herself overpowered by Lance, and despite her initial anger, she recognizes the desire in his eyes. However, the public nature of their interaction and his continued provocation cause her great embarrassment. She ultimately yields to end the spar, feeling both humiliated and shaken by the encounter.

Lance chuckled, his eyes never leaving hers. He let go of her throat and wrists, but didn't move his knee, keeping her pinned. "Is that any way to talk to me?" He leaned in closer, his aura pulsing with a strange intensity.

Moxie felt a cold sweat break out on her forehead. Her heart was racing so fast she was sure it was going to burst out of her chest. Her chest felt tight, and she couldn't breathe. Panic, she realized with a sinking feeling. It was happening again.

Her eyes darted around the room, trying to find something to focus on. The other mutants sparring, the distant sound of Gambit's whistle, the smell of sweat and rubber from the mats. But it was all too much. The room was spinning, closing in on her.

Her hands covered her face. She was hyperventilating, her chest compressing until she thought she was sure to die. "Get of me, please get off me, please, please, please," she gasped, sick with panic.

The weight lifted and she felt his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, hey, are you okay?" Lance's voice was surprisingly gentle. Concerned.

But she couldn't answer, couldn't breathe. Couldn't stop the panic.

And then, suddenly, the pressure on her chest lifted. The world swam back into focus. Gambit's face hovered over hers, his eyes narrowed in concern. "Moxie, breathe with me," he instructed, his Cajun accent thick with urgency. "In... out... in... out..."

SUMMARY^1: Lance maintains his dominance over Moxie even after she yields, which triggers a panic attack. As she struggles to breathe, Gambit intervenes, offering comfort and guidance to help her through the overwhelming experience.

SUMMARY^2: At breakfast, Avalanche's teasing of Moxie's crush on Magneto persists. During a no-powers sparring session with Lance, Moxie's focus and skills are compromised by the tension from the night before. Lance provokes her, successfully landing hits and pinning her, causing her to yield. This leads to a humiliating moment and a panic attack, which Gambit notices and helps her manage.

Her chest heaved, but she tried to mimic his rhythm. The panic clung to her like a second skin, but she felt a glimmer of control return with each breath she took.

"Look at me, Moxie," Gambit's voice was firm but gentle. "In... out... keep going."

Her gold eyes, once full of fiery defiance, now searched his with desperation. She tried to follow his lead, her chest rising and falling in an erratic rhythm. The panic was still there, a live wire thrumming under her skin, but his calm presence helped to soothe it. The room grew less hazy, the sounds of the gym fading into the background.

She realized she was crying. Sobbing, actually. She barely knew Gambit, but here she was, bawling into his shoulder while he rubbed her back and guided her breathing.

"It's okay," he murmured, his voice soothing. "You're okay. Just breathe."

Moxie clung to Gambit's shirt, her nails digging into his fabric as she tried to control her breathing. The panic was slowly receding, leaving her feeling shaky and exposed. She hadn't had an attack like this in front of anyone in the Brotherhood before. The whispers around them grew quieter, the other mutants watching with a mix of curiosity and concern.

And then the shame hit.

Surging out of Gambit's hold, she transformed into another of her three forms; this one a small red fox.

She sprinted out of the training room on four desperate paws, seeking any exit out of the base.

SUMMARY^1: Gambit successfully helps Moxie regain control during her panic attack, offering a comforting presence. Overwhelmed by the experience, she transforms into a red fox and runs away from the training room, feeling a deep sense of shame for her vulnerability in front of the Brotherhood.

Moxie's thoughts were a tumultuous storm as she dashed down the cold, metal hallways, her small fox body weaving in and out of the shadows. She couldn't believe what had just happened. The humiliation was unbearable. The other mutants had seen her at her weakest, had heard her beg. It was a side of her she had worked so hard to keep hidden.

Finally, she found an exit, the heavy steel door leading to the cover of the woods. She pushed it open with a bang, the cool evening air washing over her, bringing with it the scent of pine and damp earth. The night was moonless, but her night-vision allowed her to navigate the dense foliage with ease. She didn't have a destination in mind; she just needed to escape, to run until she couldn't feel the sting of Lance's mocking smile or the weight of her own fear.

Her paws pattered against the soft ground, the rhythm of her breaths syncing with the rustle of leaves. The forest was alive with the whispers of nocturnal creatures, their eyes gleaming in the darkness as they watched her pass. Moxie felt a strange kinship with them, both predator and prey in this wild place. Her fox form was sleek and agile, the perfect embodiment of the fiery spirit that burned within her human heart.

-

Back at the base, Gambit approached Magneto with a furrowed brow, his usual cocky swagger replaced by a solemn gait. He found the leader in his study, surrounded by the glow of monitors and the hum of his magnetic technology.

SUMMARY^1: Moxie, humiliated by the panic attack, flees the training room as a red fox and finds refuge in the woods. Meanwhile, Gambit, concerned about her, seeks out Magneto in his study to discuss the incident.

"Boss," Gambit began, his voice tight. "Moxie ran away. We can't find her."

Magneto's head snapped up from his screens, his eyes narrowing. "What happened?"

Gambit took a deep breath. "It was during sparring. Avalanche was giving her a hard time, teasing her. Then she had a panic attack. She... transformed and bolted."

Magneto's expression grew stern. "A panic attack?"

Gambit nodded, his grip tightening on the back of his neck. "Yeah, she just... lost it. I tried to help, but she bolted out of the gym like she was on fire."

Magneto's gaze remained sharp on Gambit. "Do you know what triggered the attack?"

Gambit swallowed hard, his throat dry. "It was me," he admitted. "I paired her with Avalanche for sparring. I didn't realize he'd go so far with his teasing."

Magneto's gaze sharpened. "What did he say to her?"

Gambit winced, his heart heavy. "He was being... inappropriate. Suggestive. He got a knee between her legs and she couldn't handle it."

Magneto's eyes grew colder than the steel walls of the warehouse. He stood. "Moxie has a long history of being sexually abused," he said, voice cold. "Of course something like that would trigger her."

Gambit's eyes widened. "I didn't know," he whispered. "I... I should never have paired her with Avalanche. But they've been arguing for some time, and I thought they could work it out..."

SUMMARY^1: Gambit reports Moxie's panic attack and subsequent disappearance to Magneto, who is displeased to learn that Avalanche's teasing was the trigger. Gambit feels responsible for pairing them and is unaware of Moxie's history of sexual abuse, which explains her extreme reaction.

Magneto's expression softened, but his eyes remained stern. "It's not your fault," he said. "But we need to find her. She's vulnerable out there." He gestured to the screens, displaying various parts of the surrounding woods.

"I'll find her myself," he decided. "Victor and I. I need his nose. Take him to Moxie's room, first; offer him some laundry to sniff so he catches her scent. Then tell him to meet me at the entrance for the woods."

Without waiting for Gambit's reply, Magneto strode out of the room, his cape billowing behind him. Gambit nodded, feeling the weight of his mistake heavy on his shoulders. He knew Moxie had a past, but he had no idea it was so... so raw. He found the other students hovering outside the training room, their eyes wide with concern.

Gambit nodded solemnly, understanding the gravity of the situation. He knew he had to make it right. He headed to Moxie's room, where he found Victor, the Brotherhood's feral wolf-like mutant, sprawled out on her bed. Victor looked up at Gambit with his piercing yellow eyes, sensing the tension in the air.

"Victor," Gambit said, his voice low and serious. "We need your help. Moxie's gone missing."

The wolf-mutant's ears perked up at the mention of her name. He leaped off the bed, his fur bristling. Gambit quickly explained the situation, his voice tight with urgency.

"You need to track her scent," Gambit instructed, tossing a piece of Moxie's clothing at Victor. "Meet Magneto at the woods entrance. We need to find her before she gets hurt."

Victor's eyes flashed with understanding, and he took the scrap of fabric in his mouth, his teeth tearing at it as he inhaled deeply. The fabric was imbued with Moxie's unique scent—a blend of fear, anger, and a hint of the sweetness that always lingered around her. He dropped the fabric and transformed into his full wolf-like form, his eyes glowing with a fierce determination that made Gambit's heart swell with hope.

Leaving Gambit behind at the base, Victor padded to where Magneto waited. He glanced at his boss, and then set off, sniffing for the fox's trail.

The night was alive with scents, but Victor's heightened sense of smell quickly honed in on Moxie's. The trail was faint, but it was there—a mix of fear and fury that painted a clear picture of her emotional state.

Magneto followed closely, his eyes scanning the woods with the precision of a hawk. Despite his anger at Avalanche's behavior, his main concern was for the young mutant who had stumbled into their lives. He knew she had been through hell and had found refuge with them. This was supposed to be her sanctuary, not a place to relive her nightmares.

The woods were not his domain; the woods belonged to creatures like Moxie and Victor. He trusted his companion to find the fox... And find her he did. Springing forward, he sprinted away, paws silent in the underbrush.

Magneto heard a scuffle, a yelp. A growl.

Minutes later, Victor returned to him, his jaws clamped gently around his trembling prize.

"Here," Victor rumbled, dropping the fox at Magneto's feet.

Moxie stared up at Magneto in terror, her fur puffed to twice its size. She'd reverted back to an animal mindset, likely forgetting herself, and him.

"Easy," Magneto soothed, his voice calm but firm. He crouched beside her.

She looked around for escape, but with Victor at her back and Erik before her, there was none. She let out a low, keening whimper.

"It's alright, Moxie," Magneto murmured, his hand reaching out to her. "You're safe."

He stroked her, cupping her head, rubbing at her ears. Perhaps his scent was reaching her, perhaps his gentle touch. Some of her terror faded; enough for her to lay, panting and docile, at his feet.

"Shift back," he urged, his voice still soft.

"I don't want to," she whispered. Another good sign, if she remembered speech.

Magneto nodded solemnly. "I know. But we need to talk. And I need to make sure you're okay."

She sat up on her haunches, and then transformed. Fur receded, limbs lengthened, muzzle shortened into mouth and nose. In under a minute, a naked girl sat cringing and ashamed where a fox had been before.

"I'm sorry, sir," Moxie whispered, her head hanging.

Magneto's expression was stern. "You have nothing to apologize for," he said firmly.

Moxie's eyes darted to his, surprised. "But... I lost control," she whispered.

"And you will regain it," Magneto assured her, his tone unyielding. "We all have moments of weakness."

He unbuckled the cape at his throat, slinging it over her trembling body. It was warm from his skin, and smelled faintly of metal and the cologne he always wore. She curled into it, feeling a strange comfort from the fabric.

Victor nosed at her back. With his gentle encouragement, she climbed onto the massive wolf, clinging to his back like she would a horse.

"I'll lead," Magneto said, his hand on Victor's neck. "You stay close."

Victor nodded, and the two set off through the woods. The silence was punctuated only by the occasional rustle of leaves and the soft thud of the wolf's paws. Moxie clung to Victor's back, the warmth of his fur and the steady beat of his heart beneath her offering a small measure of comfort.

As they approached the warehouse, the lights grew brighter, casting a stark contrast to the comforting darkness of the woods. Moxie felt a knot form in her stomach. She didn't want to face the others, didn't want to deal with the questions and the pity. But she knew she had to.

To her surprise, Magneto led the two of them to a private entrance; one she hadn't known about. It led straight to Magneto's chambers.

She wouldn't have to face everyone, after all. Not tonight.

Magneto's chambers were dimly lit, the only light coming from a single lamp in the corner. It cast long shadows across the floor, making the room feel even larger than it was. The walls were lined with bookshelves, filled with ancient tomes and artifacts from his past. The air was thick with the scent of leather and oak, a stark contrast to the earthy smells of the forest.

Victor waited for Moxie to dismount before resuming his usual form. Emotional things were not his forte, and he gave both an awkward nod.

"I'll just. Go back to my post," he grunted, and let himself out.

The door closed with a soft click, leaving Moxie and Magneto alone.

Clutching the cape around herself, Moxie felt sick with shame, with self loathing. "I'm sorry to cause so much trouble," she said. "I... I shouldn't have run away like that."

Magneto turned to face her, his eyes piercing through the shadows. "You did what you had to do to survive," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Moxie's throat tightened. "But I can't keep doing this," she said, her voice small. "I can't keep losing control like this."

Magneto's gaze softened. "You're stronger than you know," he assured her. "And we'll work on it together."

She curled in his cape, her face in her knees. Tears began to fall.

He remained crouched beside her, his hand warm on jer back.

"Gambit told me that Avalanche... Frightened you," he said, his words careful.

Moxie nodded, not looking up. "He and the guys have been such jerks lately." She held her tail on her tap, fingers weaving through the fur for comfort. "But I should've just ignored it."

Magneto's grip on her shoulder tightened slightly. "No," he said firmly. "You should not have to ignore it. This is your home, and you should feel safe here."

Moxie looked up at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "It's just what boys do. They tease, right?"

Magneto's expression grew stern. "Which boys, Moxie? What have they been saying?"

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I'm not a snitch," she mumbled.

"You're not a snitch," Magneto agreed. "You're a survivor." His voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. "And here, in the Brotherhood, we look out for each other. Tell me what happened."

She buried her face in her tail. Hauntingly, she began. "Toad and Blob... But mostly Avalanche. They just... Say stuff, sometimes."

"What kind of stuff?" Magneto's voice was like a tight coil.

She shook her head, her blush blooming anew. "I can't tell you."

Magneto's expression was thunderous. "You can and you will," he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We cannot protect you if we do not know what is happening."

Her eyes squeezed shut. "But it's about you."

Magneto's hand froze on her shoulder. "Me?"

Moxie's voice was a whisper. "They say I have... feelings for you. And they tease me about it. They make jokes, say that I'm trying to get into your pants. They make it sound so gross."

She was shaking now, her entire body trembling under the weight of her words. "And then today, with Lance..."

Magneto's eyes grew colder than the steel he so often manipulated. "Tell me," he said, his voice low and deadly.

Moxie took a deep breath. "Lance... He said things about me and you. He kept touching me during sparring. And he... Was like. Rubbing... Me. And it felt good, but I hated it, and he wouldn't get up..."

Her words trailed off as she tried to compose herself.

Magneto's expression was a storm of emotions. "They've gone too far," he murmured, his voice dangerously calm.

Moxie looked up at him, her eyes wide. "It's my fault," she said quickly. "I shouldn't have let it get to me."

Magneto's expression didn't waver. "It's not your fault," he said firmly. "You're not to blame for their lack of respect."

He stood, his cape billowing around him like a dark cloud. "You're going to stay here tonight," he said. "I'll handle Avalanche and the others."

Moxie's eyes went wide. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to make sure they understand the gravity of their actions," Magneto said, his voice cold. "And that you are not to be trifled with."

His hand was gentle on her head, smoothing her hair back. "You wait here," he said softly. "I'll be back shortly. I'm trusting you not to run away again."

Moxie nodded, feeling a spark of hope despite her fear. Magneto had never been anything but kind to her, never made her feel less than she was. If he said he would handle it, she had to believe him.

He strode from his chambers, but he didn't have to go far. Just outside waited the Avalanche, looking pale and contrite.

Magneto stood, regarding him, silent.

The Avalanche could not meet his gaze. "I heard Victor tell Gambit," he said quietly. "That... That you'd found Moxie. Is she okay?"

Magneto's eyes were like chips of ice. "For now," he said, his voice tight. "But she shouldn't have had to run. She shouldn't have felt so unsafe that she felt the need to hide from us."

Lance's gaze dropped to the floor. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to... I didn't know."

Magneto's eyes bore into him. "You didn't know," he repeated. "And yet you felt entitled to treat her with such disrespect."

"I just." He fidgeted. He was a large boy, handsome. "I just... She's always looking at you, sir. I only wanted-"

Magneto cut him off with a sharp gesture. "You wanted what?" His voice was like a whip crack.

"I wanted her to look at me!" Lance turned his dark eyes onto him. "It's always you, with her. It's like nobody else exists. But today, for a second... For a second, she finally saw me."

Magneto's expression was like a shutter slammed shut. "You think this is about attention?" he spat. "You think you can toy with a traumatized girl to satisfy your own ego?"

"How was I supposed to know she was... Traumatized, or whatever?! She always acts tough."

Magneto's voice was a cold whisper. "Ignorance is no excuse for cruelty," he said, his grip tightening on the banister. "You're part of this family. You're supposed to protect each other, not hurt each other."

Lance looked up at him, his eyes wide. "But I didn't mean to hurt her," he protested. "I didn't want... That. I just wanted..."

"You just wanted what?" Magneto's voice was like steel. "To make her uncomfortable? To push her boundaries? To scare her?"

"I wanted her to... Like me. Or something." Lance's face went red.

"And you thought that by pushing her like that, you would make her feel something for you?" Magneto's voice was a cold sneer. "You're a fool."

"It... It worked, though!" He was growing defensive. "She finally saw me. And she... She acted like it felt good." His blush grew. "I thought, maybe..."

Magneto's expression was unforgiving. "You thought wrong," he said coldly. "Her response is not an invitation, nor is it a measure of her feelings for you. It's a survival mechanism."

He saw the regret in Lance's eyes. The embarrassment, the guilt. He really was only a teenager, and he'd been raised without love; a foster boy, surrounded by boys.

"I'm sorry," Lance whispered. "I didn't mean it like that."

Magneto's gaze softened slightly. "I know," he said. "But you need to understand the power of your words and actions. You need to be better."

Lance nodded, his head bowed. "I do," he murmured. "I'll make it right."

Magneto's gaze was unyielding. "You will," he said firmly. "Start by understanding the gravity of your actions." He paused, his eyes boring into Lance. "And by speaking to her tomorrow, when she's ready. Apologize sincerely and accept whatever she says."

There was pain in Lance's eyes, when he dared to meet Magneto's gaze. "Does she hate me?"

Magneto's expression softened slightly. "I don't know what she feels," he said. "But I do know she's scared. And hurt."

"Can I see her?" He glanced at Magneto's door. "Please? I'm... Fuck. I need to... I have to do something. I don't know what."

Magneto's eyes searched his. "Tomorrow," he said finally. "When she's ready. I'll send for you."

Lance nodded, defeat etched into his features. "Thank you," he murmured. "Sir, I'm. I'm sorry."

Magneto said nothing, but his posture was less severe. He knew the boy didn't fully understand what he'd done, but he also knew that true change came from within. And Lance had a long way to go.

Moxie sat in the quiet of his chambers, her heart racing. She could hear muffled voices outside, but she couldn't make out the words. She hoped it was just Victor, checking in, but she knew it was likely the others had heard about her breakdown. She felt exposed, vulnerable in a way she hadn't in years.

The door opened, and Magneto returned. His eyes searched hers, looking for something. Understanding, perhaps. "They're gone," he said, his voice gentle. "For now, you're safe here."

Moxie nodded, her throat tight. "Thank you," she whispered.

He reached for her, and she allowed him to pull her to her feet. She rested her face in his chest, clutching at his sleeve.

"I love you," she whispered, tears in her eyes. "I love you so much. There's... There's nobody like you."

Magneto's arms tightened around her. "I care for you, Moxie," he said, his voice thick. "You know that."

Moxie nodded into his chest, feeling the warmth of his embrace. "But they don't," she whispered. "They don't know what you're like. They just see the leader, the scary guy with the metal powers. And they think I'm... I don't know. They make it gross, and dirty, and they call me your pet, and it's not like that!"

Magneto's hand stroked her hair, soothing her. "I know," he murmured. "It's not like that."

Moxie pulled away, sniffling. "But it's true," she said, her voice shaky. "I do love you. I can't help it."

Magneto's expression was unreadable. "Moxie," he began, his voice heavy. "Your feelings are your own. But you must understand-"

"I'm not... Asking anything from you," she insists. "I don't expect anything. I know you can't like me back. I just like being with you."

Magneto's eyes searched hers, and he sighed. "Moxie, you are more than just a student to me," he said, his voice gruff. "But we are in a position of power over you. It is not right for me to encourage your feelings."

Moxie's eyes searched his, hopeful. "But what if I don't care about that?" she whispered. "What if I just want to be with you?"

Magneto's hand cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing away a tear. "You're young, Moxie," he said gently. "You're going to feel a lot of things in your life. But we have a responsibility to each other as mentor and student."

She leaned into his palm, her face reddening. She sighed. "I'm sorry, sir."

Magneto's expression was pained. "Don't apologize for your feelings," he said softly. "But we need to be careful."

Moxie nodded, her eyes downcast. "I know," she whispered. "But I can't help it."

Magneto's thumb continued to caress her cheek, and for a moment, she thought she felt something shift in the air. But then he stepped back, his expression returning to one of stoicism. "You can," he said firmly. "And you will. For now, let's focus on getting you some rest."

She nodded, wrapping his cape more tightly around herself. He guided her to his bed, waiting for her to climb in.

"You're safe here," he repeated, his voice firm. He pulled the blankets up to her chin.

Moxie nodded, feeling a warmth spread through her chest at his words. It was strange, being so close to him like this. She felt safe, but also... something else. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

[frankmillerturnonyourlocation]

Spotify Wrapped Prompt #34

It reaches in and tears your flesh apart as ice cold hands rip into your heart/That’s if you’ve still got one that’s left inside that cave you call a chest

Your dreams have been hurting you again.

When you were small, you would wake exhausted, throat raw from screaming pleas for help that never reached your father's ears, never left your lips at all. The terrible witch that sat on your chest and stared into your eyes for hours, for days, would crush your lungs and steal your breath and paralyze you with fear. When bedtime would arrive and you would cling to your father's leg, sobbing into his slacks about her horrible smile, he would push back your bangs, kiss your forehead, and assure you that the witch lived only in your own head: a creative mind waking before the body, that's all it is, little one, no harm to you. Here, son, let me find something for you to put under your pillow tonight.

The sleep paralysis ended soon after your father gifted you that round river stone with the foreign character carved into it. When you realized that you had lost the rock– whether it had slipped down between the bed frame and the wall and tumbled into a dark, unreachable corner under the bed or disappeared from this world entirely– you were so ashamed that you never breathed a word of it to your father.

The witch would come and go.

Sometimes she stood in the corner of your room, distant, hardly watching you. Sometimes she knelt on your neck, her forehead pressed against yours. Some nights she made you feel as though a thousand pins were pricking your lungs; some nights left no imprint at all. You would see her every night for a month and then receive no visit for five.

Recently, though, she's come up with a new trick, something nasty. No matter if you're wearing a nightshirt or not– she pulls it up to your chin, or unbuttons it with fleshy, rotting fingers– the witch reaches in and opens your chest right up. She never starts in the center; usually she starts at the bottom. She'll wrap a hand around one of your lower ribs and snap it right off.

Once she's broken one, she'll place it off to the side, and you watch the broken fragment of bone slide off of the edge of your bed to land with a clink on the floor. Then she begins pulling, pushing, twisting, snapping the next one up; each rib requires a little more force, a little more time, a little more of her rocking-back-and-forth motion to which you've grown so accustomed. It aches a little more, each time, in your chest and in your teeth.

Some nights, you wake before she can dig a suitable hole. But most of the time, you keep her company when she slides her hands deep into the freshly-opened cavity, unable to watch but hearing clearly each squish of viscera, every scrape of her decaying fingernails against sinew or bone.

When she retrieves her prize and holds it aloft, though, it doesn't hurt. Your heart only feels cold.

[chaoticallyfragmentary]

I think I’ve been looking for you

Hello! This is a spin-off of my previous Dabi x Reader post. Both Dabi and Reader regain memories of their previous lives in the bnha universe. As indicated, this is a reincarnation imagine, so reader’s death will be discussed and Dabi’s dissonance from who he thinks he’s supposed to be. It deals with grief, so if you are not in a mental headspace to read it, please put yourself first. Slight angst but overall it has a happy/hopeful ending because this lil meow meow deserves it all. Some LoV found family shenanigans at the end!

(Requests are open and welcome. It’s exam season now but as soon as I’m finished with it, I’ll work on them. So, um whispers, send me some?)

Sometimes, you don’t think you’re human.

On days that are hard, and nights that are longer, you think you are something old, something haunted by the echoes of years past.

It makes no sense, admittedly. You are sinew and bone but some days, you feel like stardust and magic.

Sometimes, you ache. A beast roars in the awning crevices of your heart, incessantly clawing at your ribs, ripping everything to shreds, yearning for something, gagging on it, really. Hazy delusions, memories assaulting you like half forgotten hallucinations born in the dark. Sometimes, your grief sleeps with you on your bed, it tears at your skin like barbs, keeping you from sleeping.

Sometimes, you remember feeling trapped in your own body in someone else’s bedroom, staring up at someone else’s ceiling, wishing, for once your body could do the things it was supposed to, none of your partners, if you could call them that ever felt right, not freckles not sun-kissed skin, neither women, nor men, a sense of wrongness so profound you couldn’t give yourself to them freely, always withholding, always flighty.

Sometimes-

“Lets go!”

Your mouth purses and twists in a brief grimace at Himiko’s enthusiasm but you follow along.

She rolls her eyes at you, blond hair swaying as she talks animatedly about her recent crush. Gods, you hope, for her sake, this one isn’t as bad as the last. “-Jin kun was like—” she continues, sipping a cup filled with a disgustingly sweet concoction, just as she preferred. You love her, you do but oh boy could she eat tooth rotting sweets. You suppress a full body shudder as you make appropriate noises to indicate you were listening.

You aren’t, not really.

Sometimes, you think you are—

You are looking aimlessly around when your eye snags on someone in a corner, half lidded eyes looking around and suddenly he is there.

You look at him, the distance between you a physical ache but you don’t move. His eyes flicker to you sharply, like he knew you were there all along.

You look at him, electric blue eyes and that stupid, stupid smirk (no staples and no hunch of his spine, haunted by grief).

You start to remember, the touch of his hands and the tenor of his voice, your heart hammering a painful beat against your breastbone, fingers twitching, reaching for him, an instinct you cannot fathom.

You want to run to him, want to cry and rage, want to kiss him, tongue and teeth, want to crawl inside him, you want and you want, a want that burns like fire, blue like his, a want that lights you up from inside out, reducing you to smoldering remains and ash.

Some days, Touya doesn’t think he’s human. He thinks he’s missing half his soul.

Sometimes, he looks at his father, a perfectly acceptable one at that and remembers begging. He remembers begging, screaming, writhing and burning. Remembers him spitting horrible threats at his youngest brother, remembers the world burning and remembers it being blue.

He has lost something, someone. He knows he has, something missing since he was too young to realize there was anything to miss. It doesn’t make any sense, feeling like his name was wrong wrong wrong, that he was called something else, a name he chose, a name that was his own, not what that bastard chose. Sometimes, he takes a second too long to react when people call him.

But then he dreams, cigarette smoke mingling with spring, a laugh frozen in time. He aches with the remembrance that he needed someone as he needed air, remembers gentle hands and fond exasperation, he remembers glorious smiles and rough kisses, laughing mouth pressed to his, remembers moonlit dances and soft whimpers, desperate hands and frantic pleading, a love so bright and beautiful.

The day he dreams about finding a body, cold lifeless one, doused in the silence left by an aborted scream, the smell of daffodils, watching your mouth stretched open, sound held hostage by death, the ring he gave you glinting in the sun, a little thing he’d bought with his own money, his legs give away, forcing him awake with ash lingering on his tongue, soot on his hands and fire in his bones.

Someone was next to him

Someone was screaming,

howling, a sound filled with so much devastation and grief, a sound so cataclysmic like their world was imploding.

“—uya, Touya, baby it’s okay, shh it was just a dream, it’s okay” his mother soothes him and for the first time in a long, long while, Touya Dabi bawls in his mother’s arms.

A strangled hiccup sneaks through your throat, breaking into a sob as knowledge comes to you just as you feel your chest tighten, ribs squeezed into rubble. Himiko looks at you. “Are you okay? Oh, that is one of the Todoroki kids.” she replies and oh, his blue eyes widen and then your feet move without your permission. You follow, the howling thing in you finally quieting.

He doesn’t look the same, he is taller, eyes a lighter shade of blue, hair no longer the white that you remember, skin a bit lighter, but it is him. You would know him in death, at the end of the world.

A name you remember, his name. A name you cannot know but do, with impossible certainty. The sky is blue, grass is green and he is your “Dabi” you breathe. You see the recognition mirrored in his face, a face that you’ve never seen before, a face you know better than your own.

“Hey princess, I think I was looking for you.“

You giggle and it’s his favorite sound.

He smiles and oh, what a beauty it is.

He opens his arms and you are falling into him, his arms around you, squeezing so tight, fingers digging into skin, both of you blubbering apologies and I love you’s, reassurances that you are alive, you are here, and I’m here, it’s okay love and oh gods, you think, thank you.

Himiko stands off to the side, gobsmacked, whipping up her phone and sending a pick of you two, texting the groupchat furiously, with Tomu-chan and the others and she is sure Kurogiri has to physically restrain Tomu-chan from committing murder, yelling profanities, how dare he touch you?! while Compress and Magne sis watch the drama unfold, sipping tea. She loves her family.