#I WAS KNOCKING OUT PANELS LEFT AND RIGHT LAST TIME I WORKED ON THIS

[deathbringerdragon]

I SWEAR TO FUCK THIS SINGLE PANEL IS THE HARDEST FUCKING THING-

I GO A WEEK AND A HALF WITHOUT WORKING ON THE COMIC AND SUDDENLY I AM STRUGGLING FOR MY LIFE TO DRAW IT- WHAT

WHY

HOW

W H Y

[satorusugurugurl]

Blood and Chocolate

Summary: You spent the entire night planning a perfect Halloween evening with your best friend. but when he says he has to cancel because his vampire instincts are telling you he needs to feed, you offer to be his personal blood bag for the evening!

Pairing: Geto Suguru x AFAB!Reader

Warning: language, blood drinking, vampires, neck play!sex, unprotected sex, creampie

Word Count: 3.9K

A/N: Kinktober day seven: Vampire! I have a major thing for neck kisses so this was amazing to write! (I’m also slut for vampire books)

You needed to make sure everything was absolutely perfect for tonight. Jumping up and down to ease the nerves that seemed to keep crawling over your skin as you looked around your bedroom. Your roommates were downstairs, handing out candy to trick-or-treaters so they would be busy for most of the night, giving you and your best friend, Geto Suguru, the perfect opportunity to spend one-on-one time together. Life has been so busy lately between work and your lifestyle. It felt like it’s been too long since you last saw your best friend.

In reality, it has just been a few days ago, but that had been in passing when he came to drop off a coffee for you at work. That short interaction wasn’t enough to satisfy the hunger. You felt deep inside of your belly for him.

So you poised a plan to have him in your grasp. Everything was going to go perfectly tonight. You had lots of snacks, candy, and classic horror movies to watch. You just wished the night would come sooner so your vampire best friend could show up.

And no, you didn’t call him a vampire just because he wore dark clothes and came out mostly at night. Suguru was a legit vampire while you were a human. Vampires and humans had coexisted for decades, and while you were disappointed you never got your fangs, you were ecstatic to be friends with one!

He looked so cool with his sharp canines and flawless skin. His hair was always so shiny and pretty. And his eyes—ugh! His eyes were perfection!

Swirls of vibrant violet crossed your mind as you hummed on your bed. Thinking about sitting on his lap, watching a movie while he trailed kisses down your neck. His fangs would just graze your skin, enough to make you shiver to make you want more. Those thoughts had you squirming as heat pooled between your legs.

Okay, maybe you saw him more than just your best friend.

While You readjusted the pillows for what seemed like a million times, there was a tapping sound at your window. Turning your gaze towards it, you found yourself staring into the pools of lavender haze. Suguru grinned, knocking on your window panel again as you slowly approached it and opened it for him.

“Hi, " he greeted, his eyes taking in your very short jack-o-lantern shorts and tank top, which left little to his imagination.

“Hi there.” you learned slightly out of the window, smiling down at him.”I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” He drew in closer towards you. “Are you going to meet me yet, or let me sit on the roof all night?”

Vampire law stated that a vampire could only enter her house with an invitation. “Please come in.” Inside of you, that is! Ignoring your intrusive thoughts about saying that out loud, you stepped back, allowing him to climb over the window and into your bedroom.

“Where are your roommates?” He asked, kicking off his shoes and tossing his jacket to the side, revealing a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants.

“Downstairs handing out candy this year. So don’t get any funny ideas of taking advantage of me.” You both laughed as you crawled onto your bed, focusing on John Carpenter's Halloween.

“Me take advantage of you? No way.”

You knew he was teasing you and that he didn’t mean the sarcasm to come out in his voice as he spoke. But he would take advantage of you. You down on the mattress before making love to you. But those thoughts were reserved for you and your handy dandy vibrator after he left. Right now, all that mattered was snuggling into his musky or the smell and enjoying a long evening together.

“Oh, by the way, I’m gonna have to leave early tonight.”

Your thoughts of the evening you had planned went out the window. “What?! Why?! " You focused all your attention on him and him alone, not caring about the movie playing in the background.

“I’ve been a bit stressed lately, so I’m feeling ‘thirsty.’ I’m gonna need to feed. So I’m gonna have to leave early to make sure I get a good feeding in before tomorrow.”

You frowned, sticking your bottom lip out as you thought about all the preparations you had made for this night together. “So you’re ditching me for an IV bag full of blood?” He scoffed, wrapping an arm around you and drawing you in to ruffle your hair.

“I’m not ditching you; I just feel a bit weak and need to feed. And candy isn’t gonna cut it this time. I need to drink some blood.”

“Then why not just drink mine?”

He blinked, turning his attention towards you two, flabbergasted to speak. “Huh?” For just a second, he thought you might be joking with him. “You’re fucking with me, right?” He cocked an eyebrow as he tried to decipher if you were being serious or not.

“No, I’m serious! I went through all the planning to make tonight, and you’re just gonna leave me because you’re hungry for some blood?!” You tilted your head to the side, exposing your neck. “Just drink from me. I don’t mind sharing.”

To be honest, you were expecting Suguru out refuse your proposition. You weren’t expecting him to go deathly silent as he stared at your racing pulse in your neck. Looking at how pretty your neck looked, how fast your heart was racing, and how good you smelt left his throat burning with thirst. He always had a crush on you. But he didn’t wanna hurt you so he had never even thought about asking if you would share just a little bit of blood with him..

But if you were offering it up to him? That was a bit of a different story.

“Are you sure?”

He asked as he scooted across the bed closer to you, wrapping an arm around your waist, pulling you into his side. “Yeah.” You swallowed your mouth to dry almost to speak. “Please don’t go. I want you to stay. Please, Sugu~” There was no way in hell he could deny your cute little pleading.

Before you even had a chance to plead your case further, Suguru pulled you onto his lap, forcing you to straddle his hips, saying your face met his. The violet eyes shimmered with bloodlust as you wrapped your arms around his neck to steady yourself. He moved some of your hair back, giving him full access to your neck. His caress was gentle and sweet, and his eyes looked up, meeting yours. it was

It wasn’t like you were looking into the eyes of a predator; there was much more to it than that. This was a deeper, more profound step into your relationship. It was like a bond of trust was being made—one that screamed at you. You trusted him, and he trusted you just as much.

“It might sting a little, but I promise it’ll feel good for you just as much as it’ll feel good for me.”

“Okay, I trust you.”

Suguru started gently, pressing kisses to your collarbone, sliding up to the crook of your neck where his tongue slowly darted out, licking your pulse. That goosebumps rose over your arms as he tightened his arms, pulling closer against him. He hadn’t even bitten you yet. You were already panting in pure anticipation of what was to come.

He didn’t even hesitate before he synced his things into your neck. The stinging was fast and sudden but quickly passed as his saliva sent endorphins running through you. You shivered as a soft moan escaped your lips as you felt him slowly pulling your blood out of your neck. As he did, the sweet taste of wild berries and the only thing he could describe as the milky wave flooded his mouth. It was so lovely. Addicting. And all of it was you.

He snarled and pulled more of your blood out of your body and into his mouth. The sensation was strange at first, but it felt so good. It had you slowly rolling your hips against him as he tightened his grip on your waist. This was a new experience for both of you, something purely erotic and animalistic.

The closest thing you had done to something like this before was donating blood to a vampire bank. But you had never allowed another vampire to bite you, to feed off of you directly. Suguru never drank from another person before. Sticking strictly to blood bank bags or blood tablets he sometimes took.

This was something more, something new and different. And it was something both of you could get used to if it was with each other. Suguru never wanted another vampire to feast on you, and you never wanted Suguru to drink from any other person. This supposedly one-time deal was definitely not going to be a one-time deal. If either of you had it, you would do this every time together.

Suguru was losing himself to the list as he felt you rolling your hips faster and harder, chasing something, anything that allowed you to feel more of him!

That was when he broke the contrast, panting harshly as he swallowed down precious air. You looked dazed as you stared down at him, slightly confused as he groaned, resisting every urge to flip you over and fuck you into the mattress. Seeing him hold himself back was disappointing; you desperately wanted more of him.

“Why did you stop?” You asked, grabbing some of his hair and allowing the strands to fall through your fingers as he licked his lips.

“I-I was losing control, and I don't want to ruin anything between us.”

“You wouldn't. I think we're a bit too far gone for that, wouldn't you say?”

Suguru glanced down at his sweats. His erwcrip. Strained against the fabric, begging to be let free. While you squirmed slightly, trying to find some friction to tease your clit. The inside of your shorts were soaked, and you wanted to do nothing more than strip out and take care.

“Oooor we give ourselves three options.”

“Three options?”

“One, we can forget this,” you motioned toward the two puncture marks on your neck. “Never happened.” he groaned, wrapping his arm around you tighter, fangs grazing over your still-bleeding wound. “Two, we can lay in bed watching these classic horror movies.” This time, he shrugged slightly, seeming okay with that.

“As long as you let me taste your blood a little more, I’m okay with that.” His tongue sent shivers down your spine. “You taste so good~ like the sweetest wine mixed with starlight.”

Fuuuck, it wasn’t fair when he talked like that! It was now or never that you needed to get yourself out of your friend zone, or you would be stuck there as a permanent resident. “Or,” you pushed yourself back against his crotch, finding his throbbing cock poking you in the ass, “You can stop sucking my blood long enough to fuck me.”

Suguru’s head snapped up, no longer dazed by your sweet blood, “You want me to fuck you?” You weren’t sure how he was going to react at first. There had been a lot of teasing and flirting tonight (Along with blood drinking) but asking your best friend to fuck you was a completely different story. But with much relief, he smirked against your neck, pressing a kiss against your broken skin, “Are you sure about that? Do you want me to use you as my blood bag while I fuck that pretty pussy of yours?”

“Ooh fuck me,” you whined, rocking your hips down. “Yes, yeah, I want you. I’ve wanted you for so long!”

“Fucking finally!” he growled, sinking his things into your skin, drinking more blood as he grabbed both sides of your hips, making your rock hard against him.

“Suguru,” you cried out, grinding down on his crotch, “you’re so fucking hot.” you turned around, pushing his swear pants down, “You’re so hot and hard and fuck, I want you so goddamn bad!” He growled against your neck, kissing it as took his massive thick cock into your hand, stroking it gently.

Feeling your pretty hand wrapped around his length, Suguru pulled away from your neck. He tilted his head back, moaning your name as you stroked him a bit faster. Narrowed violet Eyes met yours as he gritted his teeth, fangs gleaming in the LED lights around your ceiling. Before he grabbed your wrist, he stopped you mid-stroke.

“Are you trying to make me cum already?”

“That’s the idea, Sugu,” he scoffed a,s he reached down, rubbing your swollen clit through your shorts, “God, Suguru,” you whispered, dropping your head onto his shoulder.

“Yes, Princess?” he pulled you flush against his chest, rocking your faster against his cock.

You weren't sure your dizziness was caused by the blood he had taken from you or by how horny you were. But you managed to push past that initial as you pressed the palms of your hands against his bare chest, as his words from earlier flooded your mind. “You said you were feeling weak, so let me take care of you.” You Whispered in a sultry voice as you pulled your shorts down, hovering over his cock, “So sit back and relax.”

You grabbed him by the base of his cock; please define it as lubricated by the amount of pre-cum he was leaking. Your best friend watched as you slowly lowered yourself on him, moaning at the sensation of him stretching and filling you. As soon as he was ultimately inside of you, he growled once you began rocking your hips.

You’re so wet and aroused by the situation, And you look so good, rocking back and forth, bouncing up and down on him. Suguru couldn’t help but moan as he grabbed your hips, rocking you a bit faster as he focused solely on you with the nearly glowing violet eyes. Your wanton moans, whimpers, and cries of pleasure were slipping out of your mouth as the head of his cock brushed against your g-spot.

“Suguru,” You cried out, gasping as his fangs sunk into the other side of your neck. You shuttered, listening to him greedily gulp as you felt him drawing your blood into his mouth. he didn’t mind allowing him to drink as much as he wanted before you were grabbing his hands, resting them against your breasts, “Here, touch me here!” You begged as a deep gut groan sounded from in his side, his chest as his large hands groped and massaged your breasts, thumbs brushing against your nipples as you found yourself bouncing faster, “Just like that, oh God, baby.”

As much fun as he was having to watch you lose yourself in the pleasure, Suguru decided he wouldn’t let you have all the fun. He began thrusting up in time with your bounces, slamming harder into your g-spot as his hands continued to grope at your breasts.

Somehow, he managed to detach his lips from your neck. Crimson slowly seeped out the corner of his mouth, staining his lip before his tongue darted, laughing it up. “Princess, fuck yeah, you’re so wet.” the bloodlust was finally getting to him. The warmth and taste of you coated his tongue as he sat up, wrapping one of his toned muscular arms around your waist while the other abandoned your breasts to tangle in your hair, pulling you in for another passionate kiss.

Your tongues moved against each other as Suguru continued thrusting up into your tight, wet cunt. He was eager to make you cum, to send you over the edge as a thank you for sharing with him. But he also didn’t want this to be the only time you guys did this. He wanted to ruin you for any other man, woman, or anyone else. Geto Suguru, your best friend, wanted you and you alone. No other woman could compare to your radiant beauty, your seductive body, and his pure attraction to you.

Thoughts like that caused him to lose control as he focused his burning gaze on you. You were moaning into his mouth, rocking your hips and messy, needing thrusts. Grinding your clit against him eagerly, drawing him into your beauty as if you were a siren at sea. Suguru broke the kiss, pulling back as violet eyes focused on you as they looked you over before reattaching his lips to the wounds he had left in the wake of his drinking session. You lost yourself to pressure that slowly began building inside of you.

“O-Oh, my god!”

“Mmmphm~ mmm.”

The careful movements and slow, lazy caresses became something the Animal Planet wouldn’t even air. It was just too full of debauchery in need as you both chased your orgasms until it finally burst, sending waves of pleasure throughout every inch of your body. Suguru sank his fangs more profoundly into your neck as you dug your fingers into his silky dark hair while you screamed his name, your walls clamping down on him, sending him over the edge with you. He spurted ropes of cum inside of you, painting you're most in our walls, only stopping once the last tremors of pleasure left his body

The two of you sat there catching your breaths, “Now,” you groaned, feeling the damp sheets under your feet, the evidence of both your orgasms coating them, “ might be a good time to tell you that I really like you.” Suguru is just staring at you with those eyes you adored. “Y-You don’t have to say anything back. I think—ahh!” Before the last words could leave your mouth, Suguru flipped you over, hovering over you.

The screams from horror movies on TV mixed in with pure happiness from children walking around outside. Embarking on a journey on All Hallows Eve in search of candy, while you were laid out on your mattress, Pieces of candies were thrown about as Suguru grinned down at you, Saving the image of you like this into his memory for all time.

“I like you too.” He smirked, his cock was already hardening inside of you, “so let me show you just how much I like you.”

You didn't even get a chance to respond or make a sound as he dug his fangs into your neck, pulling more of your blood out as he slowly began thrusting in and out of you. Your eyes rolled back into your skull as he lovingly, caress your body while fucking into you like a madman. Tonight’s evening had been a perfect success just like you planned!

Forever Tag List:

@darkstarlight82 @pandoness @nealeart @simp-plague @sugurubabe @chilichopsticks @reap3erslov3 @wil10wthetree @msniks @lana18918

Kinktober Tag List:

@candy-s72

[yridenergyridenergy]

Live report - Tour24 Who Is This Hell For? 2024/11/21 at Zepp Sapporo

Setlist:

Ruten no tou

AMON

Hageshisa to, kono mune no naka de karamitsuita shakunetsu no yami

Keigaku no yoku

Magayasou

Celebrate Empty Howls

Mitsu to tsuba

DIABOLOS

VINUSHKA

OBSCURE

Ochita koto no aru sora

The Inferno

-encore-

The Devil In Me

Values of Madness

Uroko

Eddie

My thoughts overall today are:

- so many echoes of Kyo's voice!

- This took me back to the first few times I saw Dir en grey live, in Canada, and the first times in Japan too. Times that were easier, where I was doing fine. The last time I saw them in Sapporo, in 2019, was also literally the beginning of this somewhat debilitating medical condition, caused by my own mistake. Therefore, this whole setlist, the songs and their meaning, conveyed a lot for me in this instance.

Shinya walked on stage dressed in all white. For some reason, it seemed like it was the first time that I could see him properly at his drum set. He was a literal prince! He looked so majestic, so strong. Magayasou especially was HIS time to shine! His drumming is so disorganized, and there was almost rancour and disdain behind one of his side hits during one of the songs, like if anybody had been standing there, they would have been utterly knocked out before they could blink. Also, regarding Shinya, Die tried to interact, but it seemed like Toshiya was the one who was successful in catching Shinya's glance, unless Shinya would have looked that way whether Toshiya was standing there or not hah. And it seemed to me like Shinya was truly peering at us from time to time, which I'd somehow never noticed.

Die was wearing some kind of light black tunic on top of a black tank top whose collar was very low, and he had leather short shorts on top of tights with a swirly design.

Regarding Die, the verdict is clear: he mouths total nonsense hahah. It really isn't the lyrics most of the time. He's just pumping us up by gaping his mouth a few times. He smiled so much throughout the show. I can't remember which song it was, but when it ended, he looked so ecstatic and proud, it reminded me of a high school girl finishing the performance of her life! I think that image stems from how young and happy he looked hah. His long hair kept getting stuck on his guitars.

Toshiya wore a black satin outfit with loooong panels below the sleeves. He had not only his thighs but his shoulders bare too. He had at least some lipstick, from what I remember. Toshiya was totally dramatic and expressive, like we know him to be hah.

Kaoru always impresses me by how he doesn't appear to sweat, and yet he wears the most layers in the band! He had the entire emperor look, baggy pants tucked into high boots, kind of like a horse rider, and the white dress shirt, cape, etc. He had makeup to accentuate his temples, as well as a bit of lining around his eyes, I think?

Kyo came on stage last of course, wearing all black. T-shirt tucked into clean black straight pants, black ribbed socks and shiny black work shoes. No makeup whatsoever. His hair was maybe an inch long. The tattoo next to his right eye is really visible, but this time I was on the kamite side, so I couldn't observe it much. And yeah, he has filled up the space below his jaw to outline his face. It looks like random lines: what pops up is a circular space left almost blank in the centre of his throat like to indicate where to do a tracheotomy, one line left blank on the sides, his Damned tattoo, and the two melded faces on the right side of his neck. If "Truth" is still written below his chin, it's barely distinguishable. Kyo's barbed wire tattoo sticks out a lot from his hairline at the top, despite the length of his hair right now.

It seemed like Kyo got really into the songs mostly at Diabolos. He also peeked at his lyrics memo sheets a lot, not that I blame him.

Ruten no tou was really cool. After "Sora yo", Kyo's voice is doubled in canon echoes, until the part where, in the studio recording, he does a light-pitched sigh, but in this live performance, it was merely an exhale.

The audience would have left Ruten no tou to end and transition into the next song in silence if I hadn't initiated a cheer, which happened a couple of other times. The only moment where we did let the band transition in silence was after Keigaku no yoku, because it would have been super inappropriate to cheer after he ended the song in: "Ore wa sakebu... HAYAKU SHINEEE!!" He ad-libbed Keigaku no yoku for at least the first half. No real clue what he said, it sounded like he was murmuring with the mic too close to his lips. Oh and it was awesome when they echoed Kyo's high-pitched sounds after the harder parts.

AMON was quite cool too. I don't remember anything special right now, other than that it was yet another moment where Shinya's drumming shone.

Hageshisa to, and frankly all of the other songs too, seemed to get the reaction that the band wanted. Everyone pitched in and headbanged as usual. Kyo had us sing a few parts and he did the traditional a capella: "Dive, like hell, and desTROY". Toshiya did his spins with very wide and dramatic movements, but it was clearly because there was no other way to avoid his super long sleeve fabric from interfering with him playing the bass hah.

Magayasou, I literally paid attention mostly to Shinya because of how badass his drumming is in that song. I just remember that I've definitely seen Kyo way more involved in that song in the past, but not now.

Oh, I don't recall which song exactly it was in the first few, but it was funny seeing Kaoru and Die hurry back from the edge of the stage to their mics whenever they realized that: "Oops, I've got backup vocals in 3, 2, 1..." Toshiya almost seemed to follow Kaoru with his stare when it happened like Kaoru snapped out of a trance.

During Celebrate Empty Howls, it feels like the performance was even more energetic from Kyo and the others when I last saw it in an assigned-seat hall. Either way, it involved Toshiya, Die and Kaoru coming to the front to tease us, switching sides once in a while. Toshiya's always all smiles, while Kaoru at most winks stoically hah.

The second pause happened between Celebrate Empty Howls and Mitsu to Tsuba, which felt kind of awkward. Overall, I felt like adding one or two Inward Screams would have livened up Kyo's performance slightly, or at least greatly changed it and the atmosphere of the songs.

Mitsu to Tsuba is mostly Die's time to shine. He knows the effect he has on us and he likes all the distortions he can get out of his guitar.

By the way, other than the SE, I actually don't recall seeing much AI-generated footage in the backdrop videos! The SE had images of a hooded stalker of sorts walking toward a bridge at night, a clown, photographs transposed in a circle to piece together probably someone supposed to be a criminal, etc. The music is a bit unmemorizable, but it had a beat that prompted us to clap to it while we waited for Shinya to show up.

Diabolos was amazing! Die was almost mocking us laughing during the segments where we headbang for three consecutive parts, which happens two other times in the song. I don't know if people seemed tired.

Kyo had us shouting "Blue Velvet" a couple of times. But the song evoked a lot in him, it showed. He was really into it.

The backdrop video of Diabolos caught my attention because it seems like when we sing about "Blue Velvet", we're... cooking a pig? There's just a charred pig head on a cut tree trunk, along with other imagery that makes it clear that the pig was cooked. An African tribesman with white lines of makeup all over his face and body is shown afterward. I'm not sure that that is ever what I would have associated with "Blue Velvet".

Oh, it was crazy, the anticipation building up to the "Saa ningen o yamero" part of this song. Kyo just shouted each line with deep breaks in between, to punch each point. Reading the official lyrics again, I'm pretty sure that Kyo completely changed the lyrics before "Saa ningen o yamero", actually, because it involved more stuff like: "You, and my self too, "

I think it might have been in Diabolos that Toshiya copied Kyo's stance with their left hand raised, leaning backward with their side facing us. It must have been during the climax line: " I raise my vacant eyes toward the sky".

Vinushka, again, I've seen Kyo more intense in this song in some live recordings, but it was nice and felt anyway. For some reason, the parallel between Kyo bringing his mic slowly toward his mouth for the "Aaaah... Vinushka" part while the background video shows the nuclear bomb approaching the viewer from above only just struck me. It's the same movement of two points slowly connecting to express impeding doom, that seems calm and quiet before the explosion.

Obscure involved a lot of headbanging, Toshiya spinning, etc. We didn't see much hah.

Ochita koto no aru sora started kind of like before Obscure finished, it took me a while to recognize the melody. Kyo had us sing some parts. I was really looking forward to witnessing this song live for the first time!

The Inferno came and I knew that it was the last song of the main setlist, which happened way too quickly! Sure, there were two long songs, but it felt way too short! Kyo wanted us to participate in the song a few times and he gestured the cut-throat at the very start and a couple of other times throughout the song, but I don't think he headbanged himself.

Kyo threw his mic backward JUST short of Shinya's drum set and walked off the stage before the song had even finished, leaving the other members to complete the last bit of the melody. Die was especially happy, he stayed behind to play moooore distortion, as long as he could, several seconds after everybody else had left the stage. His smile was wide!

The members returned for the encore rather quickly considering that Toshiya's assistant was still tuning his bass hah. Shinya had a sleeveless black shirt with the super big gold necklace in the style that he, Kaoru and Kyo have worn since The Perfume of Sins! Die has cut the sleeves from the black 27-years sweater but he was still wearing mostly the same clothes underneath. His arms are really defined, but Toshiya has totally surpassed him in muscle mass, woah. Buffest member in the band. Kaoru only took off his cape; how the hell does he not sweat! Toshiya had the grey sweater from the tour merch and his pants/boots with his thighs exposed. Kyo hadn't changed.

Although he did it once, or max twice during the main set, Kyo egged us on with "Sapporo!" several times in the encore, asking us over and over whether we could go on, become one, etc.

Oh man, The Devil In Me! I still completely disagree with the band's decision to rely heavily on backtracks, especially for the part "Jinkaku hitei o abite" which literally was recorded by the backup vocalists? What the fuck. But it's so cool and intense to watch Kyo lose it, growling, folding, swinging his mic cord up and down as he pours his self-hate. For the last minute or so of the song, he climbed on his crate, wrapped his red mic cord around his neck without theatrics, and sang with just enough length of the cord to follow his right arm as it curled toward his mouth. Otherwise, if he extended his arm too much, it would have tightened the noose. At the end of the song, while the instrumental continues for quite a while, he slowly sheds, or rather shrugs off one part of the mic cord from him. First, the noose is undone. Then, the cord draped on his left shoulder is shrugged off, which leaves just the one on his right side, which comes off while he stares almost in challenge at the horizon. Shedding a weight from his shoulders, from his existence literally, but not looking 100% relieved whatsoever.

Values of Madness has me headbanging intensely, so I'm not sure what happened, to be honest. Die was smiling, I think. Kyo stayed quiet to demand us to sing sometimes, which he seemed satisfied with. I don't know if it was in this song or another one, but Kyo was stalking his way in front of his crate when he must have stomped on his mic cord, because he stopped abruptly on his track to fix that before a real problem occurred.

In all three of the last songs, it was funny because the members would visit different sides of the stage, then went back to their spot when the song ended, but then another hyper song started and they went right back out there, repeating this dance once more for Eddie hah.

For the last song, Kyo asked us if we could go on, and he seemed taken aback by the response he got from the shimote side on the left, because he was like: "Huh? Are you alive?" So then that part of the crowd finally put their all into the cheer. Kyo turned to the kamite, and it sounded like we were way more at 100% intensity than shimote from the start. He asked us a second time anyway, and then, after a second of quiet on his part, he did his sudden a capella crescendo: "aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHH" with his 'claw' rising progressively, which had us all jumping and cheering. Eddie started and Kyo asked us to sing some parts, sometimes taking off his ear monitor. It wasn't clear on his face whether he was satisfied though, so probably not.

Kyo threw one of his water bottles kind of carelessly into the crowd, letting the cap and straw disconnect and all the water spray randomly onto us. Then, he promptly left. Shinya took a long time to come down from his platform, it seemed. Toshiya and Die had already started throwing picks and water. Die did the fountain/water sprouting move from close to his chest, like we saw him do in one or two videos. Toshiya and him sprayed us so much, they seemed to take a lot of pleasure in it. All three who were left on stage threw picks for a while, and I remember Kaoru stoically waving his index at us, as though teasing or chastising us for some reason hah.

Toshiya left with a smile and a modest bow and hand wave. Kaoru also waved us goodbye after throwing everything he had. Die was last, throwing his towel far but not close to the balcony like he sometimes aims to do. He intently looks at whoever catches his towel, like it means a lot to him to watch their reaction. He was really all smiles, mouthing stuff that resembled "arigatou" to us, and then he waved at us on his final way out.

What a blast, overall! I'm probably forgetting some stuff, but less than if I tried to write this live report any other time after today. I hope they play the setlist with Phenomenon in Sendai!

Oh and at one point, I was like: "Who the hell is filming the show with their cellphone? They played the reminder of the rules so often and so clearly." But it was Fujieda filming Shinya, so I guess that's the video we're getting tomorrow hah.

[amomentsescape]

Wrong Place, Right Time

Billy Loomis x Reader

Summary: Billy wanted nothing more than to add four more teens to his killing list. However, you were the last one he expected to be there.

Warnings: Violence & death, fluff

Word Count: 1,231

A/N: It felt right to kick off my Slasher Summer writings with Billy. He's been a long time favorite of mine, and it just felt right. As a reminder, I am taking any and all requests. If you have a slasher you'd like me to write for, let me know!

He could already feel the adrenaline coursing through his body. He was practically shaking as he slowly crept in through the back door of a ridiculously decked out house.

"Idiots," he muttered. The people who lived here didn't even bother locking the door.

As he finally made his way inside, he could hear chatter and heavy music making its way from upstairs.

Billy smiled as he listened.

Word had clearly spread that there was some psycho murderer making their way around the area. It only seemed right for people to ban together at night, hoping that the large gathering would deter a killer from attacking.

But clearly this group wasn't being too cautious. Leaving the door unlocked and having the stereo on high wasn't exactly rule number one in any "how to stay alive in a horror movie" pamphlet.

With this being said, the group was doing at least one thing right.

They were all together in the same room.

This was going to make Ghostface's job a little more difficult, but not impossible by any means.

He quickly turned back towards the door and signaled that he was ready.

Stu nodded back at him, having been waiting outside for his cue.

Billy smiled as he watched Stu disappear. And that smile only grew when the lights all cut out, sending everyone into a hush.

He slowly made his way up the stairs in the dark, being careful not to make any sound.

He was close enough now that he could make out voices whisper-shouting to each other. One person finally groaned out a "fine" as they left the rest of the group.

Billy considered this for a moment and realized that they were likely heading outside to the electrical panel.

He let out a frustrated sigh at this, knowing that he was going to have to go after them quickly. Stu promised not to get in the way this time.

This was his night.

As he heard the front door slam shut, Billy continued his way upstairs. He'd deal with them later.

It didn't take long to get through the group. There were only three others besides whoever left.

Ghostface jumped out from the darkness and quickly stabbed the throat of some teenage boy he had seen once or twice in the halls of their high school.

The other two girls quickly jumped up and screamed as they witnessed their friend being slaughtered right before their eyes.

One headed for the front door, but he was quick to grab onto her hair and throw her hard against the ground. The wind was suddenly knocked from her and she barely had time to gasp out when the metal blade punctured into the middle of her chest.

She shook out a few spasms and coughed up blood before her eyes quickly glazed over.

Ghostface stood back up and made his way down the hall, having seen the second girl sprint in that direction just moments before.

He felt pretty confident as he walked, already knowing where she was hiding.

Only one door was closed and if Stu and him had mapped it out correctly, it was a small bathroom with a window barely big enough to fit a child through.

"Too easy," he muttered to himself.

With a few swift kicks, the door swung open to an empty room- or so one would think.

As he tore open the shower curtain, the girl jumped up and tried to slash him with a pair of pointed scissors she had found.

She was too slow however, and Billy was quick to grab her arm and throw her body against the tiled wall.

He grabbed her head forcefully and slammed it over and over before finally using his knife to finish the job.

Easy work, he thought.

With that, he suddenly heard yelling coming from downstairs.

"Guys?"

This made Billy freeze up.

That voice. How did he not recognize it sooner?

He slowly crept his way to the top of the stairs, carefully peaking over as to not be seen. And that's when he realized it was you.

For the first time that night, Billy was scared.

You were the only one that got to see a genuine smile from the boy, the only one who Billy thought was worth living.

You both had a couple of classes together, but neither of you said much to one another. Billy had to keep up his persona with Sidney, and he didn't trust himself to do that around you.

You were much too pretty and smart to talk to anyways.

Billy had overheard conversations you'd have with some of your friends during lunch or in between classes.

You loved the same horror movies as him and always glowed when talking about your favorite characters.

He couldn't help but smile almost every day while watching you, taking in every little quirk and laugh you'd let out.

Billy had no choice but to become smitten with you.

And this is why his dilemma left him at a standstill.

He didn't want to kill you. No, he couldn't kill you. You were just too precious in his world full of anger and pain.

But what was his other option? He just killed your friends.

In his defense, he'd seen you talk to these people once or twice at school. He didn't realize you actually liked them. He may be a murderer, but he's not heartless. He didn't want to kill anyone that you cared about. But it was a little late for apologies.

"Fuck," he whispered to himself.

As you stood at the bottom level, looking around for your friends, you began to hear footsteps descending the stairs.

You quickly spun to the side and saw him.

Ghostface.

Your jaw dropped as if preparing for a scream, but no sound made its way out.

What was the point anyways? Your friends were likely all dead, and that meant there was no one else to hear your screams for help.

But if he was going to kill you, he sure was taking his sweet time.

He was walking so slowly towards you. If it weren't for the current circumstance, you would have almost thought he was trying not to scare you.

As he got closer, you began to back away from him.

You kept going until your body hit the cold wall behind you.

This was it.

He finally found himself about a foot away from you, staring through you with whatever eyes were behind that mask.

Your breath hitched and your eyes began to water. Fear overcame you as you realized that you were going to die.

As the tears began to drip down your face, Ghostface closed the gap.

He raised his hand up towards you, and you flinched away knowing that he was going to grab you by the throat and crush the wind from your lungs.

However, this wasn't what happened.

You felt the leather glove softly graze against your cheek. You carefully tipped your head back in his direction, your brows furrowing.

"W-what are you-"

His hand suddenly caressed your face, his thumb running over the wet spots your tears left behind.

You watched his shoulders sag a bit, as if he finally let go of a breath he had been holding.

And without a moment to process what was happening, he disappeared into the darkness.

[onlyyvette]

★ DAY 4 - breeding | grimlock

kinktober 2023 - masterlist.

warnings: top/dom reader + sub/bottom grimlock + cybertronian reader + heat cycles + breeding + robo tits + feral behavior + kind of dub-con since grimmy is in heat + public sex + you guys literally frag in the hallways of the ark + grimlock needs to get dicked down NOW + yes i do enjoy mechpreg sue me

a/n: Idk why but grimlock just awakens something in me; also this would most likely take place in the g1 show but i love using idw grimlock's design and character

Another day that Grimlock was stuck on this stupid planet with it's stupid rocks, and it's stupid fleshlings, and of course, stupid Decepticons. And least, but definitely not last, this cursed heat-cycle from the Slagmaker himself.

Heat-cycles weren't typically too big of a problem for most Cybertronians. They were short periods of time where mechs charge soar to unbelievable heights once every few years, usually satiable by heat-repressants or a good session of marathon sex. Usually the first option was chosen, the second method being better suited for two or more mechs in heat that are able to keep up with each other. Even when none of those options were available, it's only the first day or two that are the worst, the heat enough to make a mech pounce on someone. Still, locking yourself in a habsuite with enough energon is an easy fix. But despite how relatively easy it is to deal with a heat-cycle, Grimlock just couldn't shake his off.

Grimlock first realized his heat was was approaching when he was "sparring" with another mech. In actuality, he was just working off some steam and chose the closest poor shmuck to help him out. When he barreled into his opponent and knocked them flat onto the ground, instead of letting up, he stayed leaning into them, heavily panting as he suddenly felt dizzy and...hot. It was when Grimlock realized the he was panting and damn near about to rut against the mech he abruptly got up and excused himself. Of course, without actually saying excuse me of course.

Grimlock immediately made a beeline to the medbay. He usually enjoyed his heats when he had potential partners, but the desolate planet he was stuck just made him want to completely get rid of that extra charge. He downed all the heat suppressants that Ratchet gave him and went about his merry day before that same sensor-clogging hit him again. But he already took the suppressants! While it made no sense to him why his heat was still persisting despite the medicine was beyond him, but he was quickly beginning to forget about that train of thought when the fog started to cloud over his mind...fuck he was so horny.

Grimlock could feel his array heating up, his spike throbbing as it begged to be released from its confinements and his valve lips drooling, already puffy without even touching them. Maybe he could just release his panel really quick and just sneak a servo under his array and touch his needy valve. Just a little bit though! Just enough to get rid of this annoying charge and...

Before Grimlock even noticed it, he was fingering open his valve, forcing his blunt digits into the dripping wet heat between his thighs. "Mmhhhghh...hahhh..." Grimlock panted heavily, continuing to thrust into his valve, hitting whatever nodes he could find. He whined, thinking about how shameful it was for him to be fucking himself on his digits right in the hallway of the Ark but it was oh-so-hard for him to linger on that though because of the dizzying heat clouding his senses. The dinobot began to slide down the wall he was leaning on for support because of how weak his legs were, yet his servo never left his array.

"Haahh--Ahh! Ghh..." Grimlock's moans became more vocal as he began to reach his high. By now, Grimlock was face down, his aft in the air trembling while his digits continued to pump themselves in and out his sensitive valve. His frame was running so hot and his processor couldn't even begin to worry about how mortifying his predicament was--he just wanted someone to help him out dammit!

✦ ✦✦✦✦✦✦ ✦

You were walking down one of the many hallways in the ark after coming back from a sparring session with another bot. Your frame was aching from the bruises you got but it was a pretty decent excursion. As you were making your way to your habsuite, you caught a whiff of a sweet, tantalizing smell. Instead of making your mouth water, it made your array feel tight. For some odd, unknown reason, you decided to follow the smell, heavy pedes picking up with speed as you went.

Before you could see what was happening, you could hear the sound of rasping moans and slight squelching sounds. Who in their right mind would be self servicing out in the open like that? Despite the question filling your mind, you turned the corner and were met with one of the most beautiful images your optics had ever laid eyes on.

There was Grimlock, powerful and fearless leader of the dinobots, writhing on the floor as he shoved four of his digits into his sopping valve, aft swaying as he let out pathetic mewls and low growls. Suddenly, his EM field enveloped you, pulsing messages of want/need/please/pleasepleaseplease-- The poor mech was a mess. The moment you saw him, you could feel your spike immediately pressurize with a thunk against your spike panel. You couldn't help it! What else were you supposed to do when one of the most attractive Cybertronians you had ever met was in heat, desperate for spike.

The moment Grimlock noticed your presence, he slowed down his digits pushing into his valve and spread his legs wider, a more inviting position. When he made a low whining sound and swayed his hips again, your patient broke and your spike released itself.

As soon as your spike pressurized, Grimlock took the opportunity to lift himself off the floor swiftly and tackle you to the ground so he was sitting on top of you. Now you were no small bot, you were nearly Grimlock's size but you were so caught up in admiring your superior's frame that he caught you off balance. In all honesty, even if you did know what he was going to do, you still would have let him. "Fffrag...frag me..." The arousal was practically dripping from the dinobot's words. He rolled his hips into you, rubbing his bare valve on the underside of your spike, wordlessly begging you to fuck him and a sad attempt to stop himself from just dropping down onto your length.

You groaned as the nodes on your spike brushed against Grimlock's plush, wet valve. You still couldn't fully believe the sight before your optics. Maybe that was the reason why you felt frozen in place while the dinobot helplessly rubbed his valve raw on your spike. Surprisingly, even in his heat-addled mind, Grimlock still wanted his partner to be okay with his advances. Finally though, you lifted him up with your servos on his waist, positioning him right above your spike.

It all went too quick when Grimlock lifted up his huge, crimson thighs and lowered himself onto your thick spike. "Graahh-- HaaAH! Ah! Mnghhh!" Grimlock threw his head back and immediately began bouncing on your spike. His greedy valve clung to your spike with every miniscule movement, as if it didn't want your length to exit his valve for a moment. "Hahh, Grimlock! Fuck..." You gripped his hips even tighter and took control, thrusting into the mech's warm valve, releasing howls of pleasure from said mech. He didn't even realize it, but by now, Grimlock's chestplates parted, revealing the soft protometal hidden within. His tits were large and heavy, a beautiful matte black color to them. He wasn't producing any energon, but it's not like that was going to stop you.

You immediately latched onto one of Grimlock's nozzles with your mouth, nipping it softly. The moment you did that, Grimlock fucking whimpered, holding onto your helm and pushing his refineries into your face. As you suckled on his tit, you could finally feel his heat affecting your own thoughts. All you could think about at that moment was fucking him hard and filling him up with your transfluid, sparking him up and repeating the process all over again. You let out a small growl at the thought of breeding the mech and bit down on his nozzle hard, causing the poor mech to spit out staticky moans. "I'm gonna fill you up... fill you with-- ah!-- m-my sparklings... make sure you know they're mine." You didn't even realize hat you were speaking but Grimlock clearly did, since he reacted to your possessive words with a loud keen.

The moment you finally his his ceiling node, he keened, practically hugging your helm as he overloaded hard. You weren't done with him though. You pushed him to the ground and flipped him over onto his stomach and lifted his aft up. It wasn't easy to manhandle such a big mech, but his dizzied state from his heat made it easier. When it finally hit Grimlock that he was empty, he whined and wiggled his hips a bit but you held him in place and pushed into him once more.

"Guuhh, uuhnGGH! F-fragg, HaAHH!" Grimlock let out sinful groans as your spike kept filling him up. You really were he perfect mech for him. With every thrust, you spike rammed into his ceiling node, threatening to force open his gestation seal and fucking a sparkling into him. And he would love every fucking moment of it. With every drag of your spike against his walls, he let out howls of pleasure that you were sure everyone in the Ark could hear. But by this point, you couldn't care less; you were too busy fucking the mech under you to have any shame at the moment. All you knew was that something inside of you was screaming at you to fill the dinobot up with your spike and transfluid and make sure it stayed in there. By now, Grimlock had overloaded twice, his hazy mind unsure of exactly when his second overload had hit him, yet his charge never left his frame. Still, all he wanted was for you to already overload in him, spill your transfluid into his needy hole and make him beg for even more.

When you finally overloaded into Grimlock's hungry valve, you barely even registered it, not slowing down a beat as your transfluid flooded the mech's valve. He immediately felt your transfluid hit the edges of his tank as you filled him up over and over again. When did he even open his gestation seal again? Not like i mattered anyway, because you were still pounding his valve like your life depended on it. A distant part of his mind wished that you had a knot, mod or natural. Oh how he wished you had a fat knot to shove into his tight hole and keep you inside of him so none of your transfluid would spill...

At last, you finally slowed down a bit, pushing your spike in and out of Grimlock's valve at a much steadier pace. You could feel your transfluid and his lubricants flowing past his puffy valve lips and you truly believed that Grimlock was satisfied. He had been railed so hard he nearly saw Primus himself and was absolutely stuffed full with all your transfluid. As you eventually came to a stop and began, reluctantly, withdrawing your spike from his wet heat, Grimlock let out a low whine. "N-no...don't pull out...I want more. Please." He sounded so needy and pathetic and with the way that he kept rubbing his aft back on your crotch made you unable to reject him. If Grimlock was fully aware of his pitiful behavior, he would have wanted to snuff out your spark and anyone else who could have heard the two of you. But for now, all he he knew was that you began to push your spike into him once more and he was going to be fucked full again. Probably not for the last time.

[sol91]

Alone

LOG ENTRY: SOL 90

It occurred to me today that someday someone from earth might actually listen to these logs, so I figure I should record a needlessly expository one to get everyone up to speed.

My name is Lena Luthor.

It's been 90 martian days since I landed here with the rest of the crew. That's what, 92 earth days? Mars spins just a little on the slow side.

On sol 6 a dust storm was going to knock over the rocket we brought to take us home, so the rest of the crew went home and left me behind to die. Well, they thought I was already dead and left. To be honest, not their fault at all.

So I'm alone here on mars, no way home, no way to communicate, only enough food for a year, and everyone thinks I'm dead. Which sounds miserable but luckily I do have this disco music to listen to, courtesy of Commander Lewis.

And, if I can get these potatoes to grow in martian soil, which I definitely can, then I can survive long enough for the next mission to arrive.

Which should be in about 4 years.

Which does honestly sound like a long time to be alone. But I've been alone before. Most of the time, to be honest, it's how I do my best work.

I don't know, maybe I could have done things differently. Asked out that reporter when I had the chance. Not gone to fucking mars.

On the plus side, if I do make it home, she'll be so impressed she'll have to go out with me. I'm pretty sure the president is basically obligated to deliver a eulogy for every astronaut who kicks the bucket up here so everyone in the country must know my name by now. They'll probably show the satellite images and everything— actually, I wonder if they've figured out I'm alive by now. What else do all those NASA technicians even do all day?

Anyway, that's basically the situation. Feel free to keep watching these if you want to hear about my adventures cleaning solar panels and fixing the water reclaimer. Yeah, that'll sell movie tickets.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 91

Fuck. Oh god. Okay. Something just opened the airlock from the outside. There's no locks on it, because why the fuck would there be? There's not supposed to be anything else on this planet. I have like 30 seconds before that airlock opens and I have no idea what to do. Obviously there's no windows in the airlock for structural reasons, I guess the engineers back at NASA didn't consider the hab might be invaded by space aliens. Alright. If this is my last message I have some things I want to say. Commander Lewis your music is awful. Lex you can rot in hell. Kara I always thought you were hot.

Oh shit here we go—

Kara?

Kara Danvers stepped into the hab. She was wearing a button down shirt and khakis, no space helmet. "I've never held my breath that long, that was crazy." She said, panting slightly.

"Kara, what—" Lena began. But before she could finish forming a sentence, Kara was hugging her.

In the hierarchy of times you wanted to run into your crush, not having showered in 3 months in a room full of manure was pretty much bottom of the list. But right now, Lena didn't care. The hug lasted at least 30 seconds before Lena pulled back.

"Kara, what the fuck is going on? How are you here?"

"Oh! I'm Supergirl" Kara said simply.

"That… actually makes a lot of sense"

"I was at the office when I heard you were still alive and I just—" She shook her head. "NASA had some complicated plan to get you home, but I just thought, how far away can Mars really be?"

Lena laughed.

"You ready to go home?" Kara asked.

"Very." Lena was already crossing the room to don her spacesuit.

"Also, I was wondering" Kara said, more hesitant now. "Do you have plans for dinner tomorrow?"

Lena turned to look at Kara. "Do I have plans for dinner tomorrow?" She repeated, smiling. "Kara, I live on mars."

"I— right. Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow?"

"I would love that."

"Great!" Said Kara, "It's a date! I promise it'll be—" "Don't you dare say it." interjected Lena. "—out of this world."

[therewasatale]

wound

On Ao3.

A firm knock woke you from your slumber.

"Just a second." You mumbled, and carefully climbed out from the bed. Thanks to the painkillers and Mercy's miracle work you barely felt the pain in your left side. There will be scars, of course, there were always scars, but right now the pain was tolerable to walk even if most of your upper body was bandaged up.

"Yes?" You touched the panel next to your door and blinked in surprise as you found the omnic in front of your room. "Ramattra?"

"May I come in?"

No matter the circumstances his voice always stirred your soul.

"Sure. Just please, close to door behind you." Your left hand rested over the bandages as you limped back to your bed. The furniture was placed against the nearest wall, next to it a small table and a couch. Not the biggest, but cosiest place you had so far after many years. You actually managed to put some picture frames on the shelves around the room, some that you were able to save before the fall of the Blackwatch.

"Have a seat." You waved towards the couch. "I'm gonna lay back down, hope you don't mind."

"No, it's all right." The omnic watched your every movement. He felt a spark of anger bloom in him. Not against you, but rather against Talon, and himself.

"Thanks. So, what brought you here?" As soon as your head touched your pillow a pleasant huff escaped you; being vertical was still a bit iffy.

Ramattra glanced at your couch, then your bed, and made a decision. He sat down next to you to the ground. "You were reckless on the last mission."

"Really? Lecturing already? You could have waited until at least I recovered." You answered with a faint smile on your lips – but, of course he was right.

"You almost died." His fingers curled into a fist. "What were you thinking? Trying to take down Reaper alone."

Most people couldn't read much from an omnic's face, even Zenyatta was able to hide his feelings if he wanted to. However, right now, Ramattra's body was stiff as an arrow. His voice became darker, and his red optics stared right at you.

You were reckless, right, however, you were always reckless even back in the Blackwatch. Over and over, you had to listen to Gabe as he scolded you. He even yelled at you after some of the almost suicidal stuns you pulled. But you always came back, you've always survived.

The irony that the man who scolded and taught you to survive, was the one who shot you and left you to bleed out.

"I just wanted to talk with him."

"With Reaper?"

"No," you slowly shook your head, "With Gabe."

Ramattra lowered his shoulders, his anger started to turn into curiosity. Always, you always managed to pique his interest.

"I think he's still in there." Again, you smiled faintly, and continued as he waited in silence. "I knew he would come after me, Athena informed me where he was moving so I managed to catch him, or at least surprise him."

The omnic didn't like where this was going.

"So, I found him, and talked to him. When he didn't attack right away, I lowered my weapon and --"

"You did what?!"

"Hey, don't yell." You scoffed.

"You're trying to tell me that your old leader, who joined Talon, is still inside Reaper, yet he left you to bleed out alone!"

"He could have shoot me in the head. But didn't."

Ramattra started to understand why the humans sigh so many times so deeply. They at least were able to release some pressure, while he was only able to sit next to your bed and make plans in his mind how to break Reaper's leg and arm next time.

"In the upcoming mission you stay next to me, understood?"

"What? Come on, both of us know I'm better on my own, in the Blackwatch they basically trained me to be an assassin."

"I understand, but this is not up to an argument." He answered almost calmly. "Why do you insist on always getting in danger by yourself?" He couldn't get rid himself of the image as the cowboy dragged your unconsciousness body to the dropship, or how weak your voice sounded when you asked for help over the coms.

"I do not, but if I have to protect the others back then I'm going to do it again." You scoffed and almost folded your arms in front of your chest before deciding it wouldn't be the best or most adult move. "Ramattra, you don't need to protect me, I can --"

"But I want to." He answered without missing a beat.

And the argument ended there.

After a slow exhale you reached out and caressed his faceplate, as he snuggled closer to your hand, a blush ran under your eyes. "All right." You answered softly. "Then we will talk about this later."

"Rest, I'll be here and we can discuss this later." He took your hand into his. "But right now you need to rest. If you wake up and keep insisting that Reaper is not just a ruthless killer, then I will help you catch him. Your cowboy friend has a history with him too, I can tell. He can come and help."

"Yeah, he really does. "A tiny sigh left your lips. "All right, thank you." You pulled him closer and left a soft kiss on his faceplate.

A gentle, yet pleasant hum escaped from the omnic. "Can I stay?"

"Please, I think it would help me to have some rest." As you closed your eyes, you felt him taking your hand into his. It didn't take much and you breathing became steady and slow.

The ommnic watched over your body, focused his sensors so he could only listen to your breathing, and heartbeat – right now, nothing else mattered to him. Carefully he held your hand while focused on your heart. He maybe never needed to sleep, but he found himself being able to much easier to meditate while being next to you.

[mintteas-things]

Without You [Part 2]

Part 1 || Part 2 - you are here! || Part 3

Word Count: 2,687

Pairing: Stephen Strange x Female!Reader

Summary: The hunt for the infinity stones is on. You however, are selected to find the Time Stone. Once you return, you attempt to stop the oncoming force which caused the original vanishing.

Warnings: Mentions of Depression, Loss of a Loved One, Angst, Blood.

A/N: Hi! I got seriously inspired and I had to stop writing to make sure it didn't spill over and ruin the last part. Hopefully its good <3

You were part of the group now. The Avengers. You stood in your white and red uniform, eyes nervously flitting about the room. You were only in this position because you mentioned that the time stone was in New York the whole time. They looked at you dumbfounded, as though it were a revelation that needed to be heard. That made you an instant team player and needed to be on the team. It left Bruce to manage the machine and make sure that everyone would get back safely. It worked out for the team, as you knew when to go to and who to talk to. But as you stood in the circle with your helmet on, you kept swallowing lumps of bile. Your heart beat violently in your chest, palms sweating in your gloves, and tears stung the edges of your eyes. You hadn't a clue on how you would react to seeing Stephen again. However, you knew that this was important enough to do. Every Sorcerer Supreme kept the Time stone under a spell in case any villain had any alternative ideas or desires. Steve gave you a gentle nudge in reassurance. It was going to be alright.

“It's going to be 10 seconds for me,” Bruce announced to the team. “A lifetime for you all.”

Steve nodded in agreement before confidence oozed from his voice, “We have a mission. Six stones, four teams. Get in there, grab the stones, get back. Remember the rules- don't fuck around with your past selves and don't get caught. Don't change anything.”

A shudder ran down your spine, exhaling shakily at that point. The helmet was hissed completely shut now, airtight and not daring to let go until you arrived at your destination. Panels started to whir into life above you, separate sections swirling opposite ways and extending arms down like a carnival ride. Energy pulsed out, lights flickering from columns behind you. Finally, a button was pressed and you shrunk down. Scott Lang was right- it was a completely different universe down here. You were flying through the air..? Space? You had no clue and yet you were airtight and pointed in your form. You zipped past the others- diving straight ahead into several tunnels. A swirling, web vortex of deep blues and purples surrounded you. Blood rushed and roared in your ears, eyes squeezing shut before shakily standing.

A deep inhale- air from before the snap filled your lungs. You didn't dare open your eyes just yet, listening to the loud sounds of life in New York. Your robes swayed around you, finally allowing yourself to see. It was Fall. Leaves were changing colors and the cool air rushed to kiss your face in welcome. Legs rushed you out of the alley, rounding the corner to the left. There it was- the Sanctum. It looked like life was breathing in it. So bright and beautiful compared to the dreary state it had been left in. He would be there. He would be there. This was 6 months before you two met. You wouldn't have to run into yourself at all. It was perfect in every way. Yet, you stood there across the street and felt frozen in time. How would you explain everything? Ask for the stone? Stephen and Wong would be too skeptical to just hand it over willingly. How do you even approach this daunting task.

How do you face him?

You walked across the street and up the steps, your stomach churning and feeling queasy. Heartbeat still violent in your throat as you now knock on the door. The doors opened with a wooden groan, footsteps carefully placing into the Sanctum. The inside was beautiful- even more how you remembered it. Just like how Stephen cared for it. The fireplace was lit, bodies twisting in the singular chairs before it.

“Can we help you?” The familiar timbre ringing out in mild annoyance. A groan from Wong, exclaiming he just made hot chocolate.

You stood in the foyer, staring as the two men moved with purpose you’ve seen countless times. Cloak soared and landed on Stephen’s shoulders, perching as you took in his face. No cuts over his temple, no dirt or grime, and no sense of fear. Confidence written all over their faces. They looked ready for anything- to solve and fix anything. There was nothing, not even Thanos, that could stand in their way to accomplish it. That's how you remembered Stephen. That morning he was rushing out the door with Wong, Bruce, and Tony. And all you saw of him that morning was the astral projection. If you hadn't slept in that morning, you would've gotten a better chance at saying goodbye or even trying to help. As they waited- Stephen arching a brow at the prolonged silence- tears started to stream down your face.

You didn't know when it began.

They felt so salty, fat, and hot. Leaving sticky streaks down your cheeks as your lower lip quivered at the sight of the man you loved. The one that had vanished five years ago. Your body wanted to rush up and hold his face- to take a kiss and tell him you loved him. But this wasn't your Stephen yet. Concern was written across Wong’s face, Stephen confused as you stood there trembling. This was harder than you fully realized. It wasn't fair that you were doing this without him. Why? Those same questions you kept asking yourself for half a decade reappeared in your head. It was an encore of a broken record you didn't want. Swallowing down a choked sob, you gave a shuddering breath.

“I’m Y/N… I need the Time Stone,” you began. Hands fisted at your sides, nails cutting into your palms.

Immediately the men tensed, bodies shifting into a defensive stance as they sized you up.

“What for?” A suspicion in Stephen’s tone. His blue eyes are sharp and twinkling- like clear water on a sunny day. “Giving you the Time Stone can become dangerous.”

You gave another sobbing exhale, trying to stop the tears now. “I..” you smeared the tear tracks with the back of your hand, swallowing another bile lump. “I’m from the future.”

They froze. Any intent to fight leaving their limbs as they looked with surprise.

“I saw what happened with the infinity stones. I’m coming to collect the Time Stone, then return it once I’m done,” you continued. With what little confidence you had, you stood up straight.

“I’m supposed to guard the Time Stone from any prominent dangers. Why would I not have it? How did it leave my hands?” agitation in his voice and a sneer on his lips. Stephen wasn't buying what you were putting down. His hands raised, fists forming and the spiraling geometric shapes forming halfway up his forearms. Two of the same spirals went before his fists, glaring heatedly.

Your body trembled, hands shaking as you started to move into a defensive position. Your magic which originally glowed that familiar gold started to strip away like golden flakes. White energy crackled out, glittering starkly against your robes as you glared back. “I don’t want to fight Stephen,” your trembling voice bit out. Those hot tears still streaked down your face, your confidence a clear facade as you were stared down. “Please… don't make me fight you.” A beg from your lips as another sob broke out. Your magic was not flickering the entire time- still strong despite your emotions.

Stephen and Wong stared at you. Slowly, they exchanged glances and then back to you. They were awaiting your answer, watching your shaking form.

“You gave it away,” you finally broke down, white magical abilities fluttering away like glitter. Your legs couldn't support you anymore, on your knees. “You saw something… and said that it was to win.” Tony told you about what Stephen said before their fight with Thanos. It broke you inside- and you had cried into the billionaire at that time. You leaned forward, bracing on your elbows now as you took in deep breaths. “Please…. please…” you can't talk about how much you missed him. You can't talk about how much you needed him. It hurts worse to know that it was before you both met and a couple. You didn't hear the approaching footsteps. His familiar trembling hands gently settled on your back and shoulder, trying his best to comfort you in the moment. Slowly, he gathered you into his arms. The soft concern over his face written so plainly as he now pressed you into him.

The steady beat of his heart was music to your ears. Your hands fisted into his robes, gripping the sides of his ribs in such familiarity that he held you tighter. Slowly, his arms lifted and hands moved, the medallion around his neck twisting in its mechanism. The soft glittering gold grated your ears, and the Time Stone in your hands. “You must promise me that you will return it to me. If you don't, time will branch out and break, wreaking havoc and causing different universes,” his tone firm and his voice quiet. He had lifted your head to stare down at you. His brows furrowed and knitted together to show how he was serious. Lips curved down into a frown; your eyes took him all in. Memorizing his face like he did you.

“I promise,” you weakly said. You were nestled between his legs, chest brushing against his diaphragm as you did not dare move. Instead, enjoying the moment for as long as you possibly can. However, he let you go, and gave a faint smile.

“Go save the world Y/N,” he ordered gently.

With that, you felt your suit materializing over your body. The helmet slammed down, covering your face. The big and bold letter A on the left side of your chest and signaled to Stephen that you were part of the Avengers. His eyes bore into the symbol before looking to your face. It was like he was memorizing what you looked like. Slowly, he sat back. It felt so nice to be held by him. Even if he wasn't your current Stephen, it felt so comforting and familiar. Maybe this was the reason why you both met. You didn't linger long on that thought, growing small and immediately zipping back through the quantum realm. You landed back in the same circle you had left in, Bruce looking up after the faint sound of him finishing his count to 10.

Your suit disappeared, eyes glistening as everyone looked at each other. It was finally happening. You could see your Stephen now. The sound of Clint’s sniffling hit your ears, your gaze resting on him as he swallowed back lumps of grief. He looked to everyone, hearing Bruce ask where Natasha was.

“She sacrificed herself to get the soul stone,” he muttered. A mixture of surprise and sadness crossed everyone’s faces. The price was already high; how much did everyone have to pay in order for it to be undone? Your hands clenched at your sides, gripping the stone harsher as you did so. Slowly, you walked down the ramp after everyone. However, a shudder ran down your spine as the hairs prickled on the back of your neck. Something was wrong. You let your eyes flit about, landing on Nebula. The sinking feeling escalated in your stomach- the alarm bells resounding in your skull as you watched her. She looked no different than before. Why did you suddenly feel uneasy around her? Your mind reeled, keeping her in your peripheral vision as you walked to Tony and handed your stone over to him.

You were perched outside of the room while the men fiddled and argued about who would use the stones. You picked at your lips, eyes focusing as Nebula seemed to slink around the base. White circular magic appeared, carrying your feet through the air as you followed the suspect. This wasn't the Nebula you had met. This was the one before she had a change of heart. You watched, her head turning this way and that as she checked if the coast was clear. Then, her hands carefully flipped the switches to what Bruce had before. Your eyes widened, two long white whips stretching out and you struck at her fingers. She hissed in surprise, body lowering and narrowing black eyes at you. Her hands reached for her blaster, being whipped once more. Her cheek was struck, head snapping and body falling back onto the button.

Shit.

You watched as the ceiling exploded, crushing the time machine as Nebula leapt out of the way. Your hand raised to your ear, ready to warn the men of what was happening when you were hit. The smell of scorched skin hit your nose, melted fabric from your robes mingling with flesh, blood, and muscle. You had landed on your back, spine and head hurting now as you laid there. The earth started to shake, concrete from the compound’s ceiling started to fall. Your hands went up in a panic, mystical arts flooding around you in a protective bubble when the building collapsed.

Everything went dark, smoke filling your lungs as you struggled to breath. You coughed, blood splattering across the floor as you did. Everything hurt. You didn't know what was happening but you could feel the adrenaline spike through your blood. Something felt broken; blood covered your side, your breaths coming out in raspy wheezes as you stumbled over the debris. The sky was black, the sun lighting everything in a red hue as you moved. It was truly a nightmare. However, as you came to the grassy edge, you saw Thanos fighting the group. Steve’s shield was broken in half at this point, his body staggering as he tried to keep up with the Titan. You conjured your magic, running across the steps you made with it. You pulled an arm back, thrusting it forward and sharp, magical daggers shot out. They struck Thanos- the Titan forcing his attention away as you leapt into the air. The whips from before snapping out after unraveling. Deep down, you didn't want to do this. However, you all went through so much pain- you had to help see this through.

You swung your whips rapidly, the runes which swirled tightly within rattling the Titan’s head. Sharp cracks in the air, leaving whipping cuts and slowly peeling flesh. You landed on the ground, his arm raising and your whip curling around a strong, purple forearm. His other hand grabbed at it, your other whip cracking against his hand as he started to tug you closer. A rumbling laugh escaped his throat, now holding you close. His palm was half of your upper torso and head, clenching around you. You screamed in pain as he seemingly started to crush you, now tossing you away to the side.

“Even your silly magic tricks cannot stop me,” Thanos goaded. His body advancing for you- hammer slamming against the side of his jaw while Steve and Thor ran forward. They took over the fight, your body weakly twitching as you tried to get up. You couldn't focus, blood running down the left side of your face and blurring your vision. You didn't notice Thor, Tony, and Steve on your flanks, the vein jumping in Steve’s temple. How long did you lay there? You didn't care anymore. You stood up, shifting your feet and sweeping your left one back as you squatted down. White magic grated, spinning wheels of runes and geometry forming as discs before your fists. Your own teeth gritted, watching as thousands of Thanos’ army stepped forward and dropped down from the sky in their ships. It was scary- your heart in your throat. If you died here today, you knew in your heart you tried your best.

[weemssapphic]

adjsfh so i never really send any requests but i really like your writing style so if your requests are still open could you maybe write a smutty piece featuring submissive larissa and dominant fem!reader. the idea i had is maybe fem!reader is some sort of a supervisor that came to the school to write a report on larissa?? and larissa decided to cover up some shady stuff she did by trying to seduce her and it ends up working lol but what she hadn't thought about is that reader is more dominant than her but she ends up actually really liking that??? idk if that's like too specific feel free to add to it or like do a slightly different thing if you don't feel this would work i just want sub!larissa ahahh *slithers back into the void*

hello ahkdhsj thank you so much! i absolutely hope this does your request justice, it's also my first time writing sub!larissa so i'm just gonna post this and slither back into my very own void <3 ao3 link in title as always!

warnings/content: nsfw / pwp, sub!larissa, cunnilingus, fingering, praise kink, feel the need to mention everything is consensual (I hope that comes across)

words: ~4.2k

Dominate Me

You pulled down the long, winding drive leading towards Nevermore Academy, past striking wrought-iron gates, putting your car in park as you reached the visitor’s spots by the entrance. Glancing at the time, you realized you had a few more minutes before your scheduled appointment, so you grabbed the thick manila folder from your passenger seat and leafed through it. You’d already memorized the contents but you thought it best to take another look, to have your facts straight.

You’d been sent by the school board to investigate the principal of Nevermore, Larissa Weems. After the attacks by a “bear” (or whatever that thing out there in the forest was) had left a student in a coma, the school had come under close scrutiny. Some discrepancies had come to light regarding the earlier disappearance of another student and, well, it didn’t bode well for Nevermore - nor for Principal Weems, who appeared to be at the center of the cover-up.

Confident you were ready to face the formidable woman, whom you’d already heard so much about and whom you had to admit you were more than a little intrigued by, you stuffed the folder into your purse and stepped out of your car.

A cool breeze whipped at your face as you ascended the steps to Nevermore’s imposing entrance, pushing open the doors and searching the entry hall for a hint on which way to go.

Quickly spotting a young girl with blonde hair sporting a school uniform, you waved out a hand and stopped her in her tracks. She eyed you curiously.

“Hi, I was wondering if you could point me to Principal Weems' office?” You smiled at the girl, hoping she wouldn’t be too intimidated. She smiled back rather timidly and nodded, saying “yeah, sure” as she guided you down several hallways towards a pair of wood-paneled double doors, adorned with a shiny gold plaque that read “Principal Weems” in an elegant font.

You thanked the girl and checked your watch. Right on time. Taking one last steadying breath, you raised your fist and knocked.

– –

Larissa paced the length of her office, furious that her already busy afternoon was soon to be interrupted by the likes of some school board supervisor who was surely going to try to discredit all the hard work she’d put into Nevermore. She’d spent so many years putting her entire heart and soul into the school - she wasn’t going to let just anybody come in and tear it down. No, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She had a reputation to uphold.

A knock on her door had Larissa nearly jumping out of her skin. She smoothed her skirt and checked her lipstick in the reflection of her cell phone, before click-clacking her way to the door to let in the visitor.

She was prepared for anything. She knew her story well - she’d rehearsed it at least a dozen times by now. And if all else failed? The art of seduction would always be on her side. Smoothing a hand over her hair and plastering on her best fake smile, she opened the door to her office.

– – 

The doors to Principal Weems’ office opened and you were almost taken aback at the woman standing before you. You’d heard much about her reputation - strong, unyielding, a woman to be revered and even feared. But what had failed to reach your ears was that she was also stunning, impossibly so. She was attractively tall, with silvery curls pulled back into an elaborate updo, accentuating a long neck and smooth, high cheekbones, lips painted a rich shade of crimson…

Your admiration, however, was cut short as she peered down at you with sapphire eyes, clearly waiting for you to speak, lips pursing ever so slightly.

“Uh, hello, Principal Weems. I’m Y/N Y/L/N, from the school board. I believe we have an appointment.” You reached out your hand for the woman to shake. Her hand was warm to the touch, soft, and you had to suppress a shiver at the contact.

“Yes, of course, please come in.” Larissa gestured for you to enter and shut the door behind you. You thought you heard the faint click of a lock, though you couldn’t be sure, so you brushed it off as a trick of the imagination and waited for Larissa to guide you to one of the leather armchairs opposite her desk.

“So what brings you here today?” The blonde smiled warmly as she sat in her own chair, placing her elbows on her desk and resting her chin on her palm.

You raised an eyebrow at her before rifling through the contents of your bag and pulling out your folder. “I believe the school board informed you why I’ve been called to come by? It should have been mentioned in the letter you received on March 1st.” 

Larissa pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Yes, I received your letter.”

“Good. Then let’s cut right to the chase and start at the beginning, shall we? There was a student attending Nevermore, Rowan Laslow. His disappearance was reported to you by a Miss Wednesday Addams after the Harvest Festival in Jericho, is that correct?” You eyed the principal carefully for any tells - any signs of anxiety or deceit.

What you saw, though, was mostly agitation marring the principal’s gorgeous features. “Yes, that is correct.”

“Though you claim he hadn’t disappeared at all?”

“Funnily enough, he turned up again the next day,” Larissa batted her eyelashes and cocked her head to the side, her lips turning up into a smile - it wasn’t exactly a warm smile, though, there was something decidedly bitter about it.

“Well, funnily enough, Principal Weems, his parents claim he never did return home.” You gave the principal a smile of your own, curious what the woman would say now.

Larissa stood from where she was sitting and rounded the desk, perching on the edge of it just in front of your chair. You couldn’t help the wandering of your eyes up her form, trailing over her exposed calves, the area around her stomach where her skirt bunched up just a little bit, the pale, tender flesh between her exposed collarbones.

She smirked at you, your ogling not lost on her.

“Unfortunately, what that boy does when he leaves campus is none of my concern - he was expelled, after all. And do call me Larissa, darling.” Larissa’s voice had dropped several octaves since she’d last spoken, causing a wave of desire to wash over your core.

You rose from your chair, gaining yourself some leverage in the situation. “Do you care so little for your former students?” You stepped closer to her, until there were mere inches between your bodies.

Larissa’s pupils widened imperceptibly. “I’m not sure I like what you’re insinuating. But Rowan was a danger to this school and all of its pupils, and keeping him here was far too dangerous. If he chose to run away from his parents, well… that’s on him, I’m afraid…”

Larissa’s lips ghosted yours, her breath warm on your face. 

“You think you can seduce me into writing you a glowing report, Larissa?” Your lips brushed hers, hands coming gently to her waist, allowing your fingertips to rub against the fabric there.

Larissa’s teeth sunk into her bottom lip. The tables were suddenly flipping on her - moments before she’d been in control, well on her way to, well, seducing you into giving her a glowing report for the school board. And now here you were, trying to take that control away from her. She wasn’t used to being dominated - usually she was the one with the power, the one calling the shots.

She could only shake her head feebly and feel the smile that spread across your lips as they connected with hers. Her lips were soft, warm, inviting. You spread her legs apart so that you could push one of your thighs between them, reveling in the moan that tore from her throat at the action. It reverbated against your own lips and had you swiping your tongue at her bottom lip, a silent plea for entry. Larissa parted her lips and allowed you to explore the contours of her mouth, as your hands moved to her clothed thighs.

Larissa whimpered into your mouth as your right hand slipped under her skirt and trailed along the inside of her thigh. Her center radiated heat and you couldn’t help the guttural moan that bubbled forth from your chest as you felt how damp her panties were.

You pulled back, regarding the woman in front of you with awe. Larissa’s cheeks were pink, her lipstick smudged, her chest heaving.

Her brows furrowed, little creases appearing on her forehead as she narrowed her eyes. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” She tried to sound indignant but failed, only managing to sound extremely turned on as your thigh pressed further into her center.

“You’re an attractive woman, Larissa,” you met her gaze, quirking an eyebrow and watching as her cheeks darkened considerably. You took her chin between your fingers. “I’m going to worship you the way you deserve it. Are you going to be a good girl for me?”

You smirked as Larissa’s mouth fell open, her blush now extending from her chest to the tips of her ears. An interesting reaction to your praise. You’d have to file that away for later. “Tell me you don’t want it and I’ll stop. Tell me to leave and I’ll go without another word, it won’t affect the report.” You needed Larissa to know she had a choice in the matter.

Larissa’s eyes searched yours for a moment, finding nothing but honesty and a mad desire to bring her mind-numbing, all-consuming pleasure. “I want it,” she confirmed.

“The door is locked?”

“Y-yes,” Larissa looked to the ground, rather sheepishly.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” you cooed. “It’s just us. Now where was I?” You grazed the backs of your knuckles over the fabric covering Larissa’s core, a sinful moan dripping from her lips as her head lolled back. 

“P-please,” Larissa’s voice was low and shaky.

“Please what?” You knew what she wanted, of course you did, but you sure as hell weren’t going to make this easy for the woman.

“Please… fuck me.” Larissa’s gaze, pleading and famished, met yours, and you were happy to oblige her request.

You hooked your fingers around her underwear and slid them down her legs, planting kisses along the tender flesh of her thighs and the smooth, solid muscles of her calves as you followed them down. Discarding the underwear, you knelt before Larissa so that your head was level with her sex, suppressing a moan as you saw how wet she was for you, her cunt glistening.

Flattening your tongue, you licked a path through her folds, starting at her entrance and working your way to her clit. Larissa’s hips bucked forward and you felt a hand settle in your hair, pressing your face roughly into her cunt.

You pulled back, arching an eyebrow at the high-pitched whine you received in return. “Did I say you could touch?” Larissa’s hand dropped rather pathetically from your head and she flushed, a mixture of irritation, shame, and lust swirling in her pupils.

“Come here, gorgeous,” you cooed, reaching out a hand to Larissa for her to take as your other hand worked at the buttons of your shirt, unbuttoning them one by one at a tantalizing pace.

Larissa’s eyes were glued to your cleavage as you led her to the loveseat in front of her fireplace. You shed yourself of the button-up and guided Larissa onto her back, dragging her skirt down her legs and leaving little scratches with your nails on the flesh of her thighs as you did so.

Larissa’s hands found purchase on your own waist, pulling you in for a searing kiss. It didn’t last long, however, as you pushed yourself up and grabbed hold of her wrists, pinning them above Larissa’s head in a swift motion - you didn’t have anything to tie her up with so this would have to do. Your grip was loose but firm, wanting to provide Larissa an out while showing her who was in charge. Her pupils dilated, chest heaving as she squirmed beneath you.

“Are you gonna be a good girl for me now?” Larissa seemed to fight beneath you for a moment, each of her sapphire eyes flicking between yours, breathing coming out in shallow puffs as she twisted in your grip. Slowly, her movements stilled and she nodded, cheeks dusted pink.

“Talk to me, love. Is this okay?” One of your hands held her wrists in place as the other came to cup her cheek, thumb brushing against her bottom lip. Larissa mewled, leaning into the touch.

“Y-yes, it’s okay,” she murmured, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I’m going to let go of your hands, okay? And you’re going to leave them up there - no touching unless I tell you to.” You waited for Larissa’s nod beneath you before dipping your hands under the hem of Larissa’s top and finding her bra.

You slipped your hands behind Larissa’s back, expertly unhooking the offending garment and pushing it aside before working to remove her top and latching your mouth onto her nipple, sucking at the already hardened bud as your hand began to palm the pillowy flesh of her other breast.

You switched sides, ensuring no side would feel neglected as you nipped and sucked at her chest, feeling how Larissa began to squirm beneath you as your tongue soothed over the little marks you left on her skin. 

“Patience,” you chuckled, throwing Larissa a mischievous grin as you unbuttoned and removed your own slacks. Dark eyes roved over your body as you settled between her thighs, now clad only in your underwear.

You paused for a moment, drinking in the woman before you. The smooth, milky expanse of her thighs, coated in her glistening arousal, legs bent at the knee and dropped open for you. The pink flush of her heaving chest, moving in time with her ragged breaths. The soft flesh of her stomach and breasts, covered in goosebumps, nipples erect. Her long arms extended over her head, just as you had asked of her.

And that face - my god, that face. Eyes you could get lost in, staring down at you wantonly through mascara-coated lashes, batting against her high cheekbones, flushed with desire. Painted lips which had long since been smeared, parted slightly in question as you regarded her. An angel in human form.

“You are so gorgeous.” Your admission brought a fresh blush to Larissa’s cheeks. “You’re going to look so beautiful for me when I make you come.”

Larissa’s subsequent moan spurred you on as you ran a teasing finger through her folds, gathering up her arousal. You brought the finger to Larissa’s lips and she sucked it into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it and groaning. She released the digit with a pop that caused a fresh wave of desire to pool at your core.

“So wet for me already, hmm?”

Larissa practically purred beneath you. “God, please, please touch me.”

The low timbre of her voice spurred on your own arousal and as you brought your fingers back to Larissa’s cunt, you straddled her thigh to provide your clit with some much-needed friction.

You circled her clit with the pads of your fingers once, twice, before plunging two digits into her dripping center, moaning at the way her walls immediately began to draw you in. You began a steady pace inside of the blonde, curling your fingers into her sweet spot, creating pressure around her clit with the heel of your palm.

Larissa bucked her hips upwards with every thrust of your fingers, creating a delicious friction against your own cunt with her thigh. Your soaked panties rubbed against her skin and you rolled your hips in time with your thrusts, hissing as the seam of your panties rubbed against your throbbing clit.

She spread her legs wider, inviting your fingers deeper into her cunt. You added another finger, feeling her walls clench slightly. You could feel how close she was as her thighs began to tremble and she seemed to have trouble keeping her arms above her head as she writhed and squirmed.

– – 

Meanwhile, Larissa was coming undone beneath you. She had no idea what had compelled her to follow your orders, and it should have been easy to simply take back the control and force you into submission. But some part of her couldn’t help but to be intrigued by you, the way you took control of the situation. She found it (and you, if she was being honest with herself) extremely attractive, and relinquishing her dominance might just be exactly what she needed.

Larissa dropped her thighs open, as wide as they could go, a loud moan escaping her lips as you added a third finger. She wanted so badly to reach out and touch you as she watched you fuck her, and fuck yourself on her thigh. She could feel how wet you were for her through your underwear and the thought drove her wild.

A particularly sharp thrust of your fingers had Larissa crying out, eyes rolling back into her head. She could faintly hear you whispering praises past the ringing in her ears and her entire body felt like it was ablaze. She’d never had a lover shower her with praise before and the thought of being someone’s “good girl”, of being your “good girl”, brought her over the edge. 

– – 

“You’re doing so well for me.” You smirked down at Larissa, watching as she panted and writhed beneath you, thighs still trembling from her first orgasm. “You think I’m done with you, pretty girl?”

Your own cunt throbbed with desire as you abandoned your seat on her thigh, still not quite having reached your own orgasm but dying for another taste of the intoxicating blonde.

You trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses up the inside of Larissa’s right thigh, then her left, stopping just shy of her center each time. You kissed the blonde patch of curls at Larissa’s mound, breath ghosting just over her clit. The woman let out a needy whimper, shifting her hips in a desperate attempt to get closer to you.

You dragged your tongue through her slit, finally latching onto her clit and drawing lazy circles around the sensitive bud with your tongue. You moaned at the taste of her, a heavenly mixture of tangy and sweet, the vibrations of your moan against her cunt causing Larissa’s hips to tilt upwards, pressing herself into your mouth.

“That’s it, gorgeous. Fuck, you taste good.” You continued to lap up the juices that flowed from Larissa’s center, barely able to contain your smile at the way she rolled her hips into your mouth. You hooked your hands around her thighs, dragging her as close as you could, burying yourself in her.

“C-can I…” Larissa’s voice trailed off into a breathy groan as your tongue dipped unexpectedly  into her entrance.

“Can you…?” You looked up at her in question, your eyes meeting hers, clouded with the lust of her impending orgasm. 

“Can I touch you?” Her voice was almost timid as her arms twitched above her head.

“Yes,” you grinned at the sigh that escaped Larissa’s lips as she brought her hands to your hair, fingers weaving into your locks, pushing you gently but insistently back down to her pussy. You obliged, lapping at her core as her thighs tightened around your head. Her moans were muffled, punctuated with sharp pains on your scalp as long fingers wound themselves tighter into your hair. Your lips never left her clit, tongue flicking languidly as you brought her down from her high.

Her legs released you from their iron-grip and you finally felt like you could breathe again. You cleaned her up with your tongue, pressing sweet kisses to the insides of her thighs and trailing up her body - her hips, her stomach, the swell of her breasts, her throat, finally capturing her lips, which curled up into a blissed out smile at the contact.

“You’re amazing, Larissa,” you whispered, relishing the feeling of her overheated skin pressed against your own. The feeling of her nipples poking at your bare skin, the taste of her arousal still fresh on your tongue, the sound of her breathing - heavy but evening out - were all doing nothing to quell the embers glowing in the pit of your own stomach. Every nerve-ending in your body was alive, raw to the touch.

“I regret to inform you, however…” you trailed off, taking Larissa’s wrist in your hand and guiding her between your legs. “That I am still very turned on by you, my darling.” Larissa’s pupils widened as you pressed her fingers against your center - warm, wet, aching.

“Think you can take care of that for me?” At Larissa’s feverish nod, you pulled her up with you.

“Get on your knees.” The blonde slid onto the floor in front of you and folded her legs underneath her, waiting for further instruction. “Help me with these?” You shifted your hips as Larissa hooked her fingers around your underwear and dragged it down your legs. 

Larissa suppressed a groan when she saw how wet you were for her. You brought your fingers down to your clit, amused at the rapt attention with which Larissa watched as you began to finger yourself. 

“Think you can put that gorgeous mouth of yours to good use?” You smirked down at Larissa, who didn’t need to be told twice as she placed her palms on your knees, spreading your legs as she settled her head between your thighs. She wasted no time in flattening her tongue against your sex, running it up your slit until she found your throbbing bud. Your hands found purchase in her curls, neither of you caring that you were ruining her perfectly coiffed updo as you pushed yourself into her, fucking yourself on her face.

“I’m so close,” you panted. “Fuck- you look so good fucking me, you’re being s-so good for me.” Larissa moaned into you and your nails dug into her scalp, your hips canting upwards rhythmically to meet her face. 

Your arousal dripped down Larissa’s chin as she picked up her pace against your cunt. The coil in your abdomen was winding tighter and tighter and as Larissa’s tongue began to tease at your entrance, dipping into your core, you felt yourself begin to come undone. Her thumb came up to brush against your clit, determined to prolong your pleasure as stars began to explode behind your eyes.

Once you had steadied your breathing, you leaned down, capturing Larissa’s lips for a sweet kiss, your own taste still fresh on her tongue. 

You offered your arms out to the woman. She seemed hesitant, but ultimately allowed you to pull her half onto your lap, her head on your chest, your fingertips tracing soothing patterns over the smooth expanse of her back. She didn’t seem like the type who often (ever?) relinquished control, so you were happy to give her a few seconds to ground herself.

You nuzzled your face into Larissa’s hair, almost involuntarily - she smelled of peonies and jasmine, soft and feminine, a heavenly combination. Her breathing began to even out against the bare skin of your chest and you couldn’t help the low chuckle that escaped your lips.

“Don’t fall asleep on me, Larissa,” you murmured into her hair.

Larissa peered up at you, an eyebrow quirked up in mock-offense. “Do I seem like the type?”

You grinned. “Not at all. I should be going though. I do hope you didn’t have any other meetings lined up after mine.” You nodded towards the clock on the wall.

Larissa’s eyes followed yours and a groan fell from her lips.

“Try not to act too disappointed. Against my expectations, I rather enjoyed our meeting.” Larissa couldn’t have looked more adorable in that moment if she’d tried - cheeks pink, curls falling into wide eyes, teeth worrying her bottom lip. “It - it did take a rather unexpected turn. I can’t say I’m disappointed at the outcome… That is, unless…?”

“You mean the report? As far as I’m concerned, Rowan simply… How did you put it? Ran away?” Your smirk widened at the relieved smile you received from the principal.

Larissa eased herself from the couch, reaching for her clothes and dressing herself. You followed suit, reluctantly tearing your eyes away from the blonde’s bare skin. After combing through your hair and wiping away remnants of Larissa’s lipstick from your face, you gathered up your belongings and headed towards the doors, Larissa on your heels to see you out. 

As Larissa began to ease the door open, you turned to meet her gaze. 

“You might want to, you know,” you gestured to the smudge of crimson that stained her chin. Comprehension dawned on her face, followed by a mischievous smirk as she leaned down to match your height, planting a kiss to the corner of your lips.

“Yeah, you too,” she gestured to the lipstick mark she’d just left behind.

With a chuckle and a shake of your head, you bid the principal goodbye and walked back to your car, wondering just how you would convince the school board to send you back to Nevermore again.

-

thank you to @afeatherformills and @scumppa for beta-reading <3 and tagging @orchidsshine and @sapphicsbeloved bc i think i remember you guys asking to be tagged in things but also correct me if i'm wrong hehe

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2024-08-04

(Previous post - current page 440)

Breaktime's over, it's about time to continue! Expect me to take a handful of days between each posting-day like this just to pace myself, and have time for fun video games and other such. But I've been really enjoying finally reading more HS2 too, especially seeing such hopeful stuff like this last pair of pages really hitting home on the optimism! Let's get back to it.

Meanwhile...

Wait did we SEE her keel back over like this? Alt!Callie in this younger/teenage corpse of Jade Harley's body I mean? When did that happen? *thumbs back through old pages...* Let's see here... my browser still glitches the fuck out seizureways at the few pages that were Blacked Out, so i'll use a backup browser for those... no, further back... oh wow I forgot Aradia got such a cool Calliope-supporting outfit to show off she's on their side, literally zero memory of that and that's some FINE drip...

Oh shit wait, so it happened back over here??? (289/290)

--I figured back then she'd gotten a snap headache because of having to abandon possessing Jade's MAIN body in the struggle Alt!Calliope had with Jade's consciousness culminating around page 168, but these cuts are all so far apart-- and being knocked out of the other Jade's body shouldn't have knocked her out of this CORPSE. So is somethign entirely NEW going on that has to do perhaps with Dirk Strider's plans to maintain control of the narrative when the other kids arrive there?? Hmmm.

Anyway now I know where that bonus panel I'd accidentally glimpsed with "god-tier bodies don't decompose right" that I mentioned last blogging session came from. But why the fuck?

==>

Gosh I've missed seeing panels like this.

Wait, why are we cutting to CANDY JOHN like that's relevant here? Wasn't he in Roxy's secret lab last we saw him? Does THAT have something to do with this?! Oh shit.

(John: Investigate noise.)

Following Roxy's instructions, you proceed in the direction of the noise to go and meet up with your old friends. You approach where you thought you heard them, but to your surprise you hear an unfamiliar voice grumbling something incoherent.

JOHN: uhhh, rose? jade? JOHN: ... kanaya?

Hm? What was going on upstairs again, Karkat met up with the other liberators right? Okay let me not be so lazy and go back and check again...

Excuse me for a second, I'm going backwards to review and post some older HS2 stuff for a bit:

No they left, then John came from his destroyed old house to his and Roxy's NOT-old house, then they transportalized downstairs to the secret lab buried "hella underground" not directly under the house, where Calliope is wearing... suspiciously the EXACT new outfit that Aradia is wearing, and gives her hints that she enjoys all sorts of alternate stories like watching Roxy be in a relationship with John here in Candy instead of with herself in Meat, and added fuel to our obvious theory suspicions that Meat Alive Calliope is the author-narrator shaping the (Candy) timeline with her wall drawings and Muse of Space powers, and that they are... standing in the location in their reality that corresponds to the exact center of the singularity / black hole they're trying to stabilize? I'd forgotten about that... and then Calliope told John that alt!Calliope and Aradia and such had broken out of the black hole's event horizon for their mission, while Calliope explained that (Candy)'s timeline is so WEIRD because they've been disconnected a little TOO much from the canon of reality, like a fanwork that strays a little too far from the source material, so they need to stabilize it somehow AND NEED VRISKA (to either steal some relevance back from Canon or to get swapped there with something else or, something else we might have theorized?) but I had plumb forgotten that they SPECIFICALLY say that for their plans to work they needed John to leave and do something:

ROXY: this is finally where u come in jegbert ROXY: we gots quests for yous CALLIOPE: hee hee, yes. CALLIOPE: or *a* quest, to be specific. JOHN: oh boy!

ROXY: i mean yeah ur gonna obvs facilitate it in a sense ROXY: but only by going and busting the person who can actually help us outta normal earth jail CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity. ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan. CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more. CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it. CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

Right, Vriska's constant focus on making herself one of the most relevant characters to Canon and her powerset actually making her perfect TO do that as a Thief of Light (relevance/importance) makes that a good plan. And I fully expected one possibility was that they somehow allow her to break through to the Canon Meat timeline and both (1) influence it some way, and (2) get to a place where she could eventually reunite with Terezi Pyrope finally instead of just having left her a parting message, which may or may not happen if Meat Terezi is going to focus possibly a bit more on her relationship with John(June) once somehow resurrected or such but would definitely be amazing to have them reunited when Terezi spent SO MUCH TIME looking for her that she wasn't even part of the (Candy) timeline of events? Enough re-theorizing let me keep re-reading-- And... oh right,

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

I'm sure I was happy as hell to see that explicitly spelled out in canon for once instead of implied, because it may have been obvious to those of you who follow theoryblogs but one of the big reasons I'm glad to see these things made more explicit out in HS^2 is so even casual readers can pick up that these aspects always had these additional more important purposes that line up with all the events that happened in the past of the original comic.

But anyway. John's about to go on his bust-Vriska-out-of-prison quest:

And it's not like he has other plans. He may as well do this! It's at least going to get him involved in things again, if nothing else. He turns to go, and then hears a sound. It's the sound of feet and knocking on doors, echoed through stone and digital static.

And then,

JOHN: did you hear that? ROXY: wha ROXY: oh yeah uh ROXY: i may have messaged rose and kan and jade to check on them too ROXY: so its prob onea them showin up ROXY: they don't need to know bout all this tho ROXY: we got time to chat with them b4 u go get vriska JOHN: i'll go stall em. ROXY: thx babe ROXY: oh is it 2 soon for that joke or JOHN: no, weirdly enough, that one's fine. ROXY: oh good ok see u up there soon!

And that's where we left off-- wasn't it their kids' team who got back into their house or something? Eh I'm done looking, now I at least know there was A NOISE that was playing through the monitors from the topside of their house above the teleporter that he's running to intercept.

Okay, past catch-up over. Back to present liveblogging. Looks like this isn't Rose and Kanaya like John expects, from the sound of it-- but the way John's running down a hallway makes it look like this is INSIDE OF THE LAB STILL, so the question is who is down here or CAME down here or...

(==>)

Oh, Sollux is helping Roxy and Calliope out with their project, playing on Roxy's pink retro consoles. That shouldn't actually be too shocking should it.

Wait, how is he playing video games if he's BLIND? Robo-eyes? It's gotta be robo-eyes.

(==>)

Stare

(==>)

Sandwich stare

(==>)

SOLLUX: eating a sandwich.

Brilliant. And yeah he lives here-- but he's actually LOOKING at stuff isn't he, with eyes of some sort? Even though he's still using the 0 quirk? Tell us what's up with that!

(==>)

John stop thinking this is a relationship between Sollux and Roxy, your divorcee/ex. Unless it is, which would be pretty cool honestly.

(==>)

SOLLUX: y0u w0rried im m0ving in 0n y0ur ex? JOHN: ...hmm. SOLLUX: ... JOHN: hm. hmm. hm. JOHN: hm? HMMMM. SOLLUX: what is g0ing 0n here. JOHN: sorry, i had an answer but then i started actually considering it. JOHN: am i jealous? JOHN: hmmm... SOLLUX: if i tell y0u straight up n0 we arent h00king up will y0u st0p? JOHN: ...maybe? SOLLUX: g0ddammit.

I'm really enjoying all this for some reason.

JOHN: are you still hanging out with that creepy alive girl? SOLLUX: SOLLUX: 0n a spiritual level. JOHN: cool! JOHN: is ... she also dating roxy? SOLLUX: what? SOLLUX: idk.

I'm pretty sure I get excited at the idea of literally ANY relationship potentially happening between all these characters I love.

(==>)

Oh no John is offloading his personal problems on him in longform conversation. He doesn't want that! XD

JOHN: and it only changed because i started talking to people again. SOLLUX: (i did this t0 myself why did i ask) JOHN: i guess in gamer terms it's the same as screwing yourself over by not checking every non playable character dialogue box. JOHN: any one of them could have the clues you need.

Feels kind of like we're doing the thing from that Steven Universe: Future episode where Steven is critically upset that important things happened in the lives of his friends offscreen somewhere he wasn't around to be aware of it, when realistically as a person you can't keep up with everything, especially not John who kept to himself in a slump for a decade as he puts it in some of the conversation I'm not fully requoting.

Okay Sollux dunks on John a bit, possibly deservedly... and to some extent, in a misogynist gamer phrasing typical to Sollux, John's lack of agency? Which I think would improve somewhat once the gender issues Roxy alluded to both upstairs and in the lab with him are resolved in part, because he can't be FULLY comfortable swept up in a relationship while he's still considering herself "he"...

SOLLUX: i have n0t been able t0 play this game the wh0le time because s0me0ne was talking 0ver the s0und. JOHN: oh! JOHN: sorry : (

Oh he's been using sound-only and audio assistance to play the game like a speedrunner almost instead of seeing it. That explains that.

(==>)

I don't quite understand the shape of that thing to the right of Sollux's head, like there's some sort of watermark over it WAIT THAT'S A DOOM SYMBOL WATERMARK TAKING UP MOST OF THE FRAME WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE

SOLLUX: w0rds d0nt mean much. SOLLUX: 0nly acti0ns.

(This is a perfect sort of thing someone for someone on the Life/Doom spectrum to say, which would be MUCH MUCH HARDER for someone on the Light/Void spectrum to say or especially a Light player. Doom being about the consequences of one's actions in part and all.) Is he about to use some Mage of Doom powers visibly onscreen?

(==>)

Ohhh. So he was making a dramatic Doom Prophecy that will matter to John's choices in the future if he heeds the right lessons, while also hinting toward the nature of Doom itself as I covered. Got it. That's fun! Also it was a pink cat pillow behind his head, that's the thing I was having so much trouble seeing.

(==>)

SOLLUX: WAIT. JOHN: !

He's gonna ask him to pass him a soda from across the room or something.

(==>)

SOLLUX: change my game f0r me.

This is so cute.

(Be Vrissy.)

GODDAMNIT JAILBREAK AGAIN LOL

Vriska the elder has decided to take it upon herself to test if you measure up to the arduous task of being a Vriska. For your first test: find a way to bust out of this dump. What will you do?

Stop judging her on your stupid Vriska standards, Vriska! I hope the way this plays out eventually plays straight into the idea that this very-Vriska-like-but-not-quite-Vriska individual has her own unique strengths. I'm not sure I mentioned it earlier, but when I said that it's possible that Vrissy is a Mind player, I'm actually really excited to see the comic demonstrate that (regardless of whether or not Vrissy is or isn't completely genetically identical to Vriska) because not only would it be a good lesson for the original Vriska that Vrissy has her own value, it's also a great Classpect demonstration of how the difference in their characters and action styles amounts to a different effect on reality in the form of a Hero Title that is different...

...and in fact now that I think about it, even though it may have rubbed me just slightly wrong somewhere inside that Vrissy and Vriska could have different Hero Titles even if they WERE genetically identical, I'm actually gonna turn around and say I've decided I love that, because if Sburb gives the genetically identical Vrissy a different title and she unlocks a different powerset purely because of the unique combination of nature *AND* nurture that resulted in her, that would emphasize much more properly that Sburb isn't FORCING or pigeonholing you into a Hero Title that doesn't suit you, it really is reading into your future and soul to tell you THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY you PERSONALLY would find right to influence reality around you. That makes the lesson of its title assignment and the answer to the Ultimate Riddle that I've long discussed a STRONGER answer, not a weaker one.

And I'm encouraged by the very first thing Vrissy tries being something the original Vriska would NEVER have tried first, which Vriska over here probably is gonna be snide/discouraging about:

(Vrissy: Call for help.)

Have we SEEN their chumhandles before? I feel like we've seen Vrissy's before at least-- "adamantGriftress" is an awesome chumhandle for her, and I know for SURE I've already seen thespiansGlamor as Harry Anderson's. Who the fuck is glutinousGymnast, is that Yiffy's handle, and what does glutinous mean again?!?? (I had to google it just in case, it's New Tavros's handle. Glutinous is "like glue in texture; sticky.", often referring to sticky rice or baking dough. Ew. Stickiness sort of implies the opposite of Breath doesn't it...? And he's a gymnast?)

Now. Who the fuck is "recidivousGainsayer"? Vrissy didn't know Yiffy existed, so she wouldn't have her in her phone already unless they'd been internet friends without knowing each other personally, which would be... kinda sweet really. And Yiffy is certainly rebellious, but she seems more recalcitrant than recidivous, though I can't rule it out, especially since she's basically grown up at a boarding school; a quick google to see if we'd seen the chumhandle before also highlighted someone commenting that "RG" doesn't follow the ACGT DNA pattern, and even if you switch to RNA it just swaps the T with a U. Could be that this is a chumhandle of one of the characters we had been following over in the Bonus Comics or something.

You're pretty sure that would be an automatic fail on Vriska's test. But even if it wasn't, it isn't like you could message anyone; not anyone worth talking to anyway. There's no service in here, the only bars you've got are the ones on the windows.

Yeah, Vrissy at least knows Vriska well enough to know what she'd approve and disapprove of most broadly, unfortunately. I hope she comes to understand how Vriska should really not be her role model.

Oh not this again--

(Vrissy: Get key.)

Vriska drew this shitty key on the floor "juuuuuuuust in case you need a reminder of what you should be working towards ::::)."

Vriska, you asshole!

(Vrissy: Try the door.)

You fruitlessly pull on the bars. Vriska says it looks like it's still locked. Yeah???????? No shit, you tell her. You're just trying to see if you can get a guard's attention. She says ooooooooh that's a good idea.

If you don't keep complimenting her I'm going to be very cross with you, Vriska.

Hm, it'd be really fitting and interesting if Vrissy Mindgames her way out of this one by putting on a façade of distress and convincing the guard to barge in, maybe saying Vriska's escaped or such.

(Vrissy: Get a guard's attention.)

One of those guards Jane intentionally had all dress like Dave to taunt Jane about Dave's death or just make them harder for her and Rose to stomach fighting, right.

Maybe you should use some of your SICKNASTY BRAIN EXPLOITABLES on this jabroni.

How much practice does she have with her psychic powers? All Aranea was able to do with Cerulean psychics on humans was get a vague sense of the emotions of people around her toward her like she always does, and Vriska WAS able to put a human to sleep or wake them in another universe but only when trying so hard that her Light symbol flashed in her eye, emphasizing that a Cerulean troll who WASN'T using the powers of a God-Tier Thief of Light wouldn't necessarily be able to do the same to a human. Stealing wakefulness or stealing through wakefulness, wakefulness being a part of Agency and thus Light, where Void is associated with sleep and dreams, et cetera. (Vriska put people (like Jade D:) to sleep FAR FAR MORE OFTEN than she woke them up, and when she woke John that one time it could have been considered "stealing THROUGH Light" because it deprived him of an opportunity in his dreams to meet his Dad as his dreamself just to give Vriska the selfish opportunity to speak with him at the exact time she'd wanted to speak with him.)

Also, if Vrissy DOES refer to her Cerulean mind powers as "sicknasty BRAIN exploitables" that does put Mind more in mind than usual... and exploitables could just be flavor or it COULD be a reference to EXPLOIT, the theoretical Knight/Page action verb?! --Nah that's probably a stretch.

(Vrissy: Use your Sicknasty Brain Exploitables.)

You apply the focused totality of your psychic power into this douchebag's cranium. Frustratingly, it looks like this guy is resisting your psychic enthrallment so he can get at that donut. Other than occasionally making Tavros dance when he's being boring, you honestly don't do this much.

Holy shit, if she could make New Tavros DANCE, this actually means that Vrissy has more control over human minds than Vriska ever had?!? That or New Tavros is uniquely impressionable, which is ALSO a possibility; the original comic itself emphasized that the "impressiona8le" were more vulnerable to her abilities... those who had less control or agency over themselves.

Also, Vriska had only just met her first humans when her psychic talents were limited to making them sleep-- Vrissy grew up alongside other humans, and that might just be enough for her to understand their minds enough to do some occasional manipulation.

Your mom is always like, "You Need To Listen To Me Vriska Its Important To Keep These Skills Honed In Case Shit Gets Real", but shit so rarely if ever gets real so mom should get OFF your CASE!!!!!!!! Until now, you guess. Wow do you hate realizing your mom was right about shit. ANYWAYS, LAY OFF THE FUCKING DONUTS AND GET OVER HERE ASSHOLE!!!!!!!!

On the one hand, it's unsurprising that Vrissy didn't keep her talents honed for battle or anything, and wouldn't have invested nearly as much energy into exploiting people with psychic powers as Vriska's twisted childhood forced her to; but on the other hand, like I said, this is STILL a bit more direct influence over humans than Vriska ever had, even if it's not working right now!

(==>)

Hell yeah!!!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT SHE ACTUALLY OUTCLASSED ORIGINAL VRISKA IN CONTROLLING A HUMAN MIND.

Is Vriska going to feel jealous?! Holy shit?!?? Or is this old hat for her now and she's gonna say she could do it all along, or a retcon along those lines or-- gosh just PLEASE I WANNA SEE VRISKA JEALOUS AS FUCK OF VRISSY'S PSYCHIC TALENTS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HAVE ORIGINAL VRISKA GO "WHOA HOW DID YOU DO THAT"

(Vriskas: Exit the cell.)

Damn that felt good. After locking up the guard you turn to Vriska and ask her what next. Vriska says that now it's time to fuck some shit up. You like the sound of that. You ask her if there's any specific shit or place she wants to go fuck up. She says you'll just walk around until you land somewhere cool. You both laugh. You ask her what her real plan is. She keeps laughing as she walks away.

That's definitely her real plan. But anyway-- UGH, missed opportunity here. I guess we're just supposed to take it as a given that if original Vriska had had enough time, or grown up more, she could do the same thing to impressionable-enough humans as she did to trolls too, or the like.

(==>)

ALARMS BLARING, GUARDS RUNNING-- yeah they didn't cause this, this is some other assault on the Jail, right?

Okay, that's a lot of goons. You suggest to Vriska that you should go the other direction. Vriska says nah this is definitely where we wanna be. She says between the two of you, you've probably got enough luck to take this whole place off the map if you really wanted. You ask her what the fuck she means by that. She says you know like with your Thief of Light powers. You tell her you don't have anything like that. She says huh, weird!

VRISKA WHY THE FUCK WOULD IT BE WEIRD, VRISSY DIDN'T PLAY THE GAME OR GO GOD-TIER, YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD LUCK-STEALING POWERS UNTIL YOU PLAYED THE GAME!!!

Wait, let's back up a sec.

Vriska is smart enough to know that you CAN tap into your Hero Title powers even if you're not someone who's hit God-Tier. As a gleaner of deep lore about the game, Vriska ALSO would put together that the powers you get in the game are inherent to you even before you PLAY the game if you're skilled enough or high up on your echeladder enough to access them, so even if she never Stole Light directly before she played Sgrub, she technically COULD have. Maybe she figures Vrissy, as a coincidental genetically identical alt-version of her, should have access to the same powers just by virtue of having the same genes and training from her Seer of Light Mom knowing she'd have that potential in her genetically, OR, hear me out--

Vriska has already let us know that she's PLANNING ON STARTING A NEW GAME SESSION which we all figure will include Vrissy and the other kids as the players, and Vriska probably figures those kids will be the players too!

So, and I know this is some 3D-chess assumption-maneuvering here and I might be way off base, just taking so much from this single exchange...

...My guess is that Vriska thinks Vrissy ought to ALREADY HAVE inherent Thief of Light powers deep inside her and untapped, because she thinks Vrissy is going to be a PLAYER and thus ALWAYS WOULD gain her powers! Powers which she, of course, would ASSUME would match hers given their genetic similarity-- she would ASSUME Vrissy would also be a Thief of Light.

Except that none of the way Vrissy has actually behaved has resembled a Thief of Light much at all, and Hero Titles are inherent to your PERSONALITY and its method of action of influencing reality around you... and we already have background hinting that matches MUCH closer to her character and her behavior/actions in dialogue with others that she may be a Mind player.

Vriska didn't scold Vrissy for not having tried hard enough to develop the Thief of Light abilities she ASSUMED were inherent to Vrissy. She instead seems confused that she's never manifested any, and said "huh, weird!". Despite the knots in her psychology, both Vriska's smarts and her hero title are likely hinting to her that there might be some flaw in her assumptions here-- something that's keeping this from being a sarcastic scolding and instead telling her something isn't right about the knowledge she thought she had at hand.

(==>)

Vriska says that's perfectly fine as she always prefers a challenge. Vriska Serket, the daring Thief of Light and her imitation kid Vriska sidekick against countless foes. Marquise Spinneret Mindfang leading her Neophyte Bluehair, it's a tale for th- w8 w8 hold the fuck up. You ask her what the fuck does she mean "imitation.

Of course, just because Vriska isn't going to be an asshole in that PARTICULAR direction was never any assurance that Vriska wasn't going to be an asshole. She still views (Vrissy) as the less important version of the original her, and she's still going to frame everything in that light because of course she would, it's still in her nature and she still hasn't fully learned her lesson yet.

(==>)

I'm at the image limit so I'm gonna hold off on posting Vriska's hilariously condescending greasy expression and Vrissy squinting hilariously absolutely having fucking none of it:

Vriska says to not let it get to you, but she's pretty much figured out that this whoooooooole timeline is phony. You know, inauthentic. Fake. Bogus even. She says it's somehow the off brand equivalent of a universe and she really hopes you kept the receipt. You assure her that both you and this timeline are in fact, real as shit. She doesn't seem convinced. She says it's mostly from the little things she's noticed. You ask like what, she's only been on this planet for like a day and a half. She gestures vaguely and tells you to give her a boost so she can reach that ventilation shaft.

Yeah, the way this version of reality isn't as tethered to Canon means Vriska isn't going to take it seriously-- she shares Dirk's view of the (Candy) timeline in that regard, really. And they BOTH are going to receive their comeuppance and learn their lesson.

Phew-- that image limit was a good sign, I was already hitting the limits of my energy for the day, that was hours of liveblogging and typing. I guess we'll leave off here until another day! As I said at the outset, I'm still going to be pacing myself and only doing liveblogging every few days like I mentioned, but that doesn't mean I'm not VERY MUCH enjoying this and very looking forward to where it's going. If I weren't liveblogging, I'd get there a lot faster, I assure you, but then you wouldn't get to see me go off on random Classpect tangents about stuff you already guessed! :D

See you in a few days!

[sapphire-heart-tippy]

Sugar Crash Void Bash: The Fanfic!

The direct sequel to: The Sapphire Heartverse

Chapter One: Candy Coded

chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 5 chapter 6 chapter 7 chapter 8

Last entirety edit: 9/04/2024

“Ramón!” The brunette man calls from the kitchen, “Your breakfast is going to get cold, Foofy!” Ice sighs and places a paper towel over the two freshly cooked, fluffy pancakes dolloped with butter, and a side of over easy eggs. 

“Need any help, Vans?” Tippy asks zeir husband. Vanilla pouts a little bit, 

“Go get your son.” He points.

In his room, 15 year old Ramón is on his computer chair listening to music and doodling a little in his sketchbook. Tippy opens the door,

“Mi hijo,” Ze knocks on the panel. Ramón turns around a little startled, then takes his headphones off,

“D-daddo! Good morning! I was just about to uh… yeah.”

“Get your cotton-candy-headed self in the kitchen before your pops sends you to the void.” Tippy teases Ramón. Ramón gets up from his computer chair and looks down at his dad with a chuckle. Tippy looks up at him,

“When did you get so tall?! I swear, we might have to get you a bigger doorway,” ze follows Ramón to the kitchen, “or a bigger house, heheh!”

“What’s this about a bigger house, sweetie? I’m not making any more renovations to this place until you give me a garden.” Vanilla points a spatula and gives his husband a warm chuckle and a smile.

“Papa, do you have to wear that apron every time you cook?” Ramón sits down at the table with an exaggerated eye roll as he takes the paper towel off of his plate.

“Yes, I do, young man. Eat your food so you can get taller and annoy your dad even more.” Vanilla dusts some pancake flour off of his purple apron with violet hearts on the pockets. He adjusts his hair bun and brushes his long left bang behind his ear. Ramón notices this and remembers something he’s been wanting to say for years. Vanilla pulls off his apron, getting ready to eat breakfast with his family. The teenage boy finishes chewing and swallows his pancake, then lightly points his fork at his papa,

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, pops. How come your right bang is so much shorter than the left? It’s been like that forever.”

Vanilla looks at his son, frozen. His mouth is open a little and his eyes are just a bit wide, Vanilla is stuck in place for a moment. The brunette looks to his lower left then his upper right,

“Uh… ah. Well…” Vanilla daintily folds his apron, fidgeting with it, “I… I’ll have to tell you when you’re older.” 

“Huh? How come?” Ramón asks before drinking some orange juice. Vanilla sits next to Tippy and kisses the top of zeir head.

“Well, Foofy… It’s a long story. A very long, boring story that you might not want to sit through.” Vanilla fidgets with his hair and doesn’t make eye contact with his son. Ramón has a feeling something is up, but leaves it alone.

After Tippy leaves for work at the art studio, Vanilla drops Ramón off at his high school.

“Alright, Foofs, have a wonderful day at school. Don’t cause trouble now!” Vanilla smiles at Ramón. He leans over and kisses his son on the cheek, much to Ramón’s dismay.

“Papa, don’t!” The pink haired boy turns around to look out the window in case anyone might’ve seen. He whips his head back around to his father, “I’m not a little kid anymore, you can’t just… kiss me like that, man.” Vanilla’s brows frown,

“I’m sorry…” Ramón opens the car door and Vanilla speaks, “You’ll always be my little boy. No matter how old you get.” 

Ramón sighs,

“I know, pops.”

“Ramoooooooon!” One of his friends playfully howls at him.

“Gotta go! See you at home!”

“Okay, Foofy, I lo-” Ramón closes the door on Vanilla. The brunette is stunned for a moment. He brushes his longer bang behind his ear and drives away with a very hurt expression.

“There he is!” One of Ramón’s friends, Jared, pats his back. Jared is a tall, lean yet muscular teenage boy with a box fade hair style, gold dangling earrings with stars at the end, and very dark brown eyes, “Are you still gonna hang out after cheer today?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan anyway, but it’s subject to change.” Ramón smiles and playfully shoves his friend. They both walk inside the building. Alex, another one of Ramón’s friends walks besides the two boys. She is a chubby teenage girl with straight blonde hair down her back, light blue eyes, and braces,

“Did you see the new episode of Space Train Violence last night?! It was the best one yet!”

“You say that about every episode! Even the one where they stood on the moon and didn’t do anything.” Jared tells her with a laugh. Ramón opens his locker and sets his backpack inside. Jared leans up against the locker next to Ramón about to say something. Suddenly his eyes widen and he smacks Ramón on the back a few times to get his attention.

“Dude, what?” Ramón turns around to see Cobie, his crush approaching the two of them. Cobie is a goth teenager with spiky black hair, blue lipstick, dark eye makeup surrounding their dark purple eyes. They walk towards Ramón, causing his heart to pound. Jared suppresses a laugh. He stretches and speaks,

“Oh yeah, I just remembered I have to be over here or whatever. Hi, Cobie.”

“Hey.” Cobie waves gloomily at Jared. “Hey, Ramón.”

“Hi. Uh, ahem, hi. Cobie.” Ramón clears his throat.

“I found these rat bones behind my house. I was lucky enough to find the skull too. I was thinking about adding it to my collection.” Cobie tells him, showing him the skeleton in a shoe box. Oh man, they are so cool.

“Y-yeah, that sounds awesome. Uh… so how is your half of the project coming along?” Ramón asks them.

“It’s going well. I hope you don’t mind that I put a spiderweb design on some parts.” Cobie closes the box.

“I think that’s really cool.” Ramón smiles at them. They look at him with a blank expression, but it’s still obvious that they enjoy his company. Cobie is about to speak, but suddenly, the box is smacked out of their hands. The box and its contents spill all over the floor. The person who did that also slams Ramón’s locker shut,

“Ew! There were bones in that thing!” 

“Ryan…” Ramón grits his teeth. Ryan is a tall, muscular yet chubby and pale, strawberry blonde teenage boy with blue eyes.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than be a douchebag?” Ramón sighs with a scowl.

“Wow, so hostile for no reason!” Ryan laughs. He tries to intimidate Cobie by pretending he’s going to attack them. When they flinch, Ryan laughs even harder. He turns back towards Ramón, “What? What?”

Ramón grits his teeth, and winds up his leg about to kick Ryan in the face. Unfortunately the headmaster walks down the hallway. Ryan gives her a fake smile and bows to her,

“Good morning, Miss Lewis. You look lovely today.”

“Good morning, Ryan.” She smiles at him, then sneers at Ramón, “Morning, Mr Ice.”

“Good morning, Miss Lewis.” Ramón says.

“Mhm. Have you been getting control of that menace of a stand?” She narrows her eyes at him. Ramón is about to speak to defend his stand, but suddenly she turns to see two other teenagers attacking one another, “HEY!” She sprints over to them at lightning speed, “No stand fighting in the hallway!” She grabs them both with her stand’s mechanical arms and pushes them away from each other,

“If I catch you using your stands to fight again, you are both getting detention!”

Ramón, Ryan, and Cobie watch this happen. Ryan turns back to Ramón and flips him off as he walks away. Ramón angrily bites his teeth and shakes his head. 

After school

Ramón and Jared head to the gym to cheer practice. The cheer captain Lillie, a teenage girl with long lavender box braids tied into a ponytail, bright pink lipstick, and dark brown almost pitch black eyes, blows a sparkly pink plastic whistle,

“Alright, everyone!” She claps her hands, “Let’s get this party started! Ramón! Have you been practicing those backflips?”

“You know it.” Ramón tells her. Jared elbows him in the shoulder,

“Hey, ask her about the thing- actually I’ll ask her about the thing- Lillie!”

“Yeeees?” She asks with a cheerful smile. Ramón tries to get Jared to stop talking, but he persists,

“Ramón’s stand can glitch people in and out of existence. Can he use it for our next performance?” Lillie taps her pen with a fluffy pink end against her cheek,

“Hmmm… I don’t know. Is it a destructive stand?”

“U-uh,” Ramón looks around at the other cheerleaders, “Well… I don’t actually know. I mean- uh… Sugar Crash-”

“Ooooh, Sugar Crash! I like that name! Sorry, go ahead.” Lillie giggles.

“Uh… well… like I said, I don’t know what else he does. The only thing I know how to do now is uh… well… uh, okay okay,” Ramón steps in front of everyone, “Let me show you.”

The teenage boy takes out his stand Sugar Crash. Sugar Crash is a pastel pink robotic looking stand. He has an angular helmet on his head, right-triangle eyes with blue scleras and black pupils, a soft angled cube torso, with teal, pink and green beams connecting his purple mechanical hands. The torso has a heart shaped hole in the middle with a swirling pink vortex with a light blue singularity. The torso is also connected to a spiked and more sharp angled cubic bottom. Sugar Crash levitates with small pink, teal, and green rings coming out of the bottom cube. 

Lillie smiles as Ramón continues to introduce them all to Sugar Crash. Ramón leaps into the air to perform a backflip, and Sugar Crash causes him to glitch out of existence. The other cheerleaders ooh and aah at what happened. Suddenly they hear his voice, which sounds just as glitched and distorted as he once was,

“I’m still here,” Ramón speaks and they all look around the gym for him, “But at the same time I’m not. It’s hard to explain… down here.” Ramón’s voice is normal now. His head and torso are coming out of the floor. The matter around him is glitched and looks distorted, Ramón is also just a little distorted, his image is jerking around as if he is a corrupted video game character. One of the teens covers their eyes because it’s difficult for them to look at. Lillie frowns her brows and smiles,

“That’s so cool! But I don’t know how we could incorporate that into our cheer. Especially if it could be harmful to other peoples’ eyes.”

“O-oh, no no!” Ramón floats up quickly and goes back to normal, “We wouldn’t have to do the floor thing, but phasing in and out of existence could be part of our routine.” A few of the other cheerleaders look at each other. One of them gets a worried look and speaks,

“I-I dunno… it seems, like, kind of dangerous…” Another one chimes in,

“Yeah, what if one of us gets stuck in the ground or a wall?”

“Yeah! And what if we get stuck in the void forever?!” Another speaks up. Ramón tries to settle them down. They all start talking about stand users with void powers and how they’re always dangerous,

“I had a cousin who had a void type stand. He went crazy and ended up sealing away half of his family into the ether! Never to be seen again!”

“That’s awful, I heard there are some people who can call the void at will and destroy everything in their path.” Another says.

“That’s horrible!”

“In my opinion, people with stands like that shouldn’t be allowed to-”

Lillie blows her whistle, getting a little upset,

“Alright!” She claps her hands, “Let’s get back to practicing our cheers for the game!” She gives Ramón an apologetic look. They all practice their original routine until it’s time to go home. 

That night

Ramón has his cheek pressed up against his palm, playing with his dinner with a fork. 

“Foofy?” Vanilla asks his son sweetly. Ramón looks up at his papa with a small,

“Mmm?”

“Is everything alright? Did something happen at school, Foofs?” Ice asks his child.

“Yeah, you okay, chiquito? You look kinda sad.” Tippy asks, joining in with a warm expression.

Ramón looks at his papa, then at his dad, then back at his papa. Ramón grimaces a little then leans back in his chair,

“Uh… it’s uh… you know, like…” He waves his hand around, “puberty.”

“Ah, that makes sense.” Tippy nods, while Vanilla has a feeling something else is going on. Ice tightens his lips into a line with worried brows and scratches his jaw a little bit,

“You know you can always come to us if there’s anything bothering you.”

“I know.” Ramón tells them, “Uh… I need to do my homework. Big test tomorrow, so I have to get on that.” He gets up and heads to his room.

“W-wait! Foofy, you didn’t finish-” Vanilla picks up the plate and tries to bring it to Ramón, but his son closes his bedroom door. His shoulders drop and he brings the plate back to the table. Ice sighs deeply and slumps down into a chair.

“Hey…” Tippy walks over and wraps zeir arms around zeir husband, “He’s just going through a phase where he wants to be independent. Let him have his space for now, okay?”

“I…I know, sweetie.” Ice touches Tippy’s hand which is resting on one of his shoulders, “He’s growing up too fast. I remember when he could fit in my arms. He was so tiny. I would look down at him while rocking him and he would look at me with those big brown eyes…” Vanilla smiles, fondly remembering his son as an infant, “I would smile at him and he would smile back… I used to fall asleep with him in my arms on the couch.”

“Yeah, and you spoiled him rotten to the point he couldn’t sleep without you!” Tippy playfully pokes zeir husband’s nose, “Ramón would cry all night until you would hold him. He sounded so pitiful, he just wanted his papa…”

“He needed me, Tippy.” Vanilla covers his mouth. Tippy touches Vanilla’s cheek,

“I know and now you need him.” Ze pats Ice’s cheek.

“Hm? What do you mean by that?” The brunette asks. Tippy chuckles,

“You don’t want your little boy to grow up just yet.”

“Well, what parent wants their baby to grow up?” Ice pouts, making his husband laugh,

“It’ll be okay. Maybe you and Ramón can hang out one day. Maybe take him bowling or something and have a Papa and Foofy day!”

“I would love that so much, but…” Ice’s eyes are downcast, “I don’t think he wants to be seen in public with me.” He adjusts his hair bun and tucks away the loose strands, “He pushed me away when I kissed his cheek…”

“Listen here, Lucky Charms,” Tippy wraps his arm around his husband’s shoulders, “I’m serious when I say just let him have his space. Go ahead and wait until Sunday, that way it’s after the game, then ask if he’d like to hang out with you.” Ze kisses Vanilla’s cheek, “You know! Just get to know your kiddo all over again.”

“Maybe you’re right, Termite.” Ice gives zem a small smile and kisses zeir forehead. 

Sunday

“Foofy?” Ice gently opens Ramón’s door. The teenage boy is sleeping soundly in the top bunk of his desk-bunkbed. Vanilla hears his son peacefully breathing in his slumber, this makes him smile. The brunette thinks back to when he would watch Ramón sleeping in his crib, so worried and so protective of his child. The man clears his throat and speaks a little louder,

“Foofs?”

“Snrrrkkk- huh? What?” Ramón stirs awake. The teenage boy leans up a little too fast and bonks his head on the ceiling, “Ouch!” He rubs his head. 

“Oh! Are you alright?” Ice leans forward.

“Y-yeah… uh, hey, good morning, papa. You need me for something?” 

“Hmhm, well… I was thinking,” Ice leans on the door pane with a warm smile, “You and I haven’t had any ‘papa and son’ time together in… hm… a long while. Perhaps you and I could…” Vanilla’s voice trails off as he notices his son’s wincing face. This hurts his feelings quite a bit, however he continues, “Could, er, go bowling. If you’d like. Just you and me?”

Ramón grimaces and looks at his papa for a few uncomfortable moments,

“Uhh.. oh, dang, uh… I don’t know, man. I’m a little sore from cheer yesterday.” Ramón stretches, rubs his neck, and nonchalantly looks away. 

“I see…” Vanilla’s eyes are downcast. “If you ever need anything, Foofy, please let me know.” Ice’s honey sunset eyes gaze up into Ramón’s.

“You got it, pops! I’ll be fine. Honest.” 

“Mnh.” Ice nods at his child with a small smile as he gently closes the bedroom door.

Ramón waits a few moments after his papa leaves before breathing a sigh of relief,

“Glad that’s over…” The pink haired boy rips off the blankets from himself and slides down the ladder and sits down at his desk. Ramón puts on his headset and starts up his computer. After a while, he hears his other friends and speaks,

“Heeeeyy! So, are we still on for the mall today?”

Unbeknownst to Ramón, his papa stayed right outside the door and could hear everything.

“What? No, no I’m free. Yeah, my fathers said it’s okay… cool, I’ll meet you both around 2.”

Vanilla twirls his left bang around in a vain attempt to comfort himself. Ice sighs softly and gives one last glance at Ramón’s bedroom door, before finally walking away.

To be continued…

[drabblesandimagines]

Under The Weather

Clive Rosfield x female reader For @ladycry19, the winner of my 500 followers celebration, who requested some fluff with Clive cupping reader's face in their hands. Thank you for your support! <3

You roll over in your bunk, flinging the blanket aside as another hot flush coursed through your body. You know in a moment you’ll be reaching for it again, pulling it right up to your neck - you seemed to be alternating between freezing cold and boiling hot, with no middle ground to be found. 

What you thought was a mild cold from a night caught out in the rain from surveillance on a Bearer master has turned into something far more nasty. The infirmary was full of the liberated Bearers from said master, in a far worse off state than you were, and so Tarja had, albeit very reluctantly, allowed you to stay in your bunk rather than a make-shift bed on the floor. Her and Rodriguez would alternate and visit you every few hours to check on your condition, salves and foul-tasting medicines in hand.

Your throat felt like you'd swallowed handfuls of sand, nose stuffed up, face throbbing and a horrible chesty cough that grew worse if you lay too flat on your back. You were lucky to have a bunk room to yourself, a small nook of the Hideaway that is entirely yours, a small square cut in the wall as a window – the sun now having long set. The rest of the room comprises of a mattress atop a basic frame and a small dresser and a heavy piece of stained fabric acting as a door.

You shiver and reach over for discarded blanket and break into a coughing fit, your whole body wracking with the effort. It takes a few moments for you to catch your breath and you reach for the tankard of water Tarja left on her last visit, heave yourself up a little bit more against the pillows, and sip slowly. You catch sight of the small bouquet of dried flowers atop the dresser and can’t help but smile – a gift Clive had given you at the very beginning of your courtship, prompted by a throwaway comment of how you’d never had flowers when you’d seen the flowers begin to grow in the Backyard. He’d foraged it for you especially, searching the fields around Martha’s Rest and presented it to you so bashfully, the stems held together by twine. A green-fingered Bearer had shown you how to dry them out so you could keep them always.

Thinking of Clive, you are thankful that he is currently away with his uncle and that he won’t see you in such an unsightly state – hair worse than a chocobo’s nest, still a little feverish, snuffed up and a voice so hoarse it could’ve rivalled the dulcet of Cid’s back in the day.

You’re miserable, fed-up, tired – suffering from broken sleep as you wake to cough and wrestle with the blanket, or when another tonic was brought for you to drink. Tarja assured you that you were now over the worst of it, but it was going to take a few more days for everything to clear. Staring up at the wooden ceiling, you can’t help but think about how lucky you are that you are here, within the Hideaway, where you are being cared for and allowed to rest. When you were sick as a Branded, your master had still expected you to fulfil your duties. You’d seen your fellow Bearers work until collapse, and then your master would debate whether it was worth the gil to send for the healer or just wait and see if they pulled through on their own.

There’s a knock on the wooden panels to the side of your doorway – it must be time for another draught.

“Come in”, you call, your voice cracking a little.

The curtain is pulled aside, but it is not Tarja, or Rodriguez or even Jill who steps in, but one Clive Rosfield.

“No.” You shake your head and pull the covers up and over your head, embarrassed.

“I… I thought you’d be pleased to see me, my lady.” You can hear he is pouting through his voice alone.

“I am glad you are back safely, but you have to leave.” “Tarja said you’ve not been well - I’ve got a draught she’d like you to take.”

“If you put it down, I can take it after you leave. Please.” Going under the blanket is proving to be a mistake, it’s stuffy and hard to breathe.

“Why are you hiding, sweetheart?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” You erupt into a fit of wracking coughs, so violent the blanket falls off your head as you attempt to catch your breath. Your eyes are closed, coughing into the crook of your elbow, when you feel a warm palm rub your back in soothing circles.

As the coughing subsides, you open one eye, reluctantly, to see that Clive is knelt down besides you, draught in hand, eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“Here – drink, please.”

You nod and take it, holding it up to your lips and down it in one. It’s better that way, considering how bitter it is from past experience. Once you are finished, he exchanges it for the tankard of water and you take a deep sip, clearing the taste.

“Thank you.” You keep your eyes downcast.

“You should’ve sent word that you weren’t well.” His palm remains on the small of your back. “I would’ve been back sooner if I’d known.”

“No, it wasn’t necessary – I wasn’t on death’s door by any means.”

“Then can you look at me?”

You shake your head. “Please can you go?”

“Sweetheart, why would I leave? You’re sick – I want to look after you.”

“I look as horrible as a Morbol.”

“Impossible.” He places a hand on your cheek, cupping it and gently tilts your head to meet his eyes.

“Clive,” you huff. “I haven’t combed my hair, or bathed and I’m feverish and…”

His other hand leaves your back and now he cups your entire face in his palms, staring into your eyes.

“You’re beautiful – inside and out.”

Your cheeks burn hot but you know it’s not from the fever that time, but the sincerity in his words and in his eyes. You’d accused him of lying, but he’s never been any good at it.

“I don’t feel like it right now.”

“Then it is my job to remind you,” he presses a long, sweet kiss on your forehead, your face still held in his palms so you can’t even move away.

“You’ll get sick.” You say, pathetically.

“No - I believe I mentioned to Tarja before that I never seemed to get ill with such things in my time in the Imperial Army.” He lets go of your face then, though takes your hand in his. “She wondered if it is a quirk of being a Dominant.”

“You must have missives to deal with.”

“I can respond to them here.”

You look around the room in disbelief. With him knelt beside your bed, nearly all the space is already taken up. “There’s no room for a chair at the dresser, and that’s not large enough for the ink and quills you’ll need and-”

“Then I shall bring you to my chambers, where I can keep an eye and complete my work.”

You open your mouth to protest further, but you’ve swiftly run out of reasons as to why he can’t.

“I’d feel much better knowing that you were being taken of, and I know Tarja is under enough strain with how busy the infirmary is.”

Clive Rosfield is not a man to be swayed once he has an objective in mind – you’ve seen that out on missions with him enough times.

“Don’t ask me to go. I love you, sweetheart.”

 You pout, he knows that always makes you concede, not helped by how weak you already feel. “I love you too.”

“So, you’ll allow me to take care of you?”

You nod, feeling exhausted.

He lifts your hand to his mouth, presses a kiss across your knuckles and then smiles. “I am glad we are in agreement. Here.” He pulls the blanket off your lap for a moment and drapes it around your shoulders. “We’ll have to cross the loading dock and I will not have you catching a further chill. Ready?”

You nod again, pulling your knees up in preparation of getting to your feet when Clive slips an arm under your thighs and another around your back, lifting you up before you can even blink.

You don’t even attempt to fight him on it, say you can walk, instead you simply wrap your arms around his neck, nuzzle your cheek against his chest, breathing in his scent and feeling far more content than you have in days.

“I missed you.” You say, softly.

Clive smiles, kisses your crown once more as he steps through the curtain to take you to his chambers. “I missed you too, my lady.”

--

I am under the weather atm - can you tell? Masterlist . Requests welcome . Commissions/Ko-Fi

Comments, follows, likes and reblogs make my day!

[samwpmarleau]

fic: ginger root

whumptober day 24: motion sickness masterlist: tumblr, ao3 Galaxy-jumping and Robbie’s stomach do not, apparently, mix well. Fortunately, there’s a source of tea and saltines on board by the name of Daniel Sousa. part 1 | part 2

Robbie can’t remember the last time he felt so nauseas. Disgusted, sure. In pain, definitely. But being on the precipice of throwing up, skin clammy and ears ringing, it’s been quite a while.

He hasn’t yet found a way to prepare and prevent when he hears over the intercom the dreaded words, “Jumping in three … two … one …”

His stomach lurches as everything in his vision goes blurry. Intellectually, he knows it takes only seconds. He knows that, but from where he’s standing — or sitting — it’s the longest hour of his life. They’ve jumped three times since he was resurrected, and if anything, it only worsens.

He keeps his head against his knees as the ship comes out the other side. His bunk isn’t the most spacious of places, but it’s the one place that he doesn’t have to worry about someone coming across him in the state he’s in now. He’s already an interloper, he doesn’t need mortification, too. What kind of grown man feels like a child with stage fright from a silly little warp drive?

Right as he’s deciding he’ll keep his breakfast down, he discovers that maybe even his bunk isn’t safe, for there’s a knock at the door. The panel to open it is so far away.

“It’s Sousa,” comes the visitor’s voice.

Sousa? The man’s been plenty polite so far, but Robbie’s still amazed by the fact that he was transported here from the 1950s looking not a day over forty. And everyone acts like that’s just another day in the life. Which it must be for them, but Robbie’s playing catchup. Existing as Ghost Rider’s host had been so simple. Hacking and slashing and portaling, most of the time not even aware of what his body is doing. Time travel is beyond him.

He has no real reason to deny Sousa entry, however, so he rises to his feet and holds his hand to the panel.

The agent arrives in his typical business-casual fit (a hard-won upgrade from formal business, Daisy’d said) with a sympathetic smile and a cup of tea.

“That for me?” Robbie asks. He grimaces at the wobble in his voice.

“Yeah. Ginger root.” Sousa hands him the cup, along with most of a sleeve of saltines. “Took me awhile to get the hang of jumping, too.”

Robbie takes a sip of the well-prepared tea and nibbles on a cracker. “You’d think after thirteen years of dimension-hopping I’d be used to this.”

“Different kind of travel. And you’re no longer …”

Robbie waits in mild amusement as Sousa searches for a nice way to put it.

“… enhanced.”

“Possessed,” Robbie corrects. “I sold my soul to the devil, man. You don’t need to talk around it.”

Sousa gives him a self-deprecating smile. “Right. Sorry.”

“Did Daisy send you? No matter how many times I tell that girl not to worry —”

“She does. Don’t I know it.” Sousa helps himself to one of Robbie’s crackers. “No, she didn’t send me. She’s working on tuning static out of the comms system. New solar system, new frequency to figure out. I’ve noticed you’re always in your bunk when we jump and skip lunch, so I made an educated guess.”

Well, that’s better than having his business aired to the entire ship, he supposes. Still, he’d rather not dwell on it. “My brother would have a field day with all that techy stuff. He planned on majoring in computer science.”

Gabe’s face flashes in his head, the way he wears his joy after deciphering some equation or experiment, and the sullen way he gets when he can’t. At least, that’s the way Robbie remembers it. He’s talked to Gabe a couple times since he was brought back, and every time throws him for a loop. When Robbie had left with the Darkhold, Gabe had been a seventeen-year-old kid about to graduate from high school.

Now, he’s a twenty-four-year-old man with two degrees, a steady relationship, and a good job. While Robbie knows Gabe had been excited to see him, there’d been an ensuing awkwardness that Robbie once would have said was unthinkable. He doesn’t begrudge him that, he understands that Gabe must’ve mourned him as dead long ago when it was clear Robbie’s trip to hell wasn’t a short one. Nevertheless, that disconnect feels like a gaping wound.

Once we’re home, everything will be fine, Daisy had encouraged shortly after giving up on the sham of not eavesdropping.

Robbie hopes she’s right. It’d just be helpful to know when that’ll happen. There’s not much Daisy and her team can contribute to Earth’s chaos, or so says Mack — no, Director Mack — and everyone they love are accounted for, so their original cosmic schedule remains the same. His desires are not, unfortunately, high up on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s list of priorities.

“Bright kid,” Sousa says. “Daisy checks in on him every couple months and visits on resupply. They played long-distance Scrabble for awhile until she got tired of losing. It’s Trivial Pursuit now, though I’m not sure who’s —”

“You’ve met him?”

“Oh. No. No, that was something Daisy always wanted to do alone. She just had had a lot to say when she came back.”

Robbie feels some relief at that. He has no ill will towards Sousa, but the idea of Daisy inviting the man into the promise she’d made him, Robbie, sits uneasy in his gut. An uncharitable feeling, perhapas, but Robbie can’t help it.

He takes a generous sip of tea. That, Robbie has no problem with. He says as much, and the compliment lands. Brightly, Sousa replies, “I learned from the best. Agent Peggy Carter didn’t have much tolerance for a bad cup of tea, that’s for damn sure.”

Not for the first time, Robbie marvels at that. It breaks his brain a little to know the man in front of him dated the famed progenitor of S.H.I.E.L.D. simultaneously ten and seventy-five years ago.

“Force of nature, I’ve heard,” Robbie says. There’s not a whole lot of books to read on this ship, but S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history is one of them — protocol, probably, to keep a copy on every vessel — so he’s been left to brush up on the agency’s inception. With a wry smile, he adds, “I think you have a type, Agent Sousa.”

Sousa’s cheeks tinge faintly pink. “Guess I do.”

“Hey, no shade, man. I get it.”

“You, too, huh?”

“Well, I haven’t had anyone follow me up with Captain America, but yeah. You could say that.”

“How it’d end?”

Robbie slowly drains the rest of his tea, buying himself time to beat around the bush. “Uh, I mean, we never dated. It wasn’t the right time, and I don’t know if she felt the same. I thought maybe …” She’d seemed receptive back then, almost flirty, even. The memory of being in the control center, fully human for the first time in years, spending his last remaining moments with her, is one he’d kept forefront in his mind as his body hurtled through dimensions and rivers of blood. Not that it meant anything in the end. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway. I had to leave and didn’t know if I’d ever come back.”

“You’re back now,” Sousa points out. “You could give her a call. She might hold the same torch.”

The idea has crossed his mind no less than a thousand times. But he hasn’t felt any interest from her since he returned, and even if he had, Robbie doesn’t trust that he won’t be snatched up again. That the Rider wasn’t lying about enjoying his new host, that he isn’t merely waiting until Robbie’s settled and happy to take over. More importantly, he wouldn’t want to saddle Daisy with that uncertainty. She deserves a hell of a lot better than that.

She deserves a hell of a lot better than him. Ghost Rider or no Ghost Rider, he’d never match up to the man in front of him. Robbie’s not even sure who he is anymore without the demon.

Which leaves only one answer to Sousa’s optimism: “Unlikely.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

You wouldn’t be if you knew who it was, Robbie doesn’t say. He’d gotten the sense on day two that it wasn’t Sousa who’d brought up the notion about being more compatible as friends than lovers.

He does say, “It is what it is.” He studies Sousa’s earnest face and admits despite himself, “I’m still trying to deal with the whole space and being brought back from the dead thing. I’ve been in crazier situations, but it’s like —”

“— you don’t know what to do with yourself.”

Sousa’s bang on, which brings no comfort. Robbie’s nightmare had been far more public than he’d like, but the rest of it, how it feels to be himself again, what the Rider’s conditions had been, he’d only told one person. “Did Daisy say something to you?”

“No, nothing like that. I can relate, that’s all,” Sousa says. “Not the hell part, obviously. Feeling like an outsider, though? I’ve been there. It’s not easy to be dropped in the middle of a world you weren’t expecting.”

“You seem to be doing fine.”

At least you have a job on this ship, Robbie sulks.

Sousa snorts a laugh. “Daisy thought the same. Between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the SSR, I’ve spent two decades among superspies and dealing with blowhards who like to punch down. I know my way around a poker face.” Sousa puts a hand on Robbie’s shoulder. From someone else, maybe it’d feel patronizing, but Robbie knows the guy’s too genuine for that. “You’ll get there, Robbie. Give yourself time.”

Robbie almost rolls his eyes. Time? Since when? He expects to hear the Rider’s snicker in his head — yet there’s nothing. Not even a whisper. The Rider-voice prickles at the edges, sure. But Robbie’s not an idiot; he can tell the difference between his subconscious and the real deal. If Ghost Rider keeps to his word, then, incredibly, Sousa might be right. Time would be a luxury he’d have.

He’d have choices.

“Tell you what,” Sousa says, either not noticing or courteously not mentioning Robbie’s realization, “I bet Agent Reedy could use a hand down in the mechanic bay. From what I understand, you’re a damn good grease monkey.”

“Yeah, for cars. I don’t have any experience with planes, let alone spaceships.”

“If I could figure out an iPhone, you can figure out a spaceship. Unless Daisy was gassing you up for no reason and you’re worse than a kid in a shop class.”

Robbie scoffs. “Hardly.”

“Great,” Sousa grins with a clap on the back. “I’ll tell Reedy he’s getting a partner.”

Robbie regards Sousa with renewed curiosity. He hadn’t envisioned having anything in common with a Greatest Generation Boy Scout, yet here he sits in kindred. From time disorientation down to nausea on space jumps. “Well,” he says, gesturing to the tea and crackers, “thanks for this. And the conversation. You’re a good guy, Sousa.”

“As are you.”

Robbie raises an eyebrow. “Did you forget the part where I sold my soul to a demon?”

“No,” says Sousa, “I didn’t.”

[dwtsfun]

Dancing with the Stars Season 33 Week 10: The Finale

Hey everyone. Hope you're having a great week. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, hope you all had a great time. If you don't, hope you had a fantastic Thursday.

I wanna say that I really enjoyed this season. Since the Athlete Season, I think this season has been my favorite. It wasn't perfect and there were a lot of problems. But I think this is the most back to basics the show has been in YEARS. And I personally love that.

Before I get into the couples, I wanna address a few things. The first thing is that CAI showed us exactly why she's the most necessary judge on that panel right now. After Halloween night, she went back to how she was judging last season. That's a good thing. With Derek and Bruno blowing smoke up people's butts, we need someone to bring folks back down to earth and give actual CRITIQUES. She started doing that again towards the end. I'm glad she did. Secondly, I wanna get into the results. Some of you are being quite disingenuous with the talks about Joey (and Ilona and Chandler). Joey deserved the win as did everyone else. Ilona was actually a good dancer. Chandler being on the show while having prior dance experience is not some sort of crime against humanity. You need ringers who can keep raising the bar and forcing folks to try and catch them. It makes for a better competition. And finally, y'all gotta take a breather. Things will be okay. I'm gonna get into Chandler and Brandon in a moment. But just know that the chances of them winning were slim for all the reasons that we all know. I want us to not look at it as some sort of failure and look at the success of their season. View them as trailblazers. This couple opened up doors. They left a huge impact and for that, we need to look at it and celebrate them vs mourn their loss. Anyway, let's get into it.

Chandler and Brandon- So you know what. I'm not gonna waste anymore time. I just wanna talk about them. As you all know, these two were my favorites this season for so many different reasons. I wanna talk about how talented she is. Their jive was spectacular. Chandler has really amazing and long legs. That works in most dances. It's hard to have long legs in a jive. You gotta work that much harder to get that right kicking action and you gotta get those legs back under you in the same amount of time as someone who has much shorter legs. She looked great AND she didn't lose steam. It was a cute dance and Brandon knocked the choreography out of the park. Now I wanna talk about the freestyle. This was my favorite dance of all time. This dance was a celebration of Blackness. It was a celebration of what we, as a people, contributed to dance and entertainment. It was acknowledging those that came before Chandler and Brandon (and every other Black dancer on that stage). It was a lesson in Black history. I saw Lindy hop. I saw tap. I saw hustle. I saw hip-hop. I even saw some jazz. All of those styles of dance were originated by Black people. We got a reference to the Nicholas Brothers and that iconic tap routine of theirs. We got a reference to the dance scene with all the Black workers from Hellzapoppin. We got a look into 70s Black fashion and not in the costume-y way that folks tend to do. And we got a Curtis Mayfield song. What's even better is that the jive was also originated by Black folks. So their entire night was a celebration of Blackness and it was such a huge moment for them, for Black folks and for the show in general. After that freestyle was done, I started to cry. I knew how much it meant, but I really felt it after it was over.I wish Alfonso had done a better job of acknowledging. Y'all may hate Tyra, but one thing she's gonna do is point out a moment like that. Anyway, we know that they got 3rd and I know it sucks. But like I said earlier, let's focus on what they did accomplish not only on Tuesday night, but throughout the entire competition. Brandon killed it with the choreography every single week. There was not a week where he slacked off like so many other pros do. He was given a lot of responsibility with Chandler as his partner and not only did he meet those expectations, he exceeded every single one of them. He is the heir to the throne of Mark and Derek and we need to accept that. And Chandler? I view her season like I view Jordan Fisher and Amber Riley. That is the biggest compliment I can ever give to a celeb on this show. The MBT would've been nice but if you go back and watch those two all night, they were at peace. So bravo to them both.

Stephen and Rylee- These two are actually here because Stephen and Rylee finally figured out his biggest problem. For me, the most shocking thing of the night was watching grasp counting music and stay mostly on time for his quickstep and be completely in the pocket for the freestyle. If they had a couple more weeks, I think we would've seen him get less rigid as that comes with not feeling comfortable with the music. As for that freestyle, Stephen shocked me with how on time he was. Rylee killed it with the choreography as well. A lot of times, pros will mess up their first freestyles because it is so different and choreographing something with no rules that encapsulates your partnership, the person you're dancing with and the season that the person had on the show is a daunting task. Both Rylee and Brandon (juniors doesn't count) excelled in their first freestyles. To me, choreographing a good and meaningful freestyle is the sign of a truly great pro.

Ilona and Alan- When I tell you all that Ilona has turned me into an Alan truther? Listen, I always liked him. He's always been pleasant and fun. He seems to work well with all of us partners. He tries. For me, he's a good pro. But this season, I saw him blossom and transform into a great pro. Their relationship was so good to watch. I loved how he was there for her the whole time. Their jive, while not perfect, was an impressive several steps up from their previous attempt. And their freestyle was PERFECT for Ilona. I was shocked that they went in the direction that they did, but it made sense. I don't think Ilona would've been able to pull that off within the first few weeks of the competition. But she definitely killed it and was 100% comfortable during this dance. And I loved it. As a side note, I think the freestyle round regained some of the magic it lost over the years during this season. I'm not sure what happened, but there was a shift in thought process from every pro.

Joey and Jenna- These two are fourth for me, but that's not a bad thing. They deserved to win. I just wasn't as impressed with them as I was with the first 3. I still hate that the judges didn't give him critiques because this cha-cha would've been 100% worthy of a perfect score if the judges told him to turn his feet out and articulate through his foot. Everything else was fine and it was still a major improvement. As for the freestyle, it was good, but I was also underwhelmed. I get the tennis thing. I don't think the idea translated well to the dancefloor. On top of that when you start turning out lights and lighting up specific accessories, everything has to be tight and perfect. And Joey was a tiny bit behind the rest of the pros during that part of the dance. It maybe wouldn't have been a problem if the lights were on. But the lights being off meant that was the only thing we could see. And I saw the mistakes, clear as day. It also just wasn't all that exciting. Good routine. But when looking at everyone else's dances, it just felt kinda blah.

Danny and Witney- Danny definitely improved on his tango. It wasn't perfect. It was rigid (even for a tango's standards). But his frame looked better. Like Joey, I wish the judges had been real with him in weeks 5 and 6. A lot of the problems we saw on Tuesday would've been worked through at least somewhat if the judges had consistently told him some of his problems with his frame and being comfortable out on the floor (or looking comfortable if he felt comfortable in his mind). The freestyle was very camp. Nothing was serious. It was goofy. It was silly. But I enjoyed it. It worked. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't my favorite of the night. I don't think it deserved a 10. But it was incredibly entertaining and a perfect dance for those two for some odd reason.

So that was season 33 of DWTS. Let me know your thoughts and I will talk to you all soon. We'll do some other things before the end of the year. And once again, congrats to all of the finalists.

[villainsview]

Part 13

FULL ART by @scarletfish8eta

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The next morning, Delaney got up early. Lavender texted him after dinner to let him know where and when to meet, and it seemed he had about a two-hour drive ahead of him. There was still much to do. He had to figure out how to restrain Erick for the road — there were so many options after all — he also had to figure out what to wear, his moustache needed a trim, and he ought to stop somewhere to buy flowers…

Ding dong! Ding dong!

Delaney looked over to the front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone. Warily he approached the alarm panel to check the security camera, freezing for a second as soon as he caught a glimpse of his unexpected visitor.

“Fuck…”

“Daniel!”

Mateo now knocked on the door, shouting through it.

“I know you’re home, open up! You aren’t answering your phone anymore, you’re worrying me!”

“Fuck,” Delaney repeated, beginning to head over to the door.

Mateo would be pissed, but he couldn’t exactly turn him away when he was right there on his doorstep. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Ah, glad to see you’re alive,” Mateo said, pushing his way inside, “you just dropped off the face of the earth. What happened?”

“...it’s a long story,” Delaney said, closing the door.

“I still got a couple hours,” Mateo said, “somehow managed to keep the ruse up, no thanks to you.”

He moved over to the kitchen, blatantly taking a bottle of beer from Delaney’s fridge. He always had the good imported stuff. He turned to find an opener in one of the drawers, when he noticed the dishes left on the counter from last night.

“You never lost him,” he concluded.

“I…made a deal with Lavender,” Delaney admitted, “to get closer to her…in exchange for the boy.”

“Daniel…”

Mateo sighed deeply.

“Surely you know that was never going to work out? She would have abandoned you as soon as you lost your leverage. Besides…she wouldn’t have shown up in the first place.”

“Why?” Delaney asked.

“Because her new boyfriend finally snapped and killed her,” Mateo said.

Delaney paled, needing to sit down and stumbled back into one of the high chairs at the cooking isle.

“N-no…that can’t be true…”

“I have a picture as proof.”

“Pictures can be manipulated, Mateo!” Delaney said, “remember the yoghurt? You fell right for it!”

“...you have a point,” Mateo said, “see? This is why we work better together.”

“Lavender called me yesterday at about five PM,” Delaney said, “when did you get your picture?”

“Five-twelve,” Mateo said, “it couldn’t have happened in such a short time. Especially if you’ve been making promises about the boy. They knew he wasn’t with me?”

“He spoke to her on the phone,” Delaney said, “they know.”

“So they’re up to something,” Mateo concluded, “but they don’t know that we know…”

“We can use that to our advantage,” Delaney said, “but…what is your endgame here? Will Lavender get hurt?”

“Emotionally, perhaps,” Mateo said, “but it’ll get her back on our side. We have to make it very clear that fucking me over was a bad idea. We kill Fetcher today and when we get bored with him we’ll make her kill the boy too.”

“She’ll never forgive you,” Delaney pointed out.

“But she’ll never run away again either, because it’ll just mean more death for whoever she makes friends with,” Mateo said, “you could maybe even convince her to stay just for you~”

“...I’m supposed to meet her at some place about a two-hour drive from here at one,” Delaney said.

“Huh…I’m supposed to meet Fetcher at the same place but at one-thirty…”

“Sounds like they planned to get the boy back before dealing with you,” Delaney said.

“So we turn the tables on them,” Mateo said, “we both show up, but I’ll hide with the boy and ambush them at the right moment. They’ll never know what hit them.”

“But only Fetcher gets killed, right?” Delaney checked.

“Yes, if everything goes according to plan,” Mateo said, “now…I want to meet the boy.”

“We don’t have time for any shenanigans,” Delaney said.

“I’ll just help you tie him up then, we’ll have plenty of time for more after we’re done.”

“...guest bedroom,” Delaney said.

Mateo eagerly abandoned his unopened beer and headed for the stairs. Delaney followed.

“What is he like?” Mateo asked on the way up, “have you had many rounds with him yet?”

“He’s a fighter,” Delaney said, brushing over the cut on his lip, “I haven’t gotten the chance. Besides…I promised Lavender.”

“I didn’t,” Mateo said.

Delaney shrugged. He did have a point. They came up to the guest room, and Mateo opened the door. His fingerprint was in the security system, as he crashed there on occasion. However, as he pushed the door open, the room was empty.

“Where is he?” Mateo asked.

“Bathroom, probably?” Delaney said, pushing past Mateo to enter the room.

The bed was made again, so he was definitely awake. He walked over to the bathroom, the door was left ajar so he probably wasn’t interrupting anything, unfortunately. He pushed the door open, finding the teen going through the drawers underneath the sink.

“What are you doing?” Delaney asked.

“Looking for Advil,” Erick said, though he was restacking the spare tubes of toothpaste instead.

“Come,” Delaney said.

“Just let me finish,” Erick replied.

He sounded tired. He slept late and he didn’t sleep very well. Fetch was right, alcohol was bad for you. Delaney, however, didn’t care about how he felt, grabbing him by the back of the collar and pulling him away from the drawer.

“N-no wait, I just have to— Ack!”

Delaney yanked a bit harder to shut him up, dragging him out of the bathroom and bringing him before Mateo. Erick tried to pull free, but froze when he spotted the second man. Something about him set off all kinds of alarm bells. From the look in his eyes to the way he towered over him as Delaney pushed him closer.

“You did quite a number on him, Daniel,” Mateo said, looking the boy over before grabbing a hold of the ring on the front of the collar.

Erick tried to pull away, but Mateo didn’t let him, and Delaney was still right behind him.

“Where are you going, boy? You got plans or something?” Mateo said, grabbing the boy’s jaw with his free hand and holding him still to get a better look at his face.

“Hgn…I’m a bit hungover so I cancelled all my plans,” Erick said.

Mateo barked out a laugh.

“Cute face and a sense of humour,” he said.

Erick managed to shake his head out of his grip.

“That makes one of us,” he said.

“He’s much better company if you shut him up,” Delaney advised, “though on the other hand he makes great sounds if you surprise him.”

“Well, why don’t you grab some ropes from your hobby room while Erick and I get acquainted?” Mateo said, pulling the boy closer to him.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Erick hissed, struggling against his grip.

Mateo shushed him, turning him around and clamping his hand over his mouth, pulling him closer and smelling his hair.

“Hmm…it’s a shame we don’t have the time to get properly acquainted,” he said, dragging the boy towards the bed, “but I’ll take whatever I can get…”

Meanwhile Fetch and Lavender were already on their way to the place they were supposed to meet. An abandoned barn just off a road that wasn’t in use anymore. Lavender was in a mood since Fetch didn’t allow her to drive his van again, not to mention they were both tense.

Hopefully their plan would work. It was likely their plan would work, but there was still that off chance that it wouldn’t. At least they could meet their extra hands before things would go down. She was curious to meet the woman they spoke to on the phone. This was a man’s world after all, so she never really expected to meet another woman in this context.

They arrived at the barn, the woman in question already waiting for them, leaning against a large motorcycle, helmet resting on the seat, a large rifle strapped to her back. Lavender couldn’t take her eyes off of her.

She looked like she came straight out of a movie. She was wearing a black, leather jacket, zipped open as it was quite hot in the sun. Her butterfly tattoo visible above her tank top. Dark blue, reinforced jeans tucked into a black pair of motorcycle boots with steel toes. Her legs in particular were a bit stained with dust, probably from the recent drive.

“That her?” Lavender asked while Fetch parked.

“The one and only,” Fetch said, cutting the engine and getting out.

Lavender quickly followed as they approached the woman.

“About time,” Thorne said, “I thought you were punctual?”

“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Fetch said, “anyway, Rhodes, this is Thorne. Thorne, meet Rhodes.”

Thorne stepped away from her motorcycle to shake Lavender’s hand.

“Call me Keira,” she said.

“Lavender,” the younger woman replied.

First name basis right off the bat. Nice.

“Pleasure,” Thorne said, “so what’s the plan? I’ve already taken a look around. I can perch myself up that old windmill there, but whatever you’re planning needs to go down on this side of the barn.”

“Can do,” Fetch said, “you should park your motorcycle inside so they won’t know you’re here. Oh and did you bring the thing I texted you about?”

“What thing?” Lavender asked suspiciously.

Thorne chuckled.

“Relax, hun,” she said, pulling something from inside her jacket, “I heard you like knives.”

She handed Lavender a brand new hunting knife inside a leather sheath.

“It clips to your belt and you can use the smaller straps to attach it to your leg, or leave them off,” Fetch explained, “we never got yours back from the police, so I figured you could use a new one. How much do I owe you?”

“Consider it a gift,” Thorne said, “for her, not for you. You still have to pay me for this job first.”

“Thanks, I like it,” Lavender said, “can’t wait to use it either…”

“Attagirl,” Fetch said, “so. We’re expecting Delaney first. He has Erick. We’ll force him to give up where he is, then hide him before Keller shows up. Deal with him, call the cops on Delaney, then we all go home.”

“You don’t want to kill them both?” Thorne asked.

“Delaney is a scumbag too, but he’s not a threat,” Lavender said, “you’ll see what I mean.”

“Alright,” Thorne said, turning around to pick up her helmet “open the barn, I’ll move my bike.”

“Should be easy,” Fetch said, walking over.

Thorne handed her helmet to Lavender.

“Hold this for me, dear. I won’t need it for such a short end.”

“Is it hard?” Lavender asked, taking the helmet and watching Thorne get onto the bike.

“It takes some practice and a little more skill than driving a car,” Thorne said, “but there’s nothing else like it.”

She smiled, starting the engine and driving towards the barn while Fetch held the door open for her. Lavender considered taking lessons as she followed.

After hiding the motorcycle, Thorne climbed up onto the old windmill, Lavender still watching her until she was pretty much out of sight.

“Whoa, you can’t even see her,” she said.

“She can see us,” Fetch assured her, kicking around the dirt a bit to hide the tyre tracks of the motorcycle, “glad you two can get along.”

“I don’t see why you can’t,” Lavender said, “she’s pretty cool.”

“She’s also good at her job,” Fetch said, “now look ready. It’s almost time.”

“What do you mean look ready? You’re either ready or you’re not,” Lavender said.

“You know what I mean,” Fetch said, “there’s someone coming.”

“Oh shit.”

Lavender quickly got ready, looking over in the direction Fetch was looking. A car was approaching…but something felt off.

“Uh…Fetch.”

“Yes, Rhodes?”

“That’s not Delaney’s car.”

<Prev | Masterlist | Next>

[cetaitlaverite]

Why All This Music?

Masters of the Air - Rosie Rosenthal x OC

the link to the masterlist is here picking up right where we left off. hope you love <3

09. Up for A Vote

Freddie drew in a deep breath, thinking hard about where to start. She hadn’t spoken about Daniel like this since she’d first met Millie and Jem. Hadn’t had to, and especially hadn’t wanted to.

“I met Daniel when I was fourteen,” she began, fixing her eyes on the control panel in front of her. “I was born in Oxford, see, but my family moved to Vienna when I was two because my father got a job at the university. But, eventually, he got another job at Oxford University again, so we moved right back, to the same house we’d lived in before. But there was a new family living next door by now. It had been twelve years since we’d left.”

She smiled ruefully, continuing, “I met Daniel when his mother made him knock on the door with flowers for my mother. I remember they were tulips, a pale shade of yellow. They were beautiful. So was he, by the way.”

Here, Rosie laughed quietly to himself but didn’t make to interrupt.

“Anyway, we fell in love very quickly, even though we were fourteen and fifteen at the time. He was my boyfriend within a month and we stayed that way, never once ever thought about looking elsewhere. When the war broke out for us back in ‘39, when I was nineteen and he was twenty, he enlisted immediately. He joined the RAF because his father had been a pilot. They trained him as a fighter pilot and he got assigned to flying Hurricanes - he was good at it, too. Survived the Battle of Britain, when they were sending fighters up constantly. He would be dogfighting three times a day, sometimes, for hours at a time. He’d get two hours of sleep most nights. The Luftwaffe threw everything at them. But Daniel, he - he was just so good at what he did. Always did it smiling, too. Always found it hard to complain. He told me that he could never bring himself to mind when he’d get called out once again, even if it was the middle of the night and he’d only just fallen asleep, because he knew with every German fighter he took down he was making the world safer for me. Said he didn’t want us to have to raise children in a Britain where everyone was speaking German.”

Freddie laughed quietly, swiping away the tears which had gathered under her eyes. “He hated that I can speak German, by the way. He used to hate it when I spoke it to him. He couldn’t understand me, of course, so I’d call him all manner of sweet names and tell him I loved him in all these poetic ways and he’d demand that I stop so insistently it’s like he thought I was cursing him.

“Anyway,” she went on with a shake of her head, “I followed him to war, obviously. Well, as much as I could. I asked him how I could get myself closest to him and he told me mine would be the last voice he heard before a mission and the first voice after if I became a wireless operator, so that’s what I did. That’s why I lied and said I couldn’t speak German when I enlisted - so that I’d get to talk to him, look after him in my own small way. He put in a good word for me with one of the RAF higher-ups and got me assigned to the same base as him.”

Her smile faded as she realised she would have to speak the part of the story she hated, the part which brought it to its end. She tipped her head back to rest against the seat and shut her eyes. “He went down on a Monday in March 1941. The 10th. Shot down by a Messerschmitt. His plane went down in flames and crashed not far from the airfield. He’d been so close to home. 

“I was working at the time, guiding some of the others through the landing. I remember thinking they sounded strange over the radio but I figured it must just have been a particularly bad mission. I always thought I would know immediately if Daniel had gone down, would just feel it or something, I don’t know, but I hadn’t. And then after interrogation and everything his squadron leader came to find me, took me to a private office, and told me what had happened.”

Freddie was breathing heavily, trying to speak around her tears. Two and a half years later and it still ached as if it had happened yesterday.

“I didn’t believe him at first, of course, but the other fighters in the squadron had all seen it. They sat with me for hours, assuring me over and over again that they weren’t mistaken, that he was gone, and that he wasn’t coming back, because I kept insisting that he might have survived and they needed to look for him.

“But,” she continued, “he hadn’t. So they gave me his footlocker and the responsibility of seeing to it that his belongings went where they were supposed to go. I kept a few things, of course, gave a few things to his closest friends, then sent the rest to his parents. I visit them every time I go home and they always welcome me like a daughter but I find it -” She had to pause to breathe heavily, choking on her own words. “I find it so hard to look at them now. His mum, she - she has his smile.”

Freddie had her eyes squeezed shut, trying to keep in the tears even as they fought to free themselves from behind her eyelids. In spite of her best efforts they came stumbling down her cheeks anyway, the taste salty in her mouth, the wetness cold on her skin. Her eyes were starting to itch because of them, the back of her throat starting to taste strange.

“Oh, Fred,” Rosie said quietly, watching her fighting to get herself under control. Gone was the playful, vibrant girl from merely minutes earlier who’d pretended to shoot down the Luftwaffe’s finest. As much as he missed that version of her, longed to make her smile again, he couldn’t help wanting to scoop up this version of her and cradle her to his chest, whisper about all the good things in the world until she remembered she was the best of them.

Rosie’s soft words, his sympathy, made her sob. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, willing the tears away, and started apologising for how she’d thoroughly collapsed in on herself when her descriptions of Daniel had been intended to be happy. 

But Rosie only hushed her softly. He reached for her, curled one arm beneath her knees and the other around her waist and lifted her into his lap.

Freddie curled into him immediately, instinctively. She couldn’t find it within herself to be ashamed of how she was seeking comfort in another man while crying over her lost love. She tucked her head beneath his chin, held on tight to his shirt, buried her face into his neck and tried to drink in the smell of him, the warmth of him, the feeling of him - secure, reliable, safe. Alive.

“You can’t ever go down, Rosie,” she started saying, her voice wet and thick with tears. “You always have to come back. Always. Do you hear me?”

“Always,” Rosie assured her, tightening his arms around her, bringing her closer into his chest. “I’m not gonna leave you behind, Fred. I promise.”

“I take promises very seriously, Rosie,” she told him, sniffling. 

He smiled in spite of himself. “Me too.”

“You can’t break it,” she insisted. “You have to keep coming back. Every time. You have to.”

“I will,” he assured her, soft and sincere. “I’ll keep on comin’ back, sweetheart. You’ll get sick of hearing my voice on your radio.”

Finally, mercifully, she giggled. It was wet and weepy but it was enough. “I won’t,” she disagreed. “I like hearing your serious pilot’s voice over the radio.”

Rosie grinned, tilted his head down to press a kiss to the top of her head. “You making fun of me, Fred?”

He could feel her smiling against his neck. “Absolutely.” Her tears were slowing now, as was her breath. He could feel her breathing deeper and yet her tight grip on him never faltered.

They lapsed into silence as she calmed down. He listened avidly to her breathing. “You want me to take you back to your bunk?” he asked after a while.

Freddie inhaled deeply. “I just want to sit here for a little while longer,” she confessed, shifting just slightly closer.

She worried, momentarily, that Rosie would think her clingy, demanding he let her stay in his lap when he’d only given it to her out of kindness. But all he did was keep on holding her, resting his cheek on her head. Slowly, he began running one gentle hand up and down her back, over and over again in a steady rhythm, until, eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

Freddie woke up in her bunk in the pitch darkness with a sick feeling brewing in her stomach. The whiskey, she knew. All around her were the sounds of breathing, the hut now full of wireless operators shifting and sighing softly in their sleep.

Meatball shifted briefly at the foot of Freddie’s bed, smacked his lips, and then settled. Freddie laid still.

“Mils?” she whispered into the dark. She’d woken facing Millie’s bed and hazarded a guess that she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

“Yeah?” Millie whispered back after a beat.

“How are you feeling?”

Millie shifted in bed, presumably rolling onto her side to face Freddie, and hummed. “Drunk,” she said. “Jem stole another bottle anyway.”

“Did she get away with it?”

“Of course she did,” Millie replied. “They had fewer people working the bar because hardly anyone was in there. She got behind the bar under the guise of getting me a glass of water to sober me up and slipped straight out. No one saw the bottle tucked under her arm, I’m sure, but even if they did, no one asked.”

“What did you do while I was gone?”

“Talk,” Millie said. She yawned. “Had a pillow fight. Played with Meatball for a bit and then took him out to go to the toilet. Then came back in to go to bed.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Millie scoffed softly. “Not as much fun as you were having, I’m sure.”

Freddie groaned. “What did he tell you?” She’d hoped Rosie would have dropped her off with few words to share about their time together.

“Oh, you know,” Millie said airily. “Just that you’re the best dogfighter he’s ever seen.”

Freddie groaned once more. She lifted her head off of her pillow just to slam it down over her ears, lest she be reminded of her idiotic drunken actions.

Millie was laughing when she removed the pillow. “Don’t worry,” she said around her quiet giggles, “he thought it was cute.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” Freddie despaired into the darkness.

Millie kept on laughing. “He’s smitten with you, Fred,” she assured her. “I can tell. I don’t think there’s anything you could do now that would change that. If anything, your little performance tonight has just made him like you more.”

“I’m still embarrassed,” Freddie told her.

Freddie couldn’t see it but Millie was grinning. “I’m sure you are. But I wouldn’t worry too much. He set you down on your bed and tucked you in like you were the most precious thing in the world to him. He was so gentle with you, so clearly enchanted. He had stars in his eyes, to tell you the truth.”

Freddie smiled to herself, turned her face into her pillow as though to conceal her blush even though Millie couldn’t see it in the darkness. She thought back on her time with Rosie, on the emotional rollercoaster that it had been, and sighed before venturing, “I told him about Daniel.”

“You did?” Millie sounded surprised.

“Yeah,” Freddie confirmed. “I’d only intended to talk about what he was like, really, but I ended up telling Rosie the whole story. Started crying and everything. Inconsolable, I was.”

Against her will, Millie laughed.

“But I think I feel better now,” Freddie continued. “I’ve not been fair to him, really, being so hot and cold. At least now he knows why.”

“You probably needed a good cry, I reckon,” Millie observed. “Especially into Rosie’s arms,” she added as an afterthought. Freddie could just imagine her smirking.

Freddie laughed softly to herself. “I won’t disagree.”

They lapsed into silence, both thinking hard on different things. Freddie suspected Millie might have finally fallen asleep before she spoke up softly once more, less certain and less jovial than she’d been before. “He’s looking after you, isn’t he?” she asked. “Rosie?”

Freddie smiled quietly. “He is,” she assured her. 

“Good,” Millie decided.

Freddie wasn’t sure at which point they both fell asleep. It seemed like one minute they’d been talking and the next they were waking up, groggy and nauseous and groaning about banging headaches.

For all of their complaining, however, it was clear that no one felt worse than Jem. Her head was down the toilet before they’d even woken up and there it stayed for the better part of the morning until she felt brave enough to follow them to breakfast. Mercifully, she’d been too drunk last night to even consider changing out of her dishevelled uniform, so she traipsed behind the group as she was.

The table of wireless operators had clearly seen better days. Freddie was shivering even while she sat wrapped in her blanket, Millie had her hands over her eyes and was complaining to anyone who would listen that it was too bright inside the mess hall, and Jem’s head was on the table. She would have face planted into her porridge had Paddy not swiped the bowl away at the last second.

“How much did you lot drink last night, anyway?” Amy asked, amused, around a sip of coffee. She and the other girls who had spent their night in the officers’ club weren’t looking too sprightly either, but they didn’t look quite as half-dead as Freddie, Millie, and Jem. They’d drunk a lot but not two entire bottles of whiskey’s worth, as in Freddie’s case, or three in Millie and Jem’s.

“Too much,” Freddie mumbled, clutching her blanket tighter. Her teeth were chattering and she couldn’t even begin to stomach the thought of food right now. Even the sight of it was making her feel queasy. 

“Not enough,” Millie disagreed, groaning and pressing her forehead to Freddie’s blanket-clad shoulder.

She’d wanted to drink away the reality of Brady being gone, Freddie knew, had wanted to drink so much that when she woke up she could believe he was back. But she couldn’t and he wasn’t. MIA or POW, Freddie wasn’t sure, she just prayed he wasn’t dead.

“Look alive, Fred,” Paddy said suddenly, though she didn’t look much better herself. “Rosie’s Riveters are coming over.”

Freddie lifted her blanket and covered her face, then rested her forehead on the table the same as Jem had. She’d embarrassed herself enough in front of Rosie last night, he didn’t need to see her pale and sickly as she fought the demons of the morning after as well.

“Ladies,” Pappy greeted as they neared. Rosie and his crew took seats at the empty table beside them, echoing their own greetings as they did.

“You okay, Fred?” Rosie asked, an amused smile in his voice. She could tell he had taken up the seat behind her from the closeness of his voice, wondered if he’d had to shoo anyone away for it or if they’d all just known to let their fearless leader take it.

“No,” she replied, her voice muffled from where she was speaking into both the blanket and the table. 

“You should eat something,” he told her, obviously noticing the untouched breakfast she’d pushed away from herself the second she’d sat down. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Nothing will make me feel better,” she objected.

Rosie laughed and leaned forward until he could rest his hand on her back, heedless of the eyes of the rest of her table - except Jem, of course - on him. “Come on,” he encouraged her, dragging the bowl back towards her. “Just a little.”

“No.”

“For me?”

“No.”

“Ouch.” He knew his grin was so wide he was giving himself away to all of her friends - not to mention his crew, who were sure to tease him relentlessly about this later - but couldn’t seem to hide it. 

“Fred’s got a weak stomach,” Millie explained, swaying slightly as she tried to sit up straight and face Rosie. “She throws up when she’s anxious, when she’s overwhelmed, sometimes when she’s sad, and of course when she’s hungover. So you’d be better off not loading her up with ammunition, Rosie, if you want to know the truth.”

Freddie was sure she’d never been this embarrassed in her whole life. The problem was she couldn’t even deny it because it was completely true. She’d been the same ever since she was little, had apparently inherited it from her mother.

“Mils,” Freddie complained all the same. “That’s so embarrassing.”

“It’s the god’s honest truth, Fred, and you know it,” Millie countered. Freddie could hear the other girls giggling.

“Tell me you’re not thinking of liquidating your assets right now, Freddie, please,” Pappy all but begged. 

“Go away,” Freddie grumbled.

“Our old squadron officer used to call her ‘Prime Minister’,” Jem said, audibly grinning even though her face was still pressed to the tablecloth. “Because she’s always bringing it up for a vote.”

“Fighting words from someone who spent the morning with her head down the toilet,” Freddie retorted, finally sitting up. She let the blanket slip off of her head and pool around her shoulders, rubbing at her eyes and covering her mouth as she yawned.

“Leroy!” barked Squadron Officer Jones as she came stomping into the mess hall.

“Fuck’s sake,” Millie muttered, turning back to their table.

Freddie shrank into her blanket, pretending she hadn’t heard Jones’ call of her last name.

Jones wasn’t fooled. “Section Officer Leroy!” she snapped, marching up to their table.

Freddie sighed but didn’t look at her. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Congratulations,” Jones said dryly, clearly insincerely, “you’ve been promoted. To Flight Officer. Your reassignment training starts today at 1400. Your new CO will pick you up outside your hut. Don’t keep him waiting.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Freddie replied. Her heart had dropped.

“Get excited,” Jones said coldly. “You and I never have to work together again.”

“Lucky bitch,” Millie muttered.

Behind them, Pappy snorted.

Jones slapped Freddie’s new insignia down on the table, turned on her heel, and left.

Freddie watched her go, waited until she had left the mess hall, and then she mumbled, “Fuck.”