#I will miss the eldritch family

[halidom-confessions]

I’m still so mad the Heinwald and Curran plotline didn't get any kind of resolution. I’m mad abt ALL the side stories that ended on cliffhangers but Hein and Curran meant the most to me looking back. The fact that they and Lathna are probably not even important enough to make any reappearances in any other CyGames media just frickin sucks. I miss them so much man

[jujuflakes]

Ohhhh boy. I have come with (yet another) Eldritch!Lucifer concept design. It will happen again. Ksnsbef

Inspiration taken from omori/madoka/genshin.

I have so many biblically accurate designs in the drafts bc I just. cannot see Luci with one definite look. Hence the hc that the closer his appearance is to his 'true' form, the more unstable it becomes. my baby would drive quantum physicists mad.

[ruvviks]

"The outer reaches of space remain unexplored by humankind to this day, but its greed is relentless. We grasp and yearn and hunger for knowledge— answers to questions we cry out into the endless void expecting to understand, expecting the stars to respond. The stars will not, but one day something else will— and we will not like what it has to say." — Rome Solomon, Beyond the Exosphere (1965)

taglist (opt in/out): @shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart, @vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman, @celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister, @killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

Jasmin just aged up to elder (this sc taken shortly before that) and also became a 4 star celebrity. Career-wise she got to the highest level of Socal Media/Public Relations, which started her step into the spotlight. She then pivoted and became a chef which she again, managed to get to the top level of. She's also been a renowned archeologist since she was a young adult. And she has 4 children. And her parents died when she was a teen so she had to raise her younger siblings. She's sure come a long way and become an overachiever lmao.

^ A slightly younger Jasmin and Ahmed in Selvadorada, where they've spent many of their years and regularly visit with their children.

[rosy-crow]

Sephiroth is such a fucking wild character when I really think about it sometimes.

He was injected with alien cells in his mom’s womb as part of an extremely dubious science experiment, transformed into “part alien” because of it, was marked a successful specimen shortly after he was born, and then raised by a company as a product and weapon.

He got sent to war (ACTUAL WAR THAT ALSO INVOLVED GENOCIDE) at age 14 by Shinra as the first of his specific type of super-soldier, LITERALLY BY HIMSELF with no guide or mentor, but just the knowledge of his past training, a nameless sword, a few materia, and a picture of his missing mom.

He took command of a team of veteran mercenaries, got overly attached to them after just over a week had passed because they were apparently the first kind adults he had ever met + he had never known any semblance of a normal family, home or life, and then they all killed a bunch of people together on an island.

Halfway through Sephiroth fucking lost the photo of his mom like a classic little kid would except he was a child soldier, so he had to dig through literal corpses to look for it.

Meanwhile, his adult team started realizing the company they were working for was pretty corrupt and hmm, genocide bad. So they DESERTED to go save a kid that was the sole survivor of the people they had battled to extinction.

And Sephiroth COMMITTED TREASON ON HIS FIRST MISSION for them and to go help save the kid. But then he killed that same kid to save his team from a sinking island instead, who got really upset about that and left him to go desert their posts as soldiers hired by Shinra. Also, he somehow regained his mom’s photo during this whole fiasco but then one of his adult squad-mates kicked it into the sea in a fit of rage. Most pointless photo ever.

But that’s fine because then he just went BACK TO WAR and grew up through his teen years fighting in it, made two new friends with his fellow super-soldiers, nearly finished the war with them, and then they deserted too. One basically committed assisted suicide. One vanished completely and went ballistic.

Then Sephiroth ended up in his hometown on a mission, but he didn’t know it was his hometown because had no idea who he was.

He instead found a creepy weird room inside a reactor full of his dad’s unethical human experimentation, had a mental breakdown and a bad falling out with one of his former super-soldier friends who was dying and deranged, went to a basement library in an old haunted mansion, read a bunch of data on his own experimental creation and the project that led to his conception, believed a lie that he was the last of an ancient species, and lost his mind.

So he went and burned down his own hometown, killed a bunch of people, cut off the head of an eldritch alien that he thought was his mom and stole it to keep, got nearly cleaved in half by some farm boy, fell into the depths of a mako reactor (with the aforementioned alien head), and died for five years before coming back to destroy the world with a meteor. He briefly became a god around this time too.

He didn’t successfully carry out the meteor plan and basically died AGAIN, but this time he came back by using the forms of three random kids to rediscover his own personality because his memories of his past self were erased. He was resurrected, fought his mortal nemesis for revenge, lost again, and seemingly died for the last time but with a final statement about not really ever vanishing in full? Sure?

Also, his real mom is locked away in a crystal because she couldn’t kill herself thanks to being stuffed with alien cells. His dad never admitted to even being his father until his last moments and was just a devoutly cruel, horribly abusive scientist, that let Sephiroth go through all the previous shit just to see what would happen.

For some reason, Sephiroth can also traverse multiple worlds now too.

Oh and he has hair almost to his knees, cat eyes, goth leather club gear, and a sword taller than he is. He is 6’7/200 cm.

Oh and the wing! He has one random wing too. Sure.

Absolutely bizarre character. There is so much wrong with him. It’s perfect.

[cupcakeshakesnake]

My professor made us draw something that we "usually draw", aka something that encapsulates/represents the vibes of our art.

After careful analysis I have concluded that the prominent elements of my drawings include:

Tired expressions

Kid+parent found family dynamic

Monsters/eldritch horror/gore

Cartoony/semi-realistic style

Feeling of running away/missing home

If combined, the monsters have to be the ones making up the found family

[diejager]

what would eldritch reader vs some other eldritch person look like?

[A cheese wheel has been added to your inventory.]

[A cheese wheel has been consumed.]

Opposition Cw: blood, gore, death, cannibalism?, tell me if I missed any.

Despite old-age rivalries and ancient hostilities, to fight a Lord for One’s territory, the bloodshed and animosity shared between many, and the death of a ruling, primordial being, they had forgone the older ways, taken to learn and study humans and monsters alike, especially the sudden emergence of hybrids, a perfect cross between human and monster, one that rivalled the flawlessness of Old Ones. You were one of those that sought change, to live and prosper farther than in their imagination, their faith and their fear. You wanted something substantial, tangible under your clawed, see thing you could taste and touch, more than the pleas and cries.

Most had left their territory, travelling wherever the wind blew, some ventured far and high, drifting from the country they were born to new colonies —the Caribbean or the Thirteen Colonies in the West of the great Monopolies of the 17th centuries. You rarely strayed outside familiar lands, presiding over a small stretch of land in Europe, it was familiar, comfort. It was a decision many agreed with, those you crossed would peer at you, a subtle nod of their head and they’d be gone, vanishing when someone broke your contact; gone along the wind, leaving only a whisper of their existence in monstrous words too high for human and monster ears.

Perhaps that’s why it felt odd to fight another one after centuries of peaceful coexistence, to throw yourself into the fray, broad and towering over the trees, beak snapping at the canidae entity and talons gripping their paws, claws threatening to rip into your feathered body. You felt stretched, rusted with joints creaking and bones groaning, too old and too tired. This Entity was young, a few centuries old, with a wolf-like appearance and a character that fit a mutt more than it would a being of such prestige. They were chaotic, acting recklessly and without thought, you needn’t ask it their age, it was written all over the scarless skin and brutish acts.

Rather than fighting for land, coveting wealth and fine metals that humans loved with greedy hands, you took on the wolf for protection, the ward of your small family, under a dozen with years of bloodshed and violence under their belt. The 141 had a mastery in different skills, utilizing what they did best to push on, to fight and survive to see the next sunrise, but even hybrids had limits, where their great feats and insurmountable reputation were useless against something of old; be it young or primordial, Eldritch beings had little predator, prey to their own kind but rarely from another.

You clashed with the Wolf, standing on muscular, hind legs ruffled with dirtied fur, blood staining the greyish hair; a strong tail swaying carelessly, cutting trees down with a rough swing; a well-defined abdomen painted with a tribal tattoo, gleaming with a gold light, portraying the image of a holy symbole on a blasphemous being; sculpted arms holding back your own feathered ones, hands bleeding from your talons; and a wide mouth, silver teeth bared in a loud growl, the sound near deafening to you. It was strong and well-trained for something born in times of peace, body built to it’s peak and mind sharpened to ignore every distraction, but you were from the old, racking up more experience and wisdom it could only dream of wielding.

You were defending the LZ, standing between the Wolf and it’s mission of killing those it could kill, beings weaker than it. The only thorn in their mission was you, the lone Entity that engaged it. The Wolf hadn’t been told that the TF had an Old One, primeval in every sense. It struggled against you, your more monstrous figure compared to their tamed one, their creation stemming from some wild fantasy of the Middle Ages, when France feared the human eating wolf.

You screeched as loudly as it growled, voice gaining in force, a cacophony of screams and cries slipping from your tongue, the fears and terror of beings that brought you to life. Spreading your second pair of limbs, you slashed at it, digging into the soft skin of it’s abdomen, tearing away fibres of muscle and warm fat. It yowled, struggling to pull away, frantic at your shift of tactic —fearful that you decided to attack than defend your group. It stood on the single probability that you wouldn’t engage, preferring to protect than fight with the risk of endangering your family.

The Wolf would die today. Your grip was unyielding, keeping it in this situation however much it tried to squirm away, hands prisoners of your first pair of wings and chest bleeding from your second. Before long, it would be another body added to your count, cooling and gutted on the forest ground. You swung your tail around them, wrapping once around their slim waist, adding further leverage over it while you dug their intestines out. The strong stench of blood, metallic and tempting, filled the air, bringing fearful tears to the Wolf’s eyes, beady, yellow eyes growing hazy.

You revelled in it’s slow death, your thirst for violence growing with the ages of peace, strung tight like an itch that bothered you incessantly. You hungered, you couldn’t remember the taste of Eldritch meat, the rich ambrosia in the veins or the last whip of their dying breath. Your beak cracked open, white teeth gleaming inside your black mouth until they were dirtied, stained red with the blood of an Entity, you clamped down on it’s neck, breaking the rough skin with enough force to shatter bone, but the Wolf had tough bone. That would only prolong it’s suffering, the pain feeding you as much as the meat and bone would —a delicacy of the ages. You wonder how König and Ghost would think of Eldritch flesh.

You wouldn’t need to eat for another month after this buffet.

Taglist: @warenai @capricorn-anon @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @vxnilla-hxrddrugs @konigsblog @havoc973 @im-making-an-effort @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @danielle143

[alnilaem]

i’ve been getting an odd influx of Appalachian mountain-related tiktoks on my fyp and while I know it isn’t really the eldritch/off-putting woodland it’s said to be, it’s already planted ideas of a Ghost fic in my head lmao. Ghost living off the land, off grid and rotting in a handmade cabin of his. the reader is impulsive and running away from something (not a bobcat, but a neglectful family and heedless friends) and ends up getting lost. Ghost knows the area like the back of his hand, he can almost sniff her out between damp earth and needle-covered paths. he finds her and invites her back to his cabin. maybe doesn’t plan on letting her go—not like anyone back home would miss her, anyway.

[bloodblanks]

feverish and faint [entire slendermansion x reader] — smut

An attempt at escaping the eldritch entity that kidnapped you leads to... this. — ft: eyeless jack, masky, hoodie, ticci toby, jeff the killer, ben drowned, and slenderman.

inspired by passed around from @succulentwritings_official on ao3! ♡

author's note: dead dove: do not eat. this fanfiction will contain explicit sexual content, including rape/non-con, dub-con, gangbang(s), tentacles, facefucking, degradation, mild blood, and similar themes.

this is quite literally a slendermansion train. if you don’t like this kind of content, don’t fucking read it. you have been warned.

please read at your own discretion.

this work has not yet been proofread.

You thought you knew what you were getting into when you tried to escape. 

A broken leg. Confinement back in the basement. Maybe he’d rough you up with those tentacles of his. Depending on how much your escape had upset him, or maybe if he was just feeling particularly cruel, you would start hearing static, blacking out. Losing your sense of time, losing your memories. 

All of that, you had mentally prepared yourself for; you had acknowledged the risks at the time and still decided it would be worth it. 

For your friends, your family. All of which were sure to have missed you dearly—it had been months since you were taken captive. It would’ve been worth it for the chance to see them again. 

Even if you were caught, brought back and punished, it would still be worth it. For a second to breathe fresh air. For even a glimpse of the outside world again. For anything, anything besides the stale, dull rooms of the mansion you were trapped in. 

At least, that’s what you believed. 

When you were finally found, approximately two hours later, cowering at the overgrown roots of a tall tree, knees stained with dirt and coagulated blood, face damp with tears, by the very eldritch entity that had ripped you from your peaceful life, you knew you were wrong. 

But it wasn’t until you were dragged back into the mansion, kicking and screaming until your throat was hoarse, knowing that there was nobody to hear you, nobody to save you, that you only started to realize just how wrong you were. 

Your first sign of alarm was when he didn’t say a word, not even after he had brought you back into the mansion, back into your almost luxurious—with velvet curtains and silk bedsheets—yet dreadful bedroom. 

Your second sign of alarm was when instead of snapping your bones or sending you into a coughing fit with blood seeping from your nostrils, the tall, monstrous being ran a bath, filling the bathtub with comforting hot water and vanilla bubbles. 

But the third time was indeed the charm, the last sign you needed to let you know that there was something terrible planned in store for you. 

After all, the premonition of impeding doom was unmistakable as he escorted you into the bath and lathered you up in delicious honey foam, gently scrubbing the grime off your skin. Despite the perfectly warm temperature of the water, you couldn’t avoid the cold, cold feeling of dread as your heart sank down into your gut. 

He was pampering you like a doll, and your heart pulsed anxiously as you tried to figure out why. 

“Why are you doing this?” you meekly questioned, afraid of invoking further wrath. 

The tall man, the one you had now come to know as Slenderman, ignored your question. 

You could feel his voice in your head as he replied. 

“Did you enjoy your little escape, darling?” The words instantly sent a chill down your spine. 

The volume of your heartbeat increased, each thump louder than the last and reverberating within your skull. You could feel your chest tighten, your ribcage clamping down around your lungs like a vice as your breathing quickened. 

“I’m— I’m sorry,” you muttered, curling your legs into your chest, hugging them tight. 

“Oh, darling,” the man made a noise akin to a sigh. “I know you aren’t.”

He reached one of his hands over, long fingers taking ahold of your chin, tilting your head upwards to meet his blank canvas of a face. 

“But, you will be, soon enough.”

You could hear the promise in his words, and you tried to mentally brace yourself for whatever punishment he’d put you through. 

But no amount of preparation would’ve been enough for this. 

—

When you woke up, you were greeted by a shroud of darkness. When you blinked, you could feel your eyelashes flutter against something soft—likely a cloth, a blindfold of some sort. 

This was new. 

You still had faint traces of a headache from what had previously occurred. After bathing you and drying you off, your head was instantly filled with the now familiar buzz of static, and it wasn’t long before your consciousness slipped from your grasp. 

You winced, stirring from your resting position before the dreaded voice once again permeated your skull. 

“Good, you’re awake,” Slenderman spoke. “Right on time.”

Right on time? For what? You weren’t sure that you wanted to find out, but it wasn’t like you really had a say in it. 

“Come on in, everyone,” Slenderman addressed an unknown audience, though it wasn’t hard to guess who he was referring to. Throughout your stay in the mansion, the tall man had made you aware of the presence of others living there. You knew that other people, or possibly creatures like himself resided in the same building as you, though you fortunately never had to meet them. Even during your brief escape, you hadn’t seen anyone else, which you had been thankful for. But it appeared that your luck had ran out, and you were soon to face a fear greater than the unknown. 

You heard a door creak open, then footsteps—though you couldn’t tell yet how many people there were—which came to a shuffling halt after a few seconds. 

The room was silent, save for the pounding rush of blood in your ears. 

“Darling,” Slenderman’s voice drawled on, a hint of amusement audible as you felt tendrils wrap around your limbs, picking you up and placing you on what you guessed to be his lap. “You’ve been rather disobedient lately, haven’t you?”

You didn’t respond, your heart threatening to combust in your chest as your body tensed up. You felt his hands brush against your face as his fingers slipped underneath the cloth covering your sight. 

“You’ll have to be taught a lesson now, dear.” With that, the blindfold was lifted from your eyes, though the sudden brightness of the room proved to be too harsh on your eyes, causing you to flinch, squinting for a few seconds as you adjusted to the light. 

You realized two things at once. First of all, there were numerous men before you, of various different appearances and sizes. And second of all, you were half-naked, the only clothing covering you being a sheer, white mesh lingerie dress and matching panties. 

The realization of what was going on instantly dawned upon you, your eyes widening and blood running cold. 

“No,” you breathed. “No, Slenderman, please, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again—”

“Of course not,” he chuckled, a low rumble in his chest as he laughed. “That’s what I’m making sure of.”

He diverted his attention from you, back to the group of men before you. You counted in your head; there were six of them. 

“Go ahead, gentlemen. You’re free to do with her whatever you want.”

The final words sealing your fate were spoken. As soon as the words were said, two of the men moved forward, advancing towards you. 

The first one to reach you was a man in a tan jacket. His face was concealed behind a white mask with black painted features, dark brown hair falling past it. 

“Should’ve known better than to piss him off,” he snickered. “But I’m definitely not complaining.” 

You could only watch in horror as he unbuttoned his jeans, sliding down the zipper and pulling down both his pants and underwear together, revealing his already erect member. 

You panicked at the sight, condensation beginning to bead up on your forehead as your breathing quickened from anxiety. 

“Please don’t do this,” you begged, but the man merely laughed. 

“No can do, princess,” he answered with a callous tone. “Now get to work and suck it.”

When you didn’t move, merely looked at him with pleading eyes in hopes of the slight bit of mercy, the man grew impatient, roughly grasping a handful of your hair and pulling you forward towards him, your lips mere centimetres from his cock. 

“Open your mouth,” he ordered. You gulped, swallowing the saliva that had pooled in your mouth, trying to get past your own reluctance. 

A harsh slap to your face jerked your head sideways, your cheek instantly stinging in discomfort as you hissed in pain. 

“Open your mouth,” the masked man repeated himself, this time more forcefully. You could only comply, allowing your lips to part slightly. He wasted no time in shoving his cock past your lips, using the hand he had in your hair to push your head down, forcing you to take his length in until the head hit the back of your throat. You could feel your eyes water, tearing up as he aggressively fucked your mouth, thrusting in and out as you struggled to keep up. You tried your best to breathe through your nose, but it didn’t prevent you from gagging on his erection, the discomfort causing the first tear to slide down your cheek. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw one of the other men—black fabric mask with a red stitched on face, dressed in a yellow hoodie and jeans—move towards you. The man with the porcelain mask noticed as well, ceasing his thrusting for a second to address his companion. 

“You want a piece of her too, huh, Hoodie?” You could hear the grin in his voice as he spoke. 

The man in yellow, that you now knew as Hoodie, replied. 

“She’s got a nice body. I have no reason not to.” His voice was softer, lacking the aggressiveness that the former held. You couldn’t really frown, with the man’s erection still in your mouth, but you could feel irritation spike at his comment with the way he spoke about you. As if you were just an object, a piece of meat. Though, at the same time, there was something about that, that elicited a scintilla of dark excitement within you. Something you decided you wouldn’t—you couldn’t—pay any mind to. 

The first man pulled you off of his member with a harsh tug to your hair, a squeak leaving your lips, finally able to make sound again. You took the opportunity to try and protest again, before this went even further. 

“Guys, please,” you whined, knowing your efforts would likely prove to be fruitless. “Please stop.”

The masked man only snickered, further cementing how futile your objections were. You felt as if he was about to make a snarky comment, but instead, the hooded man spoke. 

“Masky, shut her up.” His tone was flatter, colder than before, causing a fresh wave of goosebumps to break out over the surface of your skin. 

Before you knew it, Masky was pushing you back down onto his cock, and you couldn’t do much besides take his length into your mouth, though this time, his movements were slightly slower as he jerked his hips against your mouth. 

With your nose practically pressed up to Masky’s stomach, your vision was rather limited, though you could feel Hoodie’s hands on your skin, making you flinch. 

You could feel his hands trail down your stomach to your hips, but it wasn’t until his fingers brushed against the thin fabric of your panties that you panicked, trying to squirm away from his touch. Your resistance only made the tentacles wrapping around your limbs tighten, which in return caused you to thrash harder against their grip. It wasn’t until they were binding your arms and wrists so tightly that you were worried about your circulation, that you finally stopped trying to break free. It wasn’t like you could even move as that point, anyway, the tendrils holding you perfectly still, inanimate as a statue. 

Your gasp was muffled by the cock in your mouth. Hoodie picked your hips up, lifting them off of Slenderman’s lap so that your stomach was pressed against the eldritch entity’s thighs instead, with your ass in the air. You felt his fingers push your panties aside, exposing your cunt to the cooler temperature of the room, sending shivers down your spine. 

You couldn’t make a sound, Masky picking up the pace as he abused your mouth, your eyes squeezing shut in discomfort, before you received another sharp tug to your hair. 

“Look at me,” he snapped. You opened your watery eyes to meekly glance at him, your vision blurring with tears. 

At the same time, you felt a finger brush against your clit, and you flinched, instinctively trying to wiggle away but there wasn’t anywhere for you to go. 

You could feel that it was likely Hoodie’s thumb when he started rubbing circles around your clit, the unexpected pleasure startling you. As he continued his movements, you couldn’t help but feel good, thanking whatever god was out there that at least your moans were stifled by Masky’s cock as he rapidly thrust in and out of your mouth. 

You could feel his thrusts growing more frantic, but you found it hard to pay much attention with Hoodie’s fingers pressed against your clit, the unwanted pleasure beginning to cloud your judgement. 

You only snapped out of it for a brief second when Masky grunted, his hips jerking to a sudden halt in your mouth, and you could feel liquid, slightly bitter and salty flood your mouth. 

“Drink it all,” he demanded. You complied, doing your best to swallow the fluid, the aftertaste making you grimace as he pulled out, stepping away to redress himself. 

You were glad that he was done for a second—at least this was getting closer to being over than before—but then realized something. There was nothing to muffle your moans, not anymore, and you could only do your best to hold it in, despite Hoodie continuing to play with the sensitive nub of flesh, each movement only further hazing your mind. You were hoping he wouldn’t notice, as you strained to keep yourself from moving your hips, wanting more, but your hopes were in vain when you heard him speak. 

“Enjoying yourself?” Hoodie’s tone was as callous as ever, but it held a hint of sadistic joy, and you were just about to tell him ‘no’ when you felt him slip two fingers past your entrance, a lustful gasp escaping your lips. 

You could feel a wildfire blazing across your cheeks, lowering your gaze to the floor in shame as he worked his digits inside of you, the tips of his fingers rubbing at your g-spot. 

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you denied, trying to hold onto whatever slivers of pride you had left. 

“Is that why you’re so wet?” You couldn’t see him, but you could hear the grin in his voice as his fingers made a particularly lewd, squelching sound inside you. 

You didn’t answer, your embarrassment peaking as you listened to the sounds that your own body was making. 

You couldn’t hold back from whining when he pulled his fingers out, the sudden lack of sensation making you squeeze your thighs together, trying to relieve yourself of the heat building up inside of you. 

You heard some shuffling—likely him undoing his pants—before you heard footsteps, your head snapping towards the source of the sound. 

Another man was approaching you, dressed in a khaki coloured sweater with striped sleeves, complete with jeans as well, though his mask was different than the others, more so resembling a mouthguard with a separate pair of goggles. 

“You should—woo—make her beg for it first,” he suggested, a dark chuckle leaving his lips. The tone of his voice gave you chills, something clearly more sinister than the other two that had spoken so far. 

“I don’t see the need,” Hoodie responded. “You can if you want.” 

The man with goggles shrugged, before turning to you. Behind the goggles, you could see the sadistic gleam in his amber eyes. 

“Mind waiting for a second?” he asked, seemingly to Hoodie, though the question felt rhetorical. 

“No, go ahead.” You were really hoping Hoodie would object, but it seemed like he didn’t have any issue with the former’s antics. 

“Alright,” the man with goggles snickered. “Listen up, buttercup. You’re going to—woo—beg real fucking nice for me, and when I’m satisfied, he’ll fuck you. How does that sound?” 

Awful, you thought, staring at him, aghast. There was no way you were doing this. There was no way you would just give up your own dignity like that. At least, that’s what you wanted to believe, when you felt Hoodie’s fingers rub at your dripping cunt again, but this time, at an agonizingly slow pace. 

You whined, his fingers drawing the laziest of circles around your clit, his touches softer than before, just enough to tease you but not enough to satisfy you. 

The goggled man cackled. 

“Thought you didn’t see the need,” he said. 

“I don’t,” Hoodie restated what he previously said. “I’m just helping you out, Toby.” 

Toby. So that was his name. You kept it in mind—for no particular reason—as Hoodie continued his actions, every passing second a slow torture for you. 

It felt good. You wanted more. You whimpered, feeling any self-control you had left, slip from your grasp. 

“Please,” you finally whispered. “Please, Toby, I want it.” 

You couldn’t look him in the eyes; your ego had been shattered and thrown in the gutter. If there was any occasion befitting for Slenderman’s memory erasure, it would be this. But he wouldn’t be so kind as to let you forget this, you were sure of that. 

“Didn’t hear you, sorry,” Toby taunted, the glee clearly audible in his voice. “Care to repeat yourself—woh—woo—one more time?”

You gritted your teeth, cursing yourself for being foolish and naïve enough to have ever gotten in this situation. 

“Please,” you spoke under your breath. 

“Louder,” he cut you off. To your own horror, you found yourself complying. 

“Please, Toby, I want it,” you cried out, your voice high-pitched and whiny and nothing like you had ever imagined you’d sound. 

“Good girl,” Toby praised you, his voice sickly sweet. 

As soon as the words left his lips, you felt one of Hoodie’s hands grip your hips, pulling them toward himself, the other hand likely lining himself up with your entrance as you felt the tip of his erection press against it. 

He plunged himself inside you with a delightful stretch, eliciting a loud moan from your lips. You were already more than soaked; he was able to easily slide in, much to your further embarrassment. You felt his other hand grip your hip, holding on tightly as he started pumping into you, building up a steady rhythm, the sound of skin slapping against skin filling the room. 

You were getting lost in the pleasure, each thrust of his hips sending a fresh jolt of electricity through your body, when Toby reached down for your face, taking ahold of your chin with his thumb and index finger, tilting your head up towards him. 

He slowly ran his thumb over your bottom lip, pulling it downwards slightly before pushing his finger in past your parted lips. You lightly flicked your tongue against his thumb, causing him to chuckle once again. 

He clicked his tongue, making a ‘tsk’ sound as he shook his head in mock disapproval. 

“And you were begging for us to stop...” Toby laughed, retracting his finger from your mouth with a slick pop. You didn’t reply to him, instead sucking in a sharp breath as Hoodie’s cock slammed against a particularly pleasurable spot inside of you. 

Toby undid his jeans, pulling them down, proceeding to do the same with his underwear, releasing his hard-on from his pants. He once again gripped your chin, your lips already parting for him as he slid inside of your mouth. His member was larger than Masky’s—that or he was more forceful, you couldn’t tell—and instantly hit the back of your throat, but he didn’t stop there. Instead, he continued to force your head down, hand pressing against the back of your head until you felt his cock fill your throat, instantly triggering your gag reflex. You gagged and choked around his cock, eyes once again watering as you found yourself unable to breathe, only able to glance at him helplessly as he began fucking your throat, bucking his hips into your mouth and all the way down your throat. 

Meanwhile, Hoodie’s rhythmic thrusts were growing faster, pounding into you harder than before as tension built up within you. With one cock down your throat and the other stuffing your cunt, you were caught in the juxtaposition between discomfort and ecstasy, both sensations overwhelming your mind and flooding your senses, the last of any rational thoughts extinguished; snuffed out like a flame. 

“My, my,” Slenderman’s booming voice echoed through your skull. “If I had known sooner that you would be this easy to break...” 

You felt one of the tentacles wrapped around your body loosen its grip, not leaving you with enough time to wonder why. Instead you felt the foreign appendage flick at your swollen clit, your eyes instantly widening at the unexpected action. 

Another deep sigh, though the sound was clearly inhuman. 

“You’re just a slut after all, aren’t you, darling?” 

Never in your life would you have wanted to admit it, but you couldn’t help the way his words tightened the knot in your stomach, the tension building up to a peak as your walls spasmed and contracted. The feeling of your insides squeezing around Hoodie’s cock must’ve tipped him off the edge because you could hear him groaning as he, too, came, emptying himself inside of you. 

He pulled out, his hold on your hips slackening, your lower body proceeding to slump down, though Toby didn’t stop pumping in and out of your mouth. If anything, his movements grew rougher, your throat getting fucked raw, the tiny inhales of oxygen you were able to take through your nose not enough to supply your lungs. Your eyes welled up with tears from the slight pain that you now couldn’t ignore, your throat being mercilessly scraped raw and jaw cramping up. 

You blinked, a few drops falling down your face in glistening streams. When Toby finally jerked his hips up with one last hard thrust, you were thankful that you’d be able to breathe soon, feeling his cock twitch, lodged in your windpipe as his semen spilled down your esophagus. 

He kept you there, holding your head down until he had finished pouring out every last drop of his cum, giving you no choice but to swallow it all, your head almost dizzy from the lack of oxygen. At last, he yanked you off his member, leaving you spluttering and gasping for much needed air before you dropped your head, face sinking into the soft sheets that Slenderman was sitting on. 

You were still breathing heavily, sucking in large inhales at a rapid pace, when you heard someone speak. 

“Nice to meet you, dollface. The name’s Jeff.” Upon seeing him up close, you instantly froze up, a small gasp leaving your lips. You didn’t even realize when this man had appeared and Toby left, but here he was, standing before you, eyes caked in charcoal, skin a pale, leathery white, and an artificial, carved smile wide open in his cheeks. 

You whimpered, trying to get up and squirm away from Jeff, who laughed, seemingly finding your reaction entertaining. 

“Aw, babe, no need to be scared of me,” he cackled. “I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun together. Isn’t that right, boss?” 

Slenderman chuckled, the noise a deep vibration rumbling through your skull. 

“With how much of a slut she has turned out to be, I’m sure she’ll love it. Wouldn’t you agree, my dear?”

The question was directed at you, causing your face to heat up, flushing with shame. It wasn’t so much humiliating because he called you that, but more so because it was true, merely the words themselves able to send warmth pooling between your thighs. 

“I’m— I’m not a slut,” you pathetically tried to defend yourself, though you didn’t even believe your own words. 

“Is that so?” Slenderman questioned, the dark amusement visible in his voice. You felt one of his mysterious appendages pry itself between your thighs, the tip swirling around your clit, teasing the sensitive bundle of nerves. 

“A-Ah!” you gasped, still sensitive from your orgasm. “Stop—”

“Stop?” he laughed mischievously. His tendril gave languid, broad strokes over your clit, the smooth, silicone-like feel of the tentacle lighting up your nerves, setting your skin ablaze with heat. You couldn’t help but purr in delight, bucking your hips against the foreign sensation, your pride now rendered non-existent. “Is that really what you want, love?”

You let out a sigh of pleasure, shaking your head ‘no’ and mumbling something along the lines for him to keep going, at the same time cursing yourself for being so shameless. 

“Remind me to never get on your bad side,” another man stated. He was blonde, dressed in green—reminiscent of Link from Legend of Zelda—and relatively slender, though what really stood out was the crimson irises he possessed, complete with ebony scleras. “Turning your ‘love’ into a mindbroken fucktoy, even I wouldn’t be so heartless.”

“It’s a fitting and effective punishment,” Slenderman explained, his voice nonchalant though you didn’t fail to catch the hint of perverse enjoyment evident in his tone. 

The blonde shrugged, not commenting further on the topic, instead turning to Jeff and asking him a question. 

“You cool with a blowjob?” he grinned. 

“From you or her?” Jeff replied, causing the blonde man to roll his scarlet eyes. 

“Who do you think?” the blonde shot him what appeared to be a playful glare, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Yeah, I’m happy with fucking that pretty face of hers,” Jeff answered, the maniacal smile ever so present on his face. 

“Bet.” The man dressed in green then turned to Slenderman. “Boss, am I good to fuck her on the bed or you want her to stay on your lap?” 

“As I said, Ben, you’re free to do with her whatever you want.” As he finished his sentence, he loosened his grip, the tendrils uncoiling from your limbs and letting your body fall free. 

Ben then turned to you. 

“You heard him,” he stated. “Get on the bed.” 

You pushed yourself up onto your elbows with shaky arms, inelegantly swinging your legs over Slenderman’s lap, your feet touching the wooden floor. As soon as you stood up, you could feel warm fluid dripping down your thigh, some of it landing on the ground with a small splat. You tried to pretend it didn’t happen, instead crawling onto the bed and sitting down on it, pulling your legs into your chest, holding them with your arms. Your eyes were looking down at your own knees, too shy to meet the gaze of the two men that were about to be having sex with you. 

“Good girl,” Ben cooed at you, seconds before he climbed onto the bed, arms pushing your torso down, your back falling flat against the thankfully soft, plush mattress, head sinking into the material. 

“Hm,” he seemed to be thinking. “Actually, scoot up.” You were about to follow his instructions when he picked your body up with surprising ease considering his lean frame, and brought you over to the one side of the bed, setting you down. His hand was on your chest, pushing it down onto the mattress though this time your head didn’t meet anything solid, instead dangling a bit off the edge. 

“Not bad,” Jeff chuckled, walking over to stand next to you. You peered up at him, heartbeat once again starting to race as he began undoing his black dress pants, pulling them down alongside his underwear. 

His cock was half-erect, practically hovering mere centimetres over your face, and you realized then how they planned to do this. 

“Alright, doll, open that pretty mouth of yours for me,” he said, leering at you from above. 

You parted your lips, and he wasted no time putting his member in your mouth, the organ growing firmer and firmer as you took it in, trying to wrap your lips around it, moving your tongue alongside the shaft. 

“That’s perfect,” Jeff groaned. “You’re such a good whore.” 

You were doing your best to suck Jeff’s cock that was now fully erect and filling your mouth, when Ben’s hands reached towards your chest, giving your breasts a tentative squeeze. His movements soon grew rougher, fingers groping and playing with the mounds of flesh on your chest, soon bringing his mouth down, taking one of your nipples into his mouth.

Your eyes widened, though you couldn’t make any noise, with Jeff languidly pumping in and out of your mouth, your tongue swirling around the tip, the taste of pre-cum mixing with your saliva. 

Ben continued toying with your nipples, alternating between sucking on them, twirling his tongue against the hardened bud, and even nipping at them, the sensation causing goosebumps to break out over your skin, your hair follicles standing on end as you shuddered from his touch. 

You felt his other hand snake down towards your waist, grabbing at your hips before taking hold of your thigh, squishing the tender inner area. He let go of your nipple with a wet popping sound, your eyes instantly turning towards the wall to your side, feeling your face heat up once again. 

He brought his head down, taking the soft part of your thigh into his mouth, sucking on the flesh, his teeth gently grazing the surface of your skin, the action sure to leave marks as soon as he let go, though he repeated the process multiple times after, getting closer and closer to your cunt. 

He licked at your clit, the feeling sending sparks of pleasure flying, before he took the sensitive nub between his lips, and you could feel the wet, warm suction that you couldn’t help but melt into. 

“Use more tongue,” Jeff demanded, his rough voice pulling you out of your euphoria for a split second. You tried to focus on doing as he said, however, Ben’s mouth lapping at your clit, and his fingers that were beginning to fuck into you were too distracting. 

You could feel him curve his fingers to skillfully rub at your g-spot, causing you to buck your hips up at him, wanting more. 

“God,” you could just hear the smirk in his voice as he pulled his fingers out, leaving you unbearably empty. “You really are a slut. You want it that badly?” 

You couldn’t respond, mouth still busy pleasuring Jeff, but Slenderman took it upon himself to reply in your place. 

“It appears that she does.” The supernatural creature reached one of his pale, enormous hands towards your cunt, feeling your entrance, slick and slippery with your own juices. “I doubt all of this is just cum.”

When he retracted his hand, you felt the weight of the bed shift slightly, as Ben got himself into position to fuck you, picking your hips up and aligning his cock with your entrance. 

He plunged himself in, the feeling of his shaft filling up your needy insides was nothing short of heavenly, and he didn’t bother wasting any time—it wasn’t like you needed to adjust—as he began thrusting in and out of you at a rapid but steady pace. 

As he was fucking you, he lifted your legs up and over his shoulders, allowing himself to be able to go deeper, the tip of his cock brushing up against your cervix. 

You found yourself getting lost in the pleasure once more, simply letting go of any rational thought and permitting yourself to enjoy getting fucked like a slut. 

Jeff was simultaneously breathing heavily as he rutted into your mouth, and you could anticipate it when he began to near, but to your surprise, he pulled out of your mouth. 

Instead, you watched as he stroked his cock, hands gripping the length and jerking himself off for the few seconds before he came, moaning, his cum spurting out from the head of his cock and splattering over your face. Some of the translucent fluid splashed on your half-lidded eyes, sticking to your eyelashes, while some landed in your still open mouth, the rest staining both your skin and hair. 

“That was lovely,” Jeff grinned—as always. “Thanks for the service, doll.” 

You only nodded, gasping for air and inhaling sharp breaths as you greedily sucked in a proper amount of oxygen. 

That didn’t stop you from letting out moans in between inhales, Ben drilling into you and making work of your insides; wet, vulgar slapping noises filling the room. 

You didn’t expect it when he let go of your legs—though they remained hoisted over his shoulders—and reached out towards you, wrapping his hands around your neck. 

Ben applied pressure to the sides of your neck as he continued thrusting into you, picking up the pace as you instinctively reached for his wrists, grabbing onto them although you knew you had no chance of prying them off had you wanted to do so. Somehow, the thought of that further spurred you on, amplifying your arousal as you started feeling lightheaded, blood no longer flowing to your head as it should be. 

To your surprise, it was under those circumstances that you felt fire in your abdomen, each slap of his hips against yours making you inadvertently grind up against him as pressure built up inside you, his quick yet steady movements bringing you to the edge. 

He still hadn’t let go of your neck when your gut tightened, shockwaves gripping your body as you reached your crescendo. For a second you were floating in space, the room blurring from the cut off blood supply, spinning and hazing over with white light as your gut tightened, back arching and toes curling, your cunt clenching at his cock. 

You only noticed that his hold around your throat was gone when the room went back to normal, the colours returning and shapes forming once more as your vision cleared up. As your sight sharpened, you could see Ben moving away from you, a tired laugh leaving his lips as he sat down on the bed. You realized that he, too, had came at some point, the evidence being the semen that you could feel seeping out from your cunt, dirtying the bed, though that didn’t matter to you. 

“She’s practically gone,” you heard Ben comment. “You sure she can keep going?”

“She will have to,” Slenderman replied. “Our last guest has been waiting patiently, after all. She doesn’t have a choice.”

“You really are cruel,” Ben’s tone was lighthearted, though it didn’t feel like he was completely joking. You paid it no mind, however, but rather focused on Slenderman’s words. 

One last guest, you thought. You wondered who it would be, and what they were like as you looked up at the ceiling with a vacant gaze. 

You didn’t have to wonder for long, because the final guest that Slenderman spoke of was already walking towards you, his footsteps echoing in the chamber you were in, stopping beside you. What was formerly a blank ceiling in your sight was now replaced with a tall, very tall man, donning a doctor’s coat and navy blue mask, a viscous, tar-like liquid trickling from the eye sockets. He hovered there for a few seconds, seemingly inspecting you—though you couldn’t tell—before speaking.

“Get up.” The sound of his voice was enough to startle you out of your daze. It was nothing like you’d ever heard before, the only thing coming close enough would have been Slenderman’s voice, which was deep, resonant, and laced with static. The blue masked man’s voice on the other hand, was gravelly and smooth, but with an unmistakable inhuman edge to it, almost like a demonic rasp. 

You didn’t move, instead laid there stunned, though it was dumb of you to do so. How could you not expect other creatures, after knowing Slenderman himself? You had made the mistake of letting yourself get too accustomed to the previous five men, that were all seemingly mortal. 

“Get up, darling,” the blue masked man repeated himself. You could already hear the hunger in his voice, something of a completely different essence than the lust the previous men had emanated. 

You rolled over, pushing yourself up with quivering arms, stepping off the bed with equally shaky legs. 

When you first thought of this man as tall, you had expected him to be two metres or so, but seeing him, you’d guess that he was at least thirty centimetres above your naïve, foolish expectations. 

Standing next to him, your head was barely at his chest. The sensation of someone towering over you in the way he did was something you had only experienced with the eldritch entity that kidnapped you, though Slenderman was somehow even taller than that. 

Explains why the ceilings are so high in this mansion, you thought to yourself. 

The blue masked man peered down at you, with a curiosity that made you think of the way scientists would look at guinea pigs. You could feel a chill run down your spine, fear crawling alongside every ridge and bone, your fingers trembling as you tried to maintain your composure. However, you weren’t sure what it was that you were trying to contain anymore, the instinctual fear that you felt, or the carnal, primal desire that was threatening to overtake you once more. 

The blue masked man lifted a hand, and it was only then that you realized his skin was grey. You blinked, wondering if your vision was just hazy still but to your thrill horror, you weren’t mistaken. 

It wasn’t that he was pale, or perhaps sick. No, he was unmistakably grey, with darker veins running through the back of his hand, and sharp, onyx nails. 

You couldn’t bring yourself to move or run away when he brushed your hair behind your ear, an almost innocent, even lovely gesture had you not been in the situation you were in. 

His fingers trailed down to your neck, the sharpness of his nails dangerously teasing at your skin, sending continuous shudders in your body the entire way. He stopped at your shoulder, gripping it as he used his other hand to push his mask up, revealing the same grey skin and lips. 

But what really surprised you was when he opened his mouth, revealing a set of razor sharp teeth, which opened to showcase something even more horrific—three forked, twisting black tongues. 

With wide eyes, you reflexively stumbled backwards, though his hand on your shoulder stopped you before you made it even two full steps. 

He leaned his head down, all three tongues touching your body. One at your jaw, one at your jugular, and the last at your collarbone, all flicking against the surface of your skin at the same time. The sensation was one of electricity, lightning bolts and sparks, your body reacting to his touch in a way you’d never experienced before, causing you to make a sound akin to both a whimper and gasp. 

The man chuckled, a dark, rumbly, yet oddly salacious sound. 

“You’ll be delicious,” he grinned, flashing his shark like teeth. 

“Jack, you can use her however you please,” Slenderman cut in. “But do refrain from eating her, please.”

Eating? Surely he didn’t mean what you thought he meant—were you really about to get fucked by a flesh-eating demon? 

That thought didn’t turn you off as much as it should have. If anything, you felt the ache between your thighs begin to throb once more, and you involuntarily clenched them, pressing them together. 

“I’ll do my best not to,” Jack responded, the grin not leaving his face for a single second, not until he put his mask back down, at least. You nervously nibbled on your bottom lip, anxiously yet eagerly waiting for his move. 

Jack didn’t start right away; he appeared to be studying you, likely thinking of what exactly he should do with you—how exactly he should fuck you. But you’d be lying to yourself that the anticipation wasn’t getting the best of you, the sexual tension in the air growing thicker and heavier by the second. 

It was when you felt like you couldn’t wait any longer, somehow feeling impatient, almost, that he finally did something, though it wasn’t what you expected. 

Jack sat down on the edge of the bed, lazily leaning back a bit before addressing you. 

“Come here,” he beckoned you with his fingers.  

As if you were hypnotized, you found yourself happily climbing over his legs and sitting on his lap, your ass pressed against his crotch and hands on his shoulders. 

“You seem pretty worn out,” Jack casually stated, as if it was a simple observation, like the sky being blue or the grass being green. “You think you can handle me, sweetheart?”

You gazed into his eyes, twin abysses in Neptune’s mask, almost deliriously as you nodded. 

Jack only hummed, both hands going to his ears to remove the midnight blue mask from his face. 

“Good,” he said, all sharp teeth and smiles as he took the mask off, laying it aside on the bed, his features now revealed. 

You weren’t sure what you had expected, but he was oddly attractive, with elegant bone structure and fluttering, dark eyelashes, though they covered something far more sinister—a set of hollowed out eye sockets. 

You couldn’t help but let your jaw fall, mouth agape at the sight. You weren’t too sure how you were still finding things to be astonished over, though the mansion so far had been a continuous chain of surprises. 

Jack put his hands on your hips, grasping at your asscheeks, his nails scratching the surface of your skin, causing a small squeak to leave your lips. A sly smirk formed on his ashen face, seconds before he buried his face into the crook of your neck. 

Ragged breaths left your lips as he took your skin into his mouth, his fangs scraping against your throat before letting it go, the slight sting making you let out a sharp hiss, though it was quickly overshadowed by the intoxicating warmth of his tongues dancing along the tiny incisions he left. 

The way he sucked on your neck would be similar to the way Ben did with your thighs, if it weren’t for the starvation that he devoured you with, an abundance of scratches littering half of your upper body, scattered from just below your jawbone all the way to your shoulder, some even dipping down to your collarbone. 

You didn’t need to see it to know the minuscule drops of blood beading at the faint incision lines, quickly lapped up by one of his many tongues, Jack almost purring, a contented noise leaving his lips as he tasted you. 

Amidst the concoction of pleasurable feelings—his mouth greedily consuming you, his fingers toying with the flesh of your ass—you could feel his crotch stiffen beneath your thighs, the feeling of his bulge rubbing up against you ever so tantalizing. 

You didn’t even realize your satisfied hums, nor the way you ground your hips against the hardness in his pants, your lust fully taking control of both your body and mind. It didn’t slip past Jack’s attention, though, because he then lifted his head back up and away from your faintly lacerated yet heavily bruised neck. 

You couldn’t help but think that you liked the hickeys he had left on you; there was something titillating about him marking you. 

As if he could read your thoughts, Jack spoke. 

“Look at you,” he drawled. “Getting so worked up already, and I’ve barely even touched you.” As he spoke, he let go of your behind, instead dipping his hand underneath to slide two fingers up your cunt, sticky and drenched with arousal. You moaned, feeling his fingers fill you. Despite his hand being much larger than the average male’s, his digits easily fit inside you with how wet you were. 

When he pulled his fingers out, you couldn’t help but whine at the lack of sensation, rubbing your cunt against his visibly hardened crotch, desperate for more friction. 

Jack only laughed as he brought his fingers up to your lips, where you could clearly see the fluids that coated his fingers, slick and glistening. 

“Come on,” he urged you, a twisted smile on his lips. You felt your face heat up for the—honestly, you lost count by now—time that day as you parted your lips, letting him put his fingers in the warm cavern of your mouth. You sucked on them, tasting your own juices, cleaning your mess off of his digits. 

When he retracted them from your mouth, he proceeded to pause once more, seeming analyzing you. You were both curious and ludicrously excited to see what he would want from you next. 

“On your knees, darling,” he instructed, and you obeyed without a second thought, swinging your legs over his lap and kneeling down on the floor below him, ignoring the dull ache of your knees against the solid floor. 

“Let me ask you again,” Jack repeated his earlier question as he started to undo his pants. “You really think you can handle me?”

You gulped, swallowing the saliva that had pooled in your mouth as you anticipated what was next, nodding nervously. 

“Good.” His grin was larger than ever as he pulled his pants down, tugging his boxers off a second later. 

Your eyes enlarged impossibly wide at the sight before you. 

His cock was a similar colour to the rest of him, albeit a bit darker, though that was the least surprising aspect of it. What truly shocked you, rather, was the sheer size of his erection, standing tall at a length comparable to the size of your own head. Dark, prominent veins ran through the organ, adding to its monstrous appearance. The tip had a glossy sheen to it, wet with what was likely pre-cum. 

You stared at the scene before you, your brain stuck on processing the fact that this monstrosity would be going inside of you, unsure how to react. 

Jack languidly picked up a strand of your hair, twirling it around his fingers for a second before letting it drop. 

“Go on,” he taunted. “Is something wrong?” You could tell he was amused by your reaction; he had clearly expected this to happen. You could only timidly shake your head. 

“No,” you mumbled. 

“Then what are we waiting for, dear?” Jack chuckled darkly. 

With shaking hands, you reached out for Jack’s member, placing one hand on his knee to steady yourself and the other wrapping around his shaft, giving it an experimental stroke before you brought your mouth to the head. Your tongue glided over the tip of his cock, the briny taste of pre-cum melting into your tastebuds. 

Jack let out a satisfied sigh, and you took it as a sign to keep going, wrapping your lips around the head of his member, bobbing your head up and down as your hand steadily pumped his cock in matching rhythm. 

Your jaw was already tired and aching from the previous ‘sessions’ you had with the other men, but the intimidating girth of his cock filled your entire mouth, making it even more uncomfortable and difficult. 

You glanced up at Jack, who was looking down at you with an expression of both intrigue and satisfaction as you continued stroking his length. It wasn’t long before you felt your jaw cramping up, muscles throbbing in discomfort, causing you to stop. You pulled your mouth off of his cock with a wet popping noise, instead choosing to lap at the head while your hands did the rest of the work. 

“So weak,” Jack scoffed. “And you thought you could handle me.”

You whimpered, pausing for a second to speak to him. 

“I’m sorry,” you apologized, though the way his words electrified your entire being far outweighed any part of your feeling bad. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Jack brushed your apology off, instead offering his own solution. “You’ll just have to make up for it when I’m fucking you. After all, I’m sure that dripping wet cunt of yours will be able to handle me.”

You couldn’t help but gasp, his words sending a sharp pang of arousal straight to your gut. He took clear note of your reaction, a smug smile on his face as he spoke. 

“You really like when I talk to you like that, don’t you?” Jack asked. “You dumb little whore.”

“Y-Yes,” you squeaked; his words were nothing short of arousing for you. 

“Oh, I am going to fuck you stupid,” Jack declared. And honestly—you were more than looking forward to it. “Get back on my lap.”

You got back up to your feet, alleviating your weight from your knees, something that was a relief. 

You only realized what would happen as you were about to climb back over his lap, the sudden thought striking you then that you were expected to not just sit on his lap, but also sit on his cock. 

As turned on as you were, you still found the size of his cock to be daunting, though as your insides clenched around nothing, you came to the conclusion that you wanted to be filled by that enormous cock of his. 

You climbed over his thighs, hands gripping his shoulders to hold yourself up as you let him position you, his hand holding your waist still, the other positioning himself at your entrance before you lowered yourself onto his member. 

You felt the tip sink into you, with relative ease due to your wetness, though it wasn’t until the upper part of his shaft had gone in that you started really feeling his girth, your walls forced to stretch to accommodate his size. The sensation quickly went from pleasurable and fulfilling to painful, your cunt resisting as your walls expanded to their limit. You stopped there, taking a second to catch your breath, your eyes watering from the pain and legs trembling. 

“I apologize, sweetheart,” Jack said. “But we’re not done yet.”

With both hands on your waist, he forced your hips down to meet his, his cock stabbing through you, only stopping as it slammed against your cervix. You cried out loudly, thrashing against him as both the agony of his cock brutally colliding with your cervix as well as the sharp pains of your insides being strained by the width of his organ flooding your senses. 

No matter how much you struggled and wailed, Jack didn’t let go of your hips, holding your lower body still, his cock fully sheathed in your warmth. 

Thankfully, he didn’t start fucking you right away, allowing you some time to adjust to the violent penetration, the terrible throbbing gradually fading into a dull, though still painful ache. 

As the initial pain subsided, you stopped squirming as much. That was when Jack brought his hand down at your point of connection, his thumb rubbing slow circles around your clit, stimulating the nerves and instantly sending signals of pleasure to your brain. Despite the still-aching throbbing between your legs, you felt your arousal heighten once more. Perhaps the pain was amplifying the pleasure that you felt; you weren’t sure. 

All you knew was that you wanted more, your body moving on its own, hips bucking against Jack’s hand for more. 

When his hand left your clit to instead take hold of your hips again, you whined in dissatisfaction, but he merely chuckled, before gently giving you a bounce on his cock. 

The action elicited a small moan from you, a mixture of both pain and pleasure, which he took as a sign to keep going, moving your hips up and down as you clung onto his shoulders, mewling. 

As he continued to lift your hips, pounding away at your insides, your moans slowly filled with more and more delight. Your breaths were heavy while his remained inhumanly calm, though the one thing you shared in common was your animalistic desire for each other, his hips snapping against yours as he viciously fucked into you, ravaging your insides with each thrust. 

His cock rubbed against every last inch of your walls, not a singular spot missed, the tip making impact with your g-spot each time he plunged into you, while at the same time his cock had sank so deep into your guts that your pelvis was pressed up right against his, allowing blissful friction against your swollen clit. 

His thrusts were growing more violent, though he didn’t seem to tire in the slightest as he handled your body with ease, using you like a ragdoll. 

You were bouncing up and down on his cock so fast and so harshly that you could barely distinguish one thrust from the other, Jack pounding away at your cunt, your walls gripping him deliciously as you senselessly moaned. 

You were practically seeing stars, body burning up all over, the only sound being the lewd, slick slapping noises of your drenched lips against his skin. The tension building up inside you was too much, your arousal peaking off the charts as he used your dripping cunt, before your clit rubbed against him one too many times and you were shaking, body convulsing, hips spasming as you screamed out his name. 

He kept mercilessly fucking you, his cock hammering at your cervix though the pain barely affected you anymore, your muscles tightening around him, squeezing and squeezing before finally your body went limp. You felt a few more thrusts inside you, before he then undoubtedly also had his release, filling you with his seed as your walls loosened around him. 

You felt so faint, your mind barely conscious or aware of what was taking place as he lifted you off of his cock, semen instantly flowing out of your used cunt and spilling down your thighs as he placed you down on the bed. Your back was against the soft sheets, your eyes vacantly staring up at the ceiling, completely inanimate save for the occasional twitch of your hips. 

You didn’t pay attention to what was happening, didn’t even notice Jack leaving, didn’t even realize the hands that slipped underneath you, one holding your thighs and the other supporting your back, lifting you up into the air. 

You couldn’t even tell what was occurring around you, your breaths coming out ragged and uneven, eyes unfocused, body completely limp. 

You only regained some awareness back, when Slenderman spoke, his voice intruding into your skull and ringing in your ears. 

“Oh dear,” he murmured, his voice filled with false concern. “My little toy seems to have broken.”

He was referring to you. You, his little toy. That was right, you were Slenderman’s little fucktoy. Somehow, the thought of that brought a dazed smile to your face. 

“I suppose I’ll just have to make do with what I have,” he stated, the vibrations prickling at your mind. “Though...”

His words trailed off as two of his tentacles moved about, each taking hold of one of your arms. Two more appeared, curling themselves around your thighs, holding up your weight as his hands left your body. 

With the four tendrils lifting your weight, you found yourself suspended in midair, practically floating as he brought his hand to your leaking cunt, long, pale fingers parting your swollen lips and inserting themselves in you. 

“That cunt of yours is rather loose now, dear.”

You whimpered, the sting of his words only serving to send more heat pooling between your thighs, though you couldn’t do anything to alleviate the need building up inside you, with all your limbs bound and movement restricted. 

His thumb brushed against your swollen nub as his fingers curled up inside you, the action making you hiss, the touch being too much for your nerves, overly sensitive from having came so many times. The jolt of discomfort was enough to make you instinctively squirm, though you were still fairly delirious. 

“Feeling sensitive, darling?” he questioned, sadistic enjoyment evident in his voice. You mumbled an incoherent ‘yes,’ continuing to attempt to evade his touch, though you were firmly stuck in his place as he toyed with your clit. 

“That’s too bad,” Slenderman said, his tone one of fake sympathies. “You’ll just have to suffer a bit for me then, love.”

You barely noticed, too focused on the physical sensations of discomfort when he started unbuttoning his dress pants, pushing them down just enough to take out his cock, which he lazily stroked. You weren’t too sure how big it actually was, but it felt just right when he penetrated you, a fast, singular thrust met with little resistance. 

You moaned loudly, the head of his cock rubbing so divinely against your insides, though it quickly turned to strangled sobs as he started moving his hips, each thrust causing your overstimulated clit to smack against his skin. You were wriggling against him, partially shrieking from the feeling of too much as you tried to put some distance between the two of you, to no avail. 

The eldritch entity continued to ruthlessly pound away at your abused, worn out cunt, squelching sounds emitting from your loosened and sopping walls. 

Somewhere in between the vulgar noises of coitus, you heard a deep, almost disappointed sigh. 

“What a shame,” he scoffed. “Your cunt’s worthless. I’ll have to make it tighter.”

You were confused as to what he meant by that, though you were too distracted by how sensitive you were to put much thought into it. It wasn’t until another one of his tendrils reached out, the smooth, glossy black tip poking at your asshole that the realization sunk in. 

“Ah—” you gasped. “What— What are you doing—” 

Your words were cut off by the sudden intrusion, the tapered tip pushing inside your hole, pain shooting through you as you yelped. 

“Wait, don’t—” 

Slenderman ignored your protests, the appendage working its way deeper into your guts, the slowly thickening tip gradually yet agonizingly stretching out your asshole. 

Your back side hurt, combined with the continuous stimulation of your mistreated clit, the sensations were overwhelming you. 

“Stop, stop, it’s too much—” you cried out, once again thrashing your hips, any effort to get away proving fruitless. “Please, I can’t, I can’t—”

You choked out sobs, eyes brimming with fresh tears as the tall man relentlessly violated your insides. You didn’t stop wailing, desperately pleading for him to stop when he raised one last tentacle, and before you knew it, shoved it past your open lips, harshly ramming it down your throat. 

Your eyes bulged open as you choked on the appendage, which was completely stuffing your windpipe, effectively muffling any sounds you could’ve made. 

You tried to fight, twisting and turning your body, though you were far too tired and too worn out to even resist for long, eventually simply letting your body slacken, your head slowly growing lighter from the lack of oxygen. 

It felt as if you were on the verge of passing out—you likely were—when your vision started blurring, your consciousness threatening to slip away. You didn’t bother trying to hold on, merely surrendering yourself, giving up as your holes continued to be used, Slenderman’s dick thrusting in just before the tentacle pulled out, the appendage and his cock simultaneously rubbing against one another with your walls serving as a divider. 

Dark dots began spotting your vision, all your holes stuffed, your clit still being hammered away at, each sensation combining with another, to the point where you couldn’t tell them apart. All you knew was that you were being impaled, your body being used as a toy for this eldritch entity, the pain fading into a plain feeling of fullness. 

You closed your eyes, but though you felt like you weren’t actively doing so, you could feel your innards constrict, tightening and spasming as bliss overtook you. It was oddly euphoric, allowing the darkness to take you away, your body continuing to writhe as you orgasmed one final time. 

You could feel the monster still, save for his cock, twitching lovingly inside your cunt as he, too, reached his peak, releasing and filling your womb with cum. 

Something was removed from your throat, and you felt your body’s survival mechanisms kick in, your eyes suddenly snapping open, your lungs burning as you gasped and wheezed, trying to take in much needed air. 

When you finally recovered, your chest still desperately heaving with each breath, you noticed that you were back on the bed, the eldritch entity sitting next to your laying down form. 

Though he had no facial features, you could still feel him gaze down at you, his hand tenderly stroking your hair, mangled and matted with sweat. 

“My love,” he whispered, his voice the softest you had ever heard it. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

Feverish and faint, you no longer had the energy to meet where his eyes would be, so you simply closed them again, deliriously nodding your head to no one in particular. 

“Yes,” you answered. 

[kaesaaurelia]

soooo I just finished watching that star wars hotel video and oh my god the fire safety what the fuckkkk

BUT ALSO if you are some kind of weirdo who watched this (or the evermore video) and was like "man I wish that thing existed but was good," I... can't help you specifically with Star Wars (or generic high fantasy settings) but if you are an adult or a family with teens (who are okay with some mild references to sexuality in a coming-of-age context -- which honestly would go over the heads of most kids too young to deal with them?), don't have issues with darkness, flashing lights, or potential immune issues due to touching touchscreens, and enjoy a little light cosmic and/or implied body horror I highly highly suggest going to Omega Mart next time you are in Las Vegas. It is surreal and fun and while I definitely ran into some issues there with 1. going down the story path I didn't mean to go down and 2. LOSING MY EMPLOYEE ID CARD (to be clear I did not work there, in the fiction of the game all guests are Omega Mart employees), there were helpful (actual) employees there to jump in and help me without breaking immersion at all. They were great.

There are some pathways (physical pathways) that require an ability to climb stairs but there are ALWAYS multiple paths between two points so while you might not be able to crawl through the tunnel and then climb the rope from [spoiler place] to [other spoiler place] or do the slides, you can still physically get to the plot-important places and I think at most people who can't do stairs miss... some kind of pointless music machines? (Which I had fun with ngl but I fucked around with them for like 10 minutes more because I was in the area looking for my lost ID badge and asking if people had found it.) I haven't been to the other Meow Wolf installations but I would love to go given the chance.

And if you really want a themed hotel... well, you can't find an eldritch dimension-hopping supermarket-themed hotel, no, but if you stay on the strip there's going to be a lot of neon and trying to sell you things, and also optionally a theme, so like. That's not dissimilar.

Fire safety both at these Vegas hotels and at Omega Mart will be better than crawling into a small closet with 4 of your closest friends and hoping to not die, also. And a substantial amount of the story of Omega Mart is "wow corporate greed does ruin everything," so if you liked the video you probably will also like this.

[Edit: also to be clear I don't really think Omega Mart is small-child-friendly, but mostly because it's a lot of reading, and the bulk of it is either corporate memos or a teenage girl's diaries. A lot of the stuff I found most engaging was exploring the strained intergenerational family dynamic between the girl, her mom, and her grandfather, something that small children would find either boring or upsetting or both. It's not the sexuality that's the issue, it's some offscreen implied character death-but-not-really (that not-really doesn't make it better!) and just plain bad parenting, plus the broader theme of a greedy grocery chain turning ancient mystery and natural wonder into queasy reality-breaking horror.]

[soupdwelling]

ITS TIME. this is my essay on why the chasity family are cannibals

okay so obviously this started with that one line from hatchet town “careful or your kids might end up on karens plate! she just ate!” but i like to imagine the “chasitys are cannibals” is just a running joke in hatchetfield, or maybe a rumor. most people don’t actually think they’re cannibals but it’s just something people say to get under karen’s skin because that’s fun.

but i like to imagine this rumor started with actual evidence of something. it’s not just like one day someone said “it would be funny to say this about karen lmao” it’s more like “possibly human remains were found in the chasity’s freezer but this is kind of a normal occurrence in hatchetfield so we’re just going to turn it into a joke”

ALSO. that one scene in npmd right before dirty girl and basically just every scene where the chasitys interact feels kind of off. its definitely giving the trope of “this a perfect utopia oh wait it’s actually really fucked up and dark when you think about it for a minute” like imagine in the dinner scene the “mouthful of mothers meatloaf” is fully some guys liver. and then karen chasity is like “oh i couldn’t have done it without you mark, you work so hard dragging all of these corpses into our basement!”

this also works with the “this is hatchetfield, people go missing every day” line because the chasitys are killing all of them and fucking eating them!! this can also account for why grace was so confident she’d get away with max’s murder because she’s so used to living in a cannibalistic murder family that it doesn’t cross her mind to worry. she just didn’t account for the fact that this specific murder would be more trackable because she didn’t yknow. eat maxs corpse so it was still there for the cops to find

grace’s entire personality in general is also really concerning! like, she’s fucking insane obviously! but why? she probably didn’t just pop out of the womb like that right? well, maybe it’s because she has been RAISED by crazy people. obviously her parents are very intensely christian but even the most devoted of christians don’t usually summon five eldritch demons to do their bidding. like! that is most definitely not normal! so it makes complete sense that grace’s insanity runs in the family they are cannibals they eat people

i promise i’m almost done but i would LOVE a nightmare time episode about the chasitys being cannibals i feel like that has so much crazy potential especially considering their personalities i just love the idea of a typical american christian family sitting down together for dinner and saying grace with someone’s fucking BRAIN on the plate in front of them. like that’s fucking insane.

could you IMAGINE a nmt episode of karen chasity seducing Ted and luring him into her home only for mark and grace to come bursting out of the closet wielding kitchen knives? i would kill to see that.

[escelia]

Thank you so much to everyone who enjoyed the first part! I hope I didn't miss anyone in the tags.

You can click here to read the prologue and here to read part one.

Enjoy~

Not So Normal pt2

Bruce had gathered his whole brood in the Batcave for their debrief. This time, Danny included. He'd hoped that one day he would bring Danny down here and tell him all about their nightly activities, just not so soon. His newest son didn't even seem fazed at all by all the vigilantes flooding into the cave. Not that that really meant anything with him floating down through the ceiling with Dick and Damian in hand. To think one of the kids living under his own roof was a meta and he hadn't noticed… he had to step up his game as Gotham's greatest detective.

"Is the Joker alive?" Was Bruce's first question once everyone was situated and settled. He had a personal rule about not killing his rogues, but honestly, after what the Joker pulled, he thought he might be able to overlook it. After all, when an eldritch being takes a life, who is he to argue?

"Of course he's alive! Nobody dies when I get involved." Danny puffed his chest proudly. He hadn't broken his no casualty streak since he started hero work over a year ago. Not many heroes could say that, and Danny worked damn hard to keep it that way.

Bruce let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Out of relief or disappointment, he didn't know.

"Next question. Where and what is 'clown jail?'"

"It's a subspace of the Infinite Realms." The detective tucked that term away for questioning later. "It's a trick I picked up from my Head Guard back in the Realms. It's basically a space where you experience whatever punishment I think fits your crime. But it's all psychological, so no one ever gets hurt there."

"And what's his punishment?"

"Are you a meta or an alien? I can't tell at this point."

"How long have you known about us?"

"Why did you look so different back at the warehouse?"

"You have a Head Guard?"

The questions came in like a flood. Danny flushed at all the attention, unsure where to start first. He looked to Damian for help, but he only folded his arms and smiled smugly. That little traitor! But he supposed that's what he deserved for waiting so long to tell his family. In his defense, the last time he told a family about his abilities he'd ended up strapped to a table with a scalpel poking at his spleen.

"One question at a time, please!” Danny screeched, covering his face in embarrassment. He stared at Damian pleadingly one more time.

"I told you to tell them before something drastic happened, so don't look at me. "

"You knew?" Jason pouted. Damian just smirked and puffed his chest in pride. He knew exactly why Daniel hadn't told them, but had been confident that his new family wouldn't react the way his old one had. Perhaps this would teach Daniel to trust him a bit more. And wasn't it something that Damian wanted Daniel to trust him.

"They aren't like the Fentons, Daniel. You should tell them."

The words were like a balm on Danny's nerves. The others were smiling patiently at him, judgment absent in favor of eager curiosity but not in the cruel way it had been on Jack and Maddie's faces. He took a deep breath before starting in on the details. No place like the beginning, he guessed.

He told them about how he half died when he was 14 and all the abilities he gained as a result. He told them about his hunter parents and his colorful array of rogues turned friends. Bruce had paled considerably when he got to the part about Pariah Dark whisking their town away and his subsequent defeat of the Ghost King. And he looked downright nauseous when Danny detailed his victories over several of the more godlike entities of the Realms, like Overgrowth and Vortex. He left out Dan, skipping to the part where he'd effectively become the ward and apprentice to the Master of Time, Clockwork. And finally, he told them about Jack and Maddie.

When he'd stumbled into Gotham after the vivisection and begged Bruce to take him away, to protect him, "please, I just wanna feel safe again," he'd told him that it was abuse and refused to outline the details. This time, he looked him in the eyes, and with one finger wrapped around Damian's for support, he told his family about how the Dr's. Fenton had cut him open and poked around in the name of science.

"So… you're not a meta?" Duke asked in the silence that followed Danny's confessions. He had to admit he was grateful his brother wasn't dwelling on his past. Damian had been right, they were taking it well. Boy, did he let it show on his face in a typical, 12 year old, "I told you so," fashion.

"I don't have a metagene and I'm technically half-dead, half-alive. Damian used the term Pseudo-Meta. I kinda like it."

"So let me get this straight," Jason began. "Since dying, you won the Ghost King's crown by right of conquest, defeated several godlike entities, who are now your friends, and your mentor is the literal God of time?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn," he whistled. "I don't think I died right the first time. I want a do-over."

Danny snorted in laughter and Damian tutted at him while the others elbowed him in ribs.

"Does that make you a god?" Dick teased.

"I don't think so, but every time I ask Clockwork he gets all cryptic, so maybe?"

Bruce was getting a headache.

~~•○•~~

"Alright, it's time to solve some real mysteries now," Tim said with a gleam in his eyes. They'd migrated up to the kitchen for post patrol cookies. Alfred had been pleasantly surprised when Bruce had explained that, thanks to Danny, everyone had made it home relatively unscathed. And considering they'd had a run-in with Joker, that was worthy of cookies in his opinion.

"Danny, how in the world did you get Damian to stop trying to stab you?"

"Actually, yeah! You guys have gotten really close. What's the secret?" Dick asked with a raised eyebrow. Damian rolled his eyes and answered for Danny.

"I challenged him in combat and Daniel accepted. It's not my fault none of you were intelligent enough to realize it was a bonding tactic." Bruce tried to hide his laughter in his mug while the others blatantly gawked at him.

"No way."

"I have a picture of the first time he managed to graze me in a sparring session! You guys wanna see?" Everyone swarmed him to see the photo. Dick cooed and tried to pinch Damian's cheek, but was met with snapping teeth. Steph, with eyes sparkling, just muttered, "cute," so as not to stir the youngest's ire. Danny ended up promising to send the picture into the group chat later.

"By the way, you never did say what Joker's punishment was," Jason mentioned casually. Danny smiled cruelly, his frosty blue eyes glowing.

"His greatest fear, of course! A prolonged stay in a Gotham that has not nor will ever know the Joker. I swear, I've never met a clown that wasn't a total narcissist." Danny popped the last bite of a cookie into his mouth and dusted the crumbs off on his pants. "No one is allowed to hurt my brothers. Ever."

~~•○•~~

Damian was just about to climb into bed when he heard a knock at his door. He looked up just in time to see Danny phase through it into his room.

"Why even bother knocking?"

"Because it's polite!" Damian rolled his eyes. "I just wanted to say thank you for earlier." He took a seat at the end of the bed and Damian sat next to him, as was tradition for their late night chats.

"I'm the one who should be thanking you," Damian countered. "You weren't ready to tell everyone, and yet you came when I called."

"Of course I did. You're my little brother. And I'd do it for any of you." Danny nudged him with his shoulder, and it earned him a tiny, barely there smile.

"Thank you Danny."

"Using a nickname, huh? Don't let Dick hear that, he'll think you're playing favorites."

"Of course not. I have a reputation to uphold after all. Besides, Richard already thinks you're my favorite. It's giving him a complex."

"Well, aren't I?"

"Tt, don't push your luck."

There was a beat of silence before they erupted into laughter. Danny was so proud that he could make Damian laugh, even if it was more reserved than the guffaws he and their brothers had when they found something particularly funny. He couldn't wait to brag to Jazz about it once it was safe to contact her. If it was safe to contact her.

"I'll see you in the morning," Danny said, leaning lightly against his brother's shoulder in lieu of a hug. He floated over to the door. "Goodnight, Dami."

"Sleep well, Danny."

~~•○•~~

Vlad Masters gnashed his teeth while he stared at the computer screen in his office. First Daniel up and disappeared without so much as a word, and now he was all over the news and tabloids as the newly adopted "Daniel Fenton-Wayne." He was annoyed. He was furious! He was… confused. What had that fool Jack done to get Daniel taken away? Why hadn't Maddie stopped it? How did Daniel end up getting legally adopted by Bruce Wayne of all people? The boy should have come right to him if something was wrong. He deserved it! The boy was his or he was no one's!

The man swatted the mug off his desk. It shattered against the wall.

[taygra5shaon]

Hey I've been following you a while and sorry if I missed anything but I've been wondering about this for a bit... I can see that Jacq post tadpole is druid. Was he druid before too or some other class?

Hello there Anon!👋

thanks you so much for your following and the question (I loooooveee when they ask me things about Jacq)

so, you didn't miss anything, I didn't specify what class Jacq was pre tadpole.

SO, for understanding the decision I have to explain the vision I have for him. from when he was taken back to the cult and until Orin's betrayal, Jacq was know to anyone except Gortash as Durge.

Sarevok and Sceleritas have done a big work on gaslighting and brainwashing Jacq , and one of the impositions they given to him is a new name, Durge, or Dark Urge, to mark him as the ultimate spawn of Bhaal, and erase what was Jacq before.

They had chosen everything on Jacq, Durge life, and that mean his class to, who was Eldritch Knight.

until Durge meet Gortash.

the relationship they had helped Durge discovering things about himself outside the cult, understanding and trying new things and returning to be Jacq instead of Durge.

when he was a young boy, Jacq wanted to be a Druid, because he liked plants and animals, and it was encouraged by his foster family to continue that road. After he killed his family, he just let others decided for him (mainly Bhaal), but after he shared his real name with Gortash, the encouragement of pursuing his own wish returned, and lead to Jacq changing his class, and becoming a druid.

(pardon my english if I did some errors 🥲)

[brucewaynehater101]

Tim's Granny Claus could crush a man's skull with her bicep, you don't normally notice or think about her muscles though because she puts out a very sweet mousy lady vibe that has grown into a sweet granny vibe when she started going grey. She's only really started to go grey when Santa decided to start taunting Darkseid, she likes and approves of the shenanigans but it's stressful. Her harmless quiet lady vibe is STRONG, as strong as the "good child" vibe that Tim has that makes everyone forget he's a chaos gremlin. She does legitimately need reading glasses.

She may or may not have been an Amazon at one point and definitely predates Hippolyta and her reign. Possibly she's worshipped as a goddess in some cultures. She may or may not be part elf or part fairy. She may have gone by Mab at one point or not.

Santa is the younger one in the relationship, it was a lot of drama and it took him a LONG time to woo her and part of that was due to the not actually serious age gap which still made her worry. He has his own eldritch background and he's only a little bit younger than her but she had worries about power dynamics. It was a thing.

Mrs. Claus is organized to the extreme and even more intelligent than she is organized. Her hobbies, besides making contingency plans and general doomsday prepping include making candy, learning new languages, and reading/writing trashy romance novels. She absolutely publishes under a pseudonym.

She does NOT leave the North Pole. If she needs something that's not in the home/village that she and Santa have built, she'll send someone to go fetch it for her. This is why she has assistants/minions/students/employees after all.

For the elves, working in Santa's workshops is a bit like going through the best trade school or university in the galaxy in relation to all the things it takes to get the supplies, keep things organized, make things, develop psychological profiles to determine who would most want what etc. The program is accredited. Yes to Tim helping with recommendation letters. Not all of the elves are earth based elves. More than a few are extra terrestrial. Mrs. Claus is the one to extend Santa's operation to the stars when she noticed her husband not being stimulated enough with the chaos he absolutely doesn't create on earth during the rest of the year. She considered having another child or having one of the elves go and kidnap another child but decided giving Santa more space to cause problems was a better long term solution than adopting/kidnapping a child as a band aid for an adult's mental situation.

Time is extremely elastic and not at all linear around the Santa's workshop area. Questioning this would be a bad idea. There is one time a year when leaving Santa's workshop sets you in the "right" timeline/location. If you enter the area and leave outside of that time of the year then you could end up in Pangea or on Tamaran. Mrs. Claus is perfectly capable of getting to when/where she wants if she wanted to go anywhere. She does not. Santa is also very capable but sometimes enjoys just popping out to random time/place.

Janet is the only child by blood Mrs. Claus has had. She and Santa have adopted a literal army's worth of children over the years though they haven't recently. The adoption has never actually been legal. Santa just literally kidnaps children from extremely bad situations. This may or may not have fed into the Krampus legends. Bad parents who've lost their kids just don't want to admit that it was their own fault and instead blame the missing child.

Janet was in a very "I want to be normal" stage when she got married and Santa and Mrs. Claus considered it youthful rebellion. They were pleased to get a grandson out of it though less pleased when Janet insisted they stay away because she wanted to be "normal". They're still waiting for Janet to pull herself back together.

Tim's own family talents won't break out until he's an adult. Or maybe they have and that's why he's stuck at seventeen. And no one notices because Gotham is Gotham. This is why Janet and Jack lived in Gotham, Janet had an easier time pretending to be "normal" in Gotham than she would have in any other place in the world.

Granny Ms. Claus!!!!

I adore AUs that have Tim's grandma (whoever she is [Ms. Claus, kidnapped by an alien, whatever]) as badass. I like in this one that she has muscles for days, but still in touch with both her femininity and a deceptively sweet one. To be badass, you don't have to be masculine.

Anyways, I imagine her stare over the rim of her glasses making even the most feared being at least hesitate.

Also, kudos to her for making sure her relationship with Mr. Clause was healthy for all parties. Fuck yeah.

I wonder how elves are treated in other parts of the universe. Could they also universe travel as well???

It's also curious to see how many traits Tim inherited from Mrs. Claus despite (at least originally) not seeing her much throughout his childhood. I'm assuming Tim met his grandma when Santa "died." Whether he knew her from photos or didn't find out until Mrs. Claus said something, I bet he was astounded. Not even he could make a contingency plan for "what to do when visiting someone you watched die's loved one only to find out you're related." Poor Tim. To add on to the angst, I'm pretty sure Janet was dead by that point :(

Tons of angst all around there (Mrs. Claus finding out after being told her husband "died." Tim realizing his mom hid this entire side of herself and their family, and he'll never have to chance to learn it from her).

I do like the theory for forever 17. That checks out with the weird time stuff going on with the North Pole.

[yeyinde]

infinity in the palm of your hand (eternity in an hour) | reincarnation AU

Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (OG) x Reader | Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (Remake) x Reader

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before.

And then you find him.

MATURE | 18+ —TAGS: AU, canon divergence: reincarnation; fluff; tagging as fem!Reader due to usage of "bonnie" (not a name—Reader is not named), and mentions of a dress but no other descriptive imagery is used —WARNINGS: grief, loss, unhealthy coping mechanisms, existential crisis, allusions to smut; cosmic horror (but??? it's a romance????) —WORD COUNT: 11,9K —NOTES: I like the idea of fated pairs, soul mates, but I can't write this concept without somehow diving into the cosmic horror of something, someone, controlling you from behind the scenes. So. Um. Idk what to call this abomination. It leaks horror but is meant to be quite fluffy. It's romance. It's a love story. But it's also kinda eldritch. Oops.  This was also originally a request I got back in November (I'm so sorry!). I have since lost the request, but Reincarnation Anon, this is for you!!! 🖤

In Greek, there are two words for time: 

Kronos—chronological, the clock: fixed—measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. The world runs on Kronos. On its merciless rigidity, it's apathetic, unending trek forward. It is cruel, sometimes, but it cares little for you, or anyone else who exists inside its unforgiving realm. Time is linear. A steady March. 

And then there is Kairos. In its essence, and in utter simplicity: timelessness. 

It's often found in grief when the world around you shatters and implodes. When it lapses into pain and agony. Into how and why and—

Nothing makes sense. Nothing matters. 

You've never experienced any such loss. Gran, grandad, friends, family—all alive and well. And yet—

You're grieving for something, someone—a man with kind eyes and a soft smile like the valley in spring: fresh rain over the boscage in bloom—that you've never met before. 

And then you find him.

Or, rather, he finds you. 

(Over and over and over again—)

It starts in university. 

Start, of course, is an operative word. It's an incipient event: a slow burn in the back of your head that gets hotter and hotter, but you can't quite discern why. You just feel wrong. Shaken. The foundation in which you walk wobbles. Crumbles. 

There is an unseen precipice under your feet covered by cobblestone. You know it's there—are aware of the yawning chasm that wants to swallow you whole, but you don't know where it is. 

And then—

There is no phone call, no blunt condolences for any particular loss, just—

A knock on your door. It's just your flatmate, but the rhythm cuts through your head, right down the middle. 

Agony. The world around you flips, topples off its axis, and just keeps spinning, spinning, spinning—

It hits you with the force of a tsunami. A deluge of biblical proportions that uprooted everything you'd ever know, casting you out into a frothing abyss, ravaged by mountain-tall waves that left you asunder. Awash in a tumultuous sea.

It would make sense, you suppose, had you lost someone, but you haven't. 

The most you've lost was a pet. 

And yet—

You sob, scream, and claw at your chest until your skin is torn and shredded, trying futilely to get to where it hurts the most. It's agonising. Brutal. They sedate you—no choice is given when you're so frantic, so desperate. The world slips away. The pain abated. 

But it doesn't stop it. 

They call it grief, and you don't know why. You haven't lost anyone. Mum, dad, gran, grandad. All alive and well. All there, standing clustered around your hospital bed (admitted when you wouldn't stop screaming) looking quite bewildered by you. By the things you say—missing something, someone, gone, just gone—and the way you're acting. 

And it scares you just as much as it does them, but you can't just push it aside, let it go. There is a gaping hole in your chest, one punched straight through your sternum. It's gangrenous, and rotting; the stench makes you dizzy, makes your head spin. Your heart is necrotising between your ribs and spine, but no one knows why. No one understands the agony you feel because everyone is alive. 

They all say the same: we don't know. Depression, perhaps. You just need time. 

Time does nothing to heal the wound. You can't run from the hurt—it's never-ending—but you get better at hiding it, at dealing with pulpy remains of your still-beating heart that slugs on despite the mouldering wound ripped open in the centre. 

They tell you it's Thursday, now. 

Before you'd throw something, thrash, and scream yourself hoarse because what does it matter when your heart is dying, decaying inside of your chest. 

Now, you just nod. Thursday, is it? 

Time doesn't exist to you anymore. It's just an endless stream of days and nights that get easier to withstand as the foreign clock on the wall ticks down the seconds you don't feel. 

The world is a murky haze of confusion and pain. You move on only because you have to. 

Things—

Well. They don't get better, but they get bearable, and you suppose that's the same thing, isn't it? 

And then you dream. 

They come in flashes. Snippets. Little moments of a place and time that doesn't exist, that isn't real. This life was not one you lived. The taste of elderberry has never graced your lips, but you think of the sweet, tartness like it's an old comfort. 

It makes you ache. 

Simplicity bleeds into familiarity into love into—

—you should… you should sit for this—

Crushing heartache. It carries the flavour of gunpowder, and is soaked in charcoal; the soot stains the tips of your fingers when you reach out, curling them in the rough lapels of a gunmetal grey jacket still carrying the scent of ichor, and loss. 

—i… i can't promise you forever, but i can promise you now—

You dream of a man. Of hands on your body. Eyes gazing at you—an alluvial fan in hazel, green, and gold; the shadows cast in the shallow valleys make you yearn for something. 

Something, something—

You wake up, hand to your splitting chest as the agony rips it into pieces. Heartache, grief. It drapes itself over you like a storm cloud. Looming there, ever-present, and ready to chisel open a deluge of pain so visceral you weep. And weep. And—

Your pillow is wet. Nose stuffed, eyes gritty. You've been crying, sobbing, in your sleep again. 

It's a cycle. Memories flood your head until it's splitting apart at the seams, making room for that life it wants to force you to remember, acknowledge, and pretend exists, and one you're in now. 

It breaks something inside of you. Cracks the levee. In the midst of crumbling concrete, and a roaring deluge, you hear a voice. 

(You stare at the bottles lining the shelves in your vanity, and tell no one.)

—excuse me? You dropped this—

HERE

There is a tavern on High Street. 

It's nothing special on its own. Just a building, just a pub. You pass it twice a day on your commute to work, and it should be background noise. A blur of scenery and objects as you stroll through the streets. A melding of the world around you, an inconsequential smear of cobblestone and brick. 

And yet—

Your eyes keep finding it, seeking it out. It's involuntary. Automatic. You pass the grocer and the pharmacy, head angled down toward the grey stone below, and then, like an unignorable force, a gravitational pull, your head lifts. The fairy lights are strewn around the outside coruscate in the gloom. You nearly trip. 

It's strange. Odd. 

It's just a building. Just a tavern. 

—got some of the best brews in town—

But you remember it. Are familiar with it in a way that makes absolutely no sense. You've never gone inside, never heard anyone speak about it. It's a building on a street of many. Ordinary. Plain. Nothing about this place should stand out to you. It isn't eye-catching or garish. It's—

—cosy little spot—

It's an anomaly. Much like—

Well. Much like everything in your life. 

There is a gnawing in the pit of your stomach, one that's so achingly familiar that your head swims from deja vu that shouldn't exist. It fits inside like an augur. A portant. 

How can the unknown be a comfort to you? How can it blister your heart with such ferocity that you find yourself pawing at your face to stem the deluge of tears that cascade down your cheeks in rivets? 

Whatever it is, it's calamitous and entirely unignorable. 

Your life is asunder, in shambles because of it yet each hiss in your ear addles your thoughts until you become overwhelmed by it all. Until the echoes that tell you to wander down a random side street, sign a lease for an apartment you can't afford, to leave the safety of your home country, and—

On a whim, you packed your things up on the behest of that strange, Eldridge feeling eating you alive that made you cut ties with your old, peaceful life, and book the first plane ticket to Elgin. No plan, no money. 

(You'd call it an afflatus had it not been so drenched in the unknown.)

It's paradoxical: you cry when you see that stupid church in the distance, your feet drag you to places you've never been before, and now. 

Now: 

You can't stop staring at a nondescript pub in a sea of many. 

Ignore it. Leave it. You take another route, head down, hands shoved deep in the pockets of your jacket to keep them from trembling. It'll pass. It'll go away. 

It doesn't. 

It pools in the pit of your stomach, noxious and rotten, until you wake up drenched in sweat, hands grasping for a phantom who no longer exists—

—wanna come with me?—

You break on Saturday. 

—i like when you wear that dress—

You wear it, and hate yourself a little bit for it. It's stupid, and out of place, but you do it, anyway. 

—booth in the back is where i always sit, want to come join me—

The inside of the tavern is just the same as you remembered it—

No. No. 

You've never been here before. 

You smell malt in the air; the same amber that spumes in your veins. You dance in circles between the tables, giggling at the people who smear by in a haze of gold and red. 

A hand reaches, snags your waist. "Where are you going, pretty thing? Wanna come sit with us?"

It makes you laugh, and laugh, and—

"There a problem?" Heat against your bare back. Ironclad arms around your middle. His voice is a rumble. A thunderclap. "She's with me. Go on now. Get."

You pull away from him, smirking, and—

The air is punched from your lungs. Longing sits in your throat, heavy and thick. It aches. God, it aches. A phantom pain that never quite dissipates. A raw wound left to fester; exposed and open to the elements. It never heals. Never scabs. It oozes grief and headache into your bloodstream and makes you feel lost. Dazed. Confused. 

It's silly. 

Stupid. 

The warm blends of burnt umber and gold make you tremble. Everything inside is—familiar, in all the ways it shouldn't be. 

You can't be here. Can't—

Something quivers inside of you. The sting of a guitar being plunked by indelicate hands. It snaps, breaks. You turn, eyes wild, wide—

—hey, where are you—

"...goin'—?"

A chest. Warm. Familiar. 

Your neck aches when you jerk your chin up, hands beaded against the hard, firm flesh of a stranger who feels all too familiar, too—

Hazel. A boscage in spring. Warm milk—

"Honey…"

It's out before you can stop it. 

Green and golden widen until they're drowning in a sea of arsenic white. An island of bloom, spring, carved in the middle of a barren, icy land. Lids fall, lashes dust across the shadows of the valley smeared beneath the red seal of his lower lash line. 

Your breath catches when they slide open, a slow crawl over a varicoloured plume of witch elm and wheat. 

—dark eyes, a furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips—

No. No. 

It's different. This isn't the man who haunts your dreams and whispers sweet nothings into your ear. This is not the cut of a man who once curled his fingers over your hips, lips glued to your pulse as he spent himself inside of you—

Heat sears your cheeks. 

His mouth opens, and closes. Opens again. No words spill out. His confusion is an oppressive silence. 

You swallow down the bitter tang of panic that pools on your tongue, nails digging into the soft fabric of his shirt. 

This isn't that man. 

He just—

"Sorry," you think you say, but it's all a blur. There was a blue ravine in his eyes, one with shallow shores, and crystalline waves that rippled with the breeze. You're sinking in those waters, now. Dragged down to the murky depths of blue, blue, blue that once made you see samsara with just the brush of his lips. Everything sounds distorted. Hollow. 

—you make me crazy. make me want things i shouldn't. Riley thinks i'm whipped. kinda agree with him, but i can't let you go. i can't get you outta my head, and i don't want to—

"Sorry—," you choke, the words a crumpled piece of paper lodged in your throat. Papier-mache seals over your trachea. 

You push away from him, stumbling out of this paroxysm. Flames lick at your heels, carrying you further from the laps of blue that flicker over beige. 

He chases after you. A warm hand around your wrist stops you on the corner outside of a pharmacy. The streets are dusted in white. It trickles from the sky in a thick hail of cosmic dust. 

His breath plumes in front of him when he breathes, pure white tendrils ghosting into the midnight blue silk that covers the town. 

"Hey, you alright? Can I—call someone for you, or—"

"No." You gasp, shaking your head so fast, you're nearly sick with it. 

"Hey, hey." His hand moves, perches itself against your cheek, eyes brimming in the flushed lamp overhead. His brow is drenched with concern. With confusion. And anger. Anger—why, why—

"Did someone drug you? Did you drink anythin'?" 

It rips a bark of laughter from your chest. "Drugs? No. I'm just—"

Spiralling. 

You make a vague motion with your wrist, and hope it's enough to convey the absolute travesty of your life. It meets the mark. 

The divot in his forehead softens, eyes creasing in the corners. Full pink lips knot to the side. Something passes his expression that looks a little too much like understanding to ever sit well in the pit of your stomach. 

You swallow down the acrid residuum of panic, and nod. Why—who knows. It just feels appropriate. 

"I need to go—"

"—I like your dress."

The words tumble over each other, barely coherent amid the amalgamated syllables, but ring with distinct clarity in your head. Your dress. Your brows knot, eyes dropping to the stupid little thing you'd picked out in a shop you had no business being inside. Led by the nose. A puppet on strings. 

You scoff. "I hate it."

You don't. You'd have picked it out yourself if you had that funny little thing called freewill; that precious little something you'd left behind in a dorm on a university campus you haven't thought of in years. 

"It's, ahh—," he rubs the back of his neck, eyes skirting toward the bar you fled from. "It's pretty."

Pretty. 

"Oh…," you say, quite intelligently. "You can have it if you want." 

It's only when his brows buoy to his hairline do you realise the innuendo within that. 

The fire inside dies. Doused with the waters of Acheron.

"Sorry—"

"—'dunno if it'd look as good on me as it does you, bonnie."

Bonnie. Your veins crackle with ice. Bonnie. 

"What—what did you call me—?"

He blinks. "Oh, it's not—," his hand slides away from his neck, scrubbing over the stubble on his jaw. He looks bashful, almost. The man in your dreams is—

Reserved. Cool waters. A rock. 

"It's just a nickname, it's not—it's not anythin' weird, I promise."

A nickname. You should have known that, you suppose; but like many things, it slips, silken and liquid, through the cracks wrought by paradox. 

"Right." Your nails dig into your palms, cutting the flesh until your fingers puddle with something warm, wet. Tacky. The breath you suck in between clenched teeth is a sharp hiss. "I should go."

"Ah, yeah," his brows tighten again, jaw ticking. He looks uncomfortable, unsure. Concerned. His arms come up, folding over his broad chest. And that—

That is familiar. 

You swallow down mildew and honeysuckle. Heart lurching in your chest, a painful crescendo that echoes to the whispered beat of soft words in your head. 

—you should stay, bonnie. stay with me—

"Can I at least make sure you get home safe?"

You can't. You can't—

There is a tavern on High Street that you've been to before in a dream, where you are taken to by a man with a distance in the crook of his smile; a degree of separation that makes you yearn. It pulled you in, gravity and magnetism and that primal something that they often talk about in wordy biology papers you can't understand. 

Maybe it's the chemical slurry in your head—dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin—all mixing together, and polluting your rationale, but it made a shade of roseate fall over your eyes; veiled like a Magellanic cloud. Through the startling nebulae and cosmic radiation, he loomed. Your fingers reached out, latching on to him, and you pulled him into your orbit. 

The reservations slipped, dulled by the way you fit against him. A missing piece. A complimentary artefact. His edges softened until he looked at you with nothing but warmth, affection. 

And then—

Then:

Three knocks in halted succession. Military precision. Boom, boom, boom. 

A man stood before you, achingly familiar in his mutton chops and hat. The gleam of his metals—chest candy—caught in the setting sun. Ochre, gold. You think of him, and you smile. Was smiling when you peeled back the curtain to greet him. 

It wavers. Your heart aches for that person standing in the doorway; you from a dream. 

It drags in slow motion. He takes his hat off, and cups it on his chest. 

—look, i don't… i don't know how to tell you this—

Then—

"—don't." The word startles you as much as they do him. You baulk. "Just… no thank you."

Something rings in the cognitive dissonance that shrouds you. 

It's your turn to walk away.

And so, you do. 

(He doesn't follow. You don't know why you expected him to.)

—be patient with me, Bonnie. my job is my life. my everything, but you–you're my—

It doesn't rain—a rarity in Elgin—but the scent of wet soil, petrichor, clings to the air. 

It isn't raining, but it feels like it should.

You don't expect to see him again. 

And why would you? There are so many people in Elgin, so many men. The chances of finding him again—shaggy mohawk; kind, amber eyes—were nearly impossible. Infinitesimal, really. 

So, you push him to the far reaches of your mind, and try not to dwell on the stranger that smells so strongly of coumarin that your head still feels dizzy from the scent of golden wheat fields in the spring and sycamore when you breathe in some mornings.

Out of sight, out of mind. 

A familiar stranger in a foreign land.

But you should have known better than to expect anything in this strange purgatory you’ve slipped inside where dreams are sometimes a reality, and you can’t stop comparing a hazy figure in your mind, someone you might have loved in a distant life you have no memory of, to a stranger who slots himself into your path like he was meant to be there all along. 

It starts three days later. 

You tuck a book under your arm, and walk the unfamiliar path to a small cafe you’ve never dreamed of, have no lingering sense of recognition in the small building. 

Safe, you think. 

And then—

Blooming honeysuckle. The heady scent of coumarin. Salt, amber. 

He crashes into your life again, and again, always with the same expression of happy surprise when recognition bleeds into wheat-tinged eyes. 

He offers a wide smile, a little wave, and seems unbothered by a dizzying sense of unease that sweeps through each uncanny meeting, each strange divergence of paths always, always, leading to each other. 

In the produce section of the grocery store halfway across town, he holds an unripened apricot and grins at you over the yellow sign above (30% off!). The colourful anchor in Cooper Park, where he stands with his hands in his pockets, eyes listing toward the swans in the background, drifting idly over the dark water. At the counter in a Turkish restaurant, laughing at something the waiter says as he takes his bag of takeout. 

You turn down a random sidestreet, trying to navigate the tight, claustrophobic streets of Elgin, and he's there, suddenly, at the end. Legs thrown over the seat of a sleek motorcycle, fingers toying with the clasp of his helmet. Wander into a shop, and he's already sat at the table. Reach for a carton of eggs in Tesco's and his hand bumps against yours as he tries to grasp the same. 

You hear his voice crackling through the concrete. A whisper in the back of your head. The grit, the cadence, is so different from the man you dreamed about, the hazy spectre who haunts you, that you know, instantly, that it's him. The man whose only resemblance to the ghost latching onto you is his eyes, the hairstyle. The scent. The familiarity blooms in his proximity. Two strangers sharing the same essence of a soul. 

He drives past you on his motorcycle, wanders down the same alleyway, boards the same train, and gets off at the same station. 

A living phantom. 

It's always the same, too. His eyes always shift, somehow catching yours. Easily, effortlessly, finding you even in the midst of a crowded shop, a bustling park, or a loud eatery. 

Each time, you run. And keep running. 

And then once, you catch him. 

He leans with his forearm resting on the railing of a mezzanine at dusk. His wrist resting on the iron, fingers gripping the nozzle of a lagger that dangles over the edge. 

Behind him, music spills out from inside the flat. French doors spread wide open, leaking the whisper of a party into the warm air. 

No one joins him. He doesn't look back. 

His chin is pointed up toward the varicoloured sky streaked with lavender and pink and blood orange. Eyes glowing brightly in the darkness. A field of wheat against the midnight blue gloom of an approaching storm. 

It's mesmerising. 

Despite the urge to run, you stop. Can't help yourself, really. Not when your heart cracks at the expression on his face, eyes drawn tight, brows pinched. Full of—

Longing. 

Like a magnet, then, his gaze drops to the ground where you stand, clutching your book so hard, your joints ache. 

His hand lifts, fingers still curled in a loose fist, and he gives you a lazy wave from above, lips pulling back into that same wide, infectious, grin. Happy—for some inexplicable reason—to see you, his own little poltergeist. 

You hesitate for a moment, burning the image of him in your retinas where he'll stay, a permanent scar, in the black puddles for you to see again when you close your eyes, or look into a mirror. Another ghost. 

And then you turn. Run. 

(He doesn't try to stop you. He never does.)

It is almost clockwork.

The same soft hazel eyes creased lightly in the corners. Broad shoulders are hunched as he gazes down at his phone resting on the countertop. His brows are furrowed today. Irritation bleeds in the crevasse. 

Your fingers itch. You want to smooth it out. 

(It doesn't surprise you that you can feel the phantom warmth of his finger under your flesh.)

It's strange. All of this is. Paradoxical, really. 

You know him. You don't. You've never met him before. You know he'd taste of honeysuckle. 

There is a war in your mind. A long, drawn-out battle. 

(No victor in the carnage.)

You should walk away, leave, like all the times before when you'd spotted him, and ran, but:

Frozen. Paralysed. 

You can't move. Can't—

—maybe, you're just tired of running—

—maybe, i'm just waiting for you to catch up—

His head lifts, and he catches sight of you before you can run. Hazel flashes in recognition. Spotted, you think; but it doesn't matter, it doesn't. 

He isn't waiting for you—

His chin lifts, a smile crooking on the corner of his mouth. 

—you'll be waiting a long time, Bonnie—

You want to run, but you can't. Can't. All you can do is watch as he slides out of the booth, hands shoved into his pockets, and makes his way to you. Tucked into the corner near the counter, away from everyone, everything, but he still spotted you. Still noticed. Still—

"Hi," he greets, low and cautious, like he's trying his best not to startle you. His eyes crinkle. "Didn't expect t'see you again."

You shouldn't be here. "Yeah," you say, instead, huffing. "I, uh… life is pretty funny that way, isn't it?" 

His brow furrows together at your words, eyes darkening with something you can't place. An unknowable emotion, hidden from your prying eyes. You think of him, then, and see the similarities you tried so desperately to ignore each time you saw him. Each time you ran. 

"Aye, it does." 

You should leave him here. Turn around, flee. Forget this place, this microcosm that blooms, and spreads over parts of Elgin you know so intimately; sure, somehow, that you'll find your fingerprints smeared across the ruins despite never having been there before.

Little pieces of yourself. Shedded skin, hope, dismay, peace. Longing. Laughter. It echoes through the tight webs of cobblestone buildings, bouncing playfully off of the pilasters and balustrades, the wrought iron fences, the fanlights, forever embedded in the grout. 

If you go there now, in that beautiful divisional line between new Georgian and old Baronial, you'll hear it whispering through the alcoves, a tantalising sound that rents the air in two. 

But it shouldn't. Can't. 

You've never been there, or here, or anywhere else that wasn't the winding path from your rented flat to the tavern, and the place you eked out from stone to support the vagary of moving to a whole new place for a dream. A feeling. 

And yet—

You taste malt in the air. Smell the barley, the sickly sweet scent of wet dirt on the slick pavement. 

It's familiar in your olfactory senses. Petrichor. Loam. Humus. It congeals in the slick mortar, clinging to the moss that weaves over the old concrete. 

If you looked down, you'd find a little weed growing through a crack beneath your feet, and so, you fix your eyes up, ahead, and try not to weep when the swooping sense of deja vu nearly knocks you off your feet.

But the only thing ahead of you is him. Expectant, curious. He looks at you like he knows you, like he can peel back the skittish layers that cling to your skin until you're shiny and new again. 

It's too much. Intense. Hazel. 

Your gaze drops, fixed on the rounded points of your shoes. There is no pavement beneath your feet—just scuffed linoleum. 

"Do I, uh, know you from somewhere?" 

His voice carries that same heft, that same weight, as the look in his eyes. A strange approximation of wariness and steeled scepticism, blanketed together by intrigue. Curiosity. Concern. 

"No." 

It sounds uncertain. A white lie that crackles in the air between you, nestled amid the sound of chatter muted in the background, as if someone turned the radio on in a different room. Everything seems to contort, and shift around you when he's near. 

A little microcosm eked out inside a cafe you've never been to but know, innately, what you'd order, and what you would recommend. 

"Well," he dips his head like he's trying to catch your eye, and when you lift your chin, the flash of teeth nearly makes your knees buckle. He's softer when he smiles. "How 'bout lettin' me get t'know you then?" 

It's a bad idea etched into the cold marble of a headstone.  

Your mouth opens, but the word that chews through your teeth isn't no, but yes. 

And fuck—

Something in his gaze shifts. Noctilucent eyes widen, staring down at you like he somehow didn't expect a yes at all, and was bracing for the harsh impact of no. 

"Well—" he starts, but the words fall into ash when you duck your head to avoid the crevasse of hazel washed out in flushed gold. "What's your number? I'll call you when m'free next, and we can—"

"Sure," you cut in, hand sliding into your pocket. The cold metal of your phone burns the tips of your fingers when you pull it out. It feels a little bit like a mistake when you hand it over, but he says nothing about the way your hand shakes when he takes it from you. 

His brows draw together in a childish concentration as he taps away at the screen. The artificial light, dimmed as low as possible, brightens the craggy ravines that cut across an emerald tinged boscage; sunlight splitting a lush valley of yellow and green. His puckered lips, the flash of a deep red tongue swiping across his sun-chapped mouth, seems designed to appeal to your baser desires. The one that knows how he'd taste if you pressed you let your tongue grace the tip of his, and can feel the weight of his hands on your flesh. 

He'd hold your hips like he was anchoring you to the earth: tight, warm, and a little bit desperate as he devoured you whole. 

You shiver, and try to ignore the way his pupils bloom into pits of black eclipsing lightened hazel when his gaze settles, hot and heavy, at the brief brush of skin when you reach for your phone. 

"I'll call you," he says, low and strained, like he was choking on the words he wanted to say. "I'll call you as soon as I can, bonnie." 

You nod. It's all you can offer with your heart scrambling up your throat, pulsing furiously against your trachea. 

His nails scrape the skin of your palm when he curls his fingers into a fist, and pulls away. 

"I'll see you around." 

It's not a choice, you want to say. You nod instead. Choke out an equally strained, yeah, and fight the urge to follow him when he finally pulls away. 

"Are you ready to order?" 

The world bursts back into sound, colour. You blink rapidly against the light that seems harsher now than that it did when he was blocking out the sun. 

"Uh, yeah—"

The taste of freshly poured coffee blooms on your tastebuds. 

You order tea instead. 

(It tastes like defeat.)

You only stop running when you can't anymore. When the murmuration in your head turns into screams, and the white-hot agony of grief, of yearning, threatens to make your knees buckle and your bruised heart give. 

You stop, letting him finally catch up. 

(Somehow, somehow, you feel lost and found at the same time.)

His name is Johnny MacTavish. He tells you this over dinner at some upscale restaurant that feels out of place on the old side of Elgin where the walls bleed history, and stink of old bones, and funeral dirt. 

Over a steaming dish of shrimp scampi and burgundy wine that makes your head spin and belly churn, you wonder why it doesn't feel new to you when he murmurs it. 

(A bit late, you find, since you've been texting rather infrequently since you gave him your number three days ago.)

Names never mentioned. Somehow, they didn't have to be. Until now. Until there was emptiness at the end of his question when he posed it, hazel eyes bright and blooming under the hushed yellow glare of the coruscating chandelier hanging above your heads. 

It feels a touch too late when you share your names over dinner despite already knowing he's in the military—opinions clenched between aching teeth and a strained smile that doesn't reach your eyes—and that he normally adorns a Mohawk when he's on missions, but grows it out, rather haphazardly, when he's home. 

Everything between you and him seems to happen in reverse: fears, wants, and worries are known before his given name; the touch of his skin on yours, the taste of his lips, the brush of his tongue, the weight of his palms holding your hips as he buries himself as deep as he can go in a haunting sequence of memories that bare their teeth at the starkness of reality holding them at bay. All of this before you've ever even touched him with your bare hands. 

There's a strange listlessness that envelopes you—a tangled web that spools around you, trapping you in this realm of hypnagogia. The lines between reality and dream blur until they're indistinguishable from each other. Knotted threads married together. Parallel. Concurrent. Where one begins and the other ends is as lost to you as the unfathomable uncertainty of the unknown universe. 

It's not meant to be this way, you think, watching as he feigns not knowing the name that slips between your numbed lips in the same manner you had only moments ago. Traps surprise in the tilt of his chin, but the display is largely done out of some unspoken agreement that this paradox does exist, and the emotion is fleeting. Temporal. He cloves it down the middle, and discards the excess as soon as you look away. 

(Your name fits in his mouth better than it ever did your own, like it was made for his mouth, preordained to play with the soft coil of his tongue.)

He knows more than he lets on, but you don't begrudge him his secrets—not when you have to turn your gaze back to the curled shrimp on your plate to avoid reminding him he prefers fish over crustaceans when he makes a face at the steamed scallops, and should have ordered the Maple Crusted Salmon instead. 

Like he didn't before, in a life you've never lived. In a place that mirrors this world. 

(It isn't something you should know, but you do. You do.)

You know more than that, too: whispers late at night when he couldn't sleep—internal clock still stuck halfway around the world—and urges you into playing a dangerous game of asking questions of each other when pieces of truth buoy in the dark like bobbing for poisoned apples in a barrel. 

You have to erase the words when you type them out, preemptively answering questions he'd never asked yet, and filling in the blanks to ones you posed yourself. 

Odd, you think. Strange, and weird, and macabre in that way that only deja vu gnarling between the broken crevasse of your grey matter can imbue. 

People don't just—

Know each other. 

And yet—

"They call me—"

"Soap." 

Your eyes snap up. A misstep. A grievous one. You've both been content to ignore this paradoxical magnetism that draws you together like eager poles, unable to stay away (not by choice or freewill, but some design that has no place in rigid structures of reality), and you broke it. Trampled over the unspoken rule left to linger in the foreground while you navigated around it like some misshapen elephant in the way. 

He tries to hide the suspicion, the surprise, but it falls between the empty space of his plate (food he only ordered because he's never been here before despite the familiarity that bleeds from the walls like condensation in June) and the ledge. A proverbial precipice that you leaped down; the steep incline filled with detritus and broken shale sharp enough to carve skin, muscles, from shattered bone. 

You want to swallow the words down, but they sit—innocuous and damning—between the salt and pepper shakers where his hand twitches, curls into a tight fist, knuckles bleaching under the strain of reeling himself in. Joints, cartilage, bulging through translucent skin. Reddened around the angry peaks of distrust and wariness; a summit you're not sure how to descend from now that you've crossed the arching tops. 

(Stuck, forever, at the peak.)

"How—" his voice is gravel, lavascape. Jagged rocks. Lakes of sulphuric acid. "How did you know that?" 

His accent thickens when he's angry. You wonder if he knows that. 

"I—" 

Excuses float like moots in front of you. You reach out, grasping for one, but it dances away in the turbulent wake you leave behind. You bite your tongue until it tastes of oxidised pennies, and then shrug. Nonchalant. Indifferent. Fear curls in your gut. Military, right. You wonder what you'll say if they arrest you for treachery. That you dreamed about him? Stupid. Stupid.  

"You told me," you murmur, eyes downcast and heavy, fixed on the bloody cup of wine you don't like, and trying to find solace in your downfall. "I think. I just remembered it from somewhere." 

It makes no sense, and the weak explanation would crumple like damp papier-mâché if he pressed, even just slightly, against it. A single touch, and the house of cards you built from the ground up on nonsensical lies will come crashing down around you. 

He shouldn't entertain it. Shouldn't let it go. 

"Yeah." But he does. "I must'a, huh?"

When you look up, you catch keen hazel eyes, sharp and pointed like the curved talons of a hawk. Johnny MacTavish is many things, you learn, but stupid, guileful, naïve is none of them. 

"Yeah," you echo hollowly, and give another shrug. "Guess so. It's, ah, an interesting nickname."

The clumsy barb seems to break the surmounting tension, and the pieces fall around you like poisoned raindrops, staining your skin. 

A reminder, then, when it crawls down your throat, that this balancing act can't last forever. That, eventually, your excuses will run dry. Empty. They'll be picked at and poked until they burst like a waterlogged, bloated corpse drifting aimlessly down the Nile. 

"Not the only thing that's interesting about me, bonnie," he says in a way that bleeds boyish charm, but his grin is wide, wild, and untamed. White teeth, sharp canines. You think of a wily fox on the prowl, and reach, reflexively, for the glass of wine, swallowing it down like a lifeline. "But I'm beginnin' t'think y'know that already, don't ye?"

It's a threat. A warning. 

You stare down in the half-empty glass of burgundy, the same colour red as the papercut on your index finger, and try to read the beads of crimson that run down the glass in a bloodied rivulet as if the answer could be found somewhere in the liquid. 

(Crystal Ball. Crystal glass. It's all the same, isn't it?)

"Not really," is what you eventually settle for, hedging through the murk that swims before you, an unsettling fen of unknowns and praeternatural happenings that you no longer than chalk up to happenstance. 

Kismet. 

Horror. 

Some cosmic merging of the two. 

It's all—

Absurd. 

And when you politely whisper to him that he should have gotten the salmon, you can't help but notice the ravines in his eyes widen slightly, the chasm growing and gaping, and taking on new shapes in the boscage that blooms like a familiar friend. 

(Kismet, indeed.)

He tries to pretend he doesn't know what the maple salmon tastes like, but slips up when the waiter passes by, and says it was good the last time. 

You fight the urge to chew on your glass like rock candies between your teeth. 

He stands with his hands in his pocket, rocking back and forth. The uncertainty in his brow is swallowed by the tendrils of pleased excitement that knot over his expression, unable to hide his glee when the hazel of his eyes glow brighter than the sun. 

Isn't this strange, you ache to say, words painted with the aftertaste of brine—sea, salt, and sand that are so uniquely him—but they, too, are swallowed down. 

The urge to lacerate the bubbles of complacency, feigned normalcy, are eclipsed by the raw shock of seeing him happy. Of wanting to make him happy. This stranger in a strange land. 

So, you offer some facsimile of a smile when he asks, words pushed out through a wide grin; infectious, if you had a good time. 

"Yeah," you say, and know that this word, this blase affirmative is quickly becoming your faultline through this mess. The thread keeping you sane, keeping you steady. 

It's at the curve of the word when everything else in the world is devoured by the shadow cast under his magnetic glow. The bright yawn of the sun in shades of white teeth catching on some ephemeral magic still dancing within the aether. Atoms spark. 

You try to run from it, ignore it, but your core teeters on the edge of instability. You think of neurons. Protons. Criticality. Something inside of you heats to almost half of the degree of the sun, sweltering and unrelenting. Pulsing, blue-hot. 

"That's good," he husks, eyes lidded and heavy. "I did, too. Whaddya think about doin' it again w'me?" 

It blooms. A great, scorching mushroom cloud plumes in midnight black in the milky white of your eyes.

You shuffle through the darkness, the artificial, comic night, and try to pat at the walls until you find something familiar in terror, the gnawing sense of loss that permeates through your pericardium, thrumming like a mourning toll. 

Sightless, you nod. "I'd love to."

And you mean it, too.

(Damn you. Damn you—)

Despite that tangled web that snakes around your jugular, twinning threads between the two of you, Johnny MacTavish is relentless in his pursuit. 

Where someone else might have shivered at the ghosts that brim in the tenebrous of your pupils, lurking in the untouched corners where your fingerprints stain the sediment, he lingers. Stays. Fixes himself in your path, and refuses to acquiesce to the whims of the world that keep stringing you along like reluctant puppets to some unseen, unknown marionette. 

It's almost charming in its own right, and really—when has a man fought so hard just to simply coexist in the space you deign yours? When has he torn nails from their beds, clawing at the walls that stand tall and proud, a protective tower of ashlar and dread around you until it starts to give. Until the stone crumbles away under his bloodied fingers. 

But as potent as his statement is, it gnarls inside your stomach like a poisoned seed. 

Bending to the demands of whatever this paradoxical realm goes against every fibre of your common sense that you recoil, almost, for just allowing him the scant space he occupies in your proximity. 

It's a deranged pantomime with some unseen force at the helm, conducting the madness with fingers drenched in whimsy and fate. Notched between its knuckles is the mockery of freewill and choice as it pulls you around a soundstage set in a place you've never been. It makes you dance. Amused god, eldritch horror. It takes pleasure in your discomfort, and glee in your fickle humanity. Weaving webs of tangled kismet until the silken threads are pulled taut and there is no more room, not a single atom, between your body and his. 

A nameless, faceless playwright with you as its shining star. 

Hapless leads stuck in an unending beat, a cantastoria, waiting for the shoe, the curtain, or anagnorisis to drop. 

You want to run again, but your feet are glued to the floor. Tangled in webs, threads of abstract concepts your mind threatens to come undone at the mere thought of. A cosmic sense of surrealism: crushing helplessness. 

This is horrific and terrific in equal measure, but the ache, the agony, of distance hurts more. And so, you stay. Watch as the curtain shudders over his eyes. As the etchings of complacency seem to gnarl in the tussock that line the expansive valley. He looks at you and doesn't see the awful truth nestled in the scant distance between your flesh, unable to be apart for too long. He sees you, somehow, and for him, that's enough. Enough. 

Johnny smiles at you, seemingly unbothered by the precariousness of this dance you're caught inside. In this strange equinox where you can answer questions he hasn't asked, and know things he hasn't said. Where you catch yourself leaning closer, starved for a touch you haven't forgotten despite never experiencing yourself. 

He's content, then, chasing the whims of a ghost, reaching for a fantastical dream in the head of another. 

But as content as he is, Johnny MacTavish is a hard man to catch, you think, noting the distance in his eyes, the arm's length of space he keeps between the version of him not haunted by the wants of ghosts, but such an easy man to love. To fall for. 

He balms the panic—that world-ending sense of uncertainty that nips at your heels—and makes you forget, sometimes, that there is more to him, and more to you, than anyone else could ever know. 

He's kind. Charming. 

A little space inside of your head is eked out just for him, and you find yourself hating that person for falling for some version of him first. Loathe them just a little bit more with each effortless grin he sends your way for tainting the experience of knowing him yourself. 

But you wonder, when he turns away, hiding the shadows in his eyes, and the pinch in his brow, if you really, truly know him. 

Or if the face he's wearing belongs to a phantom.

The dance continues. 

Your feet move to a soundless beat, steps preordained in a sequence lived world's ago. Nothing can feel surprising when you know a man so intimately without more than a touch, when you feel the burn of winter's chill in the middle of summer, and long so desperately for someone you just met. 

Nothing is new, and yet everything is novice. A paradox awakening with each gravitational pull to him, this man who looks only vaguely like the phantom who lives in your head, and tastes of longevity between your teeth. 

An arranged romance. Possession by ghosts who want to drive your bodies until they can live again, and love in tandem, vicariously through your living flesh. 

It makes sense to you, then, to call for an exorcism. 

(It just surprises you that Johnny does it first.)

Johnny has his secrets, just like you have yours. A small morsel of agency after autonomy has been stripped from the bone. 

You see the shadows of those hidden things etched in the topography of his valley-filled gaze, crevasses and canyons that pitch themselves in the tenebrous, uncrossable to even you. 

He reaches for you through the murk, fingers threading through your own, hands trembling with the shock, the electric current that sizzles through your blood at the brush of bare skin against quivering flesh. His hands are rough—worker's hands—and chock full of callouses and cuts, multitudes of scar tissue packed tight on top of each other, a thick layer of a life you will never know. Don't want to know. 

He seems settled when you touch, finally, thumb brushing your skittish pulse point as if he could somehow calm the acrid panic in your chest. 

(And damn him, damn this, he does. He does—)

Magnets fixed together, locked tight. You feel like a conduit to his frenzy, his hidden mania, and feed your own through the line, the red string that ensnares you both in a tangled web, until it's buzzing with shared panic and serenity and joy and helplessness. A feedback loop of emotions too extreme, too flighty, to catch. They run in droves along the lines, weaving into your skin, your chest, your head, and then pulling away to do the same to him. 

His eyes are heavier than steel when he gazes at you, expression caught between relief and longing and fear and—

Something, something. You can't pick it apart. Can't undo the tight knot until it spools, open and known, in the palm of your hands. Some unseen distance. It feels like standing at the highest peak of the valley and trying to make sense of the men in the tussock who look like mere ants from this high above. 

Is it happiness, you wonder. 

(Or maybe it's the same reluctance that wraps it's boney, gnarled fingers around your neck—)

It becomes too much. Too soon, too sudden. In the back of your head, you see images and flashes of a life not yet lived, a world still taking shape. You see him and you and a clock above some blue, broken bed. You see his smile, wide and elated, caught on the dawning sun spilling from the open curtains before it disappears under the covers, taking your laughter with it, stuck between his teeth. 

You see the past, the present. 

And your future. 

Cold. Barren. Three sharp knocks echo in the emptiness of your head. A man, a familiar stranger. You don't know him. You'd die for him. He rents the air in two. Your world in cloves. They fall to the ground, leaving you stranded and alone in the middle.

Future. There's no future. 

Your chest twists. You let go of his hand and find bloody crescent moons embedded in a ring along his flesh, knuckles whitening under your harsh grip. He said nothing about the pain. The flicker of worry across his face is genuine, you think. Real. Current. 

You smell funeral dirt in your nose. The mud is called under your nails. 

You pull away. He lets you go. 

"I, uh," he breaks off into a soft huff, injured hand lifting to scratch at the back of his shorn nape. His eyes slide away from yours, listing seaward. Avoidance undercuts the arch in his brow, the sheepishness in his mien. It's his turn to run, you realise. 

"Glad I met you," he says instead, and it's a confession and a curse. 

A bonfire burns in the river that runs through the valleys in his eyes. It's pitched on the sandy shore: an ochre flicker in the cobalt hue that saturates the land. You see the dark peaks of the rolling hills in the distance, black shapes in draped blue. 

The river is calm. The fire burns a smear of orange across the tranquil surface, meeting the milky white glow of the moon. 

It makes you think of those nights in the zenith of summer, the ones that feel neverending. Timeless. A piece of your history etched in balmy melancholy. Alone in the great expanse with nothing but the trill of cicadas, and the echoing chirp of the crickets hidden in the lush grass below. 

The sky shifts. His eyes plume with lavender-tinged stratocumulus. 

"I really like you, bonnie." It's whispered in your ear, and you wish, oh, how you wish, you couldn't hear it. That you could block the words, and the world, out so that it never reaches you again. 

Sweet longing. Beautiful agony. 

Your heart races, and you wonder how an empty space can beat at all. Can feel anything when it's just a hollow chasm. 

A heat blooms under your skin, desperate and aching. This, this, is everything you've been looking for since your heart split free from its fleshy prison, and ran away to find him, tucking itself in the boscage that glows in the flame on the shores. It's hidden somewhere. The palpitations sound like a song. You could follow it, you think, and find its lovelorn shell nestled amongst the grass that sways to its beat, and tuck it back into your empty chest where it belongs. 

(But it belongs to him, now.)

And you—

You hesitate. 

The words well on your tongue, but you think of fate, of choice, and swallow them down. 

The flames in the distance flicker, growing dimmer and darker as the moments stretch on, unbroken and barren until it's snuffed out. Gone. 

What can you say? What could you say? 

Instead, you say nothing at all. 

Johnny leaves a piece of himself on the table when he walks away. 

(You don't pick it up.)

Johnny doesn't say anything at all when he brings you home, when he stands outside of the archway to your flat, eyes lidded and pensive. A smile snakes across his face, but it's brittle and full of uncertainty, and your fingers ache to smooth the rugged lines in his brow, in the stress in his shoulders. You push it down. Smile for him instead. 

"I'll see you later," you say, and wish the ghosts wailing in your head would drop dead. 

The valley is drenched in ink when he nods, catching your gaze. 

All black, black, black. 

No sounds escape. 

"Sure, bonnie." 

You dream, and when you dream, it's of him. 

He stands at the top of a hill, and when he smiles it's full of starlight so bright it could eclipse the sun. 

In his hand, you see a pair of shears. Your mouth opens, but no sound escapes.  

He says just one word—your name—and then he lifts his hand, and cuts the rope. The sutures knit your bodies together, the string that holds him to this mortal plane, falls in swaths of golden thread to the ground where they're devoured by the earth, dissolved into nothing. Gone, forever. 

There's distance now, and separation. Nothing ties you to him except space. 

You wake up with the ghost of a scream on your lips, and the feeling of silken threads dragging over your flesh. You reach for them, and catch nothing but air. 

Palm pressed to your chest, you feel the rapid pulse under your fingertips, and know that it's back. Back where it belongs. 

Belongs, but doesn't want to be. 

You think of Johnny. 

And you weep. 

He sends a text message, and for the first time since you've met him, it surprises you. Nothing should shock you with him, anymore. You know everything, anything, about him. 

Gonna be away for a bit. Should talk when I get back. 

You reach for answers but they slide like mercury out of your hands. 

You don't dance, and you don't dream. 

You wander down the streets of Elgin, and for the first time since you woke up screaming in your bed with ghosts wailing in agony inside of your head, you get lost. 

Johnny comes back a week later, eyes heavier than you'd ever seen them, and shoulders drawn tight together as he asks you why—

"Why'd'ya keep runnin'?" He asks, words pitched and heavy with something lour and aching, a phantom pain you know all too well. There's desperation in his eyes, a low keen settling in the depth of his throat, echoing with the clamour of his despair. "If you don't want this—;" don't want me: "—then just say so, bonnie, 'cause I ain't forcin' ya t'be w'me, I ain't gonna make you stay. You wanna leave, you can just go—"

Can't. Can't. 

"Johnny—"

"No, none o'that, now. You make up your mind, 'cause I ain't makin' it for ya. I ain't makin' ya do somethin' you don't want to, and I ain't—"

He's pleading, you think. Begging—

For this, this strange thing. This awful, broken calamity, this abomination in the face of free will and autonomy. Despite the rage that hums in your veins at the idea of being controlled, manipulated, he finds something worth chasing. Worth running for. 

Why?

And what?

And—

It comes in flashes, snippets. Fragmented pieces of bright eyes—brighter, maybe, than the sun—and warmth, one hot enough to burn but it doesn't, it won't, it soothes instead. Eases coiled muscles, and absorbs the lactic acid that leaks from shredded, knotted fibres. Hands on your body, on your skin: the press of rough fingertips over prickling flesh. A whisper of curiosity, the slow descent into affection, adoration. Plush lips pillowing sharp teeth, too reverent to ever leave a mark behind—part in fear of marring fragile skin, and—

Letting the ghost of permanence fester, take root, inside his chest where his heart beats—

Jus' f'r you, bonnie. Jus' you.

For once, the phantom touching your body isn't a dream, a half-lived fantasy in another world where a man-made you whole and then ripped you into pieces, letting the scattered fragments blow with the sharp winds howling through the highlands. You know the touch, remember it. Felt it. New, and tangible. A touch that never lingered, too afraid of letting something, something, stick. 

For once—

The snaps flashing, blindingly, through your synapses are not made of dream dust and kismet. 

And—

All at once, it shatters.

—you know, i never thought i'd say this before, but i—

(You were lost in Elgin, but when you see his face, you feel found—)

THERE—

There is a lot to be said about Johnny MacTavish. 

Good things—kind, dedicated, driven—and bad things—bold, stoic, dogmatic—but one thing neither have in common is tardiness. Broken promises. 

So, when Johnny calls you in some distant land you've never heard of, and says: 

Things got bad. I might not—I might not be coming home.

You believe him. 

But the thing is: there's a difference between believing the words being said to you, and understanding their meaning. Your mind is not equipped to latch onto devastating blows with the same swiftness you do ignorant bliss. 

So, when you hear I might not be coming home, you think, instead, of tardiness. Of a missed anniversary dinner. 

(Of all the ones that came before it, and will come after it.)

And you smile. Smile into the receiver with your heart drifting down Lethe. 

"Okay, Johnny," you say, and those words will come back to haunt you three days from now, when John Price shows up at your goddamn door, stupid bucket hat tucked tight to his chest, and rips your heart into pieces. 

But for as much as you are blissfully ignorant, your mind still understands nuance. They used to call it foresight, a sixth sense; hindsight. 

You add, softer than you've ever said the words: "I love you." 

His breath stutters through the line in response. A brief pause. And then—

"If anything happens—" you hate him a little for even saying it; you really do: "just know that I love you, too. And that I hope—ah, Christ, bonnie, you got me all stupid, now—but, fuck, I hope we meet in another life."

It knocks something loose inside of you. Some primaeval thing that nestled in the safety of your ribs, moulting along your moon-white bones and glueing to the soft tissue that pulsed around it. It's shaken. Dislodged. 

It feels a little bit like your soul is being scraped off of bone. 

"Johnny—"

"—gotta go. We haven't heard from Roach or Riley in a while. I probably won't call tonight. So, don't wait for me, bonnie." 

The line clicks before the words I've been waiting for you forever fall from your wobbling lips.

You hate Johnny a little bit for this. For digging his roots deep into the soft chambers of your heart where it gnarled around your pericardium. A perfect little knot. A bow tied nice and pretty just for him. 

It makes it so much harder to bare when John fucking Price knocks on your door, stupid fucking bucket hat tucked tight against his chest, ghosts in his eyes, blood on his hands, and rips your heart into pieces until nothing but the rotten, dying roots remain. 

"I hate you so much right now," you hiss at the tombstone—the only thing you have left of him. "I hate you and I miss you and I wish you were here so I could—"

John finds you with your forehead pressed against the brass plaque, cheeks raw from the rivulets of tears that feel endless—a baptism in grief; in your tear ducts, Noah battles the biblical flood, and loses. 

Eyes that can't see past a shimmering hinterland of death and abject dismay are fixed, broken, against speckled granite. 

It's agony. The kind that makes it feel as if the marrow in your bones turned into a corrosive liquid, molten and devastating, and burst through brittle, hollow bone. 

Price, you've come to realise, seems to know things beyond what you tell him. Always picking up the shedded skin that falls from the people around him. Little pieces of them that he shoves in his pocket to ruminate on when he's trying to put together the puzzle of who they are. 

Words won't penetrate through the haze in your head. It filters in like water through a rhyne, back out to the open sea. 

(He knows this, of course, because you've been shedding pieces of yourself around him for years.)

It doesn't surprise you, then, when he says nothing. When he just falls to his aching knees in the soft humus, resting beside you as your world crumbles into ash and heartache. 

You sit in numbed silence until the sun is swallowed by the dusk that creeps across the sky. The moon itself seems to mourn along with you, hiding her eyes behind a nebulous veil of gunmetal. 

Price, without a word, helps you stand when the gravekeeper comes and ushers you out. He shepherds you into his Jeep and brings you back to the place that reeks of loneliness and dinners for one. A place that still carries the ghost of his presence around every corner, tucked away in each alcove and nook.

He might be gone, but his shadow still lives and breathes the dank, funeral air that clings to your sallow skin. A miasma of loss that tangles itself in every atom around you. 

Price seems hesitant to step inside, but you'd rather sleep on the patio with the chirping crickets and the weeping moon than be inside where the echo of his voice whispers through the halls, and he knows this, because he knows you, and so he brings you in before you can entomb yourself in grief, lost to the elements. He sets you down gingerly on the couch, body now more fragile than fine china, brushing your tangled hair from your forehead. It catches on his weathered hands. You barely feel the pull. 

He looks at you like you're a battle that can't be won. 

"Take care'a yourself, yeah? It's what—" he chokes, then, and you feel the hiccup like a white-hot knife to your gut. "It's what he would've wanted."

What he wanted is gone, and it's dead—just like him.

You don't say these words, but you wonder if he knows them, hears them, anyway. He must, you think, watching as the ashy, smoked cedar of his beard twitches. His mouth gnarls to the side in grief, uncertainty. 

He says your name. You know this because you know the shape it makes of his mouth, but don't you hear it. All it sounds like is a nail scraping over waterlogged, mossy wood. 

Price leaves.

A part of you goes with him.

You rest your forehead against his pillow, the one that smells of him still—warm milk, honeysuckle—and you wish so hard on broken promises, unfilled dreams, to see him again, to hold his face in the plinth of your palms, that your heart feels like it might burst—

—break. 

But it's already broken. There's nothing left to shatter. The pulpy mess he left behind beats not because you want it to, but because it has to. A biological failsafe that does not care about your human emotions even as it quivers and shakes at the loss that tipped your world upside down. A gaping hole sits in the middle in the shape of his smile, and your stubborn heart pulses around the wound. 

Sometimes you think it would be easier to feel nothing at all. To shed the agony like a rotting limb, cutting it as close to the bone as you can, and watching it fall, blackened with decay, and postulating with infectious spores that bud, devouring unblemished, unhurt, flesh until you're a pristine corpse. 

Grief twists you into the living dead. Breaks your head in two, cloved clean down the middle of unrelenting panic and anger—anguish so severe, you can easily convince yourself nothing at all is real. 

But it is. 

And then there is only denial and abject horror at that unimaginable nothingness that looms, blooming in your insides until they turn into a gaping, festering maw. One that makes you feel like you could swallow the whole world and still feel empty. 

No longer a human on the inside but a chasm. The person you were before died the moment his heart stopped beating. Irrevocably changed with three, stark knocks against the door he painted yellow because it reminded him of the way you looked standing in a field of sunflowers. Gone. Gone—

A barren void with its insides scraped out. Hollow. Wind rattles through your chilled bones. It sounds like his voice when it ghosts over your ribcage. 

You chase the sound. 

Running, running, running. Going so fast, it barely feels like your feet touch the ground. A wingless bird soaring across the valleys that gleaned in his hazel eyes. 

Running, running—

Your feet slide against marshy peat. A hidden bog gurgles beneath your soles. 

You don't scream when you sink. 

(The bubbles sound just like him—)

You smile.

—NOW

Eldritch machinations, some fanciful god playing a chaotic game of matchmaker, a dizzying sense of folie a deux—you haven't quite determined what the reason for this is, who or what might be behind it, but one thing you do know is this:

Something might be aligning your paths until all trails lead to him, but when you wander down those Wonderland roads, your heart beats for him. 

A second heart pulses under your skin. One slipped inside when you cupped his cheeks in your palm, and told him when you looked, you saw only him.

It might not be a choice you've made in this lifetime, but it's certainly one you can't bring yourself to regret. 

You run, but this time, it isn't away from him, but to him. 

He tastes of coumarin when you press your lips to his, a kiss met in the middle. 

You're lost, now, in the swell that gusts across the boscage. A breeze dances over your ears. A thousand starlings coo in the clear blue aether above. You feel the tickle of barley against your knees. Rasping tussock sedge curls over your ankle, weaving together until you're tied to the ground. Anchored against the stalks of wheat that shiver in the wind. 

His hands are warm, solid, on your skin. One hand braced on the small of your back, keeping you pressed firmly against him. The other cups your chin like you're made of fine china, polished crystal full of precious gems and rare metals. He holds tight as if he's afraid you'll drift away when he lets go. 

Your head is blooming full of sunflowers. They germinate in your thoughts until the petals burst through, lifting high to the heavens where the sun burns half as hot as his body angling against yours. 

His atoms sing, calling to yours. A buzz, a hum. You feel them stretch, shifting from the prison of you until equilibrium is reached when they merge, tangling together. A new being, a new entity is born from the collision—a person made of two with lungs and hearts that breathe and beat in the same cadence as it's ghosts. Woven together with marionette strings. 

It feels like coming home and getting lost all at once. 

Etched in the delicate flesh of your heart sits a kairos moment. A brief period of nothing that runs as deadly and tumultuous as the Swillies. An upheaval. 

Time is tenuous. Broken. Fragmented. 

An arm stretches out, anchoring across your waist. His mouth presses a kiss to your bare shoulder, eyes glossy in the mid-morning sun. 

"Wha' time's it?" He slurs out, words thick with sleep. 

Your eyes cut to the alarm clock on the end table. A slow, languid smile curls across your kiss-bruised mouth. 

"Eleven-fifteen," you breathe, eyes fixed on the red lines. Your heart stutters when it flickers. "Eleven-sixteen."

"S'too early," he moans, lips rubbing over your flesh. "Stay in bed with me." 

You peel your gaze away from the clock ticking down the seconds (minutes, hours, days, months, years), and turn to him. Hazel in bloom. A boscage in spring. Your eyes mist a little from the morning dew. 

"I love you, Johnny." 

His breath ghosts over your skin. You hear the hitch in his voice when he speaks. 

"Been waitin' a long time t'hear you say that, bonnie."

"Sorry to keep you waiting." 

—don't wait for me, Bonnie. i'll come find you—

—THEN

"Excuse me? You dropped this."

It's raining. Pouring, really. The droplets are the size of pennies and pelt the top of your umbrella with an unforgiving force. It sounds like the clatter of a mourning bell, and drowns everything else out. 

But it catches. Clear. Low. 

You turn, blinking through the thick fog that congeals around High Street in a dense, white blanket. 

"Sorry?" 

A man. He's towering above you, cut off at the chest by the fine points of your umbrella. You lift it, and—

Your wallet is the first thing you see. Wet, covered in grit from the cobblestone. It's clenched between a thick thumb and forefinger, held delicately together. You baulk. 

"Oh, shit—," it's snatched out of his hand, and pulled into the sanctuary of cover. You can feel it already. The mess inside. Still. You hope—

The leather peels back. Mush. 

You groan. The meagre bills you'd pulled from the machine are now wet, sticking together in a papier-mache square. Useless. No one is going to accept sopping wet bills. 

"Alright?" 

"No, I—," you glance up at him, irritation cutting across your brow. No, you're not alright. You're shit out of luck, and stranded here, now. And—

And—

Hazel. It's the first thing you see. Mountains of brown slope into a lush green valley. A cool blue lake cuts through, splitting off into a ravine. 

Your breath catches. 

"Sorry, umm. Yes. I'm—"

Attractive is the first word that springs to your mind when you stare at him—dark eyes, furrowed brow, long nose, a dusting of charcoal stubble along his cheeks and jaw, and full pink lips. Kissable is the second one. 

And then—

Oh, God. 

"Sorry," you murmur again, cheeks heating despite the chill. "I'm fine. Thank you, I'm—"

"You're not," he says, and it's uttered so assuredly that you can't find it in yourself to lie. As if he is somehow able to chisel into your head, and rifle through your problems with ease. "It's all wet, isn't it? Were you heading home, or—?"

It's cliche. Stupid. Your belly rumbles.

Mortifying. Absolutely—

His lips quirk up. A soft, almost secretive smile. Reserved. "Well, I know this place around the back. I could use the company, if you wouldn't mind."

You should say no. No, thank you—because you were raised proper. But all you can think about is the deep, brassy tone that tickles your ears when he speaks. The distant, almost careful way he regards you, as if he's putting himself at arm's length so you aren't scared off by his brawn. 

Hazel is dusted in gold. You want to bask in his warmth for just a moment longer—

"I'll pay you back, I promise."

His brows raise. Hazel framed in white. A soft huff leaves his full mouth before his lips pull up in a slow, genuine smile. 

"Y'alright, bonnie. I'll hold you to it."

(And so, it begins.)

[samble-moved]

reminder that homura is a middle schooler. she is 13 or 14 years old, depending on source. she is not old enough to drive or have a permit. she is not old enough to live on her own (it's implied her parents are out of the picture in some way — in the US she'd need to be in adoptive or foster care, or at least have a guardian or social worker, but this appears to be handwaved in the series and none are ever shown). she cannot vote. she is not old enough to get a job (earliest i've seen is 14 in the US, and that's usually in not great environments, in summer, and for low pay and short hours). she is only "independent" in the sense that it's forced upon her by lack of any adult support — nobody helps her fill out school transfer forms, she lives alone, she has no shown family or even mentions of relatives, nobody visits her in the hospital, etc.

i say this because a lot of "anti homura" arguments act as if this information doesn't exist, and that homura is "actually an adult" or at the same level as one due to looping. she canonically is not. her brain and physical body are not developing, she is only learning walpurgis tactics and memorizing test answers. her brain is not developing so she's not "mentally 26", like is often claimed by "homura is a predator" truthers. i'm not even going to touch on how weird and borderline creepy it is to say "she's a child but so mature for her age (from extreme, repeated, potentially pre-series trauma), so she must be an adult and can be treated like one".

there is a reason that children are typically tried differently in the US. unless "tried as an adult" for very serious crimes, it is widely accepted that children (and even young adults) are more impulsive, think less rationally, and are generally "less responsible" for their actions due to not having the experiences of a full grown adult. children are less mature, more prone to "overreaction" and panic, and are immature — because they are kids.

homura is a child. she also has extreme trauma, potentially from before the series even began (where are her parents? are they just neglectful? dead? why isn't there even a single adult helping her?) that is never helped or addressed. homura doesn't get help for any issues she has (obvious ptsd and depression, borderline delusions over the past being "just a dream" in wraith arc). she is not some spoiled, rich, mentally stable almost-adult who's never faced a consequence. she is a young and traumatized teenager, young enough to be a middle schooler, and has experienced:

neglectful, absent, missing, or dead family/parents

watching her friends die horrifically almost a hundred times

having zero adult support at all, no caseworker or help

bullying, half being because she's disabled

having her soul ripped from her body without consent and learning if she ever loses her soul gem (or god forbid accidentally drops it somewhere), her body will basically be "dead"

learning she and all her friends turn into eldritch horrors when they die, a process shown in rebellion to be something they are aware for (aka the horror that witches aren't "just" bodies being moved, they are actively and constantly suffering and aware to some degree the whole time)

learning that the witches they fight are girls around their age who fell into despair, and not purposeless monsters

learned of the prospect that witches can potentially "regrow" via familiars, thus if their consciousness transfers, this shows the possibility of literally eternal suffering as the witch is "reborn"

realization that, the more she tries to save madoka, the worse the situation gets

having a full on breakdown with delusions in wraith arc, thinking maybe madoka was all just a hallucination or a dream she had

finding out in rebellion it wasn't a dream, but then thinking she betrayed madoka by not stopping her from contracting

becoming a witch whose whole theme is based around suicide and wanting and waiting to die, but not being able to

being a witch whose familiars are malicious towards her and belittle her

trying to "fix" her believed betrayal of madoka by making a new world, ending up hated by sayaka and isolated from her friends

is still stuck as a witch while the last event happens!!! (her soul gem is never shown purified)

all of this while she is 13-14.

homura is not some cruel adult playing god because she is bored and likes the power trip and wants the world to burn. she is a deeply traumatized and mentally ill child who never got help. she is not a predator — and i honestly don't know if that is more of a "she's a predator because she's the most openly sapphic" or "she's a predator because she's traumatized and thus 'acts weird' due to trauma" belief nowadays in most anti-homura spaces, i've seen both. she is not a murderer or rapist or whatever else i've seen (yes, "homura is a sexual predator" claims exist, despite this never once even being implied). she is not an abuser — you can argue she's cold or rude, but she is not "an abuser".

if a child like homura existed irl (and they do exist), a professional's first thought would not be "this is an evil, irredeemable, abusive predator who can be treated like an adult", it'd likely be a reaction of horror and deep concern of "what happened to this child to make her act this way?". someone being "the perfect victim" — that is, being soft, demure, sweet, docile, flawless — in response to trauma is a harmful myth for a reason. some trauma victims will react with anger. some may be overly happy in an attempt to prevent further abuse. some, like homura, end up acting "cold" to try and avoid being further hurt. it doesn't mean homura doesn't experience emotion, hates her friends and wants them to suffer, is a predator, is "a bad person", etc.

think! when you write posts about how homura is actually an evil, awful, no good, very bad person with no positive traits, remember she is a middle schooler. of course, she's not a "real" child, and thus doesn't exist to have her feelings hurt over it, but consider this: would you say these things to/about a real child? are you aware that "real children" (often victims of trauma themselves) relate to homura due to this? i was one of them at 14ish, and while "homura is evil [for acting like a traumatized child often does]" discourse never left me particularly hurt, i know it does genuinely upset several people i know. and if you had, say, a real life child relative who acted "cold" after seeing their friends die horribly, would you call them an evil and irredeemable abuser as well?