#Sizzle Spark Center

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[redflagshipwriter]

Mamabat Chapter 11: the trap snaps shut

masterpost

Five vans peeled into view, rocketing around the curved road fast enough that they visibly tilted through the turn. They all bristled with weaponry.

Cass felt her lips press into a faint line. She glanced at Dannybaby: scared. I knew it. Here they are.

They didn’t have to talk about it. The three adults stepped out and put their backs to ring Danny, facing outwards to the threat.

“Shoot the racks,” she commanded. The mounted weapons. She didn’t like that. She pulled out a batarang herself and squinted to find her aim. The construction? Sloppy. Exposed wires. Weakness.

A gun cocked. “Aye aye, captain.” Jason hefted a gun in each hand and started shooting as the vans screeched to a stop in a circle around them. Bang! Sparks flew where he hit. Cass and Dickiebird did the same with quieter precision, slicing wires and leaving projectiles sticking into the metal monstrosities. Electricity sparked. Just in time: machines whined as they were powered on. One gave out with a huge bang!  The van attached to it jolted as the machine punched a huge dent into the roof. White smoke floated away, clouding the nighttime scene with a chemical stink.

“Whoa,” Danny breathed.

She felt a twinge of satisfaction.

Jason hit the last set-up with a bang! Bang! Then his foot scuffed across the pavement to knock against Danny’s. Check, you’re here, you’re safe, you’re little.

“They’ll come out!” Danny warned.

He was right. Doors clicked unlocked all around them and men in white suits piled out, futuristic looking guns aimed at the little group. 

She felt a twinge of disbelief. “Can’t shoot,” Cass said. No way. So dumb. They were in a circle. Friendly fire, new concept to losers??

They shot. She hit the ground in a roll and trusted that everyone else would. They did. She turned her head to see that one agent was down from friendly fire. There was no blood as he was lifted off his feet and blasted backwards against the van he came out of.

“Ghost scum!” howled one of the suits.

“We knew it!” 

The victory in their voices set her blood boiling. Cass launched herself to the closest opponent and took him down with a nasty hit. She whirled on the next one, two mean hits. Go, go, clear the area! She heard feet scuffling and weapons whining as they fired, fired, fired on the boys.

She took number 4 down as the smoke was starting to clear. She heard a pained oof from the center, where Jason and Dickiebird were blocking Danny.

“Jason!” Danny said. He sounded very young. “Oh, shit.” Cass cast a frantic glance over at his posture and sucked in a breath even as she bulleted towards the next opponent. Determined. I have to do this. Here we go! 

No, no!

Jason was down. Dickiebird was darting between Jason and the man actively firing. Danny was pale. He opened his mouth. He put his palms out. He flashbanged. 

She blinked away stars and slammed a man’s head into a van before he could aim at her. Slam, slam, drop. She stole another glance. Danny was- Danny had white hair now and he was flashing green light at their enemies. Hm. She couldn’t afford to watch. Cass bared her teeth, angry. 

Air sizzled: GIW firing wildly. Guns fired: Jason was still conscious. Danny yelped: what? 

Cass didn’t dare look more. She moved faster than Batman could ever, brutally taking down these criminals with disdainful ease. They had nothing but numbers and lasers. 

Green shot past her vision. She traced it back: Danny! Her eyes went wide. Wow. He had some kind of organic blast, like Starfire. Very useful! 

 It wasn’t enough. Danny screamed. She heard him hit the ground. Sizzling.

She howled, wordless with fury. She tackled the next agent and cracked his head against the pavement. Only two more. She flung a batarang down the barrel aimed at her and then yanked the weapon away to brutally jab the air out of the agent’s diaphragm. Cass tossed it at him as he fell. Solid thunk. It hit his head.

The last man tried to say something, white teeth flashing in the gloom. Her ears were closed to it. The only language she spoke right now was violence. She used it to get him down and wrench him into zip ties. She could hear Dickiebird talking his soothing sounds at Danny baby. Cass wanted to go there. Cass wanted to soothe him. She wanted to see his hurts. 

But she had to secure the area. She rushed around to the groaning and crying men she had put down. She immobilized them. The foolish ones tried to get up as she approached. The smart one (and there was only one) held his hands out, eyes wide in the night. He talked at her. Beseeching, reasoning, she just doesn’t understand. You’re like me. Not like them.

Cass snarled. She understood just fine. She pressed his face into the ground harshly, fingers digging into his jaw. “Shut up,” she gritted out. She left him with effort, ignoring the mean impulse to smack him. 

All the boys were on the ground. There was no blood. Eyes open. Not dead.

Something in her gun unclenched.

Dickiebird looked up at her from where he was supporting Jason, sitting halfway with a grimace as he holstered his guns. Hands shaking. “He’ll be fine!” Danny pressed his body against Jason like he was trying to absorb his body heat. His hair was black again and his eyes looked tired. “He, uh, it’s shock,” Dannybaby babbled. She knelt to rub at his back, silently encouraging the explanation. “They basically zapped his ecto, stopped circulation. It should start up again in a few minutes and he’ll feel fine.”

“Get off,” Jason grunted. He shoved at Dickiebird. Weak. “I feel fine.”

Lie.

“I feel drained,” he admitted. “But fine. Just weak. I can stand.” He struggled to stand, biting his lip. He swayed only slightly. “Man,” he cursed under his breath. Jason cast an unhappy look at the 14 agents groaning on the ground, on their bellies like the worms they were with hands ziptied at their backs. “Not my best showing.”

“Next time, you could dodge,” Dickiebird suggested lightly. 

“You’re lucky it got him and not you,” Danny snapped. “Didn’t you see that guy go flying?”

Tense. Dickiebird paused. Smile. Soothe. “I’m only teasing,” he said. “It’s fine, Danny.”

“None of this is fine!” Cass swiveled her head to make sweltering eye contact with the scumbag who was cutting in. He was bold, for someone with his cheek digging into the rocks and cement. “By the authority of the US Government, you are required to submit these ecto-entities for testing and capture into our custody. Release us, or face dire consequences!”

Cass looked at him. She felt hate. Disdain. You’re nothing, you’re a worm to me. 

“They’re telling the truth,” Danny whispered. “It’s, uh, it’s legal.” He looked haunted. He rubbed at his chest: some memory of sharp pain.

Dickiebird snorted and slung an arm over Danny’s narrow shoulders. “Maybe by US laws, but Oa has jurisdiction that supersedes. This was a clear case of assault.” He gave an unpleasant smile. Big brother. Big angry. Guard dog at the door. “I’ll make a call.” 

The next minutes felt very long. Cass pressed Danny’s face into her shoulder so that he didn’t have to make eye contact with the fallen agents. She stroked his hair with her free hand, boiling inside with fury. 

Dickiebird called. A Green Lantern answered: coming.

They waited. Jason said he felt better. His body said: mostly better. But strange. They ignored the threats and complaints from the GIW men on the ground.

Hal Jordan came, with one more Green Lantern that Cass didn’t know. He gathered up prisoners in a green veil. He talked with Dickiebird. He nodded, and left.

“I wanna go home,” Danny said quietly. “But I think that we need to get Jason to my doctor. He’s really not right. It’s… It might be time sensitive.”

[blindmagdalena]

Center Stage in a Gilded Cage (chapter eight)

18+ 5.5k. homelander x f!reader. stalking, kidnapping, imprisonment, abuse, forced relationship, slow burn, suicidal ideation/close call, dubcon, oral sex, penetrative sex. fic directory | AO3

It isn’t love like they tell it in fairy tales. It’s love the way the poets write it. It’s blood and tears, a gnawing hunger that eats you from the inside out, leaves you empty and clawing to cram something into yourself as replacement. It’s love like an infection, a fever that never fades. It’s devotion and yearning that runs so deep it turns into violence.

For the next several mornings, you make breakfast as usual.

The heat of the gas range and the hissing sizzle of the eggs are always slightly muffled. Time itself moves strangely around you, like you’re standing under a waterfall flowing in reverse. Minutes tick on like hours, but the hours go by without you noticing them at all. 

As the days–they could be weeks, you’ve stopped keeping track–pass, that night of intimacy with Homelander feels more and more like a fever dream than a memory. If you really try, however, the details of it are simple enough to recall, if not a touch hazy. 

The part of it that’s a struggle is believing any of it actually happened. When you do put your mind to remembering it, it’s as though it happened to someone else. You were an outsider to your body, and now that you’re yourself again, you’re left to ponder the actions of that stranger.

It’s your body that holds onto the reality of it for you. Your stomach still feels faintly tender from the nausea and vertigo of flying. The penthouse air feels stale in your lungs compared to the winds whipping above the city. Your heart pounds whenever your jaw feels tight with the memory of his hand clamped over your mouth, but perhaps the most vexing aspect of it all is the way the throb of your pulse now echoes loudest between your legs.

How your fear now comes laced with an unwanted tinge of arousal.

You’d been left alone that night while Homelander attended a Vought function. He hadn’t been gone long; just long enough for you to bathe. You hadn’t felt up to eating, but he didn’t notice. He’d only cared about coming home, about taking you back into his arms, about breathing in the shower fresh smell of you and exhaling mine into the crook of your neck.

Never before have you felt more like a toy, a possession, a belonging than you did in that moment.

He hasn't touched you like that again since, though you think he aches to. You feel it in the way he squeezes your thigh when you watch movies together, how his hand drifts gradually higher, but it never progresses further than that. Sometimes he’ll press against you in bed, but so long as you lay very still, he eventually drifts to sleep.

When he’s gone, you touch yourself. The ache is there, the pleasure faint, but it’s never quite enough to put you over the edge. It’s never enough to give you the kind of relief–the kind of escape–you felt with him. Your body feels like kindling without a spark, the sensations empty.

You wonder what it would take to prompt him back into that kind of frenzy, that single-minded drive to pleasure you. Would he do it again if he saw you crying?

I’m doing this for you. For us. I’m doing this because you don’t know how to let yourself be happy.

Could he have been right? Have you ever really known how to make yourself happy?

A touch to your waist snaps you from your introspection, startles you into jerking. The pan in your grip would have gone flying if not for Homelander’s hand on your elbow, steadying you.

You completely forgot you were cooking breakfast.

“Eggs are burning,” he tells you, reducing the gas to nothing. They’re far from black, but it doesn’t take much to turn eggs from edible to rancid, the sulphuric smell burning your nose. You can only imagine the havoc it’s wreaking on him.

It isn’t the first time you’ve burned a meal since that night. His tone indicates he’s come to expect it.

“Oh,” you say noncommittally, staring at the curled dark edges, the solid yellow yolk.

His hand slides absently from your hip to your waist. He’s become so familiar in these casual touches, they don’t even make your heart lurch in your chest anymore.

“It’s fine,” he says, clearly reading disappointment in your indifference. The timbre of his voice is ambiguous, but somehow you don’t really think it’s fine. He must be losing his patience with you. His arms slip around your waist like two coiling serpents. “Plenty of time for you to start over.”

Still, he wants you to fix it. Burned eggs don’t suit this idyllic fantasy.

Why bother? you wonder. He peppers light kisses on your neck, lips brushing over a kiss-bruised patch of skin. The heat of his mouth makes you shiver, makes your belly feel tight and hot. You can’t tell anymore whether the heat is anger or arousal. You’re not even going to eat it.

Nevertheless, you scrape out the botched eggs and start over, keenly aware of your pulse echoing faintly between your thighs, and the weight of Homelander’s gaze on you.

Predictably, you eat, and he toys with his food like it’s all a silly game of make-believe. Plastic eggs, foam toast, pretend girlfriend. Homelander’s obsession exists not in what’s real, but in the performance of domesticity. Every day, the idea of what’s real becomes a little more subjective. A little more abstract.

When he goes to leave, he kisses your cheek.

“Thank god it’s Friday,” he says, your chin pinched between his bare thumb and middle forefinger knuckle. He’s taken to touching you more and more without his gloves on. “I made sure I don’t have any weekend obligations, which means you–lucky lady–finally get me all to yourself.”

That’s new. Normally his weekends are even busier than his week.

Sensing his anticipation for your positive reaction, you smile faintly. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

His eyes widen just a fraction, as does his smile. It’s something of an experiment, a deviation from your automatic daily “Have a good day,” and you see the excitement of it written plainly in his expression.

“I won’t,” he says, softer, grip flexing minutely on your chin. He tarries just long enough that you begin to think he may not leave after all. Instead, he takes in a breath and drops his hand to the door panel, using his print to disengage the lock. 

“This will be good for us,” he says quietly, lingering in the doorway for just a moment longer than usual.

The door closes behind him. The green circle turns blue, and the locking mechanism re-engaging is the last bit of noise you hear. The door is thick enough that you don’t even hear his steps echo down the hallway.

Crossing your arms, you stand there for a while, staring at the door. The number pad is shiny from disuse, the buttons a gleaming silver. You’ve never seen him bother to input the code. Testing them without pressing, they’re cool to the touch under your finger, and after a beat, you input a code.

0476. America’s birthday.

The blue circle flashes red, and you sigh. You would have been angry with yourself if it’d been that easy anyways. 

For another day, you whittle your hours away on nothing, distant from yourself and your feelings. Music drones in your ears like static. Television feels alien and incomprehensible. The whole world is upside down, but it’s as though you’re the only one who’s noticed, who’s being forced to adapt.

Terrible as it is to think, the days are better when Homelander’s here.

You walk the penthouse in familiar patterns like a zoo animal in a too-small enclosure, bereft of enrichment. Knowing what you know about him, it feels like giving him too much credit to think the deprivation is intentional, that he’s putting in an effort to make you miss him in the time he’s gone. It seems more likely that he really is just incredibly ignorant of the basic needs a person has.

You’re not an animal. You’re more like a doll that he puts on the shelf until he’s ready to play with you again.

Coming to the balcony, you pull open the door and step outside, hand tight on the door frame. The wind lashes at you, stealing your breath for a split second in the way it always does before you adjust. It’s bright out today, the sky a crisp blue. It’s the kind of rich blue you’d never normally see through the smog on ground level, which always leaves it desaturated.

The clouds look near enough to touch, were you brave enough. Even standing just outside the doorway, your bare feet against the ice cold cement, is enough to make you weak in the knees. Your heart knocks against your ribs like it means to escape, but the feeling has grown so familiar, you don’t back away.

The fear, you realize, is the only thing that makes you feel present in your own body. 

Living with Homelander has forced you to swallow back your instincts so frequently, it comes more naturally now to take a step forward than to run away, your hand slipping from the doorway.

Your heart is in your throat as you near the middle point of the balcony, more and more of the city below coming into view. Your breaths grow shallow, and despite how calm you think you are, your stomach launches into a series of violent somersaults, your eyes glued to the thinning edge of the balcony.

No matter how tattered your thoughts and feelings are, your body reacts. It knows how to keep you safe. It screams and screams and screams as you press on.

There’s nothing around you to steady or brace yourself on. You feel imbalanced, top-heavy in a way that makes you sway, your poor heart lurching with it. You’re too scared to blink, unwilling to risk even a split second of darkness for the fear you might pitch forward.

Closing your eyes only makes it worse, reminds Homelander, his voice unbidden in your mind.

It’ll pass.

It’s worth it.

Trust me.

“Why?” you snap aloud, startling yourself. Why, even now, is he with you?

What’s your alternative?

The air is thin out here. Your eyes water, buffeted by the winds. Your chest feels tighter now, and every breath you take is more hard fought than the last, your lungs constricted. Tears start to roll down your cheeks, though the wind is quick to wick them away.

Your whole body sings with your fear. The adrenaline feels like an extra layer of skin beneath yours, filling your veins with tension and strength. The longer you endure it, the more aware of yourself and that change you become. You take another step towards the edge. Your mouth is sandpaper dry, pins and needles prickling your skin all over. 

Don’t look down. Look out.

You lift your gaze to the horizon, exhaling a shaky breath. You take another tentative step forward, relieved when your foot hits solid ground. You can’t see exactly where the ledge ends anymore. Another step, and then another. There’s nothing to hold you back. Nothing to keep you from walking.

Finally, you close your eyes, and move to step forward.

You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?

You gasp, eyes snapping open. Your balance waivers, and as your gaze drops, you see the empty space where your foot was about to fall.

 If not for yourself, you’ll do that for me, yeah?

You pitch yourself backwards so hard that you fall, landing on your ass with a pained noise. You choke on the tension in your throat, your whole body shaking as you haul yourself backwards, bare feet scratching against the pavement. You flip onto your hands and knees and clamber back inside, hastily slamming the door shut behind you before you let go a gut wrenching sob, the sound of it strained, agonized, barely enough breath in your lungs to birth it. 

You put your back to the door and you cry until your voice runs hoarse, until all the muscles in your stomach hurt and your tears run dry. It’s an ugly, visceral cry that leaves you dizzy and weak-limbed, the space behind your eyes throbbing in a dull headache.

There is an alternative. You’re going to find it.

Eventually you manage to drag yourself up from the floor and to the bedroom. The exhaustion that hits in the wake of your–what, lapse in judgment? Temporary insanity? Whatever you call it, it’s left you so worn out that all you can do is collapse on the bed, your muscles aching.

From the ceiling, your reflection stares back at you. You hardly recognize that face as yours anymore. Time and time again she makes choices that aren’t yours and experiences the world in a way you never could have imagined.

Homelander may have convinced you to look at yourself, but only now do you think you’re starting to see yourself as you are. As you must be.

You close your eyes, exhaling a slow breath. You begin to forget the balcony, the steps forward, the fall. It slots into a distant place somewhere in the back of your mind–where all things like it go–and after a time you’re left with nothing but the thrumming of your own body.

The echo of fear and thrill. The memory of adrenaline coursing through you like fuel, like poison, like divinity. Never before have you felt the kind of power you did when you took those steps. Fear has no control over you. It wasn’t even what stopped you.

You stopped yourself. You took control.

It leaves you electrified. You touch your tingling fingertips to your lips, where the numbness of them makes them feel like someone else’s. You trail them down your chin, your jaw, your throat. Instead of fighting it, you lean into the idea of this other you.

Hand drifting lower, you close your eyes. Instantly that haunting night comes back to you: Homelander’s mouth on your neck, your chest, your lips, his fingers curling inside you while you–that stranger behind your eyes–gasped in pleasure and kissed him back.

You try to replicate his touch. Slow, firm, full of desire and intent. Your stomach flips at the memory of it. How he kissed you like he meant to devour you, how enraptured he became with your pleasure. 

I’ll make you happy if you’d just let me.

Swallowing, you skirt your fingers along the waistband of your pants, teasing the exposed skin there. He had taken your fear, your anguish, and twisted it into something with teeth. 

Something inside you that hungered.

You have no idea how fucking good I can make you feel.

Slipping under the fabric, you push your fingers into your underwear and touch yourself in every way you remember him touching you.

The chill of your fingers–still cold from the balcony–is stark against the heat between your legs. Your pussy feels velvety under your fingers, soft and slick with arousal. 

Look who’s all wet.

You let out a shuddering breath. Trying to replicate his touch only drives home how wholly inhuman he really felt. The unyielding strength in him, how his fingers felt like anchors inside you, grounding you, keeping you so entirely at his mercy that you had no choice but to let go, to give in.

There’s no such plausible deniability here. He’s gone, and yet here you are envisioning him, imitating him, allowing the version of him in your mind to have what you’d been sure he would always have to take. You screw your eyes shut tighter, exhaling a throaty noise as you push your fingers sharply in.

Your hips rock steadily. The harder you try, the less right it feels. You attempt to relax, to let yourself focus on what it feels like now instead of what it felt like then, what it felt like with him. How relentless he was, peppering insistent kisses everywhere he could reach. You touch your neck, press into the tender mark he sucked there. Your pussy clenches at the sensation, and finally you feel as though you’re on the right track.

Something electric begins to crackle inside you. A low, dull pressure that builds gradually. You deepen your breaths, finding a rhythm, losing yourself piece by piece to the dozens of hands pulling at you in your mind. Tearing your clothes, sinking into you, holding you pinned, all of it impossibly happening at once while you’re simultaneously ravaged by lips, tongue and teeth.

Your eyes snap open when a grip like steel snatches your wrist, shocking you out of your fantasy.

Homelander stands over you.

His vibrant blue eyes are dark and glazed over, his lips parted. He’s not looking at you, but instead at your glistening fingers. He tilts your hand, enraptured by how the wetness of them catches the light. 

A visceral rush moves through you, heat and shame and excitement and outrage all in dizzying measure. You move to yank your hand back, but despite the looseness of his grip, the curl of his fingers is unyielding. He doesn’t even seem to notice.

With his other hand braced on the headboard, he leans in at the same time he pulls you closer, his eyes falling shut as he sucks two of your fingers into his mouth.

The heat of it shocks you all over, makes your stomach drop in a hot and sudden broil. His tongue slides up the seam between your fingers, pushing between them, licking away every single trace of slickness from them.

“Homelander,” you rasp, tone ambiguous in the flux of your inner turmoil.

His eyes open part way, landing on you heavy and hungry. He pulls your fingers from his mouth with an obscene, wet noise. His tongue moves over his top lip in a slow slide, dipping around his sharp canines. His breaths are shallow, nostrils flaring on every heavy inhale. He’s barely tasted you and yet he looks drunk on it, cheeks flushed red.

“What were you thinking about?” he asks, his voice guttural, raw with open and eager desire.

For once, the truth and what you know he wants to hear are one in the same. It sits on your tongue with the weight of an anchor, his expectant gaze a bottomless ocean. 

If you give it to him, are you prepared to sink?

What’s your alternative?

“You.”

Homelander groans. 

He releases your hand and takes hold of your hips instead, yanking you to the edge of the bed with such ease of force it makes you gasp. He yanks your pants off with a sharp pull, though he manages not to tear them this time.

The feverishness that he touches you with makes your whole body sing, instantly sparking the ember you’d been tending into a blazing fire. Your blood races with adrenaline, desire surging alongside instinctual fear, the two intermingling to the point where you can no longer discern one from the other.

“I was thinking about yesterday,” you say, breath hitching for the way he kisses his way down your stomach, fingers biting into your hips.  “The way you touched me.”

Like gasoline splashed over a flame, your words intensify the ravenous fire of him. He sinks to his knees, your legs hitched over his shoulders, peppering kisses along your inner thigh, hands cupped under your ass, which he’s pulled completely off the bed.

Your heart thunders in your chest while his hot huffs of breath so close to where you’re wet and wanting make you shiver. His fingers dig into the meat of your thighs, the thrum of his restraint an effortless reminder of all that he is, all that he’s capable of. The awareness of how easily he could tear you apart is no longer frightening. Instead, it’s the understanding that he won’t that thrills you. 

In the same way you couldn’t stop him when he wanted to please you, if Homelander wanted to hurt you, you couldn’t stop him. There is a surreal freedom in that, a permission to let go of the weight of fear and responsibility for yourself, for your actions.

Reap the reward.

He kisses all the way to the core of you, where his mouth closes over your clit, hot and wet and devouring. His tongue slides around and over, the rolling pull of his lips coaxing a deeper pleasure. 

All the while he holds you firmly in place, trapping you in relentless euphoria. His mouth is just as merciless as the rest of him, never needing to pause or take a breath. He’s machine-like in his rigor, but the fervor of his consumption is decidedly animalistic.

You can hardly catch your breath in the onslaught. Reaching down, you thread your fingers into his hair–it’s softer than it has any right to be–and pull hard. That earns you a throaty moan from him, the vibrations of it adding an entirely new element of sensation.

Your grip on his hair tightens sporadically, sharp little tugs that match the staccato cadence of your breaths. His tongue moves down, focusing instead on fucking you in shallow but powerful thrusts. The strength of it, the underlying hum of barely contained power that courses through him, and the sheer relentlessness of his stamina drives you wild against his mouth.

Between plunging his tongue into you and sucking on your clit, he drinks you down noisily, a parched man gulping from an oasis. You use what little leeway his grip allows to grind against his tongue, riding the tidal wave of your building release all the way to the top. 

His hand slides inward, fingers splayed to support your weight while his thumb dips deep enough to slip into you, finally giving your pussy something solid to squeeze. It’s enough to tip you over the edge. You push your other hand into his hair and hold on for dear life, arching your back with a cry that fills the entire penthouse as pleasure overtakes you, crashing down on you like a tsunami.

Like before, Homelander doesn’t take your climax alone as an invitation to stop. A man possessed, he licks, sucks and kisses your throbbing clit through every single aftershock of your orgasm. Pleasure eventually trails into discomfort, a slight tingling burn that finally gives you the strength to push him away.

He doesn’t relent right away, too lost in you to feel the meager protest. You push harder, making a noise somewhere between a moan and a whimper, overstimulated, and he finally withdraws, giving one last noisy slurp before setting you back on the bed and rising. He’s painting, face is shiny and wet with your slick, his pupils blown completely black.

In your euphoria addled delirium, the look of him makes you want to run far away as much as it makes you want to kiss him.

Licking his lips, he crawls up your body, his gaze still predator hungry. You catch his face between your palms, your breaths still shallow, and marvel at how raw he looks. 

For all your fears about what he could be hiding from you, Homelander has never been anything but brutishly upfront. He told you who and what he was the moment you woke up in his bed. You can understand his logic now–why bother muddying the waters with needless lies? He never deceived you because he wanted you to know who he was, and who he expected you to be.

Even now, he is an open book to you. Your pleasure is mine, his expression declares. The claim is in his eyes, shining on his lips, in the heady scent of it on his breath. You are mine.

And he is, without a shadow of a doubt, yours.

You trace his bottom lip with your thumb, transfixed by the way he followed it, pressing wet kisses to the pad. You tilt your thumb forward, grazing his teeth. His bottom canines are sharp, and when you press your thumb down on one of them, he closes his lips around it, sucking on it with a needy little noise that lances heat straight through you. 

Despite the immensity of his power, he’s malleable in your hands. You pull, he follows, huffing out shallow little breaths. You pull your thumb away and he looks at you with cloudy eyes, brows tightly pinched. Between your bodies, he fusses with his belt until it clicks loose.

“Stop,” you breathe, pressing a hand to his chest.

His expression twists, damn near wounded. “Wha–why? I thought–”

You kiss him before he can put himself in another rejection induced spiral, licking the words right out of his mouth before you say, “Take the suit off.”

Another soft groan from him before he’s lifting off of you, unfastening his suit. You take the opportunity to shed the last of your layers, your heart racing. You half expected him to rush, to fumble in his hurriedness, but despite his obvious excitement, he’s methodical in removing his suit, placing it on the rack in the way he always does.

It’s almost long enough to give you time to think about what you’re doing, about whether the pounding in your chest is thrill or not. That same primal part of you is shouting to run, and you are running, just not away. You’re tired of running away. This time, you’re running headlong into Homelander.

And he catches you.

He’s upon you before you can examine it any further, bare skin hot against yours. He kisses the column of your throat, breathing you in.

At the first nudge of his cock, a breathy little noise escapes you. He savors grinding the head of it tantalizingly against your clit, moving through the mess he’s made of you. You’re soaking wet, thighs coated in saliva and slick. He presses his chest down against yours and the heat of him makes you shiver. 

He isn’t putting his full weight down on you, but the sheer force of him over you is suffocating. Breathing makes you feel as though you’re pressed against a brick wall, stifling you. Trapping you. You start to shake your head.

“Wait, wait, hold on,” you say, fighting the welling panic in your throat. “Roll over. On your back.”

Confused but not opposed, he does as he’s told, moving off of you and onto his back. You swing your leg over him, and he instantly understands, grasping your hips to help gather you into position over him. His lips split into a wide grin, dark eyes glinting wickedly.

“Fuck yes,” he breathes, squeezing your hips. There’s a giddiness to him, like part of him didn’t believe that this would happen, much less that you would ever be the one leading it.

Straddling his thighs, sitting just behind his cock, you can feel the tension of his excitement thrumming throughout his body. With control on your side, you move forward, reaching between your legs to angle him into the right position.

His grip on you flexes as he fights with himself to stay still while you descend slowly, the swell of him splitting you open in one slow, hot slide.

Gravity brings you down most of the way, but a jerk of his hips that he pulls you into bottoms him out, and you both gasp with the suddenness of it, your body locking up around his throbbing cock.

“Sorry, sorry,” he pants, but his grip doesn’t ease. Like he’s lost control of himself, he holds you firmly in place while he fucks you, watching you through heavily lidded eyes, lips parted. “S’good, s’fuckin’–so fucking good,” he moans, expression twisting in pleasure. 

It’s too much all at once–Homelander always is–but you take it, gripping his wrists. He fucks like a machine, each thrust a shock to your system, momentum building into quicker, harder thrusts.

“S-slow down,” you half moan, practically choking on the overwhelming fullness of him inside you. He isn’t thrusting in and out so much as he’s grinding into you in shallow bursts, carving out the shape of himself within you like he intends never to leave.

“Take me so good,” he murmurs, and if not for the slight slow down of his thrusts, you’d think he didn’t hear you. He sits up, the ease with which he moves even with you on top of him still throwing you for a loop. “Knew you would, knew you’d be mine, all mine. Made just for me.”

His hands slide up your body, one arm moving around your waist while his hand slides up to cup the back of your head. He kisses you, pins your chest to his, ensures you feel every ounce of his desperation to be with you, near you, inside you.

It’s more than being fucked–it’s like being taken apart so that you can be put back together around him. A permanent emptiness in his perfect image.

You were not made for him. You have been remade.

The next thing you know, Homelander is standing up, your legs hitched around his waist, ankles locked behind him. You wrap your arms around his neck and gasp for the way the position brings him in deeper yet, every bounce on his cock heavier now.

“Look at me,” he rasps. You don’t remember closing your eyes, but you open them at his prompt, looking at him through the delirium of heat and pleasure. His dark eyes are glassy, and he’s looking at you with such raw, vulnerable love that it makes your heart twist in agony. “I love you.”

You take a breath, your own eyes welling with tears, and you kiss him.

I believe you, you think, tears rolling down your cheeks while the pressure of climax builds steadily back up.

It isn’t love like they tell it in fairy tales. It’s love the way the poets write it. It’s blood and tears, a gnawing hunger that eats you from the inside out, leaves you empty and clawing to cram something into yourself as replacement.

It’s love like an infection, a fever that never fades. It’s devotion and yearning that runs so deep it turns into violence. It’s desperation and the all consuming desire to be accepted for what you are, no matter the ugliness of it. It’s the most raw form of need a person is capable of.

It’s survival.

The kiss breaks and he presses his forehead to yours, your shallow breaths mingling hot and wet in the narrow space between your mouths.

The rest of the world falls away in jagged pieces–circumstance, fear, pity, hatred, pain–and narrows only to the two of you; your bodies joined, your gazes fixed on one another, and the electric pleasure of the friction between you.

“I–” you gasp, choking on your own words as he fucks you to the razors edge of release. “I love you, too.”

Maybe he’s broken you, or maybe it’s impossible to live in madness without going a little mad yourself. 

He makes a noise like you’ve gutted him, eyes screwed shut. He slams in once, twice, thrice more and you lose yourself to the heat of it all, breath stolen from your lungs by the crash of release that overwhelms your every sense.

You lose track of time, of the hammer of his body against yours. He comes shortly after, stilling deep inside you with a rush so hot that it makes you gasp into the crook of his neck, where you let yourself collapse. You’re dead weight in his arms, but you may as well weigh nothing at all for the toll it takes on him.

Sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed, he embraces you like that for a long while. Your euphoria keeps you on a cloud somewhere high above, serving as cushioning between how you feel and what you know. Just like yesterday, mindless pleasure is an intoxicating reprieve from reality, and you’re thoroughly drunk on it.

He rubs your back in slow familiar patterns. You idly toy with the hair at the nape of his neck, which prompts him to pepper you in languid kisses. Touching you like this comes to him as naturally as breathing. Your bodies slot together like two pieces of a puzzle that were long lost from each other.

“See?” he whispers, easing your bodies down onto the bed, under the covers. “I didn’t break you.”

You offer a dazed smile, not quite as certain that he didn’t. Your pelvis aches slightly, an overall tenderness to you akin to the pain you’d feel the day after a particularly hard fall.

That isn’t the ache you’re concerned about, though. It’s the one in your chest that gives you pause.

“There’s still time.”

His brows furrow while he processes the words, but after a beat, he smiles, taking it as a playful challenge.

“Aren’t you just full of surprises?”

Yes, you think, settling your head on his chest, listening to the steady pound of his heart. I certainly am.

Exhaling a deep breath, you close your eyes, content to allow yourself this respite, however brief.

In hindsight, you will always remember this moment as the quiet just before the storm.

[chevelleneech]

Ody3 revolving around Tristan, not Avery…?

I cannot explain how desperately I need the Doctor Odyssey love triangle to throuple to be have been presented as Max and Tristan fighting over Avery, leading to a threesome, only to ultimately end up as Max and Avery realizing they don’t work without Tristan.

Not that I want him to be an after thought, but right now things are sort of framed as Tristan getting a taste of what he’s wanted after all these years, as well as Max and Avery falling into each other really early on insinuating they’re meant to be.

So I want to see them trying to figure things out, which includes a misunderstanding of all feelings involved, leading to Tristan walking away thinking Max and Avery are better suited as a couple, and them believing Tristan saying he just wanted sex from them. Thus they convince themselves a throuple was never an option, only for their relationship to start stumbling, because without the thought of Tristan bounding around the corner or leaping between them in bed unannounced… it’s not the same. Their spark isn’t there, because even just the thought of, “How/when are we going to tell Tristan?” gave them that extra bite.

Because Max is the life-worn one who is a bit more methodical, yet is naturally curious, while Avery is quite cynical and likes to know where she’s headed. Tristan, however, for as serious and rude as he can be, is the rebellious burst of light both of them are clearly drawn to.

So while I know a traditional love triangle or even throuples tends to be because the woman nabbed the hearts of both men, which is what happened with Ody3, I just really really want it to give a little twist. Center the character who is obviously insecure in his place with both of them, and who so clearly wants both of their approval. Tristan wants Avery and Max, they wrote it so blatantly, but he doesn’t (didn’t) know he wants Max too, because his focus was on the fact that Max showed up and managed to get Avery right away.

Having the pairing that instantly clicked, realize they need that third person would so good. It would also add to the beauty of how and why Tristan and Avery not even so much as hooking prior to meeting Max made sense, because they needed their third person. It would also mean none of the duos work without their third, which I don’t think has ever happened on network tv. A throuple that works as a throuple, because coupling them off simply doesn’t.

Lastly, I stand by the fact that their cast chemistry was intentional. No way they wrote Ody3 this questionably on paper, and cast three actors who sizzle on screen together, yet nothing is meant to come of it. A throuple is the only thing that makes sense, regardless of my wish for the above.

[yeslikethewizard]

【 A Cat Among Wolves - Ch. 9 Update!】

LINK: Chapter 9 - weight on your shoulders FANDOM: The Scum Villain’s Self Saving System RATING: M, full tags and content warning on A03 PAIRINGS: Shen Yuan | Shen Qingqiu/Luo Binghe, One sided SQQ’s harem hopelessly in love with him

SUMMARY:

Shen Yuan never expected to be transmigrated—who DOES expect that sort of thing!? But here he is, in the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way as some NPC demon child who is at the complete mercy of the cultivation world around him. When he runs into Luo Binghe it is like fate itself plucked him up and set Shen Yuan into the world to be with the Protagonist. Keep him safe. Make sure that Luo Binghe won’t ever have to be alone in the world.

But staying at Luo Binghe’s side will be easier said than done, even if his mysterious heritage lands him in the good graces of the Scum Villain, Shen Yuan is still a demon. One living in the middle of a cultivation sect. Not to mention that something—something darker and stronger than Shen Yuan—seems to be messing with the plot, and not changing things for the better. Like Shen Yuan didn’t already have enough on his plate to deal with.

EXCERPT:

“Mn, I can understand how you might feel like that,” Lady Qin says softly. Shen Yuan glances up at her. “Would Shen-gongzi give Lady Qin his hand for a moment?”

Shen Yuan blinks, reaching up to hold out his hand. She takes it and flips it so that his palm faces up—as though she intends to read the lines of it—and then places a small coin in the center of it. It hurts —a spark of burning pain that makes him jerk his hand back with a gasp and out of her grip. The coin falls to the ground sizzling, and Lady Qin’s eyes are bright with excitement.

“Forgive this Lady,” she says, sounding not at all sorry for what she has done.

“What—what was that? It hurt,” Shen Yuan says, there’s a burn in the center of his palm. He rubs at it with his finger and winces, turning baleful eyes up on the woman in front of him. She still does not look sorry in the slightest.

“This Lady saw,” Lady Qin says, holding a finger to her lips which curl into a smile. It takes a few seconds for it to click in Shen Yuan’s head, and a chill races down his spine at the realization. Her eyes are filled with curiosity, “Shen-gongzi is a demon, isn’t he? Or perhaps something closer to a Yao? Fascinating that you’re living so close to humans if that’s the case, and with a cultivator no less.”

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shen Yuan says, he desperately wishes he could hide. Or that Xun Fu could be a little bit closer. He’s very aware that Lady Qin has positioned herself so that she is between him and his guardian and friend. He takes a step backwards.

“Don’t be frightened little one,” Lady Qin says with a soft laugh, “This Lady only has questions for you. Would you answer them?”

“No,” Shen Yuan says. He wishes his voice didn’t shake, he intends the word to be firm but it comes out small and frightened.

“I’ll give you something if you do,” Lady Qin coaxes, and Shen Yuan narrows his eyes at her. Creep! What, is she going to scoop him up and run off while Xun Fu yells “kidnapper” after her!? He takes a hesitant step backwards, frowning. “No? Your… A-Die? …Xun Fu. He said you like to read. I’ve got a really big library. Do you want to come see?”

“I don’t know how to read,” Shen Yuan lies, taking another step backwards.

“Just like you aren’t a Yao,” Lady Qin says with no small amount of amusement in her tone. “Come now, there must be something this Lady can provide you. Maybe a spiritual device? You look like a curious boy, I bet you’d like to see that right?”

[thatonebirdwrites]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/51626497/chapters/158477476

Finally updated!

I took December to rest because finishing Shattered exhausted me, I had bad flare-ups, and holidays are always so very hard for me. But I am determined to finish this fic too.

AO3 is being very slow for me tonight, so hopefully that fixes itself by morning?

EXCERPT:

The cave weeps and its moisture clings to her like webs. Far ahead a pulsing red light illuminates the rugged outlines of ribbed rock, while darkness and mist encroaches upon her feet. The stalactites and stalagmites both reach toward one another like desperate lovers who are destined to be kept apart by time. 

During the fight, she hadn’t meant to fall into the cavernous maw by the remains of the Art Center, and yet, here she walks. The tunnel she follows bisects this cave far under the city. Actually, no, she’s pretty sure she’s not under the city anymore. Maybe in the mountains? Surely not under the ocean. More water would leak through crevices, the pressure splintering the rock.

Her enemy has faded into the darkness with an irritating taunt. “Seek the screaming stone and understand the truth. Or die. Whichever you prefer.” 

Dying isn’t an option. She needs to return to Lena, but she can’t yet. Perhaps she can get a signal to her instead. Help her love find her, so that the team may come with improved firepower. She suspects her love is hard at work even now examining the fight and fixing where they went wrong.

In the meantime, she must seek the truth, but what does her enemy mean by the screaming stone? She ought to know what that is.

She parses through her memories, but gaps exist. A few segments of the trip to Ireland refuse her attempts at recall, while memories of her childhood on Krypton and her years with Alex ring clearer and closer than recent months. She feels disjointed, like part of her has split away, and worse, a growing anger coils in her gut. 

Where did they get Harun-el? She knows Lena had some as did the DEO. Has the False Court infiltrated even the DEO? What of L-Corp? How dare they threaten her Lena. Fury sizzles through her veins. How dare they come so close to her family.

She wants to rip apart these caverns. Make those men bleed for harming Lena, her family, and her adopted planet. These urges threaten to overtake her rational thought, and it frightens her. The more she dwells in the anger, the more violet sparks dance between her fingers.

She will find them. 

She will destroy them. 

She will end their injustice once and for all.

A trail of purple-gold lightning sparks in her wake.

[c-e-d-dreamer]

It is WIP Wednesday and I suppose I shall participate too with the singular thing I've written this week 😬 Will I finish cowboy Cassian in time for Nessian Week? Undetermined. But enjoy the snippet regardless?

She turns around another corner, just barely stopping short before she walks straight into a man standing in the center of the aisle. She has to tilt her head up to really take him in, the man standing a whole head taller than her, but it’s not just the height he has on her. His shoulders and chest are wide, stretching the flannel fabric he’s currently wearing, and the denim of his jeans clings to the thick lines of his thighs. Even with just seeing his profile, even with the curly strands of hair that hang down to his shoulders, Nesta can see the hard cut of his jawline, the stubble along the skin there.

For a moment, her mouth goes dry watching the man reach forward for a bag of some sort of farm feed. The large span of his hands somehow make the bag look small, and with the sleeves of his flannel pushed up to his elbows, Nesta has the perfect view of the muscles in forearm flexing as he hefts the bag off the shelf and over his shoulder. She’s sure the farm feed must be heavy, but he makes it look as though it weighs nothing.

He turns at that exact moment, practically starting when he notices Nesta. “Sorry, sweetheart. Didn’t see you there.”

He has exactly the sort of drawling accent that Nesta would expect from a town like this, his voice warm and deep. It pours from his lips like a glass of whiskey, practically curling around Nesta’s limbs. Those same lips curve up into an easy, cocksure smirk, bright hazel eyes taking her in.

“You’re certainly not from around here, are you?”

Nesta scoffs, crossing her arms. “That’s a bit presumptuous.”

She settles him with her most unimpressed look, eyes narrowed and lips twisted into a scowl. It’s a cool and cutting look that’s certainly sent plenty of men in the bars of Adriata turning and fleeing. But not this man. His smile only seems to grow, the greens and golds of his eyes sparking like sizzling embers.

“I think I know a city girl when I see one. What are you doing here in Windhaven?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“And what about your name? Can that be my business?”

“You wish.”

[transformersclandestine]

First Steps

“It is difficult for organics to remember their beginnings. From the moment you are born, you’re growing, changing, evolving into who you will eventually become at the apex of your lifetimes. But for us Cybertronians, for all mechanical life, the moment we are born is the beginning of the rest of our lives…”

——

The heating system began to cool off. Armatures that once carried the newborn life folded away out of use. In the center of what was shaped like a large coffin sat a pulsating mound of living metal: sentio metallico, the very fiber of every Cybertronian’s body. Inside this body pulsed the beating, electrical heart that provided the essence of who this ‘bot would become: the spark.

Terminus, blacksmith of the Kaon hot spot, twirled his instruments impatiently. This was not his first forging, but it was an odd case of a spark taking longer than expected to form the sentio metallico around it into a protoform. As a blacksmith, it was Terminus’ job to guide this spark along and help shape it into a final form, complete with an efficient alternate mode. As Kaon was a heavy mining town, it was expected that this protoform, Terminus’ 16th forged this hepta-cycle, would also be formatted into a ready-to-go worker. Right as Terminus’ patience with the protoform was reaching its boiling point, the living metal ball shifted and pulsed. Points began forming, shaping into limbs, a torso, and a head. Terminus got to work. The forceps he had been clicking to himself whisked into the still-malleable sentio metallico. Concentrating, he flicked and manipulated. Forming the body of a strong, miner-type ‘bot required precision and concentration, but to a blacksmith as tenured as Terminus, it was merely second nature. To some Cybertronians, the art of blacksmithing was holy work, garnished by the will of Primus Himself. To the faithful, blacksmiths were the crafters of life; the engineers responsible for bringing Primus’ ideals and hopes to physical form. To the blacksmiths themselves, especially Terminus and those working in the more rural areas of Cybertron, it was simply work.

The forging of the protoform did not take too long, Terminus’ skills made sure of that. Upon completion, Terminus stood back and let the protoform’s spark take over.

——

It seemed at first, a flash; a pulse, somewhere in the distance beyond his sight. Not that he had sight, for the world beyond him did not exist: it was nothing. No color, no sound, nor smell existed. Until all at once and without warning, it did.

His mind struggled to comprehend. The complex shapes and images that suddenly assaulted his newly-forged senses were overwhelming. After a short time, things began to fade into view. His electro-synapses that were sparking wildly just moments ago calmed themselves into a distinct rhythm. The feeling…the feeling was strange. He didn’t know it, but he was alive.

He spoke. His first words were a question.

“What is this? Who am I?”

Terminus did not look up from his tool box, of which he was packing up after a forge well done. He had gotten used to the protoforms asking questions immediately upon birth. It was much preferable to the diode-splitting screams from his earlier forging days, before modern tools made the process much more stable. Without looking, he responded.

“Your designation is D-16. And this is the world. Welcome to it.”

D-16 swiveled his head in an artificial manner, not used to the movement of body parts and seeing the new world around him. He took in a view that admittedly wasn’t very pleasant. The hot spot he was born in was a rather dark, damp hydroswamp. A sizzling pool of some vicious green liquid sat some distance behind Terminus. The soil beneath his blacksmith’s servos sank in slightly and the air was filled with steaming fog from the pious pool. The protoform tried to move his lower limbs. His legs swung out of his forging container awkwardly. They tried in vain to take a first step, but his foot spun to the side and he lost balance. Thankfully, Terminus had caught him on the descent.

“Easy there,” he said to D-16, who didn’t seem to notice any issues, “first steps are usually the hardest. Best to take it slow.”

D-16 looked at Terminus with newborn awe.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Terminus helped the ‘bot to his feet before holding out his hand. “Terminus. I’m your blacksmith.”

D-16 didn’t reciprocate the intended handshake. Instead, he began studying Terminus’ extended hand, almost as if he were uncovering a lost artifact from a time beyond. Terminus relaxed his hand and rotated it, palm outstretched.

“Come,” he said calmly to the intrigued newborn who placed his own hand in Terminus’, “I’ll show you your new world.”

——

Terminus led his curious protoform out of the hydroswamp. Though the swamp sat not far from the gates of nearby Kaon, the journey took longer than expected due to the newborn’s insistent fascination with the new world he had found himself in. Every particle, element, and facet of the world piqued his curiosity and Terminus had to gently coerce him more than a handful of times to keep moving. 

The gates of Kaon were industrial in design, owing to the polity’s penchant for blue-collar work. Large spires of crystallized Energon, lifestuff of Cybertron, mounted the archway into the city. This too fascinated D-16 and he stopped short once again to gaze at the structure before him. This time, Terminus did not interrupt. The sight of Kaon’s gate was indeed one to behold. Outside the gate, a large mining vehicle with a conical drill puttered forward before suddenly shifting into the form of a robot. This took D-16’s attention more than anything they had encountered thus far. He uttered an excited and amazed phrase as the ‘bot greeted him with a kind smile and wave before going on his way. D-16 mimed the motion and turned awestruck back to Terminus who looked on with a bemused expression. 

“What was that?” D-16 asked his de-facto tour guide.

“That’s a fellow miner,” Terminus answered back. “What he did was transform. It’s something we all can do. Watch.”

In the flick of an optic, Terminus reconfigured his body into a similar-looking mining vehicle. D-16 gazed in amazement, then looked down at his hands and clenched. Nothing happened. Shifting his servos ever so slightly, D-16 tried again. This time, he could feel the surge of energy flowing through his circuits and he too transformed into a vehicle of similar design.

“This…is…AMAZING!”, he cried out in joy. The young ‘bot spun around in vehicle mode, kicking up dust and dirt, having a blast in doing so. Terminus transformed back to robot mode and smiled. Seeing the newly forged ‘bots discover their inner purpose was one thing he could never get tired of.

——

As Terminus and D-16 ventured further into the polity of Kaon, the newborn’s eagerness to learn grew and grew. Though this wasn’t Terminus’ first rodeo with an extremely inquisitive protoform, he had to admit that D-16’s curiosity rivaled all of his former protégés combined. He tried in vain to answer everything D-16 asked but the rate of questions was becoming overwhelming. Stopping short of the entrance to the Kaon mineshafts, he held up a hand to D-16, who had begun to ask why the ground was getting rougher.

“Hey, kid. That’s enough,” Terminus said sternly, “I know it’s a brand new world to you and that everything has a story behind it, but I’m just your blacksmith, alright? I don’t have all the answers. I’m only here with you because we needed help down in the mines.”

D-16 stopped walking, stunned and slightly hurt, but understanding. “Oh, I see. I’m sorry.”

Terminus relaxed his hand and placed it comfortingly on D-16’s shoulder. “It’s alright. I apologize too. Like I said, everything’s new to you. I shouldn’t be so harsh. You’re just…way more questioning than any other protoform I’ve helped forge.”

The older ‘bot led D-16 into the Kaon mines’ opening. The entrance was a natural cave, a stark contrast to the metallically paved roads that led to it. Purple streaks of residual Energon lined the walls and acted as guide lights for the ‘bots that entered.

“These are the mines of Kaon, your new workplace.” Terminus explained. As they walked further in, D-16 noticed plenty of other ‘bots similar in shape to him and Kaon using tools to crack rocks. Some had found solidified purple crystals inside and began loading them into bins. 

“Energon is the lifeblood of this planet. It’s our fuel, our food, and our livelihood,” Terminus continued, “What you do here helps not only yourself but every ‘bot on the planet. They all rely on you - on us - to keep Cybertron operational.”

It was there, in that moment, that it all began to make sense to D-16. His childlike curiosity had suddenly become burdened with the weight of Terminus’ words. Though D-16 did not fully understand why, it was clear that this task he was built for was something far grander than he had been expecting. He clenched his fist and glanced confidently at Terminus.

“Then I’ll do my part,” D-16 said, “Cybertron will survive so long as I am in this mine.”

Terminus chuckled at D-16’s newfound confidence.

The mine’s newest worker picked up the closest pickaxe and began chipping away at the rock foundations before them. Confident in another successful forging and introduction to society, Terminus began to leave D-16 to his new life. Before he got too far however, he heard D-16 utter one last question.

“Terminus, are you happy with your work?”

It stopped the old teacher dead in his tracks. For the first time, he was presented with a question he could not answer easily. It took him a minute to think, before he looked back to D-16 with a smile.

“As long as it’s for the good of Cybertron, then yes” he answered.

D-16 returned the smile and eagerly returned to his work. Before long, he had struck a small purple crystal in his rock outcropping. He excitedly pulled it from the formation and placed it aside in a small bin.

Terminus began to leave again before stopping once more. He reached into a containment pocket in his chest and pulled out a small clear file card. 

“Hey, kid!” Terminus called back to D-16. When the young ‘bot looked up, he tossed the card and D-16 caught it. 

“My Iacon Vaults card. Greatest repository of knowledge on Cybertron. If you’re ever curious about anything, they’re sure to have your answers.”

D-16 clenched the card close to his chest and nodded to Terminus. The two exchanged respectful glances before the blacksmith turned away and left D-16 to his work. The newly forged miner likewise returned to his work, blissfully chipping away at a new outcropping of rocks.

——

The halls of the Iacon Vaults were unlike anything D-16 had seen before. Whereas his first steps into Kaon blinded him with a flurry of grungy, hardened architecture, Iacon’s premiere data archiving library was seemingly sculpted by the hand of Primus Himself. The front entrance sprang from a large, crystalline structure, rounded at the end with a welcoming presence. It felt almost sacrilegious to D-16 to even walk these halls, as nearly every crystal detail was polished and clean. At the back of the building, D-16 could spot what appeared to be flight bays welcoming in and seeing off dozens of flying ‘bots and smaller cargo ships. The Vaults were humming with activity today.

Inside, the grandiose display didn’t simmer. Lining the walls were racks and racks of servers, each blinking with a dazzling display of lights of every color. In contrast to the outside hustle, the inside of the Vaults were strangely empty. Not a single soul lingered in the halls and all D-16 could hear were the soft buzzing of the servers operating. Alone at the front’s information desk sat a broad-shouldered, red-and-blue ‘bot carefully scanning over an assortment of data pads. Upon noticing D-16’s approach, he quickly stood up and gave a warmly inviting smile. 

“Welcome to the Iacon Vaults. My name is Orion Pax. What can I help you find?"

[thehugheslover]

1am Pancake making and dancing Luke Hughes x reader

It was one of those late nights where everything felt just a little more perfect. Luke Hughes, NHL star and Madison's boyfriend of seven months, sat casually on the couch of his cozy, but stylish condo. It was one of the rare moments when the world outside—his career, the media attention, the whirlwind of life—wasn’t a constant presence. Instead, there was only the soft glow of the lamps around the living room and the quiet hum of city life filtering through the windows.

Madison, his beautiful and quiet girlfriend, was curled up beside him. She wasn’t famous like him, and she often felt out of place in the spotlight. She was shy and preferred to keep to herself, but there was something magnetic about her. Her natural curls fell messily around her face, and she wore one of his football shirts that was so big on her it almost looked like a dress. The shirt hung loosely over her, barely covering the underwear she had slipped into for comfort, her bare legs tucked up under her. Madison had always been quiet, her beauty soft and understated, but it was impossible to ignore how she looked in that shirt—so effortlessly pretty, so comfortable in her own skin. Luke loved that about her.

The clock on the wall ticked toward 1 AM. Madison, who had been scrolling aimlessly through her phone, set it down beside her and looked up at Luke. Her voice was soft, but there was a playful glint in her eyes.

“I’m kind of craving pancakes,” she said, a small smile tugging at her lips.

Luke raised an eyebrow, glancing over at her from the couch. “Pancakes?” he asked, his tone amused. “At 1 AM?”

Madison shrugged, looking almost embarrassed by the sudden craving. “I know it’s late, but it just sounds really good right now.”

Luke laughed softly, running a hand through his messy hair. “Well, if we’re both going to be up this late, we might as well make pancakes,” he said, standing up and offering her a hand. “Come on, I’ll help.”

Madison hesitated for a second but then took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. The kitchen, just a few steps away, was warm and inviting, and the low hum of music in the background made the whole moment feel even more comfortable. Luke had already pulled out the ingredients for pancakes, as if he’d been waiting for this moment. Madison loved how he always seemed to anticipate her needs, no matter how small.

They worked together, Madison stirring the pancake batter while Luke cooked. The only sound was the soft sizzle of the batter hitting the griddle and the music playing from the speakers. As they moved around the kitchen, Luke’s hand brushed against hers a few times, and each time, it sent a little spark through her. He was like that—effortlessly making her feel noticed without making her feel uncomfortable.

Then, as if by fate, the song My Girl by The Temptations came on. It was one of those old classics that Luke loved, and the beat filled the kitchen with an easy, relaxed vibe. Madison felt her shoulders relax, and she smiled softly. There was something about this moment, about the softness of the night and the quiet intimacy of being with him, that made her feel at ease.

Before she knew it, Luke was standing behind her, his arms wrapping around her waist. He pulled her gently into him, and Madison’s breath hitched for a moment, her heart picking up speed. Luke had always had this way of making her feel safe, of making her feel like she belonged exactly where she was. She leaned into him instinctively, her head resting against his chest.

“Dance with me,” Luke murmured, his voice low and inviting. He gently swayed with her, the two of them moving together in a slow rhythm.

Madison wasn’t much of a dancer—she had never been the type to love being the center of attention, let alone on a dance floor. But with Luke, everything felt different. There was no pressure, no audience. It was just them, the soft music, and the warmth of the kitchen around them. She closed her eyes, letting herself get lost in the moment, in the feel of his arms around her.

The song played on, the sweet melody wrapping around them like a soft blanket, and then, without warning, Luke spun her gently. Madison let out a surprised laugh, feeling the rush of air as she twirled. She was used to Luke’s playfulness, but there was something magical about how he made everything feel so effortless, even the silly things like dancing in the middle of the night.

He pulled her back into him and spun her again, this time lifting her by the waist. Madison giggled, feeling weightless as he spun her in a circle, her feet barely touching the ground. She laughed harder, her body bubbling with joy. The sensation of being twirled by him, her laughter mixing with the soft music in the background, felt surreal in the best way.

Luke’s grin was wide as he set her back on her feet, his hands still holding her waist. Madison wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers threading through his hair, and Luke’s hands slid around her waist, pulling her close. They stood there for a moment, their bodies pressed together, swaying gently to the music.

Then, with a mischievous look in his eyes, Luke bent his knees slightly, wrapping his arms around her again. Before Madison could ask what he was doing, he lifted her off the ground completely. Her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist, and she gasped, a playful squeal escaping her lips as Luke spun her again. This time, he didn’t stop. He just held her there, her body cradled against his as they spun together, the world around them blurring for a moment.

Madison’s heart raced, not from fear, but from the pure joy of being held so securely, so effortlessly by Luke. She could feel the beat of his heart, steady and strong, beneath her hands, and she smiled, the kind of smile that reached her eyes and made her feel warm from the inside out.

He slowed the spinning and brought her back down, her feet touching the floor again. She stayed close to him, her arms still around his neck, not wanting the moment to end. They stood there, quietly, the music continuing to play softly in the background, each of them lost in the comfort of being together.

Luke brushed a lock of her curly hair from her face and gave her a soft smile. "I love you," he whispered, his voice full of affection.

Madison’s heart swelled at the words, the warmth in his gaze making her feel like she was the only person in the world. "I love you too," she whispered back, her voice soft but steady.

It didn’t matter that they were just two people making pancakes at 1 AM. It didn’t matter that they weren’t doing anything extraordinary. In that moment, with her legs still slightly shaky from the spin and Luke’s arms holding her close, Madison knew she was exactly where she was meant to be.

And that was all that mattered.

[limerental]

ficletvember 2024 - day 23

Driven by her love for Lambert, Keira Metz attempts a forbidden ritual.

As her carefully-researched ritual unfolded just as planned, Keira felt absurdly like a child about to be scolded.

The Brotherhood had had a sprawling list of forbidden magics, dark arts never to be performed by any mage under any circumstance. Necromancy, demonic contracts, all sorts of spells and alchemical applications that stripped intelligent beings of their agency, and of course, fire magic.

In the bloated organization's heyday, something as mundane as an ailing village witch calling up a spark during a blizzard to light her tinder would have tripped some blaring alarm on Thanned Island and have swift consequences.

But despite its all-seeing power, the Brotherhood had not seen the darkness creeping from within, and it could not censure her now. Neither could the Lodge, if any of its members still lived.

The candles around the circle begin to sizzle out one after another, the only light the blue glow that lit Keira's lowered palms. She pressed them flat to the earth as the last wick sputtered and spoke clearly the next line of the ritual.

It had been a tricky thing to find the grave of a man who had not been buried, but fortunately her working didn't require the entire corpse. If it had, Keira would have sucked it up and assembled the whole scavenger-scattered skeleton to the last phalange, but she would've bitched and moaned the entire time.

If there had been a bloated, rotting corpse to drag out of the wilderness, she would have actually told Lambert what she intended to do so that he could be the one to grapple with the body and harvest what she needed.

But he likely would have bitched and moaned the entire time, and there was a reason she'd concealed her plans from him. Men could be so blinded by their emotions, and she suspected he would react poorly.

Thankfully, to complete the ritual, she'd only needed to fish a single bone out of the dust.

What was the true moral distinction, she had always wondered, between curing the terminally sick and raising the dead? Working together, she and Lambert had concocted a plague remedy to hopefully cure the whole fading Continent. If it was moral and upright of her to resurrect a dying populace, why not one man wrongfully killed?

Perhaps death could be seen as simply a deeply advanced sickness and the necromancer a physician with unusual skills.

The little metacarpal resting at the center of the circle seemed far too small and unassuming to belong to a full-grown man. Keira had held it in the cup of her palm and thought how strange it was to look at one small nub of bone and know it had once been a part of someone so significant. 

Not in the grand scheme of things, of course. Not to the Continent at large or really most anyone at all. 

But to Lambert, who in the course of the unusual events of the past year, had become quite significant to Keira, this person had been–

Kneeling, she bent low enough that her forehead kissed cold stone, speaking the invocation louder as the air in the room closed in around her, bright with magic. It was not as ugly and tainted as it flowed through her as she'd been made to believe. Perhaps the same ritual used for more nefarious purposes– to resurrect a dead corrupt king or amass an undead army– would leave a nastier taste in one's mouth.

It did not seem a dark thing at all, not even as the magic began to weigh her down, feeling it in every ounce of her being. A sorcerer of lesser skill may find themselves unraveled by the power that seethed around her, but Keira Metz was no two-bit fortune teller. 

Truthfully, she was morbidly and covetously curious if anyone would ever love her so much. If being her lover or friend had changed anyone in such a lasting way. What she had with Lambert was good, more intimate than she'd ever allowed herself to be with any man, but after this was done, who was to say that he would still–

It happened all at once. The little scrap of bone leapt into the air and glowed backlit by a fierce and blinding light, and as Keira straightened, panting with the release of magic, realizing she had been shouting as it crested, a man suddenly slumped nude before her. 

A strange Witcher, his slit-pupilled eyes narrowing like a cat's.

[osamucide]

sweet

we don’t need to say it to each other, sweet

wc: 1k

cw: gn!reader, soft!chuuya, alcohol, cigarettes, the tiniest bit suggestive, pure domestic fluff

reid: a little chuuya love because truth be told he is precious too. enjoy

. . . .ᐟ

One of the easiest ways to break down his hardened exterior was with that nickname.

"Ginny," you called as the hall light flooded your living room with warmth. No sooner than it appeared did it leave, replaced by the shifting and rustling of shoes, a coat, a hat. The connected kitchen was dim with the stovetop light and nothing else. Your water was boiling. The smell of red sauce grew stronger the closer he padded toward you to wrap around your middle.

Either he was tired or the nickname had subdued him quickly enough because any typical grumbling about what an exhausting work day that was was foregone in favor of a soft, humming kiss to your shoulder. You decided you could turn away from your noodles for a moment.

"Ginny," you cooed again, tiptoeing in a half circle to face your lover. "Hi."

If Dazai was still around you'd never get away with that nickname as often as you did. Luckily, he was gone before he had enough time to taint it. It was derived, between both you and the brunette, from the constant poking-at of the color of his hair - ginger - but Chuuya would only let something like that fly if it was from you. (He found it endearing more than he 'let it fly', but you didn't have to know everything.)

It was true, he was tired, and if it weren't for the two empty glasses already in place at the table and the steam bubbling and popping behind you, Chuuya would've insisted you come lay down with him right now so he could dip into sleep amid a cathartic gripe about his day with your fingers in his hair. There were very few hypothetical circumstances, however, in which Chuuya Nakahara would turn down wine and Italian food, and coming home to his baby and a freshly-opened pack of Seven Stars set by the recently cleaned-out ashtray, tired as he may be, was not one of them.

Trapped in his embrace, you curled your arms around him and brought his head to your shoulder. Chuuya released a deep sigh into the side of your neck, closed his eyes, and let the tip of his nose pass along your jawline. You tilted in compliance, and one more "Ginny" left you, a whisper this time.

Chuuya punctuated the little moment with a kiss to your cheekbone. "I'll pour wine, yeah?"

A soft giggle left you; you undid the buckle securing the choker around his neck before tucking it in his pocket. "Yeah. S'almost done."

A little speaker stuttered out The Dark Side of the Moon - Chuuya was never a big fan of old American psychedelic rock or musical soundscapes before you, but here he was, lighting up to the clang of grimy change. After a little deliberation, he pulled a bottle of Lambrusco from the cabinet - the one specifically for alcohol and nothing else - and strode back to the table. On the way, he passed the sink where you were straining the pasta and tucked the cigarette between your waiting lips.

No sooner than he stepped away, you were following him, and "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" begged into the space of the kitchen. Between each of your movements was a sizzling charge; suddenly, he felt more awake. The transfer of energy you blessed him with always took him by surprise. You were just placing the sauce pot on a trivet, he was just pouring wine, but it was a little magic dance. He found himself with the cigarette again. Stevie and Tom were fading out of the room, you were settling into your seat across from his, and the same lighter you both used for the smokes sparked up the candle at the center of the table. It was all a bit magic and horribly romantic, and so simple and so sensical, and he loved it. He did love coming home safe to you.

And over dinner, he watched you. You swayed side to side under his gaze and at the taste of your own creation. Smoke lingered. The sparkle of the wine died between your teeth, and you giggled more, much more, and Chuuya's chest was warm. Chuuya's face was warm and red and he almost forgot what he had been up to less than an hour before. Of course, the vino stole away his newfound verve. The longer he looked at you, the more his senses wanted to fall into bed with you and never leave. The longer you looked at him the same, the warmer he got. Late dinner, his pleasant little time loop. My very special one, he thought in time with Moe Tucker’s voice.

He hated to admit that when he stood the room was vibrating, but that's what three-plus glasses and the crushing softness of your eyes did to him. "After Hours" was a going-home song, after all, so he snuffed out the candle with his gloved fingers and let you pull him by the belt loops to your room, the speaker still droning be damned. You just wouldn't close the door, so it'd be a nice white noise to sink into the dark behind.

Soft synths and wavy guitars undressed him, spilled kisses down his neck; he breathed in the air, and it tasted like you. And you kissed him. And you kissed him and you kissed him until he couldn't keep his eyes open.

"Ginny," you said one last time, not even a whisper but a feather-light musing into those fiery locks. "Ginny, I love you."

"I love you, sweetheart." Most notably, Chuuya's heart was warm, under both your palm and the thick comforter. His home was under your palm, he supposed. He would've given it more thought if the fatigue in his bones and the meal in his belly weren't lulling him to sleep, never mind the intoxicants (the wine and your touch). He slept, and he wanted to never leave.

[fogaminghub]

🌌✨ Soar high in Infinity Nikki with our ultimate guide to the "Repair the Hot Air Balloon" quest in Firework Isles! 🎈✨ Follow the walkthrough to recover the hot air balloon parts and reveal the mysteries of the skies. With awesome rewards like Glitter Bubbles and Sketch I, you won’t want to miss it! 🚀💖

[greansebug]

The Show Must Go On

Huh.

...it's over.

...You've done it.

...Why don't you feel accomplished?

You, slayer of demons.

You saved... well, everyone.

...so why does it feel like a statistic to you?

You gaze out, over the rotten, sludge and garbage filled wastes below- but not before briefly losing your balance on the pole you cling to and damn near having a heart attack...

...It's supposed to be over.

It is over.

You killed her.

...are you not proud? Not proud of yourself?

You put an end to it.

All of it.

And yet, watching her fur char and wither as her lifeless body went up in flames on that bonfire...

...You felt nothing.

Not a thought crossed your mind, not even after all left the procession.

All but you.

And now, here you stand- or, rather, hang- as you feel just as lost as you already were.

Yu hear a deep, rumbling growl from the skies, booming down upon you, your ears automatically pinning back against your skull.

You know what to do.

You waste no time flinging yourself off of the pole you dangle from, precariously landing on another- before toppling over and landing face-first in the mud.

It appears your expertise has not helped much for your proficiency in survival.

Anyhow, you slither through the small entry shaft, small whirrs and clanks of ancient mechanisms ringing through your sensitive eardrums as you fall, slipping deeper through the cramped, claustrophobic pipe, until-

Pop.

You slide out from the exit shaft and land neatly on your feet.Well, you're better at something, at least.

The shelter looks the same as all the others. Cracked and old... it looks as if it barely holds up. And yet, strangely, it does.

A small, pitiful fire pit sits in the middle of the shelter. It is truly miraculous that fire is even possible in this humid environment, even down here, deep below the surface.

You know the drill.

You walk over to the center, seating yourself by the miniscule, ashen pile of charred wood and blackened rubbish...

You could barely even call it a fire pit.

Small pieces of rock-like junk encircle a small collection of flammable material bathed in swathes of ash... You wonder if it can even be lit anymore.

Despite your skepticism, you retrieve a small pouch from your belt...

One that your mother had passed down to you from many years past...

...and took a pinch of fine, red powder from the hide-fashoned strap.

Sprinkling it upon the shoddy, burnt splinters of wood, you lean down, blowing on it softly, sparking a couple small embers- and slowly, but surely, kindling the ash just barely and bringing the flickers of flame to life.

Though small, the fire still burned. Begging to be fanned and given life.

You lean back, propping your arm up on your knee...

...and you finally understand.

You don't feel unworthy, nor unaccomplished.

Simply resigned. Understanding that even after all that has came before you... the show goes on.

The cycle continues, it simply must.

For it is all you know.

@thunder-opossum Had an idea and decided to put it on paper. It's 2 am, so I doubted it was gonna be great, but I needed to put my idea to a use of some kind, and I'm on a bit of a writing kick rn.

Context for the weird fire thing at the end:

A head canon of mine is that Slugcats have a tradition. At the end of every cycle, they ignite a small fire, signifying their ideology of continued survival, even if they're just prolonging the inevitable. The world may be a dying ember by this time, but it is there- and albeit without purpose, surviving is all they know.

The red powder is my interpretation of the weird red stuff Arti puts on grenades to make them explosive. Considering other Slugcats can craft explosives, I took it as some sort of universal thing that all of them had, especially for the weird fire-shelter-tradition thingy.

Also, referring to Sizzle in the second person.

p.s. probably also there's some symbolism with how Arti was burned and how the fire represents the cycle and survival and the world and how Arti was consumed by the cycle but I'm not smart enough to understand it

[jbarneswilson]

fic pride weekend midweek

thank you so very much, @eusuntgratie, for tagging me!

Rules: Post your favourite line or passage from as many of your published works as you’d like. Let yourself feel proud of your creations! Tag as many people as you post snippets, so your fellow fic friends can be proud, too.

hope on the horizon

She turns and gives [Bucky] a quick salute then continues on her way. Once she’s behind the count, Nat catches Sarah’s eye. Holding her hands about twelve inches apart, she mouths to Sarah, He has a huge dick!

Sarah laughs as she pulls a coffee stirrer out of the little caddy on the table and calls out, “Yes, thank you for that information, Nat!”

not too tired

“If you broke my phone—” Sarah starts to say, raising up to look behind him.

He shoves her down and plants his hand on her back to keep her there. “Then I’ll buy you a new one. Now shut up and take this dick.”

brighter than ever

… Their fingers brush when he grabs the bucket and he feels the same sizzle he always does; the ricochet of lightning through his body that settles and hums under his skin whenever she’s around.

stevie’s mom has got it goin’ on

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Yeah, and I’m gonna kiss yours with it, too.”

Steve slowly turns his head, eyes wide and fierce with murderous intent. Bucky puts his hand up, trying to protest his innocence, but Steve balls up his fist and stalks toward him.

but keep your heart up

Bucky hums low in his throat, still in that space between awake and asleep. If he keeps his eyes closed long enough, he’ll drift straight back into sleep. Lulled by the softness of the morning and Sam’s warmth curled into his side. He frowns when he feels Sam roll away from him. The bed dips and the sheet slides down to his hips.

something to talk about

Bucky’s smile widens when he catches sight of the covered dish in her hands. “Hey, kid; whatcha got there?”

“Well, my momma said to tell you we had some extra blackberry cobbler layin’ around. But, really, she just made the one. And it’s for you.”

The Holidate

“She’d kill me and then where would you be? Without your best friend in the whole wide world, that’s where.”

Closing the cooler and lifting it by both handles, she gives him a look before heading toward her truck. “You’re my brother’s best friend. We are acquaintances at best.”

a perfect end to a perfect day

He smiles a little to himself as he looks out over the lake, ears catching the song of a far-off bird. Sarah’s body heat seeps into his right side and her heartbeat thumps gently in his ear, a counterpoint to the crickets in the grass. The scent of her, warm skin and lotion, fills his nostrils and he breathes deep, pulling her in.

a night for bad dreams

With deft skill borne from years of experience, Okoye quickly gets her youngest settled back in her own bed without waking her. She kisses Esihle’s forehead before making her way back to the living room.

Attuma sits up at her approach, scrubbing one had over his face, he reaches for her with the other. He pulls her in to stand between his legs and asks, “Time ‘s it?” around a small yawn.

across the ocean blue

K’uk’ulkan sighs happily as he strolls toward the town center, food stalls giving way first to the fabric weavers then to the armorers and vibranium forgers. Attuma follows a few paces behind, eyes drawn to the showers of sparks as new spears and axes are shaped from raw vibranium. His left hand aches with yearning for the familiar weight of smooth metal.

He passes forge after forge, sees spear upon spear and ax after ax being stockpiled, and feels anticipation flutter in his chest. His people are preparing for war. Soon, he will be called upon, his altar overflowing with the choicest offerings, smoke from fresh candles mingling with the finest incense… And he will be glad to answer their prayers, to give their warriors strength and speed and courage against their enemy.

the calm before the storm

Taking a fortifying breath and blowing it out, [Attuma] goes first to the children’s room. He smooths the frown from Itzel’s sleeping face, unsurprised to see that even in her dreams she remains serious. Next, he gathers Khanyiswa’s discarded blankets from the floor and tucks her back in, as he has many a night. Coming upon the third bed, he smiles softly at the sight of little Esihle and Chimalmat curled together like kittens.

i tag: @jemgirl86 @dasphinxone @xoxoviva @siancore @spinachgarden @princess-of-gondor @jadedjotun and anyone else who sees this and would like to share!

[godzillatalks]

The door opens with a hiss, but Rodimus doesn't even have to look up to see who it was— militaristically quiet and carefully measured pedesteps from a mech far lighter than him already giving away exactly who entered the room.

"Fancy seeing you again, scout." Rodimus snorts, finally dragging his optics away from the actually unimportant data pad to watch Bumblebee stride over to the desk in the middle of the room. The yellow bot doesn't turn to look at Rodimus, grumbling quietly as he sets down the reports he'd brought in onto Optimus' desk.

"Why're you here, fire hazard? I thought you were supposed to be causing troubles elsewhere. As in, not on Cybertron. At all." Bumblebee glares at Rodimus out of the corners of sharply narrowed optics. The Prime just grins at him, sharp teeth shimmering in the synthetic light.

"Oh, maybe it's 'cause my dad kept me around for a reason," Rodimus drawls, voice cutting through the air like an arrow aimed straight at Bumblebee's composure; something he struggled to keep together in the first place. He grits his dentae together, swiveling on the heel of his pede to respond to the fiery colored bot, but Rodimus continues before Bee can get the words out.

"Y'know, cause he actually needs me?" Rodimus' head tilts oh so slightly, tone lilted and taunting as he tapped right at the center of his chest, where his half of the Matrix resided, with a sharp digit.

Bumblebee doesn't let himself think before he lunges with a right hook.

It connects harshly with Rodimus' chin and he drops the data pad he had been holding, the fragile thing crashing to the floor, screen shattering into chunky shards that skittered across the floor alongside Rodimus, sent skidding backward from the sheer force behind Bumblebee's punch.

His inner temperature rises, heat raging from the core of his spark and outward through every line of energon in his frame. Fire flashes from the chrome piping winding around his arms and legs, cerulean optics shifting to a dark and angry, storming blue.

"Oh, because he needs you?" The scout sneers, his own optics flaring near white with anger. "The kid who wasn't even around during the war, who let his own father die—"

Bumblebee is cut off when Rodimus charges at him with a roar of rage, sharp digits extended and ready to tear, flames pouring from the pipes on his arms as if he could drown the other bot in flames, even if now they were just for show.

He could, in a sense.

Bumblebee barely rolls out of the way, feeling the heat of the flames score nasty (but superficial) burns into his paint job as he ducked under the anger-fueled lunge. He aims a fist as he moves, sending it hard into Rodimus' side.

Rodimus' plating burns. Bumblebee recoils in pain at the same time Rodimus does from the punch. He shouldn't have been surprised.

Rodimus, of course, immediately takes advantage of the slight hesitation, wrapping clawed servos around Bumblebee's throat and slamming him into the floor. Plating sizzles on contact between them, the sheer temperature of Rodimus' frame enough to make paint bubble. His servos burn indents into Bumblebee's throat cabling.

Bumblebee doesn't even scream. He can't. Primus damn, it hurts. But he'll keep fighting.

His servos twist around Rodimus' forearm, pushing through the pain to toss the larger bot off of himself with a well anchored and executed jerk of his arms to the side.

Rodimus is sent rolling, sliding to a stop with his claws dug into the floor. Bumblebee heaves himself onto his front, one servo tentatively pressing at his now fried throat. (Voicebox fine. Just hurts.)

They're just about to jump at each other again, optics shimmering with a long burning fire of jealousy and hatred for the other, when the door slides open.

Optimus squints at the two mechs on the floor of his office.

"What in Primus' name..?" He mumbles, glancing to Rodimus and then to Bumblebee.

Immediately, they point at each other.

"It was his fault." In unison, they speak, Bumblebee's voice laced with pained static and Rodimus' dripping with layers of venom.

Optimus pinches his nasal ridge and sighs.

[edupunkn00b]

I Love You Heart and Mind, Ch. 2: Moving Back

Prev - I Love You Heart and Mind - Next - Masterpost - [ AO3 ]

Logan develops new ways to… divert his emotional reactions and avoid repeated instances of his physical transformations.

"E equals MC scared!" Logan shouted, pushing his growing—and his growing—fear at the entire situation into a virtual box in his chest. Like Sherlock's mind palace, he'd found it a useful mental mechanism in, well, situations such as these. Sealed tight with a heavy chain wrapped around it, the inner box heaved and sizzled, searing hot when he thought too much about it or tried to examine it, but…

He took a careful breath. Only an infinitesimal tightening around his collar and the room appeared to be essentially the same size it had been when they'd first arrived.

It worked!

Continuing his explanation of their presence and the job ahead, Logan avoided Patton's eyes. Amplified under the influence of Anxiety's room, tender Patton was caught in the figurative grip of his arachnophobia, the fear overpowering his own thinking until an artistic rendering of the dreaded arthropods threatened to push him closer to the actual spiders hiding in the cobwebs littering the rest of the space.

Logan eyed the unusually large Argiope aurantia working to repair the damage his own sudden appearance next to the banister had caused. He ignored Patton's request to switch positions and wordlessly willed Roman and Thomas to do the same. Patton was safer in his current position, even if his fear did not permit him to recognize it.

But even this intellectual understanding was insufficient to fight the draw of his plaintive requests, so Logan struggled to force his attention away from the Heart's shuddering fear. They had a task ahead and, once they'd convinced Anxiety of his enduring importance, they would all be able to leave.

~

Over the following months, Logan encountered additional opportunities to refine this new technique for emotional control. And, to varying degrees, his fellow Sides aided in this effort. Roman was rarely a genuine obstacle, his own emotional outbursts almost comically simple to reframe as annoyances. Expressions of irritation at the Princely Side, even when not all could honestly be characterized as provoked, provided Logan a useful outlet, a metaphorical steam valve of sorts.

Virgil’s typical dry sarcasm was similarly easy to allow to slip by unprocessed. He rarely triggered a true emotional reaction and the anxious Side’s need for calm, steady handling engendered itself to calm, steady responses.

The Others were such infrequent features in Logan’s days that their presence consumed him with curiosity, effortlessly pushing aside all other feelings.

And then there was Patton.

As Thomas’ Heart, Patton’s demeanor was a study in the vagaries of human emotional expression. Also, as Thomas’ Heart, Patton’s moods were remarkably transferrable to the other Sides, none more, it seemed than to him, Thomas’ Mind. Patton’s joy sparked a palpable warmth in the center of Logan’s chest, his laughter almost literally musical to his ears. It was challenging to resist an incomprehensible urge to join in, even when he did not know or understand the source of Patton’s mirth.

Equally, Patton’s sadness cut him deep in his core, sending a raw ache through his nerves that was difficult to ignore.

There appeared to be a visual element to the phenomenon. His empathetic reactions to Patton’s emotions were unlike other happenings in the Mindscape of which Logan was aware even when he was not witness to them. Roman’s—and Remus’—creative efforts registered in his mind regardless of where either twin was working. Virgil’s anxious spirals reached him from every spot in the Mindscape. It appeared, however, that Logan needed to visually—or auditorially—perceive Patton’s emotional expressions in order to feel them for himself.

Logan had also noted the other Sides did not appear to experience or otherwise be aware of the phenomenon, a finding he tucked away for eventual analysis. To be fully honest, Logan was in no rush to uncover the cause of the other Sides’ obliviousness. Their inattention had served him well in his attempts to conceal his more physical responses to his own overpowering emotions.

It seemed, in this instance at least, that the less the other Sides knew, the better.

“Good morning, Patton.”

For not the first time that week, Logan stepped into the kitchen in search of his morning coffee and discovered Patton staring out the window, lacidaisically stirring something sticky and sweet-smelling in a big metal bowl. On most previous mornings, Patton would greet him with a cheery smile and a boisterous salutation before he’d even gotten both feet on the linoleum tiled floor. Lately, though, Patton appeared so lost in thought it took spoken words or even a soft touch to break him of his reverie.

With any other Side, Logan would hesitate to initiate physical contact without express permission, however Patton’s frequent and spontaneous group hugs left Logan feeling slightly more comfortable reaching for him on his own accord. “Good morning, Patton,” he said again, lightly letting his hand rest on Patton’s shoulder.

He started, turning to Logan with a wide smile. Then Patton looked down at the bowl instead of meeting his eyes. “Oh, hiya, Logan! I didn’t hear you come in!” Still grinning, he lifted the bowl of a batter that appeared more chocolate chip than any other ingredient. “I was going to sneak a little batch of cookies into the oven before breakfast,” he said before giving the bowl one more stir. “Caught me bowl-handed!” he laughed, loudly.

If Patton was laughing, why did Logan’s eyes burn?

Logan dropped his hand before crossing his arms as though that might hold back the tightening he felt around his waist and throat. “I would recommend starting with a more balanced approach to the morning meal. Though… the batter does smell rather entic—”

“I’ve got it!” Roman cried, leaping into the kitchen and tearing the bowl from of Patton’s hands.

Patton blinked up at Roman, confusion pulling his expression down into a little frown.

Until the brainstorm hit them all.

A variety of stringed instruments played in the background, a rousing harmony crescendoing as a vision of Thomas and his last boyfriend appeared before them. Dressed in Roman’s tunic knelt down on one knee before him. Arm outstretched, he offered his ex a giant golden key tied with a red bow. “Mi amore! You’ve always held the key to my heart!” he cried, his other hand pressed to his chest. Suddenly, the music swelled and he broke into song. “Let’s go back to the way things used to be! Can’t you see we were always meant to be?”

“Whatcha doin’ there, Kiddo?” Patton asked, smile stretched so wide Logan could see his molars.

Logan had thought only Remus could do that.

The illusion fell away and Roman sat cross-legged on the floor, the key cradled in his lap. “I know if I can come up with a good enough idea, I can find a way for Thomas to win back his heart.”

“Really, Roman… Is this wise?” Logan frowned, fists tight at his sides. “That breakup was—”

“Do you really think it could work?” Barely louder than a whisper, Patton’s voice struck him, shattering Logan's remaining arguments. His face held such hope, smile wavering now, but soft and open. Still reeling from Roman’s brainstorm, Logan couldn’t shake the image of a blossom opening to the sun.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

Logan shook his head again as Roman smiled, taking Patton’s hand. “Come, Padre… Let’s go to the Imagination. I have so many more ideas.”

“Okay,” Patton nodded, still smiling. “If you’re sure.”

Logan closed his eyes and screamed, lips and throat closed. Silent. Neither noticed how tight his tie had gotten.

“I do miss him," Patton said, voice wistful. "Thomas misses him.”

“I know, Padre,” Roman said, stepping through a fresh portal to the Imagination. “We all do.”

The dull ache in Logan’s chest did not leave with them when the portal closed. He poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to his room, the muted echoes of Roman’s plans reverberating through the Mindscape.