#Spiders Monsters Patience

[alexiroflife]

"phobia"

i literally can't stop writing for this mf, flufffff :(

satoru gojo x reader

Synopsis: you are an incredibly talented sorcerer, but your deadly fear of spiders tends to interfere with your daily life every now and then. it doesn't help when you happen to encounter a curse that looks just like one

to sum it up: satoru is always there for you to kill a spider when you need him to

WC: 2,764

Warning(s): arachnophobia, icky spiders

The burden of a Jujutsu Sorcerer was taxing beyond comprehension, which of course was why it paid so well.

Sorcerers were expected to give their lives each day within the battlefield, watching as their comrades and the people they were expected to protect die left and right at the hands of the morbid amalgamations of human beings’ worst possible fears, anxieties, doubts, and other nasty negative emotions.

To be a sorcerer was to sacrifice oneself, to accept death before it inevitably took its toll on those around you, and then eventually, on you yourself. This was why sorcerers were expected and trained to be strong, fierce, and with perhaps a few screws loose in their heads to allow them to plow full force into danger with no fears and no regrets. 

Sorcerers were meant to be fearless.

And in many ways, you truly were. You were a first grade sorcerer, more than capable of handling yourself in the face of adversity. You were proficient, quick on your feet, merciless when you had to be, and above all, you were confident in your abilities, which was just as important of a trait to have as a sorcerer as courageousness. 

You were a proud woman, content that you could put your skills to good use by aiding those who were weak and helpless, by saving as many lives as you could alongside your colleagues at Jujutsu Tech. 

You were a damn good sorcerer too, only, there remained a small matter that often seemed to creep up on you at the worst of times. Something you had tried desperately to overcome through years of training, therapy, private meetings with Yaga, and more. Something that had been clinging to you since the very moment you were born, and something you were still somehow unable to completely escape well into your twenty-sixth year of life. 

And that was your deathly fear of spiders.

You admitted that it was silly, that to have made it this far within the world of sorcery after having encountered more horrors than most people could imagine, a little fear of spiders was completely absurd. You knew it didn’t make any sense, that this fear of yours was beneath you, but that didn’t stop you from shrieking horribly and seeking shelter each time you saw a spider crawling along the wall of your apartment. 

You knew that you should have had more patience with yourself, for there was no way of conquering a fear if you refused to acknowledge it as valid, but come on. You were a grade 1 sorcerer for god’s sake, a professor at Jujutsu High teaching students to cast their fears aside to focus their emotions and energies into properly honing in on their techniques, yet you still couldn’t get over being squeamish any time you saw those little demons hurdling their way over the earth. 

In your mind, they were far worse than curses, a source of terror that must have been executed. 

Nevertheless, you kept your fears to yourself for the sake of your occupation and reputation. The only person who knew anything about this vulnerability of yours was your boyfriend, Satoru, and even he found it funny at times to tease you about such a small thing in a world plagued by monsters and curse-users. He had seen you slice open a curse all the way down the middle of its body with a blank face, blood spattering in all directions, but spiders were what got you. 

While he poked fun, he still harbored an understanding that beneath the hardened exterior sorcerers were forced to put up, you were all born of flesh and blood just as any other living being on this planet. 

Satoru was quick to rush to your apartment whenever you called him screaming, standing atop your bed and jumping up and down on your cushions in fear upon catching sight of one of those nasty things. He would throw your door open, catch you in your rather comical position, and hold back a fit of laughter upon seeing you.

“SATORU, SHUT UP AND JUST KILL IT! PLEASE!”

“Calm down, pretty, it’s not gonna hurt you,” he would say, a sickening smirk gracing his gorgeous features. “You’ve faced much worse things than this.”

“I don’t care!” you’d sob. “Just kill it please!”

And once he was finished picking on you, he’d hurry to your aid, approaching the bug in the corner and flicking his finger, rendering the creature dead. 

Then afterwards, he’d always hold out his arms for you to jump down into them once you determined it was safe, cooing into your ear as you threw your arms and legs around him, his hand holding your head. 

“You were so brave, baby. Good job, you got through it.”

It was humbling, to say the least, for the strongest to witness you in such a weak state, but despite Satoru’s teasing, he still took you very seriously. He didn’t diminish your strengths or your worths because of a simple fear. Hell, he had fears that he had buried deep within his gut that only you could drag out of him, and that was okay. Satoru poked fun, but he never judged his precious girl for feeling. 

After all, he enjoyed the fact that you were comfortable enough to let him see you in such a light after long days of having to be strong, just like him. He liked that he could help you with this one thing, even if it meant teleporting into your room at two in the morning on a work day. As long as he was taking care of you, he didn’t care less what you needed. When you needed him, he would be at your aid within a heartbeat. 

And in this moment, you really, really did need him.

Yaga had sent you on a quick solo mission to eradicate a few low grade curses at a nearby summer camp facility while most of the other sorcerers were busy with training or on leave for other missions. It was a quick and easy task for you, granted that your grade was much higher than those of the curses you would be exorcizing.

Only, what Yaga failed to inform you, and likely did not know or care about, was that one of these particular curses was unlike the rest. While you easily winded through the three other creatures, the very last one at the end of the corridor caught you by surprise. 

Your face was hardened as you whipped your head around, sensing the presence of the last curse within the space. Once your eyes landed on the source of the cursed energy, however, your face dropped and your eyes shrank in terror.

There before you cowered a three foot tall dark purple curse which took an arachnoid shape, with an array of beady red eyes atop its head and eight hair legs digging into the wood of the floorboards. Your heart dropped and your mouth ran dry, your body freezing in its tracks. You couldn’t move, you couldn’t think, you couldn’t do anything. Of all the first grade curses you had come across in your lifetime, this grade 3 creature would be the very first thing that stood between you and seeing the light of day.

The curse hissed, chattering its chelicerae-like mouth as its legs tapped restlessly against the floor, sending a horrid shiver up your spine. You were stronger than this, braver than this, you knew you were, but your legs had gone to jelly and your heart was pounding in your ears. Perhaps if you had been given a warning ahead of time. you would have been able to approach this threat differently, but instead, much to your shame, you took off in the opposite direction once your legs willed you to move. 

You could hear it crawling after you down the hall, screeching out nonsensical sounds as it rounded the corner to follow you. You were quick to duck into the first room you saw, slamming the door shut behind you and pressing your back against the surface. You searched the room in a panic, which you discovered to be a dorm, and ran to take cover in a closet in the corner.

You trembled, sinking down to the bottom of the platform as heavy, panicked breaths wracked your body. This was pathetic. This was humiliating. You were better than this, but god, this fear, those damned spiders would always get the best of you, despite how hard you tried to help it. 

You were trembling, squeezing your eyes shut as whimpers spilled from your quivering lips. That thing was so big, bigger than any spider you had encountered, and while you understood it was a curse, it looked far too real. 

You didn’t know what to do. You had to finish this mission, and the principal wouldn’t accept a sorry excuse about you being too afraid to exorcize a curse because it looked like a spider for an answer as to why you would come running back to the school. It sounded ridiculous! Especially for someone with your skill. 

You could hear the creature running up and down the halls erratically, its gross legs clicking against the walls. You pressed your lips together tightly, wrapping your arms around yourself. You wanted this to stop.

Hesitantly, you reached into the pocket of your uniform to shakily pull out your phone. You breathed out heavily, on the verge of a panic attack, trembling fingers dialing your boyfriend’s number with his. You lifted the phone to your ear and listened to it ring.

Then it clicked.

“Hello? Baby?” Satoru’s comforting voice spoke into the phone, a sigh of relief escaping you. “What’s up? You done with that little mission yet?”

“S-Satoru?” you whispered, voice trembling harshly. Immediately, the sorcerer on the other line knew something was off.

“(Y/n)? What’s wrong?” his tone dropped with urgency. “What happened? Are you okay?”

You pursed your lips again, muffling a pathetic sob that was prepared to break past your mouth. You scrunched your eyes closed, the confined space doing very little to ease your nerves. Satoru could only hear the choked whines that left you, and he was on his feet, captured with instant worry. 

“Baby, talk to me. I need to know you’re okay. Tell me what happened. Where are you?”

“T-The…” you stammered, struggling to get it out.

“Deep breaths, pretty. Breathe.”

You gulped, knocking your head back against the wood, taking a moment to release a few sharp breaths. “The camp,” you managed to whimper. 

“You’re still there?” he asked, almost incredulously. “Did something happen? Were the curses higher grades than you were told? I’m on my way right now.”

“No, i-it’s,” you shook, pressing your phone to your forehead. “It’s- a s-spider…”

There was a pause as Satoru processed what you were saying. “A spider?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“The last curse,” you exhaled. “It’s a spider, Toru, it looks like a damn big ass spider,” you rambled. “I’m so scared, I'm sorry, please come help me.”

“Oh, baby,” he sighed. “I’m coming, don’t worry. Stay where you are, I’ll find you.”

You nodded rapidly, scrunching your face as tears pricked your eyes. “M-kay.”

You tucked your phone away and within exactly two seconds, you heard a whooshing sound from outside, followed by the screech of the curse. You heard its legs clatter along the walls once more before another tormented, animalistic cry, and then there was nothing. 

You waited silently, hugging your knees to your chest as footsteps ascended. “(Y/n)?!” you heard Satoru’s voice through the walls, and your shoulders slumped with alleviation. You heard the door to the room open and you slowly reached up to the closet door handle, creaking it open to peer outside.

There, you saw your boyfriend standing in the doorway, gaze finally landing on you beneath his blindfold. The moment he saw you, he dropped his arms, pained by the sight of you curled up in hiding out of fear. “(Y/n),” his gentle voice breathed out as he stepped further into the room, extending his arms in that same manner he always did when comforting you.

The second you saw the motion, you were breaking. The reality of your weakness came crashing down on you, and your lips wobbled as you climbed out of the closet and fell into his warm embrace. You shook against him, embarrassed, petrified. You were the partner of the strongest sorcerer of the modern age, and this was what you were. Powerless at the will of a low grade curse.

“It’s alright, baby, I’m here. Please don’t cry, pretty. It’s okay, I got you,” he murmured against your temple, pressing his soft lips to it then to the crown of your head as you buried your face in his chest. 

“Satoru,” you sniffled into him, clinging to the fabric of his black suit as he wrapped you into his warmth.

“Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay.” 

“I-Is it gone?”

“Yeah, baby. I got rid of it. It’s all gone, don’t worry,” he whispered. He hated seeing you like this. Normally when you faced spiders, the interaction was far more lighthearted. You would screech, sure, but you had always recovered fairly quickly after he had killed one. Granted, you had never encountered a spider as big as the one that you just saw, but Satoru was aching upon  witnessing how rattled you were by this thing. “You got the rest of them, baby. You did so good, you know that? My strong girl.”

He was so loving with his praise as he eased you down from your high, rubbing your hair and pressing his palm to your waist, letting you know that you were safe with him. 

“M’sorry,” you mumbled into him and he looked down, pulling away slightly to hear you better and to get a look at your face. He tilted your chin up so that you could look at him, your eyes glossy and your brows pinched.

“What are you sorry for, pretty?” he asked you genuinely, heart clenching as he smoothed his thumb over your flushed cheek. 

“Cause,” you sniffed again. “I should’ve been able to handle this. It’s so stupid. I dragged you here to get rid of something so small.”

“Hey,” he said with firm tenderness, holding your cheek so that your eyes stayed on his. “Don’t do that.”

“B-But, I should be able to-”

“Stop. I won’t listen to you beat on yourself for being afraid,” he shook his head. “You’re so strong, (Y/n). You always have been, but we all have our weaknesses and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Says you,” you muttered, guilt catching your eyes. “You’re the strongest.”

“And you know better than anyone that that’s just a title,” Satoru said earnestly. “Yes there’s truth to it, but none of that takes away from the things that keep me up at night. Just like your grade doesn’t take away your fears.”

He traced the curve of your jaw softly, lifting his free hand to remove his blindfold and tuck it into his pocket. You watched as his white hair fell over his face and his sapphire eyes washed over you, displaying his loving, concerned, understanding gaze. 

“But that doesn’t mean we’re not strong. It’s okay to be scared as long as you know I’m here to help you, and as long as I know you’re here to help me.”

You could feel a lump building in your throat as he gazed at you and he curled his brows, jutting out his bottom lip slightly. 

“Don’t look at me like that, princess, you’ll make me cry,” he said, catching your face in both of his large palms as your hands moved to delicately hold his wrists. “C’mere, baby,” he whispered, drawing your forehead to his lips. The sorcerer then kissed the bridge of your nose and the edge of your brow before letting you fall back into him, wrapping your arms tightly around his torso as he held you close.

You melted into him and closed your eyes. “Love you, Satoru,” you murmured into him.

He kissed your head again, resting his cheek atop you. “I love you, too, (Y/n). Let’s get you home and all cleaned up, yeah?”

You nodded against him, thankful to the universe that the man you loved made being vulnerable feel like a gentle, welcoming, consuming form of unconditional love. 

But, fuck, did you hate spiders.

[boxofbonesfic]

 

Title: Blood and Sand (2 of 2)

Pairing: Werewolf!Moon Knight x Reader

Wordcount: 8,594

Summary: You are selected to accompany your mentor on a dig, but what you find in the desert instead makes you wish you had never come at all.

Warnings: Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Murder, Kidnapping, Cults, Implied Torture, AU, Smut, Monsterfucking, Lycanthropy, Cannibalism

A/N: honestly, thank you for reading part one because this is just… porn and violence luckily for me, those are some of my favorite things to write, LMAO. we knew this was going to be self indulgent, so i hope it’s your kind of self-indulgent too. to be clear: this part has all the fuckin’; human, monster and otherwise. 😂❤️ spanish translations provided by the amazing @negronispagliato❤️ bottom divider by @firefly-graphics!

💀

“Oh thank fucking Christ.” 

You wake with your head pillowed in Steven’s lap, his eyes dark with concern. You shift, moving to get up—but your skull erupts with pain. Sharp tendrils of it that strike at the nerves behind your watering eyes. Even talking is too much, your jaw aching as you attempt to open your mouth. 

“No, Love, don’t.” He holds you still, large palms cradling your face on either side as you whimper. Steven’s eyes harden with anger. “Prick made you read too much.” The hard edge in his voice is unfamiliar—unsettling, even. You aren’t used to seeing anger on Steven’s face. No, that emotion is much more reserved for Marc or Jake—but he’s nearly trembling with it, his lips pressed into a thin line. 

“I’ll fucking kill him.” The words are so low you barely hear them—hell, you half wonder if you’ve imagined them. For a moment, a shaft of the setting sun sinking beneath the frame of the narrow window, and his chocolate eyes turn a molten, animal yellow. 

“I will eat his fucking heart.”

Steven has the patience of a saint, laying there unmoving until the pain subsides enough for you to crawl out of his lap. Your whole body feels exhausted, wrung out and limp. The water he offers you is tinny, but you’re used to it—every drink of water you’ve had in recent memory tastes like this, it’s almost all you know. 

“What happened?” You croak, fingers struggling to hold onto the chipped mug you both share. Steven looks angry—and then ashamed. 

“You read,” he says slowly. Reluctantly, he brings his sorrowful gaze to yours.

“And we ate.” 

They do not come for him again that night, and you’re grateful for it, burying your face against his chest, clinging to Steven beneath the threadbare blanket—the only one you have. You suppose at least that you are grateful that there are no rats, no spiders or insects. They keep the the corners, skittering away whenever he comes close. 

They can sense it, you think, the thing beneath his skin. You can too. 

—

Marc kisses you hungrily, his fingers tangling in the curls at the nape of your neck as he tugs your head back. With his other arm he pulls you hard against his chest. You go willingly, easily, arching your back against him. He’s not back yet—not fully, not really. 

The other priests can’t read the Word like you can, don’t feel it the way you do—so it takes longer for Marc to come back to himself from the jackal-thing, the moon-drunk thing, and sometimes when they bring him back to you, it’s still worming around inside his head. 

Like tonight. 

Claws prick at your skin, stroking the line of your throat. Marc’s too-sharp teeth pull at the lobe of your ear before he kisses you again, sloppily. 

He tastes like copper.  

“Make me forget.” It’s a demand, not a request, but it’s one you’re happy to oblige. 

“He’s hard behind you, the fat length of him pressing insistently between the cheeks of your ass. One hand slithers beneath the tattered hem of your tank top, trailing the pads of his fingers across your nipples. The other squeezes the curve of your hip. He doesn’t pull your pants down all the way—full nudity is a privilege you cannot afford anymore. Not with the guards doing random checks now, now that they know.

Pricks. 

Mikhail especially seemed to take great pride in discovering you, often standing at the observation window when he had no reason to—the weight of his cold gaze heavy on you every time. 

Marc boxes you in with his body—you suspect both because he enjoys the feel of you pressed against him with nowhere else to go, and because from this angle, they can only see his back. Marc kicks your legs open a little wider, humming as he spreads the thick beads of precum leaking from his tip across his head, and you shudder as he slides against you with a lewd squelch. Your breath catches as he traces your pulse with one sharp claw. 

“Are you afraid of me?” There are two voices in his throat, twining around one another like vines. One is Marc’s, the one you know, the one that growls your name hungry and low—

And the other one, the one that knows you. 

“No.” You aren’t. You should be, should always have been, but for some reason, you never are. There’s so much fear here, running in your veins, oozing out of the fucking walls, you don’t want to feel it with Marc, too. You reach behind yourself to palm his cock with slow, sure passes until he moans into your hair, hips bucking into your hand. You clench around nothing, and Marc chuckles darkly into your hair like he knows it. 

“I can smell it, you know?” He breathes, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear. “How wet you are,” his hand snakes around to your front, sliding down beneath your loose waistband to cup your cunt, fingers slipping eagerly through your folds. He bites down hard enough to bruise, and you whine his name pathetically. 

“Marc—!”

“See?” He circles your entrance with deft fingers, the rough stubble on his face rasping against your cheek. “So ready.” Your eyelids go slack, your head lolling back against Marc’s shoulder as he presses two thick fingers into you, moaning low. “Soft and sweet and ready…” You don’t even think he’s talking to you, now, mumbling to himself—no, to Jake and Steven, probably—about his enjoyment of your body, how good you feel, how much he wants you. Marc scoffs at a comment you didn’t make, confirming your theory. 

“Made for us, huh?” Marc draws a line with the tip of his claw over your nipple, and you feel his lips curve against your throat. “Maybe so.” He grips the back of your head with one hand, the other still buried in your cunt as he kisses you again, hungrily swallowing the whimpering moan you try and fail to contain. He sucks on your tongue, running the sharp points of his canines along it before releasing you.

“Steven says you’re made for us.” He watches your face with pale yellow eyes, enjoying the look of dizzy bliss you know is there. You whine when he thumbs at your clit, your eyes rolling as you clamp down around his fingers. He grins.

“I think he might be onto something.” Everything you know is turned on its head now—everything is real, because how do you know it’s not? Gods and Monsters, the veil is open, forever torn for you now, and you see them all. 

“Maybe so,” you run your tongue across your lips and he follows the movement with rapt attention. “Or maybe you were made for me.” 

He laughs.

Marc scissors his fingers inside you as you go to pieces. Happy, it seems, to shoulder your weight because your trembling legs will not do so on their own. He alternates between sucking at your pulse point, and mumbling heated, possessive promises into the curve of your jaw. You feel each word as he says it, maybe even a little before, his lips moving against your skin. 

“You feel so good, Baby, m’gonna feel you on my cock next,” You’re too gone to be embarrassed by the wet sucking noise your cunt makes when he pulls his fingers out, watching as he lifts them to his mouth, deftly cleaning each one with long strokes of his tongue. It’s almost enough to make you forget where you are, what you’ve done.

What you’ve become.

You aren’t like him, but you aren’t like you anymore, either. You see the words in your minds eye even when Loki’s book isn’t before you, feel the weight of them on your tongue days before you speak them. No, you are changed. 

It’s why you need this as much as Marc does—it’s the only thing you can control. 

“Hands on the wall, Baby.” You brace your palms against the wall as he nudges your thighs wide with his knee, pulling the waistband of your pants down to your thighs. You can’t help but arch back a little as he slides his cock through the soaked and swollen folds of your cunt, moaning your name. The low, guttural appreciative sound he makes as he sinks in is almost as good as the burning stretch of his entry. You arch, pushing back against him until he’s seated all the way inside, his hips pressing tight against the curve of your ass. 

“Fuuuck.” 

You’re blissfully full, stars dancing behind your closed eyes and then—Christ—he starts to move. Marc grips your waist with both hands, holding you good and still. Your fingers scrabble against the concrete wall, teeth sinking into your lip as he drives into you, pulling nearly all the way out before filling you completely again. 

Maybe Steven’s right, you think, as Marc wraps one hand around your throat, pulling you flush against his chest. Maybe I was made for them. It certainly lends credence to his theory, the way your body fits perfectly into the hollow of his like this, his cock filling you so completely that there’s barely even room for breath. The hand on your hip drifts to your belly, pressing down as he slides back in. His lips curve against your ear. 

“Think I can feel me in there?” He asks, before pressing down harder. You writhe against him, your body hot. “Maybe if I press harder…”  Marc holds you like that for a while, pressing down on your belly with one hand as he ruts into you, growling. You’re practically a mess by the time he begins to work at your clit with his thumb, circling it softly.

“M-Marc, fuck,” You grit his name out as you cum again, twitching pathetically in his arms. Marc’s head falls back, his eyes closed as he revels in the feel of it, you clenching around his cock like a vise. He presses in deeper, a and fuck, you hadn’t even known he could. And you feel his teeth—blunt now—press hard into your neck as he spills inside of you, the warmth of it making you shudder. 

He stays like that, his teeth buried in your throat while he pants, fingers flexing on your hips. 

Marc cleans you up, sacrificing a portion of what little water you are allotted to clean the mess he’s left between your thighs, and you return the favor, before laying down heavily on the cot. Marc curls around you, placing his body between you and the door. 

—

“She’s not going.” Jake has placed himself between you and Mikhail, his arms crossed. “She’s not well.” You aren’t. You’ve been… wrong since your reading the night before, your head swimming with symbols, and a man with a bird skull for his head; bleached white like it had been baked in the unforgiving desert sun, tall enough to move the moon across the sky. Your nose is still bleeding sluggishly, too, you taste copper when you lick your lips. No, not a man—a God. 

KHONSU.

Why do you know his name? 

“This is not a debate.” Mikhail sneers. He’d come alone today, unlike every other time he had been sent to fetch you. Loki didn’t take chances when it came to security, you’d learned that by now. So why was he here? Alone?

“Loki wants her.” He jerks his head at you, blue eyes dark over Jake’s shoulder when he meets your gaze. “Move, freak.” Perhaps he doesn’t know the difference between the three, or maybe he just doesn’t care, but a lump forms in your throat when Jake squares his posture, fingers curling into tight fists. 

“What, you going to fight me in chains?” He mocks. “I said move.”

“No.” 

You’re expecting more of Mikhail’s smug condescension—not for him to ball his meaty fingers into a fist and punch Jake. His head snaps to the side, and you watch a satisfied smirk spreads across Mikhail’s face in response. He tries to shoulder past in that moment, using Jake’s surprise as an avenue around him. 

You hear the sick sound of bone crunching as your brain struggles to understand what you’re seeing. Mikhail’s arm is broken, hanging limply at his side, while Jake stands over him, his lip curling. 

“I see how you look at her.” He kicks him, and Mikhail looses a pathetic whine as the breath is driven from his lungs. “Patético.” He squats down, gripping Mikhail’s short, blond hair. 

“Let go—fucking stop!” He shouts, and finally, you hear the guards clamoring at the end of the hall. 

“The fuck is going on down there?!”

“You hear that?”

It doesn’t deter Jake though, as he cocks back and drives his fist into the other man’s face hard. His eyes are dark, jaw set tight. The muscles in his back tense and flex as he draws back again, and the spray of blood that coats his face as Mikhail’s nose breaks this time coats Jake’s face, flecking his skin with thick drops of red. He licks his lips before bringing a sputtering, gagging Mikhail’s  head level with his own. His eyes are red and crossed with burst vessels, nose smashed in and lips burst open.

“Fuck you!” He screams, his voice cracking with pain. “You and your fucking whore—”

“You think I don’t know what you were planning? What you were going to do?” Jake asks, cocking his head like he really wants to know the answer. “March her out of here, take her someplace nice and quiet,” Jake pauses, spitting on the ground beside Mikhail. “Asqueroso de mierda.” Fucking pig.

“Quiero que sepas que eres un muerto viviente. Entiendes? You’re done.” You’re a dead man. I want you to know now, understand? So when it comes later, it isn’t a surprise.  Jake doesn’t let go, not even as the sound of frantic footfall grows closer, only seconds away, now. “So when it comes, it isn’t a fucking surprise.” 

The guards storm into the room, shouting, weapons drawn. There’s so much blood, Mikhail’s bones are sticking up through the ruined meat of his arm, not to mention his face. Loki follows, his face contorting with anger.

It takes Rumlow pressing his pistol to the back of Jake’s head to make him  stop, to make him let go so they can drag Mikhail out of the room as he wails, cursing the both of you. You can tell Loki wants to punish him—punish both of you—but he needs you. You to read the book, to be the conduit he can’t be, and Jake to partake of the sacrifice, to consume the flesh and appease the God whose power they’ve stolen. 

And Mikhail needs medical attention.

Loki settles for roughing  Jake up a little, the guard team taking turns until he’s had enough, waving his hand to call them off. To his credit, Jake looks fairly unfazed, despite the physical evidence otherwise. 

“Perhaps housing the two of you together was a mistake.” He replies, and you scowl at him. 

“Kidnapping people for your fucked up rituals was a mistake.” You reply, and he laughs. 

“How cute.” Loki’s slow smile sends a shiver down your spine. “You still think you’re people.” 

They don’t come that night—too busy with Mikhail, you expect. 

Which is good, because Jake Lockley is nothing if not an opportunist. You wake as he’s fitting your knees over his shoulders, gazing up at you hungrily from between your thighs, his black honey voice rumbling in your ears. 

“Ábrelas pa’ mi.” Open for me. There is utter silence around you, no footsteps, no quiet conversation from the end of the hall. For the first time in weeks—months—you are truly alone. 

So there is no one to hear the rising cacophony of your voice as Jake sets to work between your thighs, his tongue lashing against your clit, and fingers prodding eagerly at your entrance. Your eyes roll, a breathy moan worming out from your throat. You can’t help yourself from rocking your hips against his face, and Jake smirks, his lips curving against your cunt. 

“Te sientes bien, nena?” Feel good, Baby?

“U-uh-huh,” you nod dumbly. Your unfocused eyes stare unseeingly at the dark ceiling, one hand tangled in his messy curls just to have something to hold on to. Jake groans when you pull, his fingers pressing into the softness of your thighs as he holds you still. There’s a hunger, a desperation in his touch that is markedly different from the way Marc, or Steven does. 

Like he knows he may never get another chance. 

You arch up off the cot, and Jake’s palm cracks against your thigh in warning. 

“Still.” He cuts his eyes at you from between your thighs. “No hagas que me repita.” Don’t make me say it again.

He devours you until you’re trembling, toes curling as you cum with a wail. Jake’s fascination with your cunt is obsessive, the way he maps every inch with his tongue, checking the lines with his fingers just in case. He rolls his tongue against your clit, chuckling darkly when you convulse. When he’s finally had his fill, Jake rises from between your legs, wiping your slick from his mouth with the back of his hand. 

For a moment, he just looks at you, studying the lines of your body and committing each one to memory. You feel strangely vulnerable laying there beneath him, not because this is the first time—it isn’t, and at this point you’ve lost count—but because you realize this is the first time any of them has ever seen you fully naked since the first time, not just with your shirt rucked up beneath your chin, or your joggers pulled down around your thighs. 

You reach for Jake, kissing him and tasting yourself on his lips and tongue as he fits his hips between your thighs like a puzzle piece. The full body shudder that erupts is impossible to hide as his cock slides against you. Jake grins down at you. 

“Esto es tuyo, déjamelo darte.” That’s yours, Querida. Let me give it to you.

The thick, rigid length of him takes up every inch of available space inside you at this angle; and Jake glories in it, pressing your thighs apart and back, muttering silent curses as he throws his head back. He pulls out, quickly filling you again with a wet, vulgar noise that would’ve embarrassed you had you the capacity to consider it, but you don’t, not when Jake is looming over you. He isn’t an emotive man, not even a particularly talkative one, but like this… He practically sings.

“Shh. I want to see if I can get in any deeper. I know you’d like that.” Your cunt squeezes down around him as if in response, and Jake chuckles. He slides his hands down your thighs like he’s holding you steady as he presses in. Once he’s in as far as he can get, his hips fitted against yours almost too tightly, there isn’t room in you for breath, let alone thought. And whichever words do make it into your head simply just… come out of your mouth, even if they’re just half formed. 

“Sh-shit, Jake—what’re you—fuck—!” Luckily for you, he’s not really listening anyway, his dark eyes focused on the slick mess between your legs, but you can’t stop the train now that it’s started, whiny, needy pleas falling from your lips without your say-so. Jake cups your chin, dragging his thumb across your parted lips.

“Stick out your tongue, baby—mierda, así mismo-!” fuck, yes, like that-! Jake squeezes your cheeks between his thumb and forefinger before leaning down to suck on your tongue as he slams into you, groaning. Your head is spinning, eyes wide and glassy as your lover places his index and middle fingers on the flat of your tongue.

“Chúpame.” Suck. You obey immediately and without complaint, closing your mouth around his fingers. Jake moans so low it sounds almost like a growl, his fingers digging into the meat of your hip as his eyes roll shut. He thrusts in hard and you gag around his fingers, whimpering. They’re slick with your drool when he pulls away, thick strands of it connecting the tips of his fingers to your puffy, kiss swollen lips. It’s like the sight inspires him, and he takes them again, furiously devouring every gasp and moan you release as he continues to fuck you. 

Every single one of your nerve endings is writhing with pleasure, a veritable ocean of it overwhelming you as you’re swept away beneath it. Jake is everywhere, his hands on your face, your hips, your breasts, your cunt—in your fucking mouth—you don’t know how to process it all. 

You’re cumming before you realize it, choking out a curse as you press your face, your teeth into the side of his neck. His cock spasms inside of you only moments after, sticky warmth oozing out of the place where you’re joined as Jake presses his forehead against yours, eyes closed. After a few seconds, he collapses to the side, sliding out of you only for an instant before he pulls you against his chest. You shiver as he slips back in just as easily. 

The next words he speaks are uttered quietly into your hair. 

“Can we sleep like this, querida?”  His fingers trace patterns on your skin. “Please.” You don’t ask why—you don’t need to. 

“Yeah,” you nod against his chest, and he pulls the blankets up around your shoulders. “Okay, Jake.” He presses a kiss to the space between your shoulder blades, and as your world fades to black, you feel his lips moving against your skin, mouthing the words he won’t say out loud. 

—

“King of crossroads

Travelers and Thieves

Accept this offering, accept his flesh and blood as penance—”

Blood streams from your nose as you read the Word, coating your lips and dripping down your chin. You can taste it in your mouth as you form each   syllable. Your skull feels like it’s about to split open—there’s not enough room inside for infinity, after all. You see yourself spread out like a series of mirrored reflections in every direction, in every lifetime.

You read the book in every century, you worship the God of Moons and mirrors at sacred altars raised high above the chaos below and profane ones, hidden in in the deep, secret places. You are a thousand you’s who have come before, whose blood stains the pages like yours does—

As you read, he eats. 

You barely hear the screams anymore—it’s so hard to hear them, over the noise of a thousand thousand lifetimes—but in your doubled, tripled, infinite vision, sometimes you see it. 

The thing in your lovers’ skin, the jackal-thing, tears the arm from a crying man, but you cannot smell the blood. Your nostrils are still full of incense from somewhere else, but you hear the sickening sound of splintering bone, gore staining the jackal-thing’s wide maw. It turns unfocused, yellow eyes on the guards in the outer circle of the ritual room, snarling. Distantly, you suppose you are aware of the sound of straining metal, stone cracking as he, they, it, strains to reach them, it’s long arms outstretched. 

“Stop.” Loki’s voice is eons away. He shakes you—you don’t feel it. Your eyes don’t even stray from the page. “Stop, I said!”  The commands blur into insignificant background noise, you cannot hear Loki now, because He is here. You can feel him, turning his attention to you as his power flows in through your soul and out through your mouth. And when He slips in to look through your eyes, His disgust makes your own lip curl. 

UNWORTHY.

Loki slaps you then, his palm cracking across your cheek, snatching the book from your hands. The last few syllables die out on your tongue as he snaps it shut. You stand there, dazed and blinking at your empty hands. Slowly, you bring your hand to your face, sweeping the tips of your trembling fingers through the sticky wetness just above your lips, and they come away dark red. 

Below you, the beast strains to reach the soldiers still. You squint at the links connecting the collar at its throat to the anchor set deep into the concrete—are they stretching? As you think it, there’s a metallic snap as it bursts, affording the creature another foot forward. It strains at the two on it’s arms, pulling with all its might. 

You know you don’t have long before he reverts, before the bones begin to crack again, turning skin to ragged meat as his body changes again—

You cannot let that happen. 

Loki doesn’t expect you to lunge for the book, to drive your shoulder into his chest as hard as you can. The air rushes out of his lungs, and he stumbles back, cursing breathlessly.

“What the fuck are you doing—”

You snatch the book from his limp fingers. Book is an exaggeration for the stack of loosely bound, frayed papyrus you hold in your hands, between two carved slabs of soapstone. It practically hums against your skin as you hold it now. You will decide which parts you read.

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” Loki snarls, staggering toward you. “Give me—”You step back just as the second chain breaks, leaving only one. Someone shoots, a bullet passing through the meat of the jackal-thing’s shoulder, but the wound closes up before your eyes, knitting back together till there’s nothing a there but short wiry fur and a few drops of blood. 

“Boss!” One of the guards calls up to Loki from below. “He’s—”

The final chain snaps, and the beast looses a triumphant snarl. “Shoot!” Loki screams. “Fucking shoot it!” You watch, horrified as the rain of bullets tear into its flesh, chunks of stinking, steaming meat littering the floor by its feet. It doesn’t seem to care, luminous yellow eyes fever bright with bloodlust. The ragged holes in its flesh close almost as instantly as they appear, bone and sinew mending back together as the soldiers scream. You watch as it tears one of their arms out of the socket, its wide jaws frothy with blood and spittle as it crunches through the raw, red meat of it. 

“Kill him!” Loki is screaming, the remaining guards flocking to him as the beast, the jackal, tears through the men in the sacrificial circle. “Fucking shoot him!” The carved stone beneath them is slick with blood, the whole room stinks of it, hot copper and fresh meat. Their boots slip against it as they struggle to escape, many of them having fired their entire clips into his unwavering chest. 

The words flow from your mouth like electrical current, bypassing your brain as your tongue forms words you’ve never heard before, words that leave your head buzzing and ringing. There’s pressure behind your eyes, in your skull, a full feeling that leaves blood leaking from both your nostrils. The text becomes one word, a single word, and you know the book has changed to meet its maker’s will, the one who speaks through you now, whose clear moonlight burns at your insides and streams out of your mouth as the words singe your tongue. 

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR.

You both feel and do not feel Loki press the cool muzzle of his pistol to the back of your head. 

“Stop. Fucking. Reading.” He seethes, pulling back the hammer. 

You wouldn’t even if the choice was still yours, but you don’t tell him that. You can’t, not with your throat full of the most ancient of magics. He pulls the trigger, and you feel the bullet burn against your skin—but it does not penetrate. Instead, it falls to the floor at your feet, rolling until it falls down into the gory mess below. He’s behind you, but you can see him anyway—the moon is a mirror, and all mirrors are your eyes—his face ashen, blinking as he fires again, and again, and the bullets all fall uselessly away like pebbles. 

“We need to go!” Rumlow is covered in blood, his face bearing the marks of the beast’s displeasure. “Fucking now!” He racks another round into his gun as he barrels up the stairs. Behind him, your monster is making short work of the three remaining guards on the lower floor. “If she wants to stay here and burn her-fucking-self to ashes, let her! There’s always another voice, ain’t that what you said?” Loki nods, casting you a dirty look. “Let’s go!”  as it stands there in the pile of steaming gore, it lifts its shaggy head up toward the moon framed in the skylight, and howls.  

“We need the fucking book!” He argues. He steps towards you, like he means to pry your fingers from its smoking pages, but he reels back, screaming. A monstrous hand the size of a butterfly net bursts through Rumlow’s bulletproof vest, and somehow you can hear the wet sound of the merc’s body trying to function around the intrusion—a wet, sucking noise—before he drops to the ground, still. 

The jackal-thing steps over him. The dark fur around its mouth is flecked with bits of meat, and it runs its tongue along its muzzle in obvious anticipation of more. But instead of advancing on your fleeing captors, it turns to you, fixing you with those terrifying eyes. 

COME. 

DEVOUR.

COME.

DEVOUR.

The God steps into you as one might shrug on a too small coat, steadily and aggressively working his way into your body, filling you like a helium balloon. The same presence you’d felt when you first touched the book overwhelms you now, and more burning light pours from your eyes as he peers about the room with indisputable anger. The voice that comes from your mouth is not yours, is not human. 

It is the sound of sand, of tides, of ages and of cold fire. 

“YOU WHO HAVE ABUSED MY POWER.” White fire pours from your lips, dripping down to the floor to pool like liquid. You do not take a step forward, Khonsu does, and the stone cracks beneath your combined weight. “YOU WHO HAVE SLAIN THE INNOCENT. WHO HAVE ENSLAVED THE PRIESTS OF MY HOUSE.” They run then, making for the doors, but neither you, nor Khonsu feel the need to chase them. 

It makes no difference. 

“YOU WILL BURN.” 

You lift your hand, and you feel the jackal’s blood slick fur against your palm as he leaps at your command. The halls are filled with a veritable symphony of pleading and screams as his jaws find them—or you do.

Loki makes it all the way to the vehicles, dragging a broken leg behind him as the two of you follow closely behind. It is more satisfying than you can admit as you wrap your fingers around his throat, his flesh blackening and peeling away as you lift him. 

“My hand was forced,” you say, grinning as the realization dawns . “But you will never force it again.” 

He doesn’t have vocal chords left to scream with as he burns. 

You know it when Loki dies, because you feel all the power go out of you, your body crumpling like a doll. He’s gone, the God, the ancient thing wearing your skin to exact his vengeance. You feel like an empty glove, and you lay there in the sand as the garage burns behind you, smoke curling into the dark night sky. The shape of his presence remains within you, though, and your spirit rushes back in to fill the space. 

Exhilarated, giddy exhaustion fills you, hell, you feel like you might even be high. You’re flying, your blood singing with the echoes of the power of ancients, even as you lay there, your body exhausted. 

The jackal-thing approaches you, yellow eyes bright as it covers your body with its own. You’re barely clothed now, the signed remains of your tank-top and joggers easy enough to strip off. You feel magnetized, like you have to touch and be touched, like the energy thrumming in your veins needs their help to release. And by the impatient, possessive way the jackal-thing looks at you, you gather they feel much the same. 

The beast snuffles at your hair, and then licks at the space above your collarbone, huffing. You whimper when his teeth break skin, arching your back against his chest. There’s a deep rumble that sounds almost like Marc’s laughter before it looses a growl, laving at the blood-sticky skin of your throat. 

His tongue laps at the blood between your breasts, and you hiss, your nipples peaking stiffly. You aren’t afraid, not of him—of them. You don’t know that you’re really afraid of anything anymore, not when you have but to speak for the ancient power to fill you like a water balloon. 

Claws press at your soft skin, goosebumps rising in their wake as you feel his grip tighten around your waist. He wants you on your belly. You know it instinctively, like the knowledge had come from your own head, and not from elsewhere. 

You whine as he pulls away, but you roll over, your hands slipping in the sand. They don’t wait for you to position yourself fully, tugging you back against the creature’s furry hips, it’s sticky, pink cock pressing insistently against your already slick folds. It feels like fireworks are popping off beneath your skin, and you can hardly contain your joy. 

They’re dead. Not just dead but punished, and you are free. 

Free.

Your mouth opens as he slams inside, the throbbing knot at the base of his cock forces you open even further and you let out a breathy wail. You suppose you should be ashamed, afraid, you should be a lot of things—but what does that even mean, now? Now that you are this? What even are shoulds in the face of what you have weathered?

The jackal-thing looses a pleased growl, rutting into you with sharp, hungry thrusts. They soon punch not only the air from your lungs but the thoughts from your head, your eyes rolling as you fall forward onto your forearms. He bears down on you with singleminded insistence, carving space out from within you that you know you’ll feel later. 

“Oh God, oh God, Jake.” You mumble their names amidst streams of nonsense into the crook of your arm as the pleasure condenses into an aching point in your belly. “M-Marc, p-please, I need—S-Steven—” Teeth close around the meat above your collarbone, and you let out a wail that echoes across the dark sand as you cum fitfully. If not for the possessive hands at your hips holding you in place, you’d have fallen flat on your belly onto the sand. Instead, you twitch and whine in his hold as his cock throbs heavily inside your slick, spasming cunt, flooding you with sticky heat. There’s so much of it you can feel it leaking out of the place where you’re joined, dripping down the backs of your thighs. 

When you try to move, the jackal-thing growls at you, and you resolve to stay still, at least for a little while. You can feel it’s tongue move against the wound, laving it slowly, lovingly. He pulls out of you, and there’s a sickening crack as his body begins to revert again. You sit gingerly on the remains of your joggers and close your eyes as you wait for silence. 

You hate this part—you know it hurts. 

Soon, though, there is skin pressed against your back instead of wiry fur, and when you venture a glance over your shoulder, Steven looks back at you, bloody and exhausted. 

“Hello, Love.” 

—

You know you’re grinding blood and viscera into the luxurious white carpet as you enter Loki’s rooms, but the mess only brings you a giddy sort of satisfaction. There is so much blood—so many bodies. You’d stopped counting Loki’s sacrifices, and you find yourself wondering if the bodies number the same—if somehow they cancel one another out. Part of you hopes they do, that the scales will at least be balanced, if not weighted in your favor. But there is another part of you, a new part—but somehow ancient at the same time—whispers dark words of reassurance that you can barely discern from the background noise of your own thoughts. 

They deserved it. Vile murderers, usurpers—

Their deaths were too merciful. 

The suite looks like something out of a magazine, like a five-star hotel come to the goddamn desert. There’s even air-conditioning. He had lived above you in luxury for months—you don’t even know how long, not really—while only floors below the two of you had been kept in terror and squalor. 

It would have been laughable if you hadn’t had to live through it yourself. 

It doesn’t occur to you that you’re destroying things until the first bottle of expensive cologne becomes victim to your cold, unthinking rage as you grab it off of the dressing table and lob it into the mirror. You watch the pieces of glass burst and shatter into uncountable fragments. For a moment, you see your own bloody face reflected back at you before it crumbles. It’s unbelievably satisfying. So much so that you pick up something else—a watch, a fucking rolex—and hurl that too. Golden springs roll away underneath the dresser as the pieces shoot off in all directions

 Steven doesn’t say anything as you grab the heavy looking table-clock too, and beat it into pieces against the table’s surface. 

You stand there, panting in the aftermath of your rage, a trail of destruction leading across the room. Steven pulls you into a tight embrace, and you sob into his chest, openmouthed and wailing. You had watched as the beast had slaughtered everyone—and and it was right to do it. As somehow, it—they?—had kept every promise made. 

Mikhail’s ruined throat, the beast feeding you warm, slick pieces of Loki’s beating heart—

So why aren’t you whole yet? Why do you still feel like a piece of you has been carved out, lost forever? Replaced with something ancient? Unknowable? You cling to Steven, terrified that if you loose grip on him, you’ll loose your tenuous hold on reality. He lets you cry, stroking your head and mumbling soft affirmations into your hair until you’re only sniffling, instead of sobbing brokenly against his skin. When you’re ready to, you pull away, and rub the back of your bloody hand across your face. 

He tucks a finger under your chin, those big, dark eyes of his swirling with emotions you cannot hope to name.

“Let’s get cleaned up, shall we?” He asks with a weak smile. “Can’t go back to civilization looking like we killed people.” 

“We did,” you say, looking down at the dried blood staining your palms. There is a soft voice that curls up like smoke from the darkness at the edges of your thoughts, sounding so much like your own that you aren’t entirely sure it isn’t you thinking it—They deserved it. They deserved justice.

Steven’s smile falters. “They would have killed us, Love.” 

“I—I know. I know. They deserved it.” Your fingers curl into righteous fists. You remember the hail of bullets at the dig-site, every screaming, pleading person Loki forced down the beast’s throat, and those thoughts curdle the self doubt sitting in your belly. The God’s booming voice echoes in your memories. 

UNWORTHY. USURPERS. KILL THEM ALL.

“They deserved it.” 

You explore Loki’s bedroom, the press of a button unlocking an equally luxurious bathroom. You’re stripping before you realize it, the ragged, dirty clothes you’d been wearing discarded on the tile floor. The water is hot as soon as you turn it on, and when you step gratefully under the spray, you nearly begin to cry again. You haven’t bathed properly in months—you don’t even know how long you’ve been here. Steven steps in behind you, and the two of you stand beneath the rainfall shower head, watching red swirl down the drain. 

Steven takes such care with you, you almost worry he thinks you’ll break, shampooing your hair, detangling the thick curls with his fingers. You relax against him, the muscular planes of his chest pressed against your back. He rinses the suds from your hair and skin, cupping water over your head. You let him.

 As the ash and blood wash from your skin, you discover new scars, ones you could not even hope to notice in the dim light of your cell. It’s like you’re rediscovering yourself, relearning what you look like, who you even are. You feel like a different person now, than the one who’d been brought here, her head bagged, wrists zip-tied—

No, you are someone else now, someone else entirely. 

Steven cups water over the bite mark on your shoulder, and you hiss at the sting of it. He doesn’t stop though, pressing an apologetic kiss to the skin between your shoulder blades as he cleans your wound. 

“Made a right mess of you, he did,” Steven replies. “Eager bastard.” 

“Well, it’s not like he can kiss me,” you say, and Steven laughs. 

“I-I think I can fix that,” he says, his voice thick with sweet, eager confidence. You fear for an instant that some spark of the earlier fire still remains inside of you, but as Steven caresses the curve of your jaw lovingly, you do not feel the all consuming fire—you just feel him. 

He presses kiss after kiss to your lips until they’re parted and swollen from his attentions, his firm hand on your chin holding your head steady as he works. Steven only stops when you’re dizzy and panting, fingers scrabbling against his slick skin as you try to hold onto him. He pulls you down onto his lap on the shower bench, groaning as his cock presses against your cunt. 

“F-fuck, Steven,” the words are gasped against his throat as your fingers dig into the meat of his shoulders. “God-!” He holds your hips steady, the two of you rocking against each other. How does this feel more intimate than when he’s actually inside you, his cock sliding through your slick folds with audible noise, his other hand tangled in the curls at the nape of your neck with his face pressed to the side of your throat. You’re eager for more contact—desperate for it, even, but he keeps the pace frustratingly slow and steady.  

“Used to dream about when we’d get t’do this—patience, Love—with no one bloody watching.” Steven rocks his hips into yours, and you pressing sloppy, needy kisses of your own against the skin of his neck and shoulders, and you feel his hips buck against you as he chuckles. 

“Fuck, you little minx.” He grips your wrists behind your back with one large hand, forcing you to arch against him. He groans before leaning down to tug one of your nipples between his teeth. ”Fine pair we make.”

“Oh yeah?” You ask, fighting to keep the words even as he wraps his lips around the other nipple, and your toes curl. “And what pair is that?” Steven releases you with a pop, and then releases you so he can squeeze your breasts together, admiring your swollen, puffy nipples. 

“The voice and the vengeance, of course,” he says, pressing another kiss to the skin between your breasts. You moan and shiver as the leaking head of his cock pushes hard against your entrance, your clit rubbing deliciously against the base. He teases the both of you, pressing until his head’s almost inside, and then pulling away again until you’re panting, hips straining uselessly against his firm hold. 

“Steven please,” you whine his name pathetically. “I-I want to cum—!” Steven nods at you, his face the perfect picture of understanding. 

“I know, Sweetheart. I know you do. A-and you’re gonna, I promise. As soon as I think you’re ready, m’gonna let you cum. Can’t force things—he was rather…” He pauses, like he’s searching for the right word. “Rough with you earlier.” You know you should appreciate Steven’s consideration, his mindfulness of the fact that you’d already them lay claim to your body—your shoulder still bears the stinging bite mark the jackal had left on you. Instead, you let out a frustrated whine at his words, attempting to force yourself down onto his cock. Steven clucks his tongue at you, before pausing, and then he chuckles. 

“Marc says we should make you wait extra long for that.” He lifts your hips easily despite your efforts, moving you back and forth across his tip. He lowers you just enough that the head of his cock pops inside, and you mewl, clenching down around him. “But since you feel so fucking good inside, I’m not gonna do that.” 

Steven’s head lolls back against the tile and he thrusts shallowly, teeth sinking into his lip before he pulls you off again. This time, he guides you to the bench before sinking to his knees on the floor of the shower. Steven spreads your legs wide, tugging you to the edge before kissing you. 

“Let me make you feel good,” Steven mumbles against your mouth. “Wanna make you feel good, Love.” He trails wet, sloppy kisses down the side of your jaw and between your breasts, mumbling praises against your wet skin. “So fuckin’ beautiful,” Steven sighs, pressing another to the skin above your cunt. “So perfect.” You whine as he peels your thighs apart, tossing your legs over his shoulders. 

“You don’t have to be quiet anymore, Love,” he says, glorying in the shrill whine you loose as he drags his finger through your folds. “So let’t hear it.” Where Jake and Marc are hungry, eager, Steven is diligent. Methodical. He sucks on your clit, working his tongue against it with slow, deep strokes that leave you gasping, your thighs clenching around his curly head. 

“God, fuck, Steven,” sentences are a chore to form, so single words have to suffice as you tangle your fingers in his hair just as his own circle your entrance deliciously. Your hips undulate against his face, your eyes closed. The orgasm takes you by surprise, your thighs trembling as pleas, praise and curses all fall  from your lips in equal measure, and you aren’t sure which ones you mean. 

“Fuck, yes Steven, feels so good, fuck-fuck-fuck, please—” You’re a simpering, weak-limbed mess when he finally releases you, your legs like jelly. It takes little maneuvering to get you back into his lap again, and this time, Steven wastes no time. He positions you above his cock before dropping you down, letting gravity help him fill you. It punches the air from your lungs in a sharp exhale. 

You can barely focus on breathing though, not when he feels like this inside of you. The fullness is delicious, leaving you gasping when he repeats the motion, lifting you until his head’s almost out, and then dropping you back down again, but still desperate for more. More that Steven wants to give you, more that you don’t know you can take, but that you’re more than willing to try. Your cup runneth-the-fuck-over with pleasure, throbbing on every nerve ending, choking out every other thought. 

“Oh, Love,” he groans, rolling his hips into yours. “There it is.” Steven’s hips buck against yours; short, teasing thrusts that stimulate, but don’t fulfill. Finally, he sheathes himself in you to the hilt, his hips bucking softly against you like he’s looking for more space inside where there is none. The mark from where they’d bitten you as the jackal is still there, humming with power. Steven laves his tongue against it, moaning, savoring the coppery taste of your blood on his tongue. 

“God,” Steven gasps against your skin, holding you close and tight, curving his hips up into yours with increasingly desperate thrusts. “F-fuck, you’ve no idea—” You’re not sure if he’s sputtering out a response to Marc or Jake, but you don’t really have the spare capacity to consider it. Not when Steven is whispering feverish praise and promises into the curve of your throat, and then making good on them with every thrust. 

“Feels s-so good , fuck, want you to cum on my cock—!” He’s almost as bad as you, mumbling possessive nonsense as he slots his teeth into the marks the beast left behind. Briefly it occurs to you that he shouldn’t be able to, but then Steven grinds his thumb against your clit and the electricity of it makes you think pointedly of other things. Like the way his body feels against yours, and you’re close, so fucking close—Your knees tighten around his hips, digging into his sides but he doesn’t seem to notice, or care. 

With a whine and a shudder, you go boneless in Steven’s arms, your eyes rolling as the fireworks become bombs, become supernovas, and your cunt clamps down around his throbbing cock like a slick, wet fist. Steven kisses you, and you taste your own blood on his lips as he slams you back down, holding your hips still and in place as he cums too. 

“Mmm, yeah, mmmfuck,” his head is leaned back against the tile, curls plastered against his skull from the water. Steven stares unseeingly at the shower head above you, holding you tucked against his chest as he fills you. You rest your head against his chest, your own heaving. 

Steven finally releases his death grip on your hips in favor of drawing shapes against the skin of your back. You’re not eager to move and neither is he, keeping you caged comfortably against his chest. There are scars here too, old ones, healed over and almost gone, new ones, fresh, pink wounds you know will leave still more. 

You catalogue them, listing each one as your fingers travel across his skin. Chest. Stomach. Forearm. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, not really, not until you feel Steven’s lips curve against your hair. 

“What’re you doing, Love?” 

What am I doing?

You remain silent and thoughtful as Steven helps you off of him, murmuring assent when he asks if he can clean you off. It’s not until you’re getting out of the shower, watching him toweling off, counting the scars on his back—that you realize. 

“I’m cataloguing.” You say, laying a hand on his back. Steven jumps. 

“What?” 

“I’m counting them. Your scars.” You lick your lips. You know you can’t take them away, you can’t erase them—but you can avenge them. Loki’s network is vast—your lips curl into a small smile. Was vast. Now it is rudderless, a snake without a head. You will dispose of the rest of it. The dark fury in your head feels righteous, and when your eyes meet Steven’s, they are bright with the same. 

“I want to pay them back.” 

fin

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[therainscene]

There upon a rainbow is the answer to a Neverending Story: Will's time-travelling coming-of-age

[Spoilers for The First Shadow ahead, though they don't begin until after the cut. And obligatory disclaimer that I haven't seen the play for myself yet.]

Will Byers is a character haunted by his past.

I mean, obviously, right? After the awful events of S1, Zombie Boy finds himself getting literally hunted down by a giant metaphor for trauma; by S3, when all his friends are starting to grow up, Will is still clinging pathetically to childhood escapism while that trauma metaphor continues to bristle under his skin.

That's not to say that Will's refusal to conform to other people's ideas of what growing up means isn't one of his strengths -- but there's a difference between that and refusing to grow up at all, and Will is very much digging his stubborn little heels in when it comes to the inevitable changes of adolescence.

Because Will is also a character haunted by his future.

As a gay boy growing up in an era that despises gay men, Will's fate has been quite clearly spelled out for him: if he's lucky, he'll just be looked down upon as a pervert; if he's not, he'll get murdered or become an AIDS statistic.

It's hard not to be a late bloomer when you know how quickly undesirable flowers get pruned.

So the prickling at the back of his neck doesn't just flare up in moments that remind him of his past, but also in moments that remind him of his future.

The dark intimacy of the cinema and the sweltering eroticism of the sauna remind him that his feelings for Mike are developing into something new and terrifying...

...while Milevn's heteronormative antics remind him of how unlikely it is that Mike would ever want that sort of future with him anyway.

Even his debriefing on the Mind Flayer's return hints towards his struggle to accept this truth about himself:

Will describes his encounters with the Mind Flayer as like being frozen in place, and I think that applies to his timeline too: the Shadow surrounds him on both sides, boxing him in, preventing him from moving forward or backward.

The only temporal direction open to him is sideways... towards that equally frozen realm the Shadow came from in the first place.

And he's not the only one in this predicament.

-------------------

Like Will, Henry was trapped in an alternate dimension as a child, and like Will, the Mind Flayer followed him home and possessed him -- allowing past and future to torment his adolescent self in tandem.

Brenner pressures and manipulates young Henry to give in to the dark urges demanded by the Shadow, sending him helplessly down the path towards becoming Vecna.

It's the classic self-fulfilling prophecy that dooms many a "difficult" (traumatized/neurodivergent/queer) child whom the adults in their life have no idea how to handle: Henry is deemed too broken to be worth treating with patience or compassion, and when the abuse finally does break him... well, that's just proof they were right about him all along.

The Shadow possessing Henry in 1959 somehow presents not as a formless cloud of particles, but as the spider monster he himself would shape twenty years later...

...and I think this is evidence of a predestination loop.

El didn't just banish Henry to Dimension X, but sent him back in time, allowing him to create the same monster that possessed him as a child. The Shadow was never an alien -- it was a manifestation of Henry's worst possible future, bootstrapped into existence by Brenner's meddling.

Note that this means El is also trapped in a self-creating loop:

If El hadn't used her powers to send Henry to Dimension X, then he never would have been able to sabotage his own childhood... which means Henry might never have become an asset to Brenner, which means Terry would never have been injected with Henry's blood, which means El would never have been born with powers.

To be clear: I'm not saying that El or Henry brought this on themselves.

This is all an allegory for the cycle of abuse, so the self-sabotage going on here isn't about these characters literally being to blame for what Brenner did to them, but about how they self-blame: internalizing the abuse and perpetuating harm in turn.

Let's return to Will and consider one of the show's biggest mysteries: why was he taken in S1?

The play heavily implies that Henry's powers were acquired in Dimension X, and outright states that the lab kids' powers came from Henry's blood, so it's unlikely that Will was born with powers.

Maybe Will was just in the wrong place at the wrong time... but then why was it so important that this random kid be spared from Vecna's plans to kill everyone in S2? Perhaps something happened during his week in the Upside Down that made him an asset to Vecna... but given the similarities between Will's connection to the Mind Flayer and Henry's, I propose an alternative explanation:

Whatever made Will a target in S1 is something that won't happen until S5. Because Will is also trapped in a predestination loop.

If predestination loops are what happens when a self-sabotager is linked to the supernatural, then frankly it's almost impossible for Will not to be trapped in one.

Every season since returning from the Upside Down, Will has sacrificed himself to help his friends fight the horrors... and all three of those sacrifices have been deeply entwined with his feelings for Mike.

In S2, Will was willing to die to save his friends from the Mind Flayer after Mike's heartfelt monologue broke through his possession.

In S3, Will bottled up all the pain he was feeling after his fight with Mike and refused to address it again once he realized the party was going to need his help with the Mind Flayer.

And in S4, Will pretended that his painting was actually from El in an attempt to support Mike -- and save the day once it started to look like a S2-esque monologue from Mike was needed once again.

Over and over, Will takes the love he feels for another boy and channels it into The Greater Heteronormative Good as though he's trying to atone for something. But the older he gets, the less effective that becomes:

S2's sacrifice was crucial to saving the day.

S3's sacrifice was helpful... but like... his role was to be a glorified Geiger counter; he didn't exactly need to shut down emotionally to pull it off.

S4's sacrifice did fuck all to save the day, and he definitely didn't need to meddle with Milevn's relationship by injecting a lie into it -- the painting could have passed as platonic if he wanted.

If this pattern holds, then we can expect Will's next move to start causing harm.

I usually interpret Troy's above line as Vecna foreshadowing... but what if it's actually foreshadowing how Will's nearly-adult self is going to start the chain of events that lead to 12 year-old Will's kidnapping?

Homophobes often accuse gay men of being a threat to children, which is rich because homophobia is the actual threat to children. In his desperate efforts to suppress the desires that make him a target to homophobes, all Will has accomplished is to hurt himself on homophobes' behalf. He's become a homophobe.

And thus he dooms an innocent child to needless horrors.

It's tempting to believe that Will's S5 coming-of-age is going to involve breaking the loop and undoing all the horrible things that happened...

...But I don't think this is likely to be the sort of time travel story in which the past can be undone. For one thing, Will breaking the loop would also undo the entirety of Stranger Things; for another, this show isn't really about defeating abuse so much as surviving it.

My bet would be that Will can't destroy the loop any more than he can destroy 80s homophobia. But once the loop completes, he'll also be free to leave it in the past and take a brave step into the future -- one in which he fully accepts his right to be in love and lust with a boy.

As scary as that future is...

...he might be pleasantly surprised by what he finds there.

[aricarianis]

The Widow At The Door. | AO3 Simon "Ghost" Riley / Female Character Psychological Drama, Comfort, Manipulation, Predator/Prey, Female Character Has a Fear of Spiders. One-Shot | 1,450 words. In a panic over a feared predator, she reluctantly accepts help from Simon, a seemingly kind stranger with a hint of menace. As fear and trust collide, she must confront her vulnerabilities and choose between facing her fears or surrendering to an unsettling comfort.

The room echoes with a recently delivered scream, and several minutes of panic drag on before the thought of how she landed in this situation crosses her mind. Short, irregular gasps guide beads of sweat down her body. Her shaky hands clutch a key to communication with the outside world — if only she had someone to call. Back against the door. Nails digging into wood. Frozen in place. Trapped.

Her eyes dart around, searching for an escape plan: on the living room table, a weeks-old notice about the upcoming building-wide pest control. On the couch, only a remote, some pillows, and a stuffed animal overdue for return. The knives on the kitchen counter to her left — useless against the kind of predator outside. A precise hunter, deliberate in every move, with a patience that speaks of experience. Fear spreads like a rare venom, paralyzing her in a way she hasn’t felt in years, not since she last had to fend for herself.

“Are you okay? I heard screaming.” A deep, disembodied voice in the distance brings her back to reality.

“Oh thank God! C-can you see it? By the door.” Her voice trembles, giving away her state of mind.

“I don’t see anything.” His voice grows louder, closer. “Mind telling me what I’m supposed to be looking for?”

“It’s a… it’s a spider. A huge spider. Staring at me when I opened the door.”

The memory of its gaze triggers a cascade of tiny, electrified bumps across her skin. A small eternity passes before the booming voice makes a comeback.

“Maybe you scared it away when you screamed. Do you want to come out? It’s just me out here, I’ll put it away if it shows up-"

“No! Jesus, no.” She interrupts, fear pushing her mind to create all sorts of irrational scenarios, all ending with her getting attacked by the menacing predator. “I’ll just… stay where I am. Thank you, mister.”

“Simon. Name’s Simon, I live down the hall. You don’t have to call me mister,” the stranger stated.

Her mind races, flipping through images like a film reel, searching for anything to put a face to the voice outside the door. Then, it clicks: a broad frame, towering height, dark eyes that seem to bore through you. A sinister impression that always left her uneasy. They’d crossed paths often, her eyes always darting away, her phone a shield against unwanted conversation. She once even called a friend in the elevator just to avoid acknowledging his presence, feeling his gaze linger as she spoke of loneliness and heartbreak. A gaze that made her wish she could read his mind.

And now here he was, putting himself in the line of danger to help her. Silly instincts.

“So your plan is to never leave your apartment again?” Simon asks.

She chuckles, a weak attempt to mask her unease. “I would if I could but… ah, it’s okay. I’ll call the manager tomorrow, see if the pest control company is still coming in-“

“They’re not,” Simon interrupts, “coming in, I mean. They wrapped up a few days ago.”

“Fuck.” She closes her eyes as a deep sigh escapes her lips. Her way out of accepting the stranger’s help slipping through her fingers. “I’m out all day, I haven’t even seen them around. They shouldn’t have wrapped up if monsters like that are still out there.”

“Maybe it was waiting for the right moment to come out.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking. “Right as I’m trying to go out for dinner?”

“I mean, maybe it knows you shouldn’t be alone,” Simon carries on, “maybe it’s looking for a warm place to stay and it took a liking to you.”

She shivers, not just from the thought of the spider, but from the way Simon’s words hang in the air. Silly instincts making a comeback.

“What do you mean ‘took a liking to me’? My place isn’t warm or inviting and, besides, I hate that. I hate that something I can’t see gets to choose me and make me feel trapped. It feels like there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“There is.” His tone rock solid.

“What?”

“You can come out.”

“Say what now?” Her voice rising in volume.

“The spider is probably more scared than you are. Come out.”

“You can’t be serious,” she scoffed.

“Why?”

“‘I’m trapped, Simon!”

The mention of his name for the first time in the exchange opens the path for bluntness to come through.

“You’re the one trapping yourself right now. I told you the spider isn’t out here, it’s just me.”

She hesitates, his words catching her by surprise. “You think I’m trapping myself?”

Simon’s voice is steady but gentle. “You’re hiding behind a door from a guy you’ve seen many times before. If there was a spider here, it’s long gone now. I know we don’t know each other, but I’m just trying to help.”

Guilt crashes in like relentless waves. Loneliness and heartbreak had blinded her to kindness and compassion. Her tone softens. “I’ve never had to worry about this before.”

“About spiders?”

“About facing scary things on my own.” She looks down at the tips of her fingers peeking out of the sleeves of a jacket — too big to be called hers. The warmth it once provided now feeling like a constricting burden. Heavy air of an anxious summer night.

“You’re not on your own,” Simon says soflty. “I don’t mean to pry, but if you want to share, I’m here to listen.”

Sharing with a stranger would make it real. Friends might understand her reasons, but strangers demand context. Context as to why she trapped herself in a cage she created — one whose key still carried the warmth of past hands. Hands that made her realize hers were better off holding bars. Barriers, like the door between herself and the spider. A comfortable prison that took away the pain of having agency. The kind of pain that has landed her here. The kind predators can sense.

“Are you really sure it isn’t out there?” She diverts, her voice revealing a hint of exhaustion.

“Yeah, I’ve looked everywhere. Well, everywhere except…” He pauses, leading her on.

“IT COULD’VE GOTTEN INTO MY HOUSE?” she shouts, frantically searching for the predator that could’ve slipped into her home.

“It could, but that’s out of your control. Spiders are sneaky. They get into places without anyone noticing and hide in the dark until it’s time to feed.”

“Stop talking like that. I’m scared!”

“You won’t be if you let me in.” His bass voice hovers somewhere between friendly and ominous. “You know, to check it out.”

With a quick shrug, the jacket slips to the floor. Fear clouds her mind, leaving no room for second thoughts. As always, there’s relief in surrender. Her trembling hands fumble with the lock, struggling to keep up with the urgency in her head. The door swings open. A breeze slips inside. Her eyes lift. Simon.

“Are you okay?” he asks, softness everywhere but his ever-piercing eyes. She nods and steps aside, making space for him to enter.

Simon methodically searches the apartment. His eyes scan every corner and shadow with a practiced gaze, fingers brushing against surfaces as if sensing for movement. A precise hunter, deliberate in every move, with a patience that speaks of experience. He pauses occasionally, offering reassuring glances that suggest there’s nothing to fear anymore.

“Well, you’ll be happy to hear that the spider is not here.” The corners of Simon’s lips curl up, his voice slicing through the anxious silence of the apartment. She sighs in relief, and thanks him. He takes it as a sign, an invitation. “So… still feel like going out for dinner? All this hunting left me hungry.”

She hesitates, her gaze shifting to the door. The invitation is simple, yet it holds a weight of its own. She could refuse. Step outside the trap Simon pointed out she put herself in, by herself. Walk out into the world knowing there was a spider that took a liking to her, but she wasn’t going to let it dictate her life. But in this moment, with her comfort zone tempting, she finds herself falling back into her old patterns.

“Yeah,” she says, her eyes dropping to the jacket, then back to Simon. “I’d like that.”

Simon’s smile broadens, and he gestures toward the door. “After you.”

As they walk through the doorway, Simon glances at the notice he slid under her door a few weeks ago. A small reminder to look for a sweet new home for his tarantula. After all, he has another pet to take care of now.

[susivoi]

They grow up so fast <3

Cocoa headcanons as a cocoa enjoyer:

Jealousy

An aggressive territorial boar-like cocoa. It can usually be found patrolling around the Apollo cabin or Hades Cabin respectively. When given affection by those that it trusts however, it melts into their lap like a puppy.

Grief

A shy yet kind Cocoa that doesn't understand the size of it's Antlers. Nuzzling results in some unwanted scratches. Unfortunately it loves cuddles and nuzzles. Fortunately, the Atlers can be neutralized with marshmallows.

Guilt

A spider cocoa so of course it spins webs. It sticks to everything and usually sits in a ceiling corner with a web nest. Usually, it's shadowy webs are temporary and fizzle out of existence unless tended to. Not exactly the most cuddlable but doesn't mind a good pat.

Isolation

The most anti-social of the cocoas. Usually you can find it sitting in the shadows watching groups of people. It doesn't like interaction unless it's from those it trusts (aka it's dads) The least affectionate of them all.

Sadness

The blob child here we go. Clingy, lazy, sluggish. Wherever it goes it leaves behind a misty shadowy sludge on the ground. Like snail slime. The trail dissappears upon being touched. This cocoa will do anything to get serotonin and with cuddle with literally anyone and anything. No one can refuse that dopey face. Well... eyes. It really doesn't have a face. The eyes just float around as if they were in a jello monster.

Shame

Timid and skittish. Shame is usually seen hiding under beds, tables, or any box that it can fit in. Yet, it can easily be drawn out from hiding with patience and toys. Literally a lap cat I don't know what to tell ya.

[melleonis]

list of worm characters and how good they would be at force fem

beware spoilers

UNDERSIDERS Taylor (Skitter): unless there's an estrogen spider somewhere in the world, no shot Taylor (Khepri): unfortunately, unlimited power comes at the cost of a rapidly-dwindling understanding of gender Grue: lacks both the ability and the inclination. his fragile masculinity makes him a fine target, however. Tattletale: you'd think she'd be good at it, or at the very least sufficiently-advanced egg detection, but she also believes everyone on the team is straight, so this is gonna be a blind spot for her. Bitch: shockingly good at it if the end goal is puppygirl, stone useless otherwise. Regent: i mean. he could, but what's in it for him? easily bored, no patience for process. at best he could manage getting someone into a tutu for a lark before losing interest. Imp: gaslight girlboss of course she's gonna be great at this. what's this? all the contents of your underwear drawer replaced? you didn't do that... did you? who else could have? so you must have wanted this...right? Parian: if you will not wear the dress, the dress will have to come to you. Foil: nah

EVERYONE ELSE Accord: ugh who wants a tidy feminization? Bakuda: hey maybe you'll get hit with the fem grenade! probably you'll just die, or worse. Bonesaw: oh now we're talkin. unparalleled biomech horror force fem game. the mechanical spider tapped into your spinal column decides when it's time to get you prettied up for a tea party. Canary: shania twain karaoke incident feminizes twelve, birdcage for sure. Cherish: trivially easy to set up an emotional conditioning system. wearing skirt? dopamine hit! wearing pants? kill yourself - whoops. well, she'll have a lot of time at the bottom of the ocean to figure out correct feedback intensities. Clockblocker: in theory one should be able to get up to some mischief while someone is frozen in time, but i'm not sure dennis has the ability to freeze someone without also freezing their clothes, which means this has limited utility. could play a support role for someone else. Contessa: effortlessly trips you into a chain reaction that completely reshapes your life as part of a twelve-thousand step plan to improve humanity's long-term odds of survival by a fraction of a percent. thank you for your service. Echidna: all your evil monster clones are girls for some reason. whether this works depends entirely on how you respond to awkward post-incident questions your friends have about it. Eidolon: yeah i mean he could. but it doesn't make him feel globally, historically important so he's not gonna. Gallant: is "feminine" an emotion he can inflict? girl feelings beam attack? shame we'll never know, RIP. Gregor the Snail: nothing in canon says he can't secrete a mildly acidic ooze that turns you into a slime girl. Jack Slash: broadcast shard should in theory mean he can easily manipulate other capes into getting feminized, but that's less time spent on self-aggrandizing mass murder, so. Marquis: bone structure matters less than you'd think in the grand scheme of things, but yes he can reshape your jawline and cheek bones, give you those child-bearing hips. pros: he doesn't kill women, so you're that much safer. cons: it is going to hurt like a motherfucker. Number Man: oh no your company has fallen on hard times and you've been laid off! and how peculiar that the only business hiring anywhere near you is the maid cafe. it says they're very strict about their dress code but that's probably fine. and food's gotten so expensive but wait these odd imported protein shakes are absurdly cheap... Panacea: you know what the joke is already, come on. Scion: has Path to Victory and would never in a billion years think of using it for anything fun.

and finally,

the Simurgh: best in show. sure, it'll take four years for the triggers and conditioning to work their way through your subconscious but when they do...

BONUS Simurgh/Dragon double-team: Defiant probably never spent enough time close to the Simurgh to get affected, plus he had those high-tech earplugs he designed himself, so surely he's fine. nevertheless, his focus wanders during a critical moment while editing Dragon's source code, and now she's bossier, maybe even a little meaner, and the prosthetic parts she's making for colin's cyborg body are... different. curvier, softer. and every time he tries to find the problem in her code he gets distracted, and she gets more and more imperious. can he find a way out of the Simurgh's conditioning and his AI lover's domination? will he have to seek help from Saint - or worse, Teacher? surely they wouldn't take advantage of him in his vulnerable cyberdoll state?

[bluestarjay]

Plasma is so loser bf x princess bf, and like,, I think we know who's who, even though they're both definitely losers. I see a lot of polyninja, a lot of lava, and a lot of bruise, but not enough plasma!!! They're so underrated,, here's some early show plasma for the soul 😎

When they first met, they hated each other. Wu had Jay, Cole, and Zane just, like, attack him out of nowhere! Obviously, it was for the test,,, but all Kai had gotten out of it were 3 annoying rivals. And the blue one? His first thought when he asked about his sister was, "Is she hot?" He was annoyed. His job was to protect his sister, and yet she was in the hands of some damned skeletal villains. How had he failed so badly?

Even though he had insisted that he wouldn't become a ninja, that it was just to save Nya, he had found a home at the monastery. He knew it was necessary to stay and help defeat Lord Garmadon. He had his sister and 3 annoying friends. But that was more than he could say he had before.

The most annoying of them was definitely Jay. He never shut up, and he was kinda dumb, but at the same time, he was brilliant. They had shared stories of how Wu had found each of them, and Jay mentioned a failed flying machine. Apparently, he lived in a junkyard and had grown up building things, which was pretty cool. He knew they were similar in that aspect. He, too, grew up creating things, and he was well aware of the patience and skill required for it. Jay, of course, was a whole lot smarter than him, considering that Kai never went to school, and Jay had been homeschooled for the past 12 or so years by his parents, who also happened to be incredibly smart. But considering how much of a genius Jay was, to be able to invent things with a reasonable chance of success, as well as the other artful skills he had mentioned, he lacked common sense. And it pissed the hell out of Kai.

After many months of getting to know the other ninja and a few encounters with Lord Garmadon's son, Lloyd, he could definitely say the other ninja had grown on him. Zane tended to be a pushover and always took things too seriously; he always mother-henned them when they got injured. He was kind, though. Cole was kind of a slob. He wasn't really one to say anything, though, as he was too, but sometimes it was like Cole was another breed. He was way too strong for him, too, so training with him always sucked. Jay wasn't any less annoying, but he had gotten used to nervous ramblings and pessimistic panicking in the face of danger. Seriously, he was a ninja! How was he gonna help save Ninjago if he couldn't handle spiders? But he should probably give him more credit. He was a pretty sheltered kid, living in a trailer in the desert. He had started to cling to Kai when it got too cold, since he wasn't used to the cold weather. At first, Kai thought it was annoying because all he had to do was grab a jacket. But then Zane started to do the same, and it became common to have Jay and Zane sit on either side of him when they played video games so they could bask in the heat he radiated. Honestly, he preferred just having Jay next to him than Zane. Only because Zane was too cold, even for him!

At one point, he noticed that what had been a simple, fleeting crush on Nya had become love for Jay. Jay was in love with Nya. His sister! The thought of it made his stomach ache, and he knew that he wouldn't let Jay go out with his sister, no matter what. Hell, he'd rather let Nya go out with Pythor than Jay!! And it wasn't necessarily anything against Jay. He just didn't want one of his best friends to date his sister!

But they went out anyway. To Mega-Monster Amusement Park?? When they were on a mission there?? He hadn't even given permission!! And then Jay unlocked his true potential because of Nya!! He wanted to be happy for them, truly, but he couldn't find it in him. He didn't know why, but he felt nauseous seeing Jay's glowing form next to Nya, hearing her say, "I like you best when you're you!" Well, no shit! Anyone could've told him that! A voice deep inside his head tells him *he* should've helped Jay unlock his true potential.

Another several months go by, and they've since had to deal with getting Lloyd adjusted to his new life as a teenager and the green ninja. He had a huge role to take, and he felt bad. In those few months, he had come to think of Lloyd as a brother. He was stupid to think he had a chance at becoming the green ninja himself. It was always meant for Lloyd. He knew it made sense; his role, no matter what, would be to protect his younger siblings. He's noticed that as Nya takes on her passion for engineering or mechanics or whatever the hell it is, Jay had worked on his own stuff less. And then when Pixal had joined, maybe he just felt useless? They already had people to take care of fixing their mech and vehicles, and his lightning was useful, but not really for the day to day mechanical jobs Jay tended to help with. He knew this because he tended to watch Jay sometimes. Not because he was being creepy or liked him or anything, obviously! But Jay was the kind of guy who needed some help sometimes. He noticed that Jay was a lot more restless without having stuff to do, so he bounced his legs, which got annoying because it shook the table or his feet tapped the floor a bit too loudly. Sometimes, he'd start drumming on the thing closest to him, which, again, got annoying real quick.

One time, when it was just the two of them, Jay started bouncing his leg and looked really anxious, and kai thought that maybe it was because Nya was fixing something in the next room over, and the clacking of metal and whatnot could be heard. "You good, man?" Jay stopped almost immediately and turned to look at him. Kai had several thoughts about Jay's hair, how it was almost definitely curly, but being straightened every morning. At the time, it had been raining, so even though Jay's hair wasn't quite curly, it was frizzing up and didn't look very good. And to think he made fun of Kai for having damaged hair!! Jay forced a smile, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. "Yeah, of course! Why wouldn't I be?" "I don't know, you've been shaking your knees like crazy, and you look half dead. Is it the rain messing with your powers? Or Nya?" Jay flushed and looked confused. "It's kind of the rain. Why- why would it be about Nya?" "Uhh well, she rejected you, didn't she?" Jay looked away from his eyes. "And she's taken over your role as the 'smart one' or whatever. She's out building and fixing things, and you feel like we don't need you anymore. But we do. Dude, you're so fucking smart and you don't even know! I didn't even go to school, you know? If you keep bottling everything up, you're just gonna end up hurting someone and probably yourself." Jay looked back at Kai, tears building up. Knowing him, he'd probably just start getting super defensive. "Dude, you just took that whole conversation from 0-100 right there, like, you aren't wrong, but where the hell did you get all that from?? And me and Nya, we just decided we were better off as friends, it's fine. I genuinely don't care all that much, Nya's really cool, and I'm fine just being friends with her! But she's been hiding out with Pixal, and every time I ask if she's got anything she needs help with, or if she's got something for me to do, she insists that they've got it! And I would totally just work on my own thing, but I can't because they're always in there, and it's awkward! Because what I've been doing my whole life, Nya has picked up in the past few months! And now they don't need me, and I feel useless!" As tears silently streamed down Jay's face, Kai wrapped his arm around Jay and pulled him towards his chest. Usually, he wouldn't do this for someone unless it was Nya or Lloyd, but he loved Jay.

He *loved* Jay.

Holy shit was he in love with Jay???

Ughhh, this was so bad!!

He's in love with the boy who was in love with his sister!

They might’ve been just friends, but that was still weird, wasn't it? He'd definitely have to talk to someone about it,,, He looked down at Jay, who was still tucked into his chest, and oh wow, even though his hair was straightened every single morning, it was really soft! Jay had by now stopped crying and let out a long breath. He looked at Kai and smiled. Had Jay always had a scar on his lip? He wondered how he got it. And were those lichtenberg scars on his shoulders; and beginning to creep up his neck? And his eyes, they were entirely brown, but his left eye was partially a deep, dark brown compared to the lighter chocolate color of the rest.

"Kai?" Uhh yeah?" "Thank you."

[askponyinuyasha]

There's talk of giant spiders and other less natural monsters near the old fortress in the center of the wood; Be careful out there.

Zooks: There's talk of giant spiders and other less natural monsters near the old fortress in the center of the wood.

Inuyasha: What?!

Inuyasha: We'll have to finish this later!

Gad: Be careful out there!

Astro & Sunburst: ...

@ask-wizard-sunburst: Did he say 'giant spiders'?

<Previous> ... <Next>

~To be continued...~

(High-res transparent PNGs below the cut, and whoa-nelly there are a lot of them)

Thanks everyone for your patience! This bit took me a really long time because there were so many figures and new poses and effects to draw!

In the intervening time, I did really enjoy seeing everyone's speculations as to who the off-screen character was! Nobody managed to connect the dots that they'd seen this font and text color before!

Anyway I hope to do a couple more entries like this where I can sit back and let the story tell itself. I'll even try drawing some action sequences maybe but hopefully I can avoid drawing too many spiders.

[mousebone-s]

Redesigns of my patience soul design (her name is Wynn). Headcanons / info under the cut:

- 9 yrs old

- LV 3 (was occasionally manipulated into harming monsters by Flowey)

- she/her

- likes: toys, playing pretend, animals, puzzles, mysteries

- dislikes: bullies, being alone, spiders

- has juvenile arthritis, Chron’s disease, and generalized anxiety disorder

- bullied heavily for her timidness and perceived weakness before falling

- extremely shy, had very few friends aside from some teachers and Hero (bravery soul)

- parents were strict and overprotective, partly because of her chronic illnesses. Father was always working and rarely interacted w/ Wynn. Mother was sometimes smothering and emotionally manipulative, sometimes cold and distant.

- often went to Mt Ebott to play. One day, bullies saw her heading to the mountain and followed her. They pretended they were going to throw her in, and one of the bullies dangled her over the edge. The ground beneath chipped, and the bully stumbled to keep their footing, accidentally dropping Wynn into the hole.

- after falling, felt apprehensive about returning home because of how kind Toriel was, but ultimately didn’t want to hurt her best friend and parents.

- Wynn discovered her soul power (she would not take damage as long as she stayed still) and used it to avoid harm long enough to spare monsters. When she got to Asgore, though, she was so afraid upon realizing he would not accept mercy that she tried to run, allowing Asgore to deal one fatal blow.

[luneemeritus]

Hello! I've been reading and liking your posts on Hazbin Hotel (especially the analyses of Angel - he's my favourite character!) and I wondered if I could ask you something about Huskerdust?

It's something that's been playing on my mind that I'd be interested to get another perspective on.

I ship Huskerdust, like many Hazbin fans, but I'm aware that not everyone likes it. And I've seen the arguments about Angel's initial treatment of Husk and whether it was sexual harassment and how much that ruins the Huskerdust ship and so on.

One point I see made a lot is this:

"If Angel was a straight man and Husk was a woman, everyone would agree that this behaviour was creepy and wrong and no-one would ship those two! But because Angel is gay and Husk is a man, it's fine apparently? No!"

It's been stuck in my head. And I've not seen many Huskerdust defenders addressing the claim (apart from, like, one YouTube comment I doubt I'll be able to find again).

So I'm turning to you because I enjoy reading your Angel Dust posts and you're pretty good at pointing out flaws in haters' arguments.

What would your response to that be?

OMG thank youuu!!! I also love your posts, specially how you mix Angel with Jessica Rabbit, she's gorgeous, I simp for both of them honestly 😭

Ok ok. Now, let me sigh veeeery heavily because 'anti-Angel Dust' requires a lot of patience to deal with. Huskerdust only came to be because Angel stopped his behaviour, which everyone, including the writters, know it was fucked up. Their argumentation ends there, to begin with.

(tw: SA, rape)

And this take "If Angel was a straight man / If Husk was a woman" is beyond delusional. Guys, do anyone here thinks being creepy and pushing boundaries is ok? No, right? Literally no one thinks that's ok. Angel don't think that's ok. This is why he stopped. This is why, even before opening up to Husk, he stopped the moment Husk pushed him away. It was clear to him that there was a limit he wouldn't cross. Notice how they 'dehumanize' (he's a demon spider but, you got it) Angel to "a creep", ignore his victimhood AND shamelessly wish for him to not be loved because of a mistake he committed AND fixed it, but then Huskerdust fans are the wrong ones? Angel is overly hated (and lied about btw) because 1, he's a victim, 2, he's an imperfect victim, and 3, he makes mistakes *because* of his victimhood, but idk, his haters live in some alternative reality where a gay man victim of human trafficking is well accepted and understood. Even if their hatred towards the character proves the opposite.

Angel didn't do anything he can't amend for. Do these people also think the shipp was "ruined" because Husk was an Overlord in the past? No, right? Obviously not, the AMOUNT of Angel haters that justify and ignore Husk's flaws is absurd. Husk also pushed Angel's emotional boundaries and made unnecessary rude comments about his work. Is he a monster for that? Obviously not, the moment he realized what Angel was going throught, he changed his perspective completely and that should be the case with everyone. Because yes, Angel's victimhood DOES matter, his hypersexuality is a coping mechanism, a facade, all of this matters, it matters SO MUCH MORE than Angel asking for Husk to bang him. "But it doesn't justify" boohoo Sherlock Homes, Angel stopped his behaviour. There, satisfied? Lol no because hating a victim is never enough, always a new reason (I also wish Angel would verbally apologize, that would be great too, and Huskerdust is still a slow burn, always keep that in mind). Angel is a victim of human trafficking. It's not Val being mean to him, it's Val using him as a slave. A slave. Rape. Collective rape. Sex trafficking. Sex slavery. Yall know what that means?

Here, an example and a study about how enduring abuse fucks up your brain.

https://www.bianj.org/abuse-brain-injury/

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1238225255/domestic-violence-is-now-recognized-as-a-leading-cause-of-traumatic-brain-injury

Imagine how Angel's brain is. Like. Angel haters, I know putting yourselfs in someone's place is not your thing, specially when you have to weaponize someone's gender identity and sexuality to make a point, but imagine having your brain deformed by years of abuse. Abuse from the person you once loved. Bad, right?

It's just that Angel's haters are unable to analyze any kind of nuance. Doing a bad thing, like pushing boundaries, doesn't make you an irredimable person. Angel, because of his hypersexuality caused by years of severe abuse and isolation, harrassed Husk. He realized he fucked up. He stopped. Husk also seem extremely guilty for his past. They're both owned by people that have pleasure in torturing others, violating every single part of their body, mental state and soul. See the difference?

Victims aren't perfect. Victims will make mistakes. Husk is also a victim (by Alastor), and he also makes mistakes... HUGE mistakes, cause you know, being a Gambling Overlord... not the best vibes. Angel's haters should really stop pretending to care about poor Husk's feefees and just admit they don't want a victim to find love and peace.

...ANYWAY. Sorry, Chrysalys, for the big ass response but I feel like I said everything I wanted to. I hope the haters didn't changed your perspective about the shipp! Because, as yourself said in your amazing analysis, they're not perfect people, but they're perfect for each other. Huskerdust is precisely what a wholesome, healthy couple is, even with two flawed people: they talk and communicate about their problems. They opened up. Understood each other. Support each other. I reblogged someone joking about how Huskerdust was able to make in one episode what Stolitz didnt to in two seasons LMAO

[legendofzoodles]

How the Chain solves dungeon puzzles

Time has been doing this since before his first puberty so he’s got it down to a science. With decades of experience he’d probably rely on that heavily when approaching any dungeon puzzle, and automatically pay attention to certain things like the design, who might have created it and the items he finds there to give him a leg up when it’s time to use ye olde noggin. That being said, since he has been doing this since he was a child I feel like he’d 100% rage if things got too difficult. 

What? You think he survived the Water Temple because of patience and controlling his emotions? Goddess no, he was mentally 9 when he painstakingly got through it and it broke him. He now has a deep seeded hatred for all water based puzzles. 

Warriors on the other hand, has spent a lot of time managing armies and little to no time in a room devoid of sunlight- unless it was shutting himself away in his office to crunch some overdue paperwork. Don’t get me wrong he’d crush any sort of puzzle where the solution is simply beating up a room full of monsters or the dungeon boss, but traditional puzzle he might struggle with. A lot of Zelda puzzles require an ‘out of the box’ kind of thinking that probably doesn’t come naturally to the ‘by the books’ Captain. 

Since back in the day Twilight had Oocca and her son to teleport him out of the temple when he got tired, low on supplies or bored so if he can help it he won’t stick around longer than he needs to. That said he’d still really enjoy his time there, silently taking in the atmosphere and ambience of the dungeon. 

Also, according to the 2000s Zelda fandom TP’s dungeon puzzles were the most difficult of the series. I’d wager that Midna, rather than helping out (outside of her being a companion type character), would’ve either cryptically teased the answer if she figured it out before him to poke fun or simply not have taken an interest and just nagged at him to hurry up. Meaning he solved them mostly on his own and therefore got really good at it.

Sky definitely used to chat with Fi as he solved puzzles back in his adventure, sharing thoughts, getting hints and occasionally voicing frustration. Because of this, he would definitely collaborate with whoever’s exploring with him and if he’s on his own then he’ll just talk to himself. Helps him think.

He’s the type to overthink every problem presented to him, to the point where he’d often invent a very convoluted solution when an obvious one was staring him in the face ignored. And unless there’s someone there to point it out he’ll never notice. 

Like Time, Legend’s got a lot of experience dungeon crawling, I’d argue more since judging by Time’s armour he hasn’t been travelling a whole lot recently, so he’d also be relying on that experience. When he was younger, dungeon puzzles were a blast to figure out but now they’ve all just kind of bled together. There’s nothing he hasn’t really seen before in some shape or form, no tricks for the deity’s to pull that will surprise him. 

He’d just breeze through each puzzle or trap like: “Lame,” or “Seen it,” or “Hey...the spider’s new,” yawning as he went. I feel though if he were paired up with Warriors (he could act nonchalant while Warriors is jumpy at everything) who’s new to all this or Hyrule how’s only ever seen really simplistic dungeon puzzles it could spark that joy he once had. 

Wild would unashamedly break the system. Either accidently while finding creative way to cheat or to intentionally carve out his own shortcut. Not so much out of frustration, he could absolutely solve it they way the designers intended if he wanted to, trouble is he rarely has any interest in doing that. He used to ruin the carefully constructed puzzles (most of) the Sheikah monks crafted specifically to test him- right in their faces!- and they rewarded him regardless of the damage he caused. He’s been spoiled. I can imagine him blasting a way out only to turn around, go back in and intentionally destroy the rest of the puzzles for the sake of completion and loot.  

Members like Wind, Hyrule and Time on a bad day would 100% support this method, the others would be horrified, with Legend somewhere in the middle.

Four is a very methodical sort of problem solver, not one to let his past experience cloud his judgment and restrict him to assumptions rather than trying out something new. As a blacksmith who’s probably gotten to learn about how other cultures craft their weapons he probably has a deep appreciation for the dungeons design and would be the first to point out what certain quirks of the building mean and what tribe left their mark there. Whenever he may feel agitated for not understanding a puzzle all he needs to do is walk around and look at some historic architecture to keep Blue at bay. 

For this reason he may be one of the slower ones to complete a puzzle, but at least the walls swirling patterns may give him inspiration for a cool new sword handle. Not everyone would be able to relate to his eye for detail though. 

Four: The paving looks amazing with all these unique carvings, don’t you think?

Hyrule: [grazing a hand over the stone] Ah yes, the floor is made out of floor. 

Similar to Warriors Hyrule hasn’t really seen any complex dungeon puzzles, but unlike him he has a more creative ‘out of the box’ way of thinking, which would give him an edge. He’d probably get easily distracted though, lured away from the puzzle by a hidden passage or another route he hadn’t checked out, yet would somehow end up discovering every nook and cranny in the entire dungeon has to offer without much trouble.    

Wind is not really a fan of them. Unless it’s for a specific purpose like rescuing someone or to beat up a monster he’ll actively avoid them. But if he had to he’d try to get through it as quickly as possible by literally just trying whatever first pops in his head. He’d rush past and ignore any sort of hints the designers might have given him and try to brute force his way though. When it eventually works he’ll immediately forget the solution though, so don’t bother asking how he got out just be glad he did, like Grandma would. 

He’s not the type to ‘stop and smell the roses’ like Four, or just enjoy the atmosphere like Twilight, but he’s too polite (thanks to Grandma) to go around destroying ancient masonry like Wild. 

Who do you think would make up the best teams (2- 4 people) if the chain were split up in a dungeon? 

I’m thinking Sky, Four and Hyrule because they’d go at a slow pace chatting the whole time, with Four teaching the other two about who built the dungeon and Hyrule encouraging them to explore every room. Or maybe Legend, Warriors and Wind, with the latter two trying really hard and Legend supervising and making fun of them. Leaving Time, Twilight and Wild, where Twilight would struggle to keep Wild from blowing them up and Time being seconds away from joining him. 

~~~

Thanks for reading! 

Masterlist

Other headcanons: 

Parkour team

Honorary Gorons

How each member of the chain laughs

[treedaddymcpuffpuff]

Beneath Miles of Stone - Part eighteen - John Wick x Plus Size Fem Reader

Summary: John has been in prison for nine months. He’s content to stay if it means appeasing the high table and keeping peace between the owners of each continental. However, he meets someone who erases that willingness. Peace be dammed.

TW: talk of killing/kill for hire job

Even though she left an extensive note to Michael detailing what happened, she decides to follow it up with a text.

Hey, sorry about the wet marks on the couch and rug.

I’m worried about you. Is leather jacket man always going to come crawling to you when he gets beat up?

I’m a bad roommate.

Nah, you’re just ❤️in ❤️ Also, a letter taped to the fridge? I feel like I’m in the 1800s. Had to read that shit by candlelight to make it really authentic.

She smiles, laughs out loud, then frowns, puts her phone down and rubs her face, attempting to massage some reality back into her brain to replace the vivid delusion she’s been entertaining.

A knock on the door of their hotel room makes her suspicious. After all, John said: “don’t open the door”, “don’t leave the room”, “pick up the phone if it rings”.

But surely not answering the door doesn’t apply if it’s hotel manager on the other end.

Winston’s rich voice is a salve to chafed nerves, and she’s scurrying eagerly to let him in.

“May I come in?” He looks as tired as she feels, even with the kind smile on his face.

He sits in the swivel leather desk chair while she folds her legs up on the bed and listens to what he has to say.

“Do you know what they call him?”

“Who? John?”

Winston nods. “They call him Baba Yaga, the Boogeyman. A terrifying monster. The thing that lurks under your bed, if you will.”

“Why?” She asks this because she knows it’s what he wants her to inquire, what she supposed to say to something like that.

“Once he wants someone dead, whether it be for professional or personal reasons, their fate is sealed. No one he’s hunted has ever lived.”

Spiders ballroom waltz down her spine. “He’s dangerous,” she summarizes.

“He’s lethal. And I’ve never, ever seen him like this.”

She picks the skin on her fingers, which Winston notices and scolds her for. “That can cause bad infections, you know.” He’s not mad, though; still, with a gentle smile, he offers to have a variety of stress balls sent to the room instead.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to accommodate me,” she admits, blood hot on her neck and jaw.

“My dear child, I do not have to do anything. I want to make you as comfortable as possible.”

She blanches a little bit at the term of endearment from him, reminded of a wise old uncle lost at sea, here to give her advice in her time of need.

He drops that topic for now. “It’s not my place to say, but he’s in love with you.”

She’s grateful for his patience as she chokes on this information.

“And while Johnathan is dear to me,” Winston says, leveling her like C4 does to a skyscraper, “It would be irresponsible of me, if I didn’t try to help you get away from this life while you still can.” He pauses for a moment, and in his silence she hears the ending to that trailing sentence: “if you still can.”

“You really think he’s that.. bad?”

Winston gives her a puzzled look. “No, not at all.” He shakes his head. “You misunderstand. I think the opposite. Johnathan has always been truculent, capricious, and implacable, but he has never been capable of being bad . The problem is not what he will do to you, it’s what he will do to protect you. And the hold over him someone could acquire by obtaining you…”

He keeps trailing off, which makes her think that he’s constantly trying not to say something. “Like, kill me?” She clarifies.

“Or worse.”

Oh.

“I just want you to know you have options. It’s very easy to feel stuck.” His contemplative expression denotes that he’s been on the receiving end of that statement once or twice.

“Mr. Scott,” she says, “you’re really, really nice… thank you for being that way.”

“Please,” he holds up a hand, smile gentle, “call me Winston. A friend of Johnathan’s is a friend of mine.”

Once he leaves, she takes a big breath and screams into a pillow a couple times. Then, she engages it in a boxing match it didn’t consent to.

John clears his throat, and the image of her turning around, one hand strangling the pillow and the other raised to hit it, little mouth popped open in an O of surprise, makes him laugh.

“Uh.. the pillow started it.”

The fact that he’s quiet enough to open the door, shut the door, and then get halfway into the room with a cloth bag and a dinner tray balanced in his arms is unsettling. Only because it means he can get away from her too easily as well.

He unloads his arms onto the desk. “I’m sure it did. You want me to kick its ass?”

“Nah, I don’t think we’ll have too many problems with it anymore.” She places the crumpled pillow back in its nesting place on the bed.

“I got turkey sandwiches,” he says, pointing to the tray. He sees the untidy office chair and tilts his head. “Was someone in here?”

She could lie, but he’d see right through it. “Winston came up.”

His smile immediately drops a little, but he doesn’t press the issue . “Com’ere, eat.”

He bought four different bags of chips from the dining hall, three kinds of soda bottles, and two ice cream cakes in styrofoam containers.

The sandwich is delicious, probably because she’s eaten nothing but peanut butter toast and strawberries in the past 24 hours.

“I took our clothes to dry cleaning,” he tells her, “they’ll be done and at the door in the morning.”

She looks up at him, hair mussed and static-y, a big bite of sandwich in her cheek, sleepy bags under her eyes, red puffy robe so pretty on her skin tone - god, the color suits her - shoulder slipping down because she wanted one two sizes too big.

She says something to him after she swallows. Maybe thank you. He’s too busy kissing her to hear the words, slipping his knuckles into her hair to grip the base of her skull.

He’s desperate with tongue and lips, like she’s going to slip through his hands into the floor and fall to the core of the earth. He traps her thighs in his own, grabs the bottom of her chair and drags her closer and tries to pull her into his lap.

Both of them don’t fit in the office chair comfortably, not with the way he wants to hold her, so he picks her up around the waist and takes her to bed.

When will this stop being surprising? The fact that he can just fold her up and cradle her like she’s made of clouds instead of meat and fat and bone.

The entire time, he manages to keep kissing her, too. Like a scene from one of those sickly romance movies she tends to shy away from.

“Were you done eating?” He asks, kissing her cheeks and forehead. The tip of her nose.

She pushes her arms around his neck, pulls him so that she can land a big, wet kiss right on his forehead, and he swears to god she must’ve left an imprint because of the residual feeling; the heat that spreads from her mouth onto his cheeks. His eyes go all soft and melted chocolate for her, big strong shoulders caving and slack. He curls around her like a heated, weighted blanket, covers and shelters her and makes her feel….

There’s a word for it.

Safe.

“John,” she giggles, his adorable little pet - thinking back to a classical childhood cartoon, he grins - the young girl squeezing the life out of her new pet ducky, going on about how she wants to hug him and hold him and hug him and hold him forever because he’s so cute -

“S’your fault,” he murmurs into her ear, inhales her. She smells like his soap. “You taught me how to cuddle.”

She can’t argue with him, and she doesn’t want to.

He overkills the heat and wraps a blanket around them, but she doesn’t mind sweating a bit. Not if it means she gets to stay clinging on him.

He plans to slip his devil fingers under this robe and give her some clit petting stress relief - rub her into a slow, beautiful mess before his mouth replaces his hand and gets a taste of what it’s been salivating for - but her eyes are closing and she’s getting softer and her breath is evening out through her chest. She settles into sleep like walking into one room from the next, determined grip still tight around his robe collar. Eyelashes soft and tickling her cherub cheeks.

He kisses her head, brushes hair out of her face. My human, he thinks, almost absently, like the thought just organically appeared and has been here all along.

Mine.

[cilil]

Crossroads of the Fallen King: The Sundelions of Arien

❁ Verse: Silmarillion x Legend of Zelda Totk/BotW ❁ Pairing: Mairon x Arien ❁ Synopsis: Mairon has a favour to ask of his former lover. ❁ Warnings: / ❁ Oneshot (~1.4k) | SWG

AN: Here's my contribution to the Crossroads of the Fallen King challenge! This oneshot takes place in my TotK/BotW AU and deals with the Sundelions, Arien as their caretaker and the key role they play in healing wounds dealt by Void creatures like Ungoliant and her spiders. For a more detailed explanation, see the end notes down below.

"Arien."

The sound of Mairon's voice is pleasant as always, and she listens before she knows it, ignoring the dread and anger welling up within her chest. Many times has Arien imagined what it will be like when he finally  decides to show his face again, how she will confront him for his betrayal, how she will be wiser and not let him fool her ever again. 

She doesn't have to look at him. She knows he's standing there, smiling as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't broken her heart. 

And she knows that these days he only comes to see her if he wants something. 

Arien has no patience for it. 

"What do you want?" she asks as coldly as she can and refuses to face him. Stubbornly, she keeps her gaze on the black and golden flowers she's tending to for her lady, the miraculous Sundelions that can produce the only known cure to the Void's Gloom; and suddenly she has an idea why her former lover chose to appear in a domain where he's not welcome. 

The fact that Mairon was able to reach her without being seen or detected worries her, though less for her sake and more for the Maiar of Vána and Yavanna who cannot match his fell fire. 

He has taken a step closer, and Arien feels an uncomfortable heat surging through her veins. Is it his gaze on her that she feels, she wonders, or is he already looking at his prize. 

She caresses the Sundelions' fragile petals as if in reassurance, and she knows his eyes follow her movements. 

"Look at me." 

Mairon's request, uttered softly and without the edge of command that so often accompanies his speech, startles Arien so much that she does. She sees the same face she knew many years ago, yet marred by a blackened wound across his left cheek, as if struck by a poisoned blade. Similar wounds are on his neck, chest, arms and hands, and pity overcomes her before she knows it. 

"What happened to you?" she gasps and rushes to his side. "Did the Dark One...?" 

For a moment Arien hopes that he will answer yes. If it was Melkor who hurt him, maybe he would finally see the error of his ways and come back to her. But as quickly as that thought has crossed her mind, she begins to abhor it. She knows well how dangerous the Dark Vala can be and doesn't want her fiery kin, fallen as they all may be, to face the wrath of his freezing storm. 

"No. I was hurt while fighting monsters from the Void; with his help, if I may add," Mairon says, holding up his hands and looking at his damaged palms. 

Arien takes his hands into hers. He remains eerily calm and composed, and the lack of any wincing or flinching makes her hope he isn't in too much pain. 

"Are you sure this is what happened?" she asks gently. "Are you sure you are not blaming something else to cover for him?" 

"He hasn't hurt me and would never do so. It is as I said." 

There is no anger in Mairon's voice, but his tone is firm. Arien isn't sure if she should admire his conviction or think him a fool for trusting and defending Melkor. 

And even if he didn't hurt him himself, he let him get hurt, she thinks, nodding to herself as if to reassure her conscience that the Dark Vala is indeed to blame for this mishap as well. 

Gingerly, she examines his wounds and finds that Mairon hasn't lied to her. Injuries from Void creatures have unfortunately become more common in recent times, prompting her lady Estë to instruct her Maiar accordingly and request a steady supply of Sundelions. The pervasive decay infesting their once thought unbreakable weapons must cause him as much ire and stress as his former lord Aulë, she muses. 

"You want me to heal you," she says. It's not a question; she is certain that she knows the reason for his visit now. At least he was wise enough to come alone and not bring his miserable master with him. 

"Ah, you don't have to." Mairon looks up at her, an amicable smile on his lips. "A few of these lovely flowers would already suffice. I can handle the rest myself; after all it would be rude of me to ask for too much from you." 

His words seem fair, his voice is smooth. It's all so perfectly easy and reasonable that Arien pauses, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. Why would he not take the freely given help of a Maia serving both Vána and Estë, he who has never been a healer. 

Unless... There is a reason why he wants to take the flowers himself. 

"Is your lord hurt as well?" Arien asks sharply. 

There is a flash of something unreadable in Mairon's eyes, gone before she can see it for what it is. 

"Of course not, why do you ask?" He laughs lightly. Too calm, too serene. It doesn't ease Arien's worries in the slightest. "You would not feel very inclined to help him if it were the case, no?"

"Are you lying to me because it is in fact the case and you want to use my compassion for you to take my flowers so you can help him?" 

At last mild annoyance clouds Mairon's fair features, and the ancient familiarity of seeing him thus makes it strangely comforting. Endearing even. Yet Arien keeps her guard up while trying to glimpse past his. 

"You have seen for yourself that I am wounded as I told you," he says. The corners of his mouth quirk upwards again as if to regain his smile, but it's more akin to a haughty smirk this time. 

Arien finds a strange sort of pleasure in breaking through Mairon's barriers and ripping off his carefully crafted masks, even if what she finds is less fair than the faces she remembers. 

"It is not like I fail to understand the thought," he continues, "deny me in order to deny Melkor, just in case. That is certainly something he would think to do to spite former lovers as well." 

Her own control slips, her hands sizzling against his as her fána heats up. To imply that she would stoop to Melkor's level — and yet, even though Arien knows full well the intent behind such a well-placed comment, she cannot deny that Mairon has a point. 

"We wouldn't have that problem if you just agreed to let me heal you instead," she snaps. 

"Perhaps, though I did tell you why I didn't feel it was appropriate of me to ask for that." Mairon has regained his calm, controlled composure with infuriating professionalism. 

It's not the first time that Arien has wondered if speaking to her is some sort of task or game for him that he completes with the same excellence as his other work. 

"You are going to come with me," she orders, still fuming. "We will go to my house and I will heal you properly and you will stay as long as it takes."

"If that is your wish, I shall." 

Mairon's smile is as bright as Arien's fury. She lets go of his hands and links their arms; he knows the way to her house, yet she feels the need to hold on to him lest he slip away too soon. At least his wounds will make him stay with her for a while, even if his powers and strange new magic seems to be mostly unscathed and only his fána is damaged. 

There is a strange sort of triumph in taking her wayward former lover home. She even begins to enjoy herself once she takes a few Sundelions to brew a healing potion, applying it to every inch of blackened skin and adding a few spoons to a bowl of hot soup that she feeds him. 

Thus absorbed in this brief moment of reconciliation with the Maia she once wished to spend eternity with, Arien remains blissfully unaware of the shadow that comes over her meadows at night, cruelly rips out a handful of her beloved flowers and disappears with his prey. 

End notes: In Zelda TotK, Sundelions are a plant ingredient used to cook healing items that can restore damaged caused by Gloom, an evil and harmful substance that essentially drains the life of its victims. It causes decay in weapons and permanently reduces Link's health, making him unable to heal himself fully until he can get rid of the Gloom damage. I felt like Void and Void creatures like Ungoliant would be an excellent fit for Gloom and Gloom-affected monsters, as well as Arien as a servant of Vána and Estë growing and maintaining Sundelions.

Thanks for reading! ♡

taglist: @angbangbaby @asianbutnotjapanese @a-world-of-whimsy-5 @blauerregen @bluezenzennie @destinyeternity1 @edensrose @elanna-elrondiel @eunoiaastralwings @i-did-not-mean-to @just-little-human @melkors-defense-attorney @numenhore @sauron-kraut @urwendii @wandererindreams

[sariels-world-ella]

So originally I was just going to make the full body design drawing since this artwork I made here isn't full body, here's that drawing in case you're curious:

So, I made a full body one and then got carried away and made Grillby and Fuku too, I still don't know how the arms work AT ALL but ehh... Whatever

I don't have too much info on Grillby and Fuku as AU Characters but I do have a bit on Muffet so here's that below the cut:

Full Name: Little Miss Muffet

Alias: Muffet, Muffy, Miss Muffet

Biological Sex: None

Gender: Feminine

Age: mid to late 50s

Romantic preference: any

Status: alive

Birth year: early 1960s to late 1950s

Species: Monster

Type: Anthropomorphic

Race: Arachnid

Occupation: Baker

Known Family: Little Miss Patience (Grandmother) Little Miss Mactan (Mother), The Small Spiders (Adoptive Children)

Strongest Attacks:

Venom Bite - Inject your enemy with lethal Venom

Lynch - hang your enemy with a noose of webs

She graduated from a high school in snowdin and went to Hotland’s culinary school for her higher education, as soon as she graduated she took out a business loan and opened her bakery parlor.

Not much of Muffet’s early life is known, but we do know she lived with her grandmother, Little Miss Patience though it's unknown if her parent(s) were still in the picture, though we do know her mother's name is Little Miss Mactan, as in Latrodectus mactans (Black Widow), implying that if Muffet had another parent that Mactan probably ate them and the reason she isn't in the picture anymore is that she is serving jail time.

Muffet did meet Papyrus when she was 7 and he was in his 30s-40s at that time when he was working part-time as a babysitter, and at some point Muffet met Grillby but it's unknown exactly when.

During the Underground Civil War, her Parlor was temporarily closed down and she made food and supplies for the war effort.

Muffet is extremely skilled in martial arts and likes to use a fighting technique that incorporates elements of dance.

Before the barrier went up, Muffet’s Family originated from, what is now, the human country of France. We know that Muffet has a lot of tiny spiders that aren’t the same race nor monster type as her being from the Creature Type, but she does consider them her children, and no, they are not the ones she serves to others to eat, those are actual, real, living, exoskeleton and blood spiders not monsters who look and act like spiders, we know this because if they were monster spiders, she won’t be able to cook or bake them into anything as they’ll just turn into dust and dust doesn’t taste good.

We also know Muffet came from a longline of tailors and seamstresses, but Muffet chose to pursue baking and went to culinary school, however Muffet is still a natural tailor and is very good at making clothing, even making clothes to support the war effort during the Underground civil war.

We don’t know what Muffet’s pet is, we do know it’s not a species part of the Supernatural Order, so it’s likely just a familiar, though if it is, it's unknown if she is the one who conjured it or it was just passed down through generations.

[blooming-gwens]

The first 1,200 words of For Everything Chapter Two

Hey guys! I’m really, super excited to be back in action, working on this monster of a fic. It’s still going to take me a considerable amount of time to finish, but to tide you over, I am releasing to you the first 1,200 words of what I am expecting to be a 45-50k chapter. Enjoy~

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Time seemed to slow as she descended from the shadows into a brilliant night sky.

She’d never seen the stars so close before—Glittering like polished jewels caught in the light of a craterous, full, yellow moon.

Not even perched from the highest point of the city had the sky been so crystalline—above her an abysmal sea of a million luminous lights, glinting against the empyrean curve of the fathomless cosmos that retreated further and further away from her, falling out of reach, out of touch—smaller and smaller until they were just pinpoints—until they were absorbed by the silvery clouds she sliced through.

She couldn’t breathe, the air whipping around her stealing any breath she could greedily inhale. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t cry.

There was nothing she could do.

Miguel had warned her. He showed her, as if knowing would be an advantage, as if knowing would slow her fall. As if knowing would inspire her not to take it all for granted—but she did, and there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say to change it now.

And there was so much she wished she could have changed.

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“Wait, I think there might be a way to figure out where the Go-Home-machine sent Miles.”

Gwen didn’t mean to roll her eyes, but she also didn’t fight the instinctual movement that reflected the otherwise unwarranted annoyance that curled through her. To be fair, the feeling had been festering for the past four minutes as she petulantly sat through a whirlwind of ideas—some good, some bad, some questionable at best.

That had been the first time Margo had chimed in through the plethora of plans being shoved into the mix, and Gwen had already been steadily losing her patience with every dead end they met.

Time was not at their disposal, yet there they were, on some secluded rooftop on Earth-616B, wasting more than they could afford, missing every mark they shot for.

And Miles…

Miles was missing in a finite cluster of multiverses, and Miguel was also on the prowl—armed with rage, and the numbers, plus every advantage they could only dream of possessing. Meanwhile they didn’t even know where to start looking or how, but all of a sudden Margo did.

“Well don’t leave us in suspense, pig tails.” Ham groaned.

“You’re one to talk.” Peter B huffed with a raised brow. Gwen leered at him, shaking her head once. “What?” He asked, meeting her narrowed eyes.

“Oh, I get it! Because he is a pig, and he has a tail!” Pav perked, gesturing down to Ham, who was glaring daggers at the pink robed Spider-man.

“Nice, Pav.” Hobie said, lounging with his arms folded behind his back in a web spun hammock suspended between two air conditioning units.

Mayday squealed from the carrier strapped to Peter B’s chest, kicking her chubby legs with a giggle and reaching towards the talking pig. She had been wholly fascinated by Spider-Ham since first glance as if he was a character from one of her storybooks.

“Right…” Margo sighed before continuing. “So the Go-Home Machine keeps an archive. Just the consequential details like the variant, where it was sent, stuff like that. The data is wiped intermittently as a security measure, but knowing Miguel, there could be a backup.” She explained promptly, Gwen scrutinizing her glowing figure with arms folded over her chest

“That guy does have some major trust issues.” Gwen heard Peter B mutter from behind her. Her eyes rolled again. At this rate, she expected them to be stuck upwards by the end of this conversation.

“Assuming you’re right, would LYLA have access to this back up?” Gwen questioned, her tone bristling.

“LYLA has access to everything.” Margo answered, turning to face Gwen, her holographic form glittering under a flickering flood light mounted to a wall behind her.

“Can you access it?” Gwen emphasized, her tone clipped. Already she could see all the ways her idea could go–none of them consisting of a successful resolution. “Without getting caught.”

A smile spread to Margo's lips. Gwen’s stayed set in a subtle scowl.

It turned out Spider-Byte also had access to everything, it just took a little more effort, and she would have to directly hack into the machine's mainframe on E-928. Any other way would significantly heighten the probability of LYLA’s security protocols being triggered.

“That sounds like a suicide mission if I ever heard of one” Noir added, tipping his hat forward and cupping his masked chin with his pointer finger and thumb. “And I have planned a couple myself.”

“Noir’s right.” Peni said, sitting inside SP//dr, the front hutch of the mech suit propped open. ”Miguel would never leave HQ without surveillance, especially if he knows some of us have gone rogue. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Margo nodded before gesturing to herself. “I’m an avatar. They can’t catch what they can’t touch.” She waved one hand through her forearm, and everyone watched in astonishment when her arm wavered as her fingers passed right through it.

“Oh, that is creepy.” Pav whispered, covering his mouth with his hand.

”I’ll be quick. In and out. Easy.” Spider-Byte confidently continued.

“But what if—“ Peter B started before Gwen curly cut him off.

“She’s not going alone.”

All eyes turned to her as she spoke, silence following her decree.

Ham was first to break the seemingly long, awkward stretch of stillness. “Now it’s actually a suicide mission. Well, at least for Gwen who can’t do that cool arm thing like Margo.”

Spider-Byte took a single step towards Gwen, her brows knitting together. “I don’t need the back-up. Like I said, I’m untouchable.”

Gwen couldn’t trust that. She couldn’t trust her.

There had been no intention to harbor shock or malice towards Margo, but there was still an itch about her Gwen couldn’t scratch. She never really went out of her way to talk to the avatar, but they would pay each other a respectful acknowledgement anytime they crossed paths—which wasn’t often.

Margo spent a majority of her time in the confinement wing of HQ, where all the anomalies were stacked up to be sent back to their respective dimensions. Maybe it was Gwen’s uneasiness towards the machine, but she never strayed to that side of HQ on her own volition. If she was needed, she would report, but she kept her interactions and time there minimal.

In turn, the two girls remained distant.

Though Gwen couldn’t help but notice how her and Miles had looked a little longer, said a little more than she ever bothered to say to Gwen.

(And vice-versa.)

Her and Miles?

Perhaps the insistence of her blatant jealousy could have better timing. Her focus was needed elsewhere and her emotions were clearly clouding her judgment, right?

“You’ll need the back-up if things go south.” Protested Gwen, leering down at Margo.

“What happens if something happens to you?” Pavitr all but squeaked, his stress tangible.

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Pav.” Gwen hissed, her eyes still locked with Margo’s.

“Is it just me, or is Gwen being very intense?” She heard Pav ask in a hushed whisper.

“S’not just you.” Hobie replied flatly.

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And scene. I hope that satiates the pain of waiting. I appreciate all your patience, and above all, support! Much love <3

[st-kitten]

"older, wiser...sexier"

MIGUEL O'HARA x READER warnings: more biting, fluff ig, flirting (lots), age gap words: 2,598 (again????)

You have just started to work as an intern at the Spider Society and have already gotten on Miguel's nerves. (Don't take it personally, he's just a hater) Past your work hours, he finds you at your desk in the dark and he decides to supervise your work, only to find you playing Sims... He raises an issue, but, you decide to test his patience a little to see where it goes. Let's just say it went somewhere you liked...

Eyes glued to the only lit screen on the floor, you stared at your screen, modifying one of your sims. You'd finished your work hours ago and lost track of time. A little harmless overtime seemed like a good idea until you realised there was practically nothing to do. So, there you were, wasting your time on Sims past midnight, listening to songs.

Swaying in your seat to Lana Del Rey's unreleased songs, you failed to hear someone approaching you from behind.

"Rookie..."

You nearly jumped out of your seat, turning around to see none other that your biggest "fan", Miguel O'Hara, a.k.a., your boss.

"Jesus Christ!" you shrieked, recollecting yourself.

"Getting a little sidetracked, don't you think?" he said in his stern voice.

"It's relative... I think?" you said, trying your best not to trigger him.

"Keep yourself in line. Or it'll catch up to you. Get to work," he commanded.

"Great... Stop meddling and I will..." you whispered, forgetting that you were talking to a genetically modified superhero with monster senses.

Miguel froze and looked down at you, gaze piercing into yours, almost like daggers.

"Meddling, am I?" he huffed, crossing his arms.

You sighed to yourself, ready to face his wrath.

"You watch yourself around here. You don't wanna be another problem."

"Hey, you hired me. I'm already your problem," you said, trying to sound rational. Deep down, you barely knew how your heart was still beating.

Miguel scoffed. "I'd be happy to fire you." He looked away, clearly dealing with some pent up anger.

"Who put you as a good candidate anyway?" he mumbled to himself.

"You did... Don't you pick the applicants anyway?"

He sighed, stepping closer to you. "You're insufferable."

You didn't know what you were thinking. You were probably an idiot for saying what you did after that. "What was that, sir?" you asked, batting your eyelashes, not-so-politely.

Miguel raised his eyebrow, staring at you, almost intrigued.

"Did you just bat your damn eyelashes at me?"

"Yes, it's often an involuntary response of the human eye..." you said, trying to retain your newfound confidence.

Miguel's eyes narrowed, a smirk slowly creeping upon his face.

"If you're trying to flirt with me, rookie, you should know that I can fire you on the spot."

Oh, he was getting it. You weren't going to give up that easily.

"Do it. I dare you."

Miguel chuckled, entertained by your brattiness. Stepping closer to you, feet almost touching the wheels of your chair, he towered you.

"Are you sure you want to try that threat with me, chica estúpida?"

You could tell that he liked it. The proximity certainly helped your case. *Alright, I'll bite*, you decided.

"Threaten you? Oh, I wouldn't dare, sir! I'm very compliant..." you said sweetly, but not so innocently, trying to get a reaction out of him.

He chuckled once more, leaning in closer to you, still somehow looking down at you. *How fucking tall is he?*

"Then why dare me to fire you, little one?"

His words sent a shiver down your spine. He was right up against you, his body heat radiating strongly and causing your breath to falter a little bit. You took a discreet gulp, maintaining the smirk on your face.

"Well, I like to rebel a little. I can stop if you want..." You gazed into his blood-red eyes intently.

His smirk only grew, eyes drifting to your lips for a split second.

"You know how to stand your ground. I might just like you here," he said, placing his hand on the backrest of your chair.

Grinning softly, you responded, "Well, it's a good thing you didn't fire me on spot, isn't it?" You leaned back in your chair, playing with the strands of your hair, hoping some distance would stop the clouds in your mind.

"Keep that up and you'll end up being my favourite, chica."

Oh he wasn't even trying to suppress his interest. What was it about midnight and spiders acting up?

"Oh, I know I will be," you said confidently.

"Is there a reason you're being so flirty, cariño?" he whispered, leaning forward.

Barely processing your words, you blurted out, "I like getting what I want. If I have to flirt for that... so be it."

Miguel's claws dug into the fabric of the seat. He didn't know why, but he liked your frankness.

"Flirting with men twice your age... tsk tsk," he chucked. "Can't say I blame you there."

His low, raspy voice had you in a trance.

"Older, wiser...sexier." You pursed your lips innocently.

It was Miguel's turn to hold his breath. You could see his pupils dilate.

"Did you just imply that an older man is sexier?" he asked, truly wondering whether you meant it.

"You are... don't know about others."

Miguel resisted the urge to growl. Instead, he leaned in, his face barely a few centimetres away.

"I do like the sound of that... You might just be my favourite now," he whispered.

"Prove it."

Miguel didn't say a word. Instead, to your surprise, he pressed his lips against yours, languorously kissing you before pulling back, biting your lower lip and letting it go, watching it redden slightly; still smirking.

"Proved... hermosa." Miguel turned to walk away, stopped, spun around and said, “You might want to make my eyes red…”