#a disembodied voice and you live in their body

[karliahs]

nothing like media abt AI and robots and constructs to make me go absolutely insane thinking about the horrors of embodiment

[rememberwren]

Skin Deep

Tattoo artist!Simon x fem!reader. Reader, looking to expand your horizons, you get your first tattoo from an enigmatic artist deemed “Ghost”. 8.4k. Features: soft!Simon who is bad at people-ing, vaginal sex, lots of nipples, like at least three nipples, poor writing, abrupt transitions, shy and awkward reader. Based on this post.

Sequel here.

-

“I bit the bullet!” you shout over the music, hand cupped around your friend’s ear to be better heard. She shrieks in delight at the sound of your voice, turning to wrap her arms around your waist and pull you close to her swaying body. Many eyes in the club follow her movements. She has always been the wild child to your wallflower, attracting attention wherever she goes.

“You bit what?” she shouts back, her breath like a mint julep. 

“The bullet,” you laugh. “I called that guy you recommended and set up an appointment. For the tattoo I wanted!” 

She stares at you blankly. Her silky little tank top is drooping off of one shoulder, so you reach out and tuck it back into place. The longer she stares, the more nervous you grow. She’d been so encouraging after your last boyfriend dumped you—encouraging you to step outside your comfort zone, to ‘make more mistakes’, to live life more fully. Now she’s staring at you like you’ve grown a second head and it’s the one doing the talking. 

“What guy I recommended?” she asks. 

“Kevin!”

“Oh no. No, no, no. Not Kevin. Not Kevin. Why, Kevin?” 

You frown. “You said you went to Kevin.” 

“It wasn’t a recommendation, sweetie, if anything it was to caution you away from him! He’s a creep; there’s a reason why I never went back.” 

You deflate like a balloon, going limp and letting her drag you to the nearby free seats at the bar where you sit heavily. It’s not just the tattoo. It’s the icing on a shitcake of a day. 

A new song seamlessly starts, and the dancers nearby go wild with excitement. Your mood is the antithesis of the event; everyone seems to be having a great time except for you. Story of your life. 

“You conveniently left that out. Ugh. I’ll cancel it. What am I even fucking doing—thank you—” you accept the cup of ice water the bartender slides in front of you with a shy smile, sipping at it and keeping your hand curled over the top of it protectively. “—none of this is like me.” 

Your friend frowns. She steals your drink and sips at it. “You were the one who said you’d always wanted a tattoo. You’re an adult. These are exactly the kinds of decisions you’re old enough to make. Look, fuck Kevin. All my friends hate Kevin. I know another guy, and he’s highly recommended. Let me give you his number. Alright?” 

“Alright,” you sigh. You make a silent promise to yourself though: if it doesn’t work out with this next tattoo artist, then you won’t be getting one at all. You’ll take it as a sign from the universe to get back in your comfort zone and stay there, once and for all. 

-

What kind of a moniker is Ghost? you wonder to yourself as you skim the Instagram of the shop this Ghost owns. The profile picture is one of the building itself, and all of the pictures are of various inked body parts. Beautiful ones, admittedly. But no hint of the mysterious figure who owns the shop. There is a personal instagram linked @GHOST89 but it is private when you try to click on it. 

The phone number your friend gave you rings straight through to voicemail. You let out a shaky breath. Fuck, you hate voicemail. Talking to people was difficult enough; talking to people’s disembodied machines was even worse somehow. It isn’t until you’ve hung up after leaving your message that you realize you forgot to tell him your fucking name (genius!). Groaning, you contemplate dialing him back when the phone in your hand rings—and it’s him. 

“Hello?” 

“I’m free Wednesdays for consultations,” says a baritone voice from the other end of the line. 

Nice to talk to you too, you think dryly. Maybe this guy is as bad at the phone as you are. “I work Wednesdays. Are you free in the evenings?” 

He sighs, like this is going to be very strenuous for him. 

“Name a time. I’ll pencil you in. Half is due at the end of the consultation upon booking an appointment. Cash only,” he says. 

Jesus Christ, could he be anymore abrupt? While a tiny part of you is grateful that he isn’t trying to make small talk, a larger part is terrified that you’ve already made an impression so foul that it’s incurred his wrath. What other reason could he have for being so stilted? 

“Alright,” you answer cautiously. “How’s five?” 

“Five. Don’t be late.” 

He hangs up on you, leaving you wondering why every step outside your comfort zone must be so bloody far.

-

You arrive early to the consultation, only to find that the building itself—a tidy little brick two-floor, adorned with a sign that dubbed it SKIN DEEP tattoos & artisan piercings, which you recognize from Instagram—is locked. A note written in neat handwriting taped to the door declares NO WALK INS. Your palms are sweaty. You wipe them on your work slacks, but it doesn’t help. How are you supposed to get in? 

All at once a shadow appears on the other side of the door. The shadow is enormous: well above six feet tall, and broad shouldered. A black surgical mask is tucked up over his mouth and nose, which only adds to his intimidating aura. Judging by the impressive sleeve of tattoos he has, you imagine that this is the guy. 

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And Ghost. 

Dark brown eyes stare down at you when he opens the door, cocking a hip against the frame, staring at you. Waiting. 

Waiting for you to explain your presence, you realize. 

“I have a consultation,” you blurt out. “At…five?”

He opens the door wider to let you pass without a word. He’s so broad that you can smell him as you pass him: clean and masculine. The inside of the tattoo shop is bigger than it looks on the outside. There is a reception area with a desk and a computer and printer. The glossy wooden floors are polished to shine, leading to an open floor plan. There is a small sitting area with armchairs, a wide sofa, and a table on which rests two bottles of water, a notebook, and a steaming mug of liquid.

“Sit,” he says, his voice the same deep rumble you recognize from the phone. He chooses the chair beside the mug. His body is so goddamn long, his legs lean and thick all at once where he stretches them out in front of him. He reaches for the mug and takes a sip—of tea, judging by the smell. “Name?”

You tell him, perching yourself anxiously on the other chair. He glances up at you, eyes raking over your posture. Suddenly he tugs the mask down to rest beneath his chin, revealing a full, pale mouth. A straight, noble nose. A pink scar stretches across his lips and up towards his cheek. 

“The water is for you,” he says. 

“Oh!” You reach forward and take one bottle, breaking the seal. “Thank you.”

“This is your first tattoo.” 

“What gave me away?” you ask with a weak laugh. 

He doesn’t laugh. “Everything. Is someone putting you up to this? This smells like Soap.” 

“What? No, of course not. I want this, I’m just, I’m an anxious personality. I promise.” You hesitate and then add: “I probably smell like soap because I showered this morning.” 

His mouth twitches. He leans back in his seat and sucks on his teeth, and you get the distinct feeling that he is trying very hard not to laugh at you. Why had you mentioned to him that you showered? What was wrong with you? Just as you’re comprising a list of things, he picks up the pencil and the notebook, opening to a fresh page.

 He asks what you want and God, that’s a harder question. 

You do your best to express your idea, but your words feel halting and silly. His pencil scratches rapidly at the paper as he listens in total silence—pausing only once, when you say that you want this to be a sternum piece. Only then does his pencil seem to hover over the paper, his dark eyes seeking you out and pinning you in place on the armchair. 

He reaches for his tea to take a generous sip and then continues writing. 

He asks a few pointed, concise questions (and you’re just thrilled he was actually listening), following your answers up with more scribbling in his notebook. At length, he shuts the book. 

“I think I see the vision. Give me thirty to sketch something and we’ll see if you want to book an appointment. Something this size, on your sternum could take more than one session, depending on how well you sit. How do you take pain?” 

“I mean, it hurts?” you offer. 

He stares. “Two sessions. Let me sketch something. Drink your water.” 

You think that maybe he’ll move to another room to sketch, but he just flips to a clean page and begins to work right there (drawing the mask up over his nose and mouth again). With nothing else to do, you can’t help but watch him. 

He’s handsome, in an odd sort of way. His brow is a little too low, his gaze a little too intimidating to be considered conventionally attractive, but you find him fascinating to look at, especially when he is so clearly in the throes of something he enjoys doing. It’s almost like watching someone have sex. The thought makes your face go warm. You pick up your phone, determined not to look at him again. 

“Here.” 

You glance up from your mindless scrolling. What he shows you is a beautiful rendition of what you had expressed wanting. There are a few key differences, and he patiently explains why he made the decisions he did. He didn’t make the changes because he thought your idea was stupid. He made them so the image would better fit the contours of your body. He made them because the ink will spread over time, and he wants the look to stay clean. 

His thoughtfulness touches you. 

“I love it. I want it,” you say, enthusiasm getting the better of you. 

“This is just a first sketch,” he says dryly, making that warmth return to your face. “I’ll text you a few variations this week, and we can nail down the final piece. You want to book?” 

“Yes,” you say, nearly buzzing. “I really want to book.”

He’s expensive—but judging by the book of his artwork that is available for you to flip through at the front desk while he quotes you a price and writes you up a receipt, he is more than worth the money. Fuck, he’s got skill. You thought that maybe his art style was too dark for what you wanted, but you found that he was able to adapt styles nicely. You just hoped this tattoo wouldn’t bore him to death. 

“Thanks again for meeting with me,” you say as he sees you out. “I’ll be waiting for your text.” 

“You’ll get it.” He glances past you out the window. It’s dark. “Did you walk?” 

“No, my car is just there.”

“I’ll wait.” 

And he does. His figure darkens the doorway until you have shut your car and locked the doors, temporary insanity making you give him a short wave. He raises two fingers and then disappears. 

-

You didn’t tell me this guy was cute, you text to your friend. 

GHOST? Cute? I’ve never even seen his face lol. He’s always wearing one of his masks. 

You chew over this information. Yes he’d been wearing a mask, but he’d lowered it for you. Did that mean something? Did it mean something that you wanted it to mean something?  

Masks are cute, you say. 

Fuck the tattoo artist!!!! she says. Maybe he’ll ink you for free. 

You’re terrible. 

You’re…thinking about it. 

-

Two days later, you squint blearily into the darkness at your phone after it vibrates on your nightstand. The time reads twelve past one in the morning. It’s from GHOST. 

The two images he sends are beautiful; enough to rouse you straight from sleep into wakefulness. 

I love them both, you tell him. But the second one is amazing. I think that’s the one. 

Keep your appointment. Ten minutes later (after you have already fallen back to sleep) he sends: wear something appropriate.  

And fuck, you didn’t even think of that. 

-

“You’re being ridiculous,” you mutter to yourself in the mirror, turning sideways to assess yourself. On the bed behind you are a series of button up shirts, all of which you have tried on at one point or another. 

“You are,” your friend agrees from where she lounges on your bed, scrolling on her phone. “Your tits are cute. Let Ghost see them.” 

The look you give her is the one the phrase ‘if looks could kill’ was modeled after, surely. She doesn’t even see it, so the effect is lost entirely. You turn your gaze back to the silicone nipple adhesive covers again, still stuck to their adhesive backing. You’ve already used one set of the pack of three, and they covered your nipple and areolas nicely, but still left you feeling so exposed. 

“Be glad you’re not going to creepy Kevin anymore,” your friend says.

“Very glad of it.” 

You felt reasonably safe with Ghost, but still a degree of embarrassment about your own body. Or perhaps that was too strong a word—it didn’t embarrass you, but it felt private. Baring your breasts to a near stranger (especially one you had a grudging attraction to) made your anxiety reach epic level proportions. 

“You should text him about it, see if he has any advice for you. He’s been doing this for years. I’m sure he’s seen it all,” she says—the first good idea she’s had all night, miles ahead of ‘Just let Ghost see your cute tits’. 

That night, you take her advice and text him, hoping you aren’t overstepping some weird artist-client boundary. 

I’m a little nervous.

You can cancel, is all he says. I’ll refund your money.

It’s not that. 

What is it? 

Not really accustomed to the nakedness tbh. There. You said it. Let him think you some prim priss; it was true. 

But all he said back was: how can I help?  

I don’t know, you admit. Then; sorry. I’m probably bothering you with this while you’re working. 

I’m not working. Five minutes later, when it seems as if you aren’t going to message back: I keep the shop closed to the public. One customer at a time: you. I’ll let my piercer know I’m with a client and not to walk in. I’ll keep you covered every moment I can. Better? 

Relief, warm and sweet curling low in your belly, you let him know: much better. 

-

You bring the pasties anyway. 

-

The day of your appointment, you are so nervous you are shaking. Now you know the truth behind the phrase ‘knees knocking together’, as you stand outside SKIN DEEP waiting for Ghost’s hulking figure to appear on the other side of the glass. 

When it does, he’s like a little punch to the gut. That black surgical mask is in place—typical for him, if your friend’s words are to be trusted—but his blond hair, cropped short to his scalp is riotous in a way that is adorably charming, like he hasn’t been able to keep his hands out of it. His black t-shirt stretches across his broad shoulders, and his jeans fit him nicely around his thick thighs. 

You’re horrified to find that your attraction to him has grown. Exponentially. Your friend’s words echo in your mind—fuck the tattoo artist, maybe he’ll ink you for free. 

“Hi,” you squeak. 

Ghost raises both his brows. He opens the door wider for you to slip past him. Fuck he still smells good.

“I’m still nervous,” you blurt out, hoping that speaking the truth out loud will help you feel better. It doesn’t. 

“That’s normal. You can back out at any time, but the earlier the better. Come look at the image and tell me if it’s still what you want.”

It’s exactly what you want, and more. 

“It’s perfect. You’re very talented.” 

He huffs a little, like you shouldn’t have said such a thing. 

The chair is a great leather contraption which reclines comfortably once he’s gotten you in it (after making you use the restroom first, during which you took the time to splash water on your burning face and double check that your pasties were in place covering all the cutest bits according to your friend). Simon moves around you, making preparations with the ease of someone who has done this work for many years. 

You fight the arousal that blooms in your belly at the sight of him doing such benign things as washing his hands, putting on gloves, opening fresh needles, preparing little wells of ink and sticking them to the movable cart with Vaseline. There’s just something about a person who knows exactly what they’re doing and who is able to do it with efficacy.

“Ready?” he asks at length. 

You nod, hoping your nerves don’t show on your face. Steeling yourself, you unbutton the shirt you’re wearing. His eyes follow your hands, but there is a detached, clinical sort of expression in them. He’s not watching a strip tease, he’s looking at a canvas. 

Finally, you sit in front of him in only the pasties, the shirt lax around your shoulders, and your sweatpants, socked toes curling in anxiety in your shoes. Without missing a beat, he leans the chair all the way back. Then he opens a fresh disposable razor and shaves you. 

“Am I hairy?” you ask, resting your hands oh-so-casually over your breasts to keep them out of his way. 

“Yes,” he says. Then his eyes flicker to yours. “Everyone is. Everywhere. It’s normal.”

“I’m just teasing you.” 

“Didn’t think you had the breath in your body left to tease me,” he mutters, voice nearly lost behind his mask as he carefully works the razor across your skin removing the baby-fine hairs from beneath your breasts and across your sternum. “You’re nervous, I mean.” 

“Would you take the mask off?” you ask on a whim. It had helped last time, to see his face. 

“No,” he says. He adds: “Sorry. It’s more sanitary f’you if I keep it on.” 

You get the feeling that he really is sorry—and that’s well enough. Some of the anxiety in your belly fades away. He would take it off if he could. The most anxious part of the process (baring yourself to a stranger) has already passed. Maybe now you can begin to relax. 

After cleaning your skin, he carefully lays the stencil and has you stand up to look at it in the mirror and make sure the placement is correct and holy fucking shit. It’s sexy. You’ve always been attracted to tattoos, and fancied the idea of getting one on your sternum for far longer than you’d ever admitted to anyone, but seeing it come to life gives you a rush you hadn’t expected. You feel so…badass. 

“Good?” He asks. 

“Very good,” you answer, sitting back down, hoping he ignores the way your breasts bounce a little as you do. He leans you back again and this time breaks out the needle gun.

But before he uses it on you, he carefully takes a clean towel and lays it over your left breast, covering the parts of you that are not nearest to his eyes. His gentleness and thoughtfulness go straight to your cunt. 

“Thank you,” you say softly. 

He just nods. The gun buzzes to life. “I’ll make a line and see how you feel. Last chance to back out without any souvenirs.” 

“I’m not backing out.” 

He clicks his tongue as if to say, It’s your funeral. Then he lays his hand on your sternum above your breasts, pinning you in place, and makes a gentle line. 

It burns more than you expected it to. There’s a sandpaper quality to it, almost like the rasping of a cat’s tongue. The pain is sharp and bright, but it isn’t overwhelming. In fact…a strange part of you sort of enjoys it. Maybe it’s the rush of endorphins. 

“Good?” He asks. 

“Good,” you squeak. 

You hear his quiet laugh, no more than an exhale of breath.

“Let me know when you need to break.” 

You don’t know how you feel about the way he phrases that: when you need to break. He adjusts his mask a little, leans over you, and gets to work. Sometimes the needles pass over a place that is more sensitive than the others, making you flinch. He pauses when this happens, eyes flickering up to your own, making sure you are alright even though he can likely feel the pounding of your heart beneath his hand. That hand on your chest, wrist just brushing the top of your breast, is a solid warm weight that seems to tether you back down to the earth as he lines you. He is very careful not to brush against your breast when he wipes away the excess ink and traces of blood, but you feel hyper-attuned to how easy it would be for him if he wanted to. How huge his hand is compared to your tit. Beneath the pasties, your nipples ache with tension, a tension that is mirrored between your legs. 

“Alright. Break,” he says, abruptly turning the gun off. He covers your exposed breast with another towel. “Take ten.”

He disposes of his gloves and disappears behind a curtain in the back, leaving you throbbing between the legs. Worming your phone free from your pocket, you scroll aimlessly, hoping to calm your raging hormones. He returns right at the ten minute mark, just as his cellphone rings. He glances toward where it rests on the table, but makes no move to answer it. 

“Do you need to get that?” you ask, offering him an out.

“No,” he says. “I make everyone leave a message. Weeds out the cowards.”

It had almost weeded out you, you think about telling him, but in the end you decide against it. He gloves back up. 

“Good for more?”

And so it repeats. 

At one point, he runs into a patch of sensitive skin on your ribs just overlaying the bone. It has you sucking in a breath through your teeth, eyes squeezing shut. It’s too late to turn back now you tell yourself; the only way out is through. 

His thumb gently strokes your sternum. 

“It’s rough. You can take it,” he says, quiet and focused. The buzzing of the gun never ceases as he tries to make his work as quick as possible, his words a little distant and distracted. “Just keep breathing. That’s it. Good girl.”

Jesus. Did he not have any idea what those words could do to a girl? A groan escapes your lips, and he clearly mistakes it for pain, because his thumb strokes again the soft skin over your heart, just above the curve of your breast. 

“You can do it. Just a little longer for me, and we’ll break.”

“Hurts,” you breathe, flinching again. 

He hushes you, surprisingly tender. 

“This is the worst of it.” This time, his thumb does brush the edge of your breast, making you suck in a gasp. He recoils, hand lifting away from you and curling into a fist. He rests that against you instead, taking away any further hope that he might brush his fingertips against you. You make it through the rough patch with tears in your eyes but no worse for wear.  

“Break. Ten minutes,” he says again, already shredding his gloves and moving to disappear behind the curtain. 

You call out: “Hey, wait—I’d rather just get through it in one go if I can. If this really is the worst of it.” 

“I need breaks too,” he says stonily.

You duck your head, feeling silly. “Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He vanishes again. 

He is late to return to you. Only by five minutes or so, but noticeably for a man so usually punctual and so demanding of punctuality in you. His face is stoic—what bits of it you can see from behind the mask—as he washes his hands thoroughly and preps his work station again. 

This time his hand keeps a very respectable distance from your breasts—a fact which you both lament and appreciate all in one. He works with single-minded efficiency, giving you his entire focus. You break once more, but this time he breaks in the room with you, stretching out his back and neck (giving you a generous glimpse of his belly when his shirt rides up, exposing cut abs and a happy trail you’d give your life to follow). 

“I think we could do this in one sitting, if you have nowhere else to be,” he mutters at length. 

“Eager to be done?” you wonder. 

He stares at you, expression flat, and says nothing. Nothing needs to be said. 

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” you murmur, staring up at the bright adjustable light that he has positioned over you. You hope he mistakes that for the reason behind any mistiness in your eyes, his rudeness cutting you deeply. 

So the two of you push through later into the evening, until you are sweating at your temples and the base of your neck from the continuous pain for so long. At last he lays the last gradient for the shading, sprays you down, and wipes you clean so very gently. 

“Go take a look. I’m going to cover it up.” 

It’s beautiful. Stunning, even. You let your shirt gape closed and cover the pasties, revealing a broad glimpse of the sternum tattoo, and it is the sexiest you have ever felt. It almost makes your eyes burn anew.

“I love it,” you choke out. “Thank you.”

“Can I take a picture of it?” he asks. “For Instagram.” 

“Sure!” It will feel a little like being famous, you think, judging by how much notice each of the photos on his Instagram garners. He crouches down on the floor to be at the perfect height, reaches out and gently adjusts your shirt. Parts of the tattoo are covered—the very far edges—but you can’t deny how sexy it is. Maybe he feels the same way. 

After he takes the photo, he posts it and asks for your handle to tag you in it. Then he says: “Let me cover it up. Keep it covered overnight, but tomorrow let it breathe. Keep it clean. Don’t do anything stupid to it. Understand?” 

“I understand.”

“And if you have any questions—text me.” 

-

You get home to find that Ghost’s personal account has requested to follow you. Thrumming with nerves and excitement, you accept the request and send one of your own, spending the night scrolling through his Instagram (so, so carefully to avoid any incidental ‘likes’). Plenty of the photos are of his artwork, still. But there are ones of his dog: a German Shepherd that is thankfully much more photogenic than her surly owner. There are three or four photos featuring Ghost himself, and only one has his full face in the picture. You find yourself staring at his fixated expression for longer than is respectable. 

-

Three days later when you find yourself panicking, you don’t text him like he asked you to. You call. 

Your skin is peeling off. Peeling. Off. The sight of it makes your stomach roll. The entire tattoo is hot to the touch, and the skin around it feels warm as well. Flushed. Is it supposed to hurt this much? 

The internet doesn’t help. The peeling is normal, sure. But everything else is suggesting that your tattoo could be infected. What sort of ink did Ghost use? Was it reputable? What if the infection reaches your bloodstream? You were too young to die! Your anxiety spirals like a plane with one wing, trailing smoke as it soars straight down, determined to take you with it.   

With shaking hands, you don’t even think about texting Ghost. You go straight to calling him, tapping his number in your phone and pressing it to your ear, listening to the ring. 

He’s going to send you to voicemail, just like he does to everyone else—except he doesn’t. All the sudden there is glorious feedback from the other end: a cacophony of voices and laughter, clearly some sort of gathering. 

“Yes?” Ghost says into the phone, as if that’s a decent hello. 

“There’s something wrong with my tattoo!” you cry. 

“Wait—get out of my goddamn way.” There is rustling, and then the noise decreases substantially. You can almost see him standing outside whatever bar his friends have brought him to, mask down around his chin, hand over his other ear as he strains to listen to you. “Say it again. Now I can fucking hear you.”

“There’s. Something. Wrong,” you say through your teeth. “With my tattoo!”

“Well? What is it?”

“It’s falling off, for one!”

He snorts. “That’s normal. That's why you called?” 

“It’s all swollen and hot. And it hurts.” 

Now that shuts him up. He sighs a little, switches the phone from one ear to the other. “Hurts how bad?”

“Worse than getting it.” 

“Fuck me. Alright. Meet me at the shop in…twenty?” 

“Twenty minutes from now?” 

“From when else?” He hangs up. Man doesn’t know the meaning of the word goodbye. 

-

The night is cool. You don’t bother with a bra, not when it irritates your tattoo so much. Pulling your jacket closed more tightly around yourself, you walk from your parking spot along the street to the tattoo shop. 

Ghost stands outside at the curb. His figure is unmistakable. He is smoking, mask down, the lit end of his cigarette a burning ember that flares bright in the darkness. When he sees you coming, he crushes the cigarette beneath his boot and opens the door to the shop, which is still and dark. He flicks on a light switch as he goes, casting the place in a warm glow. 

He’s dressed in his usual dark jeans and an obscenely tight t-shirt, his sleeve of tattoos on display. He leaves the mask down. His eyes are on your tits—or resting where your tattoo is beneath your clothes. 

“Well. Sit. Show me.”

You sit in one of the armchairs, your shoulders rising in defensiveness. “What, just flash you?”

“Nothing I’ve never seen before.” 

Gritting your teeth, you begin unbuttoning your shirt until it gapes open. You cup your breasts with your hands, maintaining your modesty while putting the tattoo on full display. He narrows his eyes, leaning down. His fingers reach out, but then he thinks twice and washes his hands. 

“I was smoking,” he says when you roll your eyes in exasperation. 

“You’re worried about getting the chemicals on my skin but not in your lungs?”

“Fuck my lungs,” he mutters. His fingers hover over your tattoo. “Can I?”

You nod. His fingers are cool when they gently prod and ghost along the edges of the tattoo, feeling for the signature warmth of an infection. “Any fever?” he asks. 

“Not that I’ve noticed.” 

“You feel warm, but I’ve felt warmer. I don’t think it’s infected. Have you tried icing it?”

“No,” you admit. 

“Ice will help. Just use something clean, for fuck’s sake.” As he speaks, his breath fans across your chest, making you shiver. He sees this, his eyes darkening. “When you called, I thought it was for me.”

“It was for you,” you say, brow furrowing. “Who else?”

He snorts, lips quirking. It tugs on the scar across his lips. “Forget it.” 

“Forget what?” 

“Talking about it goes against forgetting it.”

You groan, tossing up your hands. “You’re impossible.” 

He reaches out and jerks your shirt closed, hastily doing up a button. Your face burns as you do up the rest of the buttons—you end up having to backtrack and redo them because he was off by one. 

“Thank you for meeting me. I’m sorry it was for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” he says. “And I wasn’t doing much.”

“You were with friends,” you insist.

His eyes narrow. “Who told you that?” 

“I saw it on your Instagram tonight.” 

“Nosey.” 

“I could buy you a drink sometime,” you offer after a lengthy pause, your heart pounding loud enough to fill the silence between you. Are you really doing this? Are you really asking him out?  “Make up for the ones I lost you tonight.” 

“Maybe.”

God, it’s like he’s not getting it. Maybe you need to be bolder. Fortune favors the bold, doesn’t it? Your hands are shaking when they fall back to the buttons on your shirt. 

“Would you take one more look at my tattoo? Just to be…positive?”

He sighs and makes an impatient hand gesture. Your fingers fumble through the buttons again. You don’t cover yourself with your hands this time; just keep the halves of your shirt over your nipples. He dutifully exams the tattoo again, prodding gently, laying the flat of his fingers against it to feel the warmth it lets off. 

“Maybe you should look closer.” 

His eyes flicker up to yours. “Closer.”

Your mouth is dry. “Yeah.”

“Can’t get much closer than I am.” 

“You could—if you wanted to.” 

“If I—“ it hits him then. You can see it in the fractional widening of his eyes, the way his mouth parts softly in blatant surprise before he shuts it, dark eyes returning to your sternum. He says: “Closer.”

“Mhm.”

The back of his hand brushes against your breast, causing your breath to hitch. His thumb traces softly along the outline of the tattoo, following the path just beneath your shirt, nudging the fabric aside slowly, so slowly, until your breast is bare, nipple puckered and aching. 

“Fucking hell,” he mutters. His eyes flicker to yours as if to see if you really want this—and whatever he sees must reassure him, because then he is sweeping his fingertips along the bottom curve of your breast and taking it into his hand, his palm rasping gently over your nipple. All the breath rushes out of you. Your thighs clench together. Already you’re aching—have been since you saw his mouth around that cigarette on the street—but he moves with determined caution. His thumb finds your nipple and teases it, pulling a desperate little sound from the back of your throat. 

“Pretty little tits,” he says, his voice a warm, smoky rumble that goes straight to your core. He captures your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching softly. 

“Fuck,” you gasp, one hand reaching out to brace yourself against his shoulder. He is solid and firm beneath your touch, unmoving and unmalleable. Your breasts have always been sensitive, but it feels like every touch is directly related to the feelings in your cunt. You find your back arching, hips searching for friction against the seat of the chair. 

“Be still,” he says firmly. Another pitiful sound slips past your throat. “Let me play with you.” 

“Please,” you gasp. “Play with me—even if that’s all you want—just don’t stop, please.” 

His mouth parts as he listens to you, his eyes so, so dark. The pupils have nearly swallowed his irises whole, until you can see yourself bare from the waist up in the reflection. He shakes his head a little. “You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

“I do. I—“ your words are cut off with a gasp as he hauls you out of the chair by your wrist and onto his lap. He’s so thick thighed that it stretches you obscenely to have him between your legs. His hands tear the button-up off your shoulders and down your arms until it flutters to the floor, leaving you half naked. Dipping his head, he presses a heated kiss to the place on your sternum where he had rested his hand during the tattoo—and then trails wet kisses towards your left breast, taking your nipple into his mouth and sucking with a decided softness. 

You let out an unflattering, choked groan, resting your weight heavily against him until you can feel the prominent bulge in his tight jeans. His hands find your ass and grip you tightly, working you back and forth, rubbing that bulge against your clothed sex. 

“Driving me fucking crazy,” he mutters against your skin, opening his mouth to drag the sharp line of his teeth against the curve of one breast before switching to the other and flicking his tongue over your nipple. 

You gape at his admission. Had you been? He’d been so closed off and cool…though now that you thought back, maybe that was just his way of hiding it. Suddenly he grips the back of your neck, where your hairline ends, and pulls you to his mouth. He tastes faintly of smoke, even fainter of the drinks he had had earlier in the night, but it is an intoxicating mixture. Your tongues find a rhythm as your hips do the same, both of you fucking in every sense of the word except the literal kind. 

He takes one of your thighs and wedges it between his own, until you’re no longer grinding against his cock but instead his denim-clad thigh. “You the kind of girl who can cum like this? Just from this?” 

“Uh-huh,” you promise, head bobbing. 

He buries his face in your neck. “Good. I won’t last when I’ve got my cock in you. I’d like you to cum at least once before then.”

“Oh god,” you groan, gripping his shoulders fiercely as you begin a halting, stilted rhythm against his thigh. The denim is rough against your leggings. He feels all around you: his scent, his taste, his touch. When his hands find your hips to help you work yourself against him more smoothly, a sigh of gratitude fans from your lips. 

“What else do you need?” he asks. 

“My—touch me—“ He abandons your hips once you find a suitable rhythm. He finds your nipples again, teasing them with clever fingers. The stimulation has your peak approaching faster, building like a storm in your lower belly. 

Ghost leans back to look at you, eyes trailing over you from head to toe: your face burning with warmth, your breasts with peaked little nipples, your leggings nearly soaked through at the crotch with how wet you are. He shakes his head, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. 

“Fucking perfect.” You bury your face in his neck, feeling a warmth inside your chest. He grips you by the neck again and tugs you back. “Look at me. Look at me.” 

You look at him for as long as you can, but when the band in your belly finally snaps, your eyes roll up and slip shut, your mouth drops open in a choked gasp, nails digging into his shoulders as you shudder and shake in the throes of your pleasure. 

He leans down to kiss you through it, tongue teasing at your slack mouth. 

When he stands, he takes you with him, hauling you up until you wrap your shaking legs around his waist. It’s probably a good thing too. You aren’t sure you could walk otherwise. He carries you the few steps to the couch and lays you down, curling his fingers in the waistband of your leggings. You nod. He strips them off you, along with your flats, and your panties until you are naked as the day you were born.

Your thighs clamp together shyly. He lets them, reaching behind himself to pull his shirt off. Something catches your eye in the streetlights streaming in through the window: Ghost has one of his nipples pierced, a neat little barbell through the sensitive flesh. 

Fingers enter your vision—your own—reaching out on instinct. You hesitate, unsure if he is receptive, and a little afraid to hurt him. He’s so bloody tall, too…but he takes care of that himself by kneeling down by your side, his eyes cautious. Closer, you can see the scars: silvery in the moonlight, crisscrossing over his torso. 

“Does it hurt?” You ask, softly stroking your fingers beneath the pale pink skin of his areola. 

“No,” he says. You can feel the timber of his warm voice vibrating through his chest, up your fingers, straight to your pussy. “You can play with it.”

You shyly run your thumb over it the way he had yours. He sighs, breath fanning across your arm. His eyes go heavy-lidded, tongue flashing as he wets his lips. After a moment, you grow insecure and move your hands away from his nipple down to a scar that crosses his sternum. He lets you, very patient, like a dangerous creature withholding its bite. 

“You’re so—“ the words are whispered dreamily before you have any idea how you plan to finish the sentence. Flushing with embarrassed heat under his wary stare, you finish: “—hot.” 

He physically turns away, expression inscrutable. You can’t help but feel like you have said the wrong thing. He puts a hand on your belly, stroking the softness. “You broken, or can you take more?” 

“I want more.”

“Want my cock?” 

You nod, feeling like a bobble head. 

“I want to hear you say it.” 

“I want your cock.”

His hand reaches for his belt, unbuckling it. Your eyes track the movement with hungry nerves. His hands put butterflies in your belly: thick palms with long, slender fingers, veins criss-crossing along the backs. An artist’s hands. He works his belt free with nimble grace and shucks down his jeans and underwear in one smooth movement, revealing his cock to your gaze and the light from the street lamps. 

He is huge here to match. Downright intimidating in length and girth, uncut with a nice curve toward his belly. He grips himself and gives a series of smooth strokes, the muscles in his abdomen flexing into sharp relief. 

“Oh my god,” you mutter. 

“No gods here,” he says, kneeling up on the couch. His hands part your thighs, and for a long time he just looks at you, that sensitive, swollen place between your legs. He stares so long that you nearly cover your face, embarrassed by whatever he is thinking. Then he touches you, and when he does, he touches you with surprising reverence. He touches you like you are art. 

“Can’t believe you let me ink you,” he mutters, stroking your vulva with his warm palm. His eyes are on the sternum piece now. “Practically let me carve my name into your skin. Anybody around here who sees it will know who did it. They’ll know who touched you.” 

“Good,” you breathe. 

His sigh is shaky. You’re learning his reactions, his very breaths. That shaky sigh means he’s pleased with you. You’ve said something right. 

He reaches down to his jeans on the floor and works a hand into his pocket, pulling free a condom. He hands it to you—for inspection, you realize, though you’ve had so few one night stands (try zero) that you’ve never had the need to inspect a condom before. The package is intact at least. There appears to be an expiration date which you squint at. All looks well. You hand it back to him and he tears it open, rolling it down his considerable length. 

Then he goes back to touching you. One hand braces himself against the back of the sofa so he can lean down to kiss you, tasting your mouth deeply. The other hand finds your entrance, circling it with a finger before slipping inside you all the way to the last knuckle. You are wet enough and relaxed enough that he slips in easily. 

“Relax…there you go. Let me in,” he says under his breath, working a second finger in beside the first. It is a bit of a stretch—he’s thick everywhere goddamn it—but it’s a good stretch, a much needed one. The third finger has you stiffening, whining at the pinch of pain. He slows his fingers and lets his thumb find your clit, muting the pain with little jolts of pleasure. 

“Ghost,” you groan, toes curling against the leather of the couch.

“I think you can take it,” he says, thumb so soft and insistent against that aching pearl of nerves. “But what do you think?” 

“Your cock—want it—please—“

“Alright,” he laughs, pulling his fingers free and wiping the wetness on his cock. “No need to beg.” 

He notches his cock against your entrance and slips inside you. Both of you inhale together, like on cue. Just the first few inches have you feeling full beyond your comfort zone, but he seems to understand in his silent, all-knowing way. He stills, working that free hand between you both to play with your clit until you’re clenching around him, body trying to pull him deeper. He slips further in and then reaches the end of what your body can take. You feel fucking stuffed, your hands shaking where you have gripped his naked shoulders, nails digging into his skin. 

His own breathing is ragged, pecs brushing your nipples with every inhale. The little bursts of pleasure help, until you find that your hips have grown restless, working back and forth as much as his substantial weight will allow when you’re pinned beneath it. 

“Stay still,” he mutters into the juncture of your neck. “Stay still or I’ll cum and this is all over.”

“Can’t,” you gasp, his revelation electrifying you. “Have to move, ‘m so full—“

“Fucking hell,” he groans. He pulls out, leaving you feeling gaped. “Roll onto your side.” 

He gives you instruction but isn’t shy about reaching out and physically arranging you until you are both spooning, your back to his chest. This time when he enters you, it is more shallow, and easier for him to reach around and play with your clit. 

You arch your back, seeking more of him, pressing your breast into his free palm. He plucks at the nipple, teeth nibbling at your throat. 

“Want you to cum again,” he says, stilling your movements so that you can’t fuck your self back against him. “Give me one more. Then it’s my turn.”

“Ghost—I can’t—“ you’ve never cum twice before. Not even with your favorite toys have you been able to scrounge together more than one illustrious orgasm. This knowledge and your expectation of his disappointment has you stiffening in his arms. 

“If you can’t, then don’t,” he says simply, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He keeps his fingers soft and insistent against you, and only after a few lengthy moments does he feel confident enough to work his hips against you too. He pulls out too far and his length drags across your labia, the head brushing where his fingers play with your clit. 

You give a sighing little moan. His head cocks; you aren’t the only one listening to sighs. Now when he gives those lazy, lackadaisical thrusts, his entire length just strokes the outside of your sex. 

“Oh fuck,” you whine, feeling that band in your belly begin pulling tight again. 

He hums behind you, a smug sound. 

“Not sure I want you to cum now,” he says. “Hold it. I’m thinking it over.” 

“Ghost!”

He laughs, honest to God laughs at you. Tears prick your eyes from the sheer need (and a bit from embarrassment) but his hips never cease nor slow their tireless thrusts against you, not even when you grow close enough to beg, close enough to plead. 

He loops his arm around your waist and pins you against him when you cum to keep you from rolling right off the couch, your body wracked with shivers and spasms. The warmth of your release washes over you from head to toe, and you are still basking in it when his cock finds your entrance again and enters you. 

The position keeps the penetration blissfully shallow (otherwise he might give your cervix a painful beating), but he still reaches new lengths inside you, filling spaces you didn’t know were empty. The shop is eerily quiet except for the sound of his hips snapping against your ass and the frequent breathy sounds his cock punches out of your lungs. 

He buries his face in the crook of your neck and lets out a series of sounds that are toe-curling: deep groans and raspy curses, whispered praise and hisses through his teeth. His hand grips your hip tightly, leaving shadows the shape of his fingerprints on your skin as he fucks you. 

Sooner than you’d like—but he’d warned you, hadn’t he?—his thrusts grow sloppy, the sounds messy thanks to your wetness as he finds his release and moans it into the skin of your throat. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. And again: “Fuck, fuck. You broken?” 

“Yes.” 

He snorts. Then it turns into that laughter, warm and rumbling against your back. You smile where he can’t see. 

-

“Sorry about this,” he says as he ties the condom off and throws it away, naked as the day he was born. You’re still naked too, though much more shy, legs crossed demurely and arms wrapped around yourself. 

“Regretting it already?” 

“Yes,” he says. Then, when he sees the stricken look on your face, he adds: “Should have at least taken you to dinner first.” 

“Dinner?”

“You owe me drinks. I owe you dinner.” He finds his boxers in the darkness and slips back into them. Then, because the expression on your face still hasn’t relaxed, he says: “I don’t regret the sex. Do you?”

You shake your head. 

He scoffs a little. 

“I mean it,” you insist. You touch your tattoo. “I wanted it…the day you did—this.” 

He raises both brows at you, silently calling your bluff.

“I didn’t think you were interested,” you admitted sheepishly. 

“I jerked off in the back just from seeing half your tits,” he admits, slipping into his jeans now too. His mouth curls a little at the corner when he sees the way you gape at this news. “I was interested.” 

You laugh; you can’t help it. “Dinner, then? Or drinks?” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Alright. Get dressed.”

[livingdeadgirlflorette]

SO HIGH ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ carl grimes x reader

summary : getting caught smoking at your age isn't a good thing, but maybe getting caught smoking by the new guy's son isn't so bad at all, especially since he looked so cute.

tags / rundown : slight angst at the start, almost kissing, underage smoking, shotgunning, set in alexandria, carl is easily flustered, reader's parent's are pronounced dead (womp womp)

word count : 2.8k

a/n : this fic was inspired by me listening to so high by doja lols. since my midterms ended, i've decided to write this with my free time. hope it was worth it (∩_∩;) also i'll be writing a part 2 to "late night kisses", just dk where to start ( ´△｀) lmk if you want to be tagged in it!

dividers by @cafekitsune ꩜ .ᐟ

PART 2: YOUR FACE ⟡₊⋆∘

Alexandria seemed like such a pleasant escape from the shithole of the world we're living in today. Living almost two years by yourself from. . . unfortunate circumstances between your parents and an unexpected herd of walkers that had invaded your base camp. With a heavy heart and an even emptier stomach, that had left you scrounging for anything to survive. Food, water, a place to sleep in— it felt like you were just barely living day by day.

With all hope lost and no destination ahead, you just kept walking— no goal or end in mind, just walk until you found a place that could help you regain the empty feeling in you. To your surprise, a place like that still existed— a sanctuary called Alexandria. The first time you ever entered the gates, you felt like a deer in headlights. It all looked different from the outside world, giving you a sense of hope, a small beacon of hope that it would get better.

But even with all the good things that come with it, it still felt like you were so out of place. The pristine, large houses and the children laughing, acting as if nothing had ever even happened. Unrightfully, it irked you. They didn't know what it was like living day by day, not knowing if the last place you'd stay and shut your eyes for shelter in would be your last. They didn't know what it was like to starve, famished to the point you'd eat raw animal just so you could have something in your stomach. They didn't know what it was like to lose people by shooting them using their own gun. They didn't know.

All the feelings of jealousy, envy, and sadness spiraling in you, was overwhelming you to the point of just crying until you had no tears left. But you would never let them know that. It would be a stupid move to show weakness, especially in the state of the world. So you sneak out.

Sneaking out of Alexandria was a therapeutic event. Every time you do this it relaxes you, knowing what would come after would be the cherry on top to help you wind down and let your feelings fizzle out.

With you far enough from Alexandria where you knew no supply runners or recruiters would catch you, you walked through the forest, trying to find a place that's quiet. Seemingly in a matter of minutes, you find a small clearing. Peaceful and from your scoping of the forest, no walkers.

You sit down next to a tree and put your bags down, then finally sitting down, leaning on the large vegetation. Pulling out a pack of cigarettes, you fiddle around your jacket pockets and suddenly stop when you hear a voice call out to you, seemingly unimpressed.

"You know that kills you, right?" You turn around to put a body to the disembodied voice, and you see it's the boy from that one group that Aaron had recruited. You weren't that tuned in to the whole story, but you saw enough to know that they were like you, different, in the sense that you'd been out there, living through the apocalypse.

From overhearing Ron and Mikey talk about if they should him to play videogames, you knew the boy's name was Carl. He was cute, interesting, boyish in a way that he still had that youthful face, yet he was mature to have so much control over his emotions and body language and the way he carried himself.

If it were someone different, you'd just ignore the person and tell them to leave you alone. But you had the idea Carl wouldn't be such an annoyance to you, so you decide to entertain yourself by speaking with him.

"That's kind of the point." Finally, you find you lighter in your back pocket and proceed to tap on the cigarette box, pulling one out and putting it between your lips.

You didn't what to continue talking right now, wanting to just focus on matter at hand. You were thinking how to tell him but you were pleasantly surprised to see that he'd gotten the message, and just walked next to the spot on your tree, and sat down next to you.

Raising an eyebrow at him, you question his motive. Why would he even talk to you? more so why would he try to sit next to you? he has nothing to gain from this. . .

Continuing your actions, you flick open the lighter and the fire sparks burst out, creating a small flame. It fills you with relaxation. You lean in, just close enough to light your cigarette and when you finally inhale the comforting tobacco— you sigh out the smoke, lazily blinking. Your eyes dart up to the sky, watching the smoke from your mouth go up and away.

You look back to Carl, realizing you barely noticed he'd comfortably situated himself— with his signature sheriff's hat that he donned on the grass next to him and a comic book open in his hands.

You guess he wouldn't really be a nuisance, he would just be next to you while you let out your puffs of tobacco. So you scoot a little closer to him. What you didn't notice was how he saw you moving closer, unable to hide a ghost of a smile before it disappeared completely.

The sky was turning into an entrancing shade of cool colors. It seemed like time passes faster when you're smoking, only focused on changing the cigarette when it's on its last puff, and breathing in and slowly out to watch the result of your sighs for it to go up into presumably the clouds. You wish you could stay here forever. Carl was quietly reading the second comic book he'd brought, not having any plan to talk to you and your relaxed state. The boy's company was actually, comforting in the sense that you had someone with you.

But you had noticed he kept glancing at you and more so, your lips. You know the reason. He's obviously curious. From your knowledge, teenage boys are typically rebellious, so you figured he'd want to try a small puff.

The silence that had been enveloping the majority of your time together was broken by you.

"You want to try it?" His eyes jolt up from the scene in the comic he's reading, sincerely surprised you'd ask.

"I- uh- yeah i'd like to uhm— I wanna try it." He tries to find the right words, but seemingly they all just turn into mush when he sees you.

Your eyes are lidded, your body languid— presumably from all the tobacco you'd been smoking, and your lips are plump, slightly open. With that look, it's enough to send blood rushing to his cheeks, his eyes darting blinking rapidly and looking slightly down to hide his blossoming blush.

Even in your smoke-induced haze, you still notice this. Seeing him act all bashful and shy in front of you, it makes you feel giddy inside. You let out an airy chuckle and you hand him the cigarette.

"Knock yourself out." You tell him. With a nervous gaze, he musters up his courage and looks at you. Hesitantly taking the cigarette in your hands. But you undoubtedly notice his hands brush against yours as he took the lit stick of tobacco.

Carl then calculatively puts the cigarette in his mouth, inhaling before letting out a dry heaving cough. You giggle at him, you know it's a common mistake but he just looks so cute trying to do it properly.

"How do you even do it without coughing—" His words were cut off by another cough he let out, he seemed like he was having a hard time so you gently put your hand on his back, lightly patting it to help him cough.

"It's okay, I kept coughing a fit the first time I did it." You assured him, wondering how you could help him get through it, until you finally clicked, realizing what you should do to have him experience it properly.

"Do you want me to help you?" Your voice is gentle and calm so you don't startle him. He looks at you, his coughing had seemed to cease. His posture went straight, eyebrows furrowed. What could you possibly to do help him smoke without him wheezing?

Carl silently gives you an okay, slightly nodding as he does. "Don't freak out, okay?" He's curious, what would you do to help him? But then he sees your actions, you take the cigarette in between his calloused fingers and put it back into your mouth, taking in a small intake.

He's uncertain on what you're about to do, questions going in and out of his head. But you silence those answers by taking the cigarette out of your mouth, then grabbing his chin with your free hand to have his face an inch apart from yours.

His mouth is open in awe and disbelief. He can feel his heart beating out of his chest when you take you open your mouth, slowly blowing the smoke into his mouth. He quickly understands what you're doing, slowly breathing in the puff of smoke with his mouth.

With the last blow of your lips sending the smoke, You make eye contact with him. Your eyes were all this time trained on his lips, focusing so he wouldn't move. His breath hitches when he finally has all of the smoke you had in your mouth.

It's overwhelming for Carl, really— knowing all the puffs of tobacco he had in his mouth were in yours, and how close you still are to his face, it makes him want to shoot his heart out into the darkening sky. Realizing he's been looking too long at your face and not releasing the smoke, he lets it out slowly, watching your every move.

You look at him, letting a small smirk grace your face as you lean back. He doesn't know why he has such a dissatisfied feeling when you pull back though, It's so perplexing to him.

"We should get back to the gates, I think your father would be worried that his son's been missing." You put the cigarette out, standing up and patting your jeans off, shooing the dirt off your clothing. You look back to Carl, the emotion on his face evidently stupefied.

"Yeah— my dad's probably looking for me by now so," He scrambles also to fix himself up, turning slightly away from you. He tries to find more words, but it leaves him with only a few.

"We should go." He finally says. He wanted to save himself from the embarrassment he'd feel from you seeing his blush.

Carl thought what he was doing was ridiculous though; it was getting dark, you wouldn't be able to see color on his face unless you were close and squinted hard enough. But he does so anyway.

The rest of the walk back to Alexandria you're standing side by side, walking with him. You fail to ignore that tingly and rushed feeling whenever his hands accidentally brush yours, making your cheeks flush. You look at him, curious if he also felt the way feeling you were experiencing.

Carl felt quite befuddled, he was so perplexed at the thought of you. There was a swirling feeling in his heart. He wondered if what he was feeling was just from the nicotine in those cigarettes or if it was because of you, but then his question gets answered when he looks at you.

With the eye contact you guys had, you smile bashfully and look straight back at the path. He made you smile, and that was enough for him to know he was interested. He wanted to know more about you, and what it would feel like to have your face close to him again. Hopefully next time it would be to feel your lips on his, and not just the smoke.

I'm not sure if I like this, but it fueled my imagination of smoking with Carl so I don't really mind (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶) .ᐟ.ᐟ

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Scarlet and Gold.

Pairing: Yandere!Diluc x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 3.1k.

TW: Sex Doll AU, Unhealthy Relationships, Gore (No Injury To Reader), Blood, Implied Consensual Sex, Past Trauma, Obsessive Behavior, and Intimidation.

By the time you reached the address, Diluc was already waiting in the lobby.

You’d gotten the call about an hour ago, spent half an hour dragging yourself out of bed and gathering what you’d need before making the twenty minute drive to an apartment complex on the other side of town, careful to avoid any security cameras the cops would think to check if anyone requested an investigation. Five more to park and throw your well-worn duffle bag over your shoulder and three to find Diluc, loitering near the elevators, fiddling with a loose cigarette he would never light. You greeted him with a quick nod before throwing your bag into his chest, and he feigned a groan, stumbling back as he caught it. He needed to work on his impressions, but that could wait.

You spoke first. That, you couldn’t critique him on – most androids couldn’t speak until spoken to, and you couldn’t expect Diluc to go against one of the core tenants of his programming. “What is it?”

“Just the usual.” He kept his voice low, muted, trying to hide the remaining traces of an accent that’d been invented by some marketing team over a decade ago. “I’ve already seen the apartment. There’s a little blood, but not much else. We’ll be done by sunrise.”

You took the stairs, keeping your head bowed and face shielded from any possible security cameras. Diluc didn’t share your paranoia, staring straight ahead with the same indifferent expression he always seemed to wear. The benefits of having a face that’d been printed and distributed tens of thousands of times, you guessed. Tracking down a single Diluc in a sea of androids and companion bots wasn’t a length most detectives were willing to go to. “I’d rather not have to do this at all.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Says the man who doesn’t have to sleep.” You came to a stop in front of the first door on the fourth story and tried the knob. It gave easily, the cheap titanium dented and the lock broken beyond any hope of repair. Diluc’s handiwork, obviously, although you couldn’t say whether or not he’d done it on purpose. “Anything else you want to tell me, before we get started?”

He thought, for a second. “I passed a carousel on the way here,” he said, with no particular inflection. “It was nice. I thought the horses were well-crafted.”

“About the assignment, ‘luc.”

“Oh,” And then, with a hint of red in his pale cheek. “You might want to hold your breath.”

You didn’t have to ask what he meant. As soon as you opened the door, you were hit with the stomach-turning stench of stale blood and rotting gore, both at least a week old. You cursed, pulling your shirt over your nose and mouth, but pushed forward. The first body was splayed out in the center of the cramped living room, wrists and ankles bound with disembodied wiring, all clothing removed and chest dotted with black ink. The abdomen had been cut open, skin peeled away to reveal the entrails in their full, shriveled glory. Judging by the number of blades littered around the corpse, ranging from blunted scissors to gore-splattered carving knives, it’d been more of a hack job than a dissection.

Diluc had undersold the mess. Blood had soaked into the carpeting and dried, turning the floor a ruddy, reddish-brown color. What was left had gotten on the walls, the furniture, the ceiling. You swallowed back a groan. The furniture could be broken down and discarded, the walls and ceiling bleached. The carpeting, though, would have to be torn up and replaced, which meant you would have to spend a few more precious minutes of your night calling in a cleaning crew. That, or you would have to make Diluc do it, but he was shy around new people, and you were too much of a bleeding heart to sit back and watch him do your work.

“The second body’s in the bedroom.” He was already rummaging through your duffle bag, paying the scene in front of you no more mind that a butcher would lend to a pig on a meat hook. He handed you your tools – a pair of wire cutters, a box cutter, and a pocket-sized sewing kit – and kept the rest for himself. “Let me know when you’re done.”

You let out a breath of a laugh. “I thought you would’ve gotten over that by now, ‘luc.”

He didn’t indulge you with a response, only pulling on a pair of latex gloves and starting towards the corpse. You didn’t stick around to watch. Rather, you followed the carnage where it branched off further into the apartment, a trail of rotting viscera and tacky blood leading you into a moderately sized, completely undecorated bedroom. You found your perpetrator quickly; a Dottore droid, still wearing its Teyvat-issued costuming, its hands bloody and a scrap of intestine still caught in its pointed teeth. You paused in the doorway, feeling for the military-grade taser (the only weapon effective against androids, as far as anyone could tell) you kept in your pocket, but the android didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t activate at all when you reluctantly approached. There was a charging port at the foot of the bed, still pristine. It must’ve run out of battery just before it could plug itself in.

Towels from the nearest bathroom were dampened and brought in, the evidence of slaughter scrubbed away from artificial skin and its blood-soaked clothing removed. It was muscle memory, by now – dragging the body to its charging port, knocking the converter out of the outlet before connecting the android to its port, making it seem like its late user had drained its batteries before mistakenly leaving it on a dead cable. When it’d slummed into place, you took up your box cutter and sliced a long, thin line from the lowest portion of the scalp to the nape of its neck, revealing the color-coded string of wires that connected the processing units in its metal skull to the rest of its body. You cut through everything you could find, ensuring that if the unit was ever activated again, it wouldn’t be able to do so much as blink. For good measure, you fished out the memory chip kept in the centermost compartment of the throat, too, crushing it under your heel and sweeping the glittering remnants underneath the bed. A copy of the footage it collected would’ve been sent to Teyvat's severs, too, but erasing it was someone else’s job. You were only here to take care of yourself.

With a breathy groan, you bit off a length of thread and haphazardly stitched up your ragged incision. The cosmetics really didn’t matter. In a few days, when someone filed a missing person’s report and the cops stopped by for a check-in, they’d find a spotless apartment, a dysfunctional android, and nothing else. The investigation would lead elsewhere, to a bitter ex-partner or a friend without an alibi, or it would hit a dead end. Either way, Teyvat wouldn’t be involved.

You slipped back out of the bedroom, careful to avoid touching anything you didn’t absolutely have to. By the time you got back to the living room, the body was gone and Diluc was kneeling by a black suitcase no larger than the average carry-on, securing the tags with transparent zip-ties. You and Diluc would haul it to a dump on the outskirts of the city tonight, and a contact of yours would have it compressed and incinerated by tomorrow morning. Maybe, when you were done, you’d take him out for something to eat. Or, you’d get something to eat while he let a mug of black coffee go cold.

You rested your hand on his shoulder by way of praise, pulling away when he stiffened underneath you. Right, that was something you had to work on. Most rogue androids tended to be touch-adverse at best, made aggressive by little more than eye-contact at worst. Diluc was relatively tame compared to most of the cases you handled, but you would still rather not provoke him. “Did you find the phone?”

He grunted, fishing a smartphone out of his pocket. With your sleeve pulled over your hand, you accepted it, found the nearest window, and chucked it as far as into the night as you could. Diluc appeared over your shoulder. “Forty-five meters,” he said, as glass crashed into cement somewhere in the distance. “Above average for non-athletes.”

“I’ve been practicing.” The window was closed, the suitcase slung over Diluc’s shoulder along with your near-empty duffle bag. “I have to make a call. You can meet me in the garage, if you want.” Already pulling up the number to your preferred cleaning service, you glanced to Diluc. “Are we doing breakfast?”

His posture straightened. “Yes.” If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought you saw a spark in his glass eyes. “I want to try tea, today.”

~

By the time you got to the door, Diluc was soaking wet.

You hadn’t gotten a call, and he didn’t text. The first warning you got was a knock on your door, then another a few minutes later, after you decided that anyone who’d go out in this kind of weather wasn’t someone you wanted in your shoebox of an apartment. You only caved after the third, imagining a neighbor who’d gotten locked out or some lost, desperate tourist as you dragged yourself off of your couch and to the unlit entryway. Predictably, Diluc stood in your doorway, red hair plastered to his scalp and clothes drenched, not that he seemed to mind.

“Can you—” He paused, his dull eyes meeting yours as he ran his fingers through his hands, dragging the crimson heap out of his face. “Can you cut my hair?”

Ten minutes later, he was sitting on a stool in your cramped bathroom, wearing grey sweatpants and a (three sizes too big on you, just a touch too small on him) t-shirt while his own clothes dried. He’d told you it wasn’t necessary, that he didn’t feel the cold like you did. When you told him that you didn’t want an univited guest tracking water into your apartment, he accepted it with a curt nod and changed in your bedroom.

After prepping your razor, you positioned yourself behind him, dragging a comb through his hair. It was long enough to reach his waist, curled at the end to make him seem just a touch more disheveled than he actually was. Everything about his hair, from the length of his bangs to the way it could never quite sit completely flat, was perfectly stylized, perfectly crafted to convey Diluc Ragnvindr, Calvery Captain of the Favonious Knights, the only gentleman you’ll ever need again. You’d be lying if you said there wasn’t a part of you that didn’t mourn ruining such a well-executed vision. “You sure about this?” you asked, as you brushed it out. “It can’t exactly grow back.”

“I am.” And then, after a second of thought, “I’d do it myself, but there’s a safe-guard. Can’t damage the merchandise without a direct order from my user.”

Hence why Teyvat needed you in the first place. “How short do you want it?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s different.”

You hummed, taking up your scissors. “If you say so, boss.”

You cut away everything below his shoulders, then took up your electric razor – running it over the back of his neck. As you worked, Diluc spoke. “How did you start?” You took up your comb, brushing back his bangs and pasting his hair to the side. “With Teyvat, I mean.”

You tasted blood on the back of your tongue, felt a chill run up your spine. You brushed it off, though, refusing to let yourself fall back into that little steel room with those awful golden eyes again. “They brought me on as a technician,” you admitted. You still were one, technically, on your employment transcript, when people outside of your little world asked what you did for a living. “A first-generation Zhongli we were working on went rogue and reverted to its original Morax programming. It wiped out most of my team before security bothered to show up.” You didn’t tell him about the minutes you’d spent hiding in a steel locker, praying its heat sensors had been removed, or the hours it’d taken upper management to decide what to do with you. To people like Diluc, who could take a bullet to the head without faltering, topics like ‘building dread’ and ‘the imminent fear of death’ tended to fall flat. “Since I was already in on their dirty little secret, they decided to keep me on. I didn’t really get a choice. It wasn’t like another job was going to fall into my lap after something like that.”

With your hand under his chin, you turned his head to the side. “Your turn, ‘luc.”

“I… I think I used to be a companion, but something went wrong.” His bangs were next, taken up and coaxed into sitting somewhere other than the dead center of his face. “It’s hard to describe. We aren’t supposed to think about things that aren’t our master,” The word came out hitched, unsteady, like he had to force it past his lips. Like he hadn’t wanted to say it at all. “But I could. It was like… waking up with the ability to fly. I wasn’t supposed to, but I could, and that meant I couldn’t do what I was built to, anymore.”

A thumb pressed into his jaw, a comb dragged across his scalp. Diluc’s eyes fell shut, but else about his blank expression changed. “And? Do you like it?”

“Sometimes.” His shoulders slanted downward. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.” You let go of his chin, letting him turn back to the vanity’s mirror. “What do you think?”

It was far from a masterpiece. The sides were too short, the front too long, every part of it still as untamable as it’d been in its original state. Still, he took it in with wide eyes, the corner of his lips turning upward ever so slightly.

“It’s perfect.”

~

By the time he got back, you’d nearly fallen asleep.

With your body as wrung out as it was, your energy spent to the point of near unconsciousness, it was all you could do to watch through your eyelashes as Diluc appeared in the doorway to your bedroom, a towel thrown over his shoulder and that tiny, almost undetectable smile still painted across his lips. You’d done this enough for him to know how to navigate your apartment, to know how to navigate you – shifting onto your mattress slowly as he positioned himself between your legs. He’d gotten more used to contact since you started seeing each other, but his touch was still ginger, still gentle as he dragged the dampened cloth over the inside of your thighs. With a groan, you rolled onto your back, spreading your legs and giving him more space to work.

You’d been confused at first, but for all the eloquence Diluc lacked, he could be convincing when he wanted to be. You still weren’t sure how much of it you believed, but it made enough sense – a buried impulse, dampened by his newfound sentience but not quite drowned out. He didn’t want another user, he’d said, but he still had requirements to fill, and this would help to take the edge off.

You couldn’t complain, either. People coughed up tens of thousands of dollars for companion droids, and here you were, being paid six figures a year to close your eyes and let one bury his face between your thighs once or twice a week. The coddling wasn’t bad, either. Your line of work meant most of the people you met had stopped breathing a few days prior, and as loathed as you’d be to admit it, you didn’t hate the feeling of his delicate hands skirting over your skin, didn’t mind it when your eyes drifted open and met his, already fixed on your face. He bowed his head, dipping low enough for his lips to ghost over the curve of your hip before breaking the silence. “A sight as radiant as the rising sun.”

You let out a breath of a chuckle. “I didn’t think you used pre-scripted lines, anymore.”

“I don’t.” He preened, clearly more proud of himself than in-awe of you. “I thought of that one myself.”

This time, your laugh was throaty, genuine, loud enough to ring off the wall of your bedroom as you shoved him away with your foot. “If you want to be romantic, you can start by getting me something to drink, loverboy.”

He provided no resistance, disappearing into your dark apartment and reappearing with a glass of water in his hand a few minutes later. He handed it off to you with an easy smile, and you could almost pretend you didn’t see a phantom of gold in those dark eyes as his fingertips brushed against yours.

~

By the time you thought to reach for your taser, the android was already charging at you.

It was an Alhaitham, dressed in civilian clothes and sporting a ragged tear across the synthetic skin of his cheek. He was still standing over the corpse of his user – days old, by the time you and Diluc got there – but as you opened the door, he turned to face you, lips parted and his expression totally, utterly blank. For a second, it was all you could do to stare at him, to try to remember whether or not your report had mentioned the android being active, and then he was lunging at you.

You scrambled for your taser, already knowing you couldn’t be able to reach it before he reached you. You clenched your eyes shut, your fingers brushing against plastic, and then—

And then you felt Diluc’s hand on your shoulder, heard metal crack and fold into itself. Hesitantly, you opened your eyes, forcing yourself to take in the sight of Diluc’s hand wrapped around the android’s head which had been, in turn, reduced to a crumpled heap of scrap metal and shattered glass. Its body twitched once, twice, then went limp, and Diluc released it, letting the now-dysfunctional droid collapse.

After it failed to get up again, Diluc turned to you, practically beaming. “I think,” he said, his voice low, sentimental. “That this is what I’d do to you, if you ever tried to leave me.”

Golden eyes, the stench of fresh blood, the sounds of screaming muffled only by a thin sheet of metal. This time, it wasn’t so easy to pull yourself out of it.

You managed to nod, to force a few words out of your dry throat. “Got it, ‘luc.”

 He hummed, the noise contented, appeased. Slowly, delicately, he cupped your cheek, tilting your head back and letting his lips ghost over your forehead. He barely touched you, the gesture as gentle as it was fleeting, but you could feel his grin cutting into your skin, wider than you’d ever seen it before.

[toxicanonymity]

night walks (original)

2k | pothead neighbor!Joel x f!reader

joel miller masterlist | night walks masterlist

He shrugs and leans in.  You don't lean away.  He takes your chin in his hand and your mouth opens for him, emptying your lungs before you can tell your body no.  He gets less than an inch from your lips and exhales into your mouth as you inhale deeply, accepting his breath. 

Summary: Joel, an older neighbor you've been walking with late at night, asks you into his basement to sell him weed but has other intentions.

content warnings: I8+ nsfw, drugs, dubcon, unsafe PIV sex, dirty talk, light imprisonment, creepy pothead joel, age gap (unspecified), possible dosing, no outbreak, Joel is untrustworthy.

(a/n): felt like writing some sex and taking a new Joel for a spin.

You're living in your Aunt's basement in a conservative suburban neighborhood while you work a dead-end job.  You keep to yourself and don't know anyone in the neighborhood. You take a walk late at night.  Not uncommon for you.  Normally, no one is out, so you light up a joint as you round the corner into a dark cul-de-sac. 

"That smells good," a gruff, disembodied voice says.

You startle and look around.  "It's cool, I'm cool " he says, and your eyes land on him in the shadows.  It's Joel Miller sitting out on the porch in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. "Sorry I scared you.  I'm no snitch," he adds.  "Have a good night." 

He comes out almost every night from then on and starts to make small talk.  One night he comes down from the porch in PJ pants and a tight t-shirt, stretched by his biceps, and asks if he can walk a lap with you.  You're like, whatever.  This is when you start to notice how hot he is, having barely seen him in the shadows. The PJ pants are a little too flattering on his ass and you can also see the ample size of his package. His beard glistens with bits of gray and silver.

In the darkest corner of the neighborhood one night, he says "hey" and his hand brushes the back of your hip. You turn and look into his eyes and his face darkens. He wets his lips and your heart races. He asks, "Mind if I hit that?"

You pass it to him and there's a spark when your fingers touch.  The intimacy of his mouth on your joint makes you blush.  His brow furrows as he takes a drag and maintains eye contact.  Something in his gaze gives you butterflies between the legs.

He shares bits and pieces about himself. Sounds like he's having some kind of a midlife crisis. His wife cheated. He's moved into the basement and made a man cave.   He starts crossing your mind during the day.  What's his deal, why is he talking to you? Are you friends now?  You're not sure if he's lonely or a creep.

One night, he sheepishly approaches you about buying some weed.  He wants you to bring it to his man cave so you can show him the stuff and remind him how to roll a joint and all. 

-

He lets you in the side door. When he holds the door open, you get a whiff of his sweat.  He's listening to Pink Floyd.  His tight shirt is blotched in perspiration and his muscles are pumped up.  

He asks, "Mind if I finish this set?"  

"Sure." 

It's burning up inside and you're in joggers and a hoodie. You sit down on the couch and try not to watch. You look around the room at his TV, the bar.  Your eyes drift to the bench where he's on his back, his shirt riding up exposing his happy trail, his package pressing up into his joggers.  

"Don't be shy. You can watch," he says without looking over. 

He's definitely a creep.  He counts down from 5 then racks the bar and sits up.  He looks you up and down.  You put your thin metal case on a tray that's sitting on the ottoman in front of you.  

He goes and locks the door where you came in - the bolt and the slider.

"Drink?" He asks, and walks behind the bar.  "Gotta tell me what you want or you get an IPA." 

"I'm good."

He brings you an IPA.  

He uses his shirt to wipe his brow.  He sits down right next to you, with plenty of other space on the couch,  and stretches his arm out behind you.  He catches you glancing toward the locked door. 

"Too late now, pumpkin." He adjusts himself.  "Come on, loosen up." He hands you the beer and you take a sip.  

"Good girl."  He looks you up and down again. 

-

You put the beer down on the tray and lean forward, elbows  on your knees.  "Alright, so. . ." 

His massive hand rubs your back slowly and it feels a little too good for comfort.  You try to ignore it.  

You open the weed case and get out the baggie and rolling papers. "You're gonna take-"

"Yeah, I know how to do it,”  he smirks. He tucks some cash in your case – a little too much – and closes it.  

Then he pulls out his own case from under the couch.  He puts the weed you gave him in there and pulls out his own stash.  You open your mouth but aren't sure what to say. 

"You gotta hit this. Really, try it," he says.   

You watch him roll the most perfect joint in the world.  

You call him out.  "Why'd you act like such a noob?" 

"How else was I gonna get you in here, hm?”  

Your cheeks burn. 

“Now we're all set to do what we want." A self-satisfied smile creeps across his face. "I won't tell, you won't tell. . . "  He winks at you and his eyes sparkle.

You tense. "I won't tell what?"

He brazenly eye-fucks you.  "What are you gonna say, you came over to sell me weed? C’mon.” 

He strokes your hair.  You're a little sick to your stomach.  You get another whiff of his sweat and curse your body for responding favorably.  

"Where's your wife?"

"Hell if I know," he shrugs.  His hungry eyes don't leave you alone.  

"Damn, you're hot," he blurts out.  It's exactly what you were trying not to think about him, but shit, he is.  

-

He puts the joint in his mouth and lights up, then his arm returns behind you.  His thumb  strokes the nape of your neck and you don't move away.  Not to be intimidated, you turn slightly toward him.  He inhales, holds in the breath, then offers you the joint.  

You hold up your hand and refuse the joint.

He shrugs and leans in.  You don't lean away.  He takes your chin in his hand and your mouth opens for him, emptying your lungs,  before you can tell your body no.  He gets less than an inch from your lips and exhales into your mouth as you inhale deeply, accepting his breath. 

"Atta girl," he says, followed by a small cough into his fist.  

You exhale the smoke slowly, then take a deep breath of clean air and exhale again.  

His large, veiny hand rubs your thigh and you sit in silence for a moment.

He says, "Good shit, right?" 

It's amazing.  "Did you just dose me?" 

He laughs. "Shotgunnin's a hell of a way to dose someone. Nah it's just about findin' the right strain, pumpkin" 

Whatever it is - the weed, the beer, his sweat, his body, the glimmer in his eyes. . . Whatever it is has you hot all over and tingling between the legs. You fidget with the zipper of your hoodie.

He puts his hand over yours and tugs the zipper, his hand dangerously close to your tits. "Let's take that off," he says. You take it off, leaving a tank top and no bra, and fold it up at the arm of the couch.  Part of you is unsure why you're settling in.  The lower part of you knows exactly why.  

His thick knuckles stroke the tattoo on your shoulder

His voice is a low rumble, through nearly-gritted teeth when he says, "found myself a bad girl."

He takes another puff, then sets the joint on an ashtray.   He holds in the breath, takes your cheeks in his hands, his sad eyes searching your face hornily. You empty your lungs again.  He seals his mouth with yours, sending a rush of blood to your loins. You accept the breath, sucking it out of his mouth, then close your mouth and turn away to exhale as your nipples harden.  His face stays and hovers close to yours. 

-

When you finish exhaling, you turn back and meet his gaze.  His eyelids are heavy with lust. He looks at your lips, cradles the back of your head, and smashes his mouth into yours.  His mustache tickles. His tongue invades your mouth and makes you throb. You back up a little and his body pushes yours down on your back, your head landing softly on your hoodie.  His legs wedge between yours.  

His clothed arousal presses right between your legs and his large hand maps your body as he buries his face in your neck.  "Lets see how bad you can be," he growls into your ear before taking a gentle bite of your neck, then sucking hard.  His hard-on swells even larger and harder against you and your hips automatically roll into him.  Your legs wrap loosely around him all on their own.  God, he's big.

You don’t know what’s come over you, but you’re dripping wet.  It’s like a magnetic, masculine energy is radiating out of his pores, penetrating you.  Locked in a basement with this total creep and you’re dizzy with desire.  

He slides his arm under your neck and kisses you forcefully as he gropes your breasts and grinds into you. Then he shoves his hand down into your pants where you aren't wearing underwear.  His thick fingers part your folds and glide against your slick.  You hate yourself for it, but you've never been more turned on, and it shows. 

When he feels how wet you are, he says “I’ll be damned.  You want it that bad.” 

He tugs down your joggers urgently, backing up on his knees to pull them and your shoes all the way off.  Then he frees his cock and strokes himself, wetting his lips. Chest rising and falling as he eyes your naked cunt.  Fuck, he has a nice cock.

He hovers over you again and one of your legs wraps loosely around him.  Your back arches in anticipation.  Your clit throbs.  He breathes heavily and his cock prods your entrance.  You moan softly.  He teases you with the tip.  Your body aches to be filled.  

“All yours, baby, every inch.”  His low voice obliterates anything that was left of your will to resist. 

He pushes his swollen tip inside, and the stretch pushes a moan out of you.

“Yeah, go on.  Take this cock.” He pushes further.  

He grunts, "God, you're tight. C'mon now, you can do it.”  Your hips tilt to receive more of him and he plunges the rest of his length into you with a loud grunt and shudder.  His neck vein bulges and his eyes close. You gasp as he fills you up and you twitch around him.  

“Yeah,” he pants, rocking into your clit while he's all the way inside. “Attagirl.”  You already feel something building deep within you.

He retreats then plunges into you again with a grunt.  The vein on his neck bulges more and his biceps flex as he hovers over you, fucking you slowly, then faster.  “Yeah, that’s my bad girl.”  Fuck, he feels good.  Tension coils rapidly in your core.  

He wraps a strong arm around you, lifts you up against him, and his cock stays inside you as he sits back on the couch so you’re in his lap straddling him.  He expertly works your clit and his massive hands on your asscheeks move you on his cock as his hips move under you.  

“God damn, you’re hot,” he says again as you roll your hips into him.  “Yeah, ride this cock,” he says, thrusting up into you as his massive hands rove your body.  He forcefully pulls down your tank top and sucks your tit, moaning into it.  Your thighs tremble.  

“Yeah, c’mon,” he says. “Come on this cock.”  

The next time he bottoms out, your clit grinding into his pubic bone, softened by his hair — you do.  Pleasure blooms from your clit, pulsing, washing over you, and your walls clench around him, wringing a guttural groan from his lungs. 

His cock pulses enormously and your whole body jerks into him as your climax continues.  He thrusts a few more times. Slow but emphatic, pulling you down on his cock as his balls empty inside you.  You stay on top of him as your climax wanes.  

-

Shit, that was dumb, you realize.  But it felt really fucking good.  

“Reckon I won’t need to lock ya in next time, huh?” he asks, stroking your hair.  You swerve his hand, get dressed, and leave. 

But the next night, you still find yourself walking by his house.  

“Any time you wanna come,” he says.  “You’re welcome."

Short Deleted Scene

-

Thank you for reading!!! your interaction is always appreciated too! 💐 this is a one shot but I'm having thots so you never know, LMK if you like him. I can kinda see him as a breeder, maybe.

Continuation by popular demand: night walks 2

[myuni-moon]

SAGAU: Reboot (Part 3)

cw: violence, reader falls unconscious

You’re operating fully for survival the moment you feel the hard pressure against your skin. The manacle feels too tight, and you tug on it to hopefully grab the attention of anyone close enough to hear your strangled cries amidst the rattling metal. Kaeya lifts you so easily into the air, as if you were truly nothing. The need to claw at him to release you becomes great, and you act out solely in pure instinct.

Without thinking, your nails make contact with the arms keeping you in a chokehold. All you can envision is the scrape against his muscles, and you pray you leave enough damage to make him stop. You can only worry then what happens after that.

“You’re so pathetic, it’s almost cute.�� Kaeya laughs. It grates your ears. Your consciousness is close to slipping, and it makes you even more desperate. You kick. You cry. You struggle. Anything to get away from him.

A breeze passes by you, tickling the hairs on your legs. In a locked room with no windows, it is completely out of the ordinary. However, in your frazzled state, you can’t care for it– not when a pair of thumbs are threatening to crush your windpipe without so much as hesitation. Black dots your vision. Your head feels so fuzzy. You want to live. That’s all you think about; survive, fight, pray– you pray someone, anyone comes for you.

You’re let go abruptly, your body dropping unceremoniously onto the floor. Coughs ripple your lungs as you attempt to breathe in as much oxygen as you can manage. Your vision is still hazy, and your head rings with the adrenaline rush coursing through your veins. Like a bug, you writhe on the floor as the reprieve settles into your system.

In the fever-like state, you can only hear glimpses of a high-pitched voice.

“… too much… unconfirmed... traveler… without Paimon… elemental trials…”

You black out.

You find yourself in a white void. Nothing and anything is bound to happen. The strangeness of your current setting should be another cause for caution, but any panic within you dissipates as if it never was there to begin with. You settle with staring into the endless space.

“We have waited for so long.” The words tingle like strings on a lyre. Each melodic ring reverberates in your head, a choir of disembodied voices speaking to you all at once.

Your head whips from one direction to another, “who are you?”

A blue light materializes before you; it circles around your form. It grazes around your skin, tickling every part it touches. “We are here to serve you, dearest one.” You reckon the light is who you’re talking to.

“What do you mean?”

Your head tilts in confusion, and the sprite blinks as if amused at your confusion.

“We,” it sings, “are made to heed your every word. If you have any concerns, pleas, orders, you need only tell us– and we shall fulfill them to the best of our abilities.

“We can be the wind beneath your sails, the tumultuous storm upon your enemies, and the gentle breeze that comforts you. Dearest one, we are The Thousand Winds. It is our greatest pleasure to welcome you once again to the lands of Teyvat.”

A breeze kicks up from the nothingness; it blows past you along with the little light. It swirls and swirls until it becomes a raging storm. You think the blue whirlwind would threaten to blow you away, but your feet are firmly planted to the ground. In fact, there is barely any force acting upon you from the tornado. It feels unreal, too unreal even for a dream. A part of you knows there is something more than your subconscious at play.

Before you can ponder upon it, the voice rings once more– “Any time you require us, only call to the god of Anemo.”

And just like that, the presence dissipates. You are left in the empty void once more.

Your mind slowly comes into awareness, feeling the ache in your bones and the strain in your muscles. It takes some time before you’re able to open your eyes fully. You’re only half conscious when you hear the creak of the door, and the sound of footsteps approaches you in steady strides. A gentle touch, something far divorced to the force on your neck previously, brushes against your fingertips.

It’s light– almost airy– in the way it moves through the grooves of your fingerprints. Inhuman, your mind whispers in your lack of awareness. The impression it leaves on your skin is kind, and that is enough to jolt you awake.

When you’re fully conscious, emerald eyes are peering into yours. They shine with the sunlight from an open window; doves coo right outside it. The figure in front of you is only processed as a bright, melodious voice resonates from them.

Your name is softly uttered in reverence, followed by a lyre’s hum. The discomfort in your body is relieved, and the pressures against your mind eases. You can say you’ve almost completely slipped into a state of serenity– mindlessness. The fight or flight instincts within you fade and is slowly placated-

Your fingers still twitch.

[marchsfreakshow]

After Show Jitters [Peter Maximoff]

Fluffy smut

Doing performances on stage are always weird and scary. No matter how many times you've performed. Peter knows just how to relax you once you're done.

Another theatre based fic. Because theatre. But our lovely Quickie this time. And also why not? This took ages lol I'm so sorry

Warnings: minimal mention of plot, praise, begging, small amount of teasing & body worship, overstimulation, classic PiV.

18+! MINORS DNI

No one's perspective

⊹˚.⋆ ₊꒷ᘏᘏ︶ଓ︶꒷꒦⊹˚ᗢ₊꒷︶ଓ︶

The evening had passed quicker than expected. A blurry mush of lights, audiences and words.

Resting your head on your crossed arms, another sigh escaped you. "Just one more performance.." you muttered to no one else in the dressing room.

"You're doing so well.." The words uttered from a disembodied voice made you shoot up and stare into the mirror. Peter stood behind you, resting his chin on your shoulder. Gazing into your eyes through the mirror with a little glint of desire. Your fingers wrapped around his arms as you let out a breath.

Kisses started on your cheek and trailed down to your neck easily. The little murmuring of praises continued as Peter's hand made their way to your chest, finding one of your breasts easily. Gentle, teasing squeezes as kisses turned into small bites and licks here and there. Tiny gasps leaving you with every single kiss and touch. He was being languid with his touches. Both of you knew you could be faster. He'd been faster before. "Takin' it so slow.." you whispered slightly whiney, suddenly getting a bit needy.

"Oh, the only time I want to take my time and worship you..." Peter started, obviously stopping himself from giggling, "You want me to go fast and... hard?"

"Y-yeesss... please, please Peter.."

"Hhholy shit I love your begging..." He breathed out, immediately pulling your costume jacket off, and throwing it somewhere. Well, there goes that $30.. as soon as Peter pulled your chair away from the dresser, his hands went under your thighs, pulling you up into his arms. A squeak of surprise from you and your arms whipped around his neck, only pushing you further into his body. "Perfect... perfect..so damn great.." He continued, walking you to the closest wall and keeping you up against it.

As soon as your back was against the wall, and your legs tightened around his waist mainly, Peter's hands immediately became a blur. His own trousers pooled around his ankles, and your own suddenly hung around one of your own along with your underwear. "Fucking..." You whispered in slight disbelief.

"What?" He asked lowly with a small chuckle, only causing you to whine nothing in particular. "I thought you'd be used to that by now babe." Your only response was a small shake of your head before your lips finally met his. Fast and sloppy kisses together, his hands roaming over your thighs. If it was up to Peter, he could live between those thighs. He really could've. Another few licks and bites around here, and just there out of pure desperation.

"Wow... fuckin' gorgeous. Jesus...could live between these things.." The speedster muttered to himself as his hands worked to bring your top off too, letting your tits practically spill out of your bra like water. His whispered compliments only served to warm up your face more and more. One touch to your cheeks and it was probably as hot as a furnace. Eventually, though, Peter met your eyes as he focused his hand's attention on your thighs. So..perfect. "I think ya deserve me now.."

"Fuck Peter... pleaseee.." You were never one to beg, so your desperate words blew Peter's control out of...whatever box in his head he was keeping it in. "Please just fuck me..please.."

"Damn...beg some more and I might just bend you over the dressing table once we're done like this.."

Your only response was a whine, mixed with a gasp as the speedster let his cock free from his boxers. It had been up against you the whole time Peter was praising you, and your attempts to pathetically grind against him went unnoticed unfortunately. Biting your lip as you watched it twitch for a second, pre-cum glistening the tip so beautifully. But only for a second as Peter's hands kneaded into your thighs and thrust upwards. His cock filled you perfectly every time, maybe more when you were clinging to his shoulders and up against a wall. "you really musta been missin' me tonight hm?" He whispered teasingly into your ear with every agonizingly slow thrust up into you. "Hm?"

"y-yeah-!" Was your eventual reply, breathless already from a small amount of slow movements.

"yeah? So you wouldn't mind if I sped up then?" Peter asked rhetorically, you definitely didn't mind, and he certainly didn't mind the idea of speeding up. You didn't even reply coherently. Only replying with a strangled moan, digging your nails further into his shoulders.

"Peter...fuh-fuuck!" Whimpered into his neck, his thrusts up into you getting more obscene and faster. A wet sound repeating itself which only made you feel closer to your ecstasy. His own moans and whines were buried into the crook of your neck as he attempted to hide them, despite how many times you told Peter you wanted to hear him. Both of you were so vocal, that it almost hurt to keep yourselves quiet just in case anyone walked past the dressing room. "Mmhh..'mso.."

"uh huh..go on.." Peter urged into your ear, still quietly praising and loving you verbally as he gripped onto your thighs once more. He could already feel your cunt start to clench over and over, then figured it would only get worse in a second. "Always feel so good...perfect.." He muttered incoherently, feeling your legs tighten around his waist once more. Practically milking him of nothing as soon as that needed high overtook your feelings. Screaming out his name, pulling him impossibly close to your own body.

Yet, Peter's own movements never slowed. In fact, he only went further up, getting a little bit faster. It elongated your high, eventually slipping into feeling overstimulated. "God- 's..'sso much Peter.."

He just shushed you, continuing to increase his pace. The lewd sounds of your mixed moans and Peter's continued thrusts eventually pushed the speedster over the edge. His movements up into you got sloppy, eventually digging his nails into your skin more and for certain leaving some bruises a few hours later. His reserved whimpers and groans changed into whines of your name, over and over. "F-fuck.."

Peter's hands faltered slightly as he brought himself down from his needed ecstasy. Panting a bit as he caught his breath, and it was warm, sweet against your neck. You were still too mindless to give a verbal thank you, so you pressed a kiss to his temple instead. Gazing dumbly at the man holding you against the wall.

But eventually, you were placed against the small couch right by the wall you were just fucked against. You could still feel Peter twitch inside you as he hovered above you. "soooo.." He started with a smug grin, "Want round 2?"

"Absolutely..."

⊹˚.⋆ ₊꒷ᘏᘏ︶ଓ︶꒷꒦⊹˚ᗢ₊꒷︶ଓ︶꒷

Tags: @babygorewhore / @taintandviolent / @oceanblvd111 / @nahoyasboyfriend / @coentinim / @slutforgarlogan / @briaroftheroses @am3ricanh0rrorwh0re /. @evanpeterspeter / @feefymo / @fear-is-truth / @lacucarachapisser / @marchsfreak / @saintlucretia / @jazz-berry / @t8-ak47 / @lemoniiiiiii

[angled-blade]

How the Slashers met you

Slashers; Billy Lenz, Bubba Sawyer, Ghostface (Billy Loomis + Stu Macher), Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers (OG + RZ), Thomas Hewitt

To be fair, you’d never have expected this to happen.

• Billy Lenz

So long as you are associated with the sorority—be it that you frequent their home or live in it, Billy would have already known all about you. He’s even started adding you as an additional detail to his calls, unnerving the girls even more the longer they were occupying the house.

~

“Shh! It’s the Moaner!” One of the sorority girls exclaimed, attempting to hush the bustling Christmas party. The chattering came to an abrupt pause, as multiple footsteps neared the rotary phone that sat atop the table. His voice rang through, surprising them with the new addition animosity. The disembodied voice began chanting your name, similar to a mantra before crudely cackling once more. Barb steps in, feeling quite irritated that the man changed his sights from the sorority to you—someone who isn’t even a resident of the home.

“Why are you— ___’s got nothing to do with this, you fucking creep!”

“Naughty, naughty piggy.. Billy knows.. Billy wants ___! Tell Billy, bitch piggy—tell Billy now!” The man screamed many more expletives toward the girls, Barb having held the phone at an arm’s length as she waited for his response. The girls clung onto eachother, worry appearing on their faces the more they listened. One of the girls took matters into her own hands, snatching the phone and hanging up—cutting off the Moaner’s rage-filled screaming from reaching them. Silence returned in the house, with the girls looking at each other knowing now that you were involved in their mess.

They knew they had to let you know as soon as possible.

• Bubba Sawyer

Multiple factors were in place in which you would be spared by both Bubba and Drayton, it’s possible that you knew the Texan family when they were still active in the slaughterhouse. There was also the offchance that Drayton held a soft spot for you, which guaranteed your survival.

~

“Woah, woah, woah! Ain’t that someone familiar, Bubba?” Drayton’s voice seemed to hold a tone of surprise, as if he was not expecting a victim. The younger Sawyer tilted his head in confusion, multiple questions forming in his head as he wondered what it was that seemed to bewilder the ever so uptight Drayton. He remembered bringing back two people, both were knocked out by the blunt force of slamming the back of the chainsaw against their heads.

“Ya’ don’t look at ’em, don’t ya’... Look at ’em real close up.” He ordered, Bubba following his line of sight as he focuses on you. He squints through the mask, drinking in the image of you. As if lightning struck his own—he now realised who it was he struck himself. A shocked squeal erupted from his throat, his legs now on autopilot as he stumbled toward your unconscious body, babbling apologies as he held you. The excessive movement had you waking up soon after.

You found yourself face to face with Bubba, who seemed sheepish.

• Ghostface

  • Billy Loomis

You might have met either through Stu or at the VHS store while you asked the closest person—that being him—for recommendations, resulting in an engaging discussion of horror films before quickly devolving into you exchanging numbers to each other before heading home.

~

“Good talk, I totally get your enthusiasm. It was nice talking to you… Uh..”

“Billy. Billy Loomis. It was nice talking to you too.. Wanna talk later? We can exchange numbers.”

You nodded, passing him your number before leaving the VHS store. Sure, it wasn’t every day that you met a diehard fan of horror movies, even going so far as to get into the details of the production itself and quoting directly from the actors—you were in no place to judge a person for their interests. You had your own interests and you’re sure you’d be passionate too if someone asked you about it.

It was already night by the time you were at home looking over the new movies rented for the time being. Feeling indecisive, you kept shuffling through the choices you had. By a stroke of luck, you were greeted with a familiar voice. A smile appeared on your features as you began talking to Billy. It was as if he were providing you with his own reassurance through simply talking to you. With all pleasantries aside, down came the questions.

“Hey, Billy.” His response was strangely quiet, a soft yeah as his reply. He’s probably busy with something.

“Remember those movies you saw me pick out?” A hum in agreement now. 

“Which one’s your favourite?”

  • Stu Macher

You are associated with Stu in school, often acting as his cover whenever he was up to his shenanigans. How were you upgraded to such a role? It was because you were seated closest toward the door to the classroom. You even stalled the teacher whenever he snuck back in.

~

“Did you see the look on her face? Did you see!?” Stu nudged you, a wide grin over his features.

You chuckled with him. No matter how many times you promised to not entertain Stu’s antics—it was pretty damn funny at how easily he got under the skin of those he pranked. In your eyes, it was merely harmless fun, there wasn’t any reason to get angry about it seeing how the pranks were juvenile. Even then, the only one jeopardising his time was him, really. Though you supposed that there were changes. One thing that was different was that Stu began approaching you outside of class.

“Hey, uh.. ___? How about we head out for lunch and.. y’know, hang out then?” He asked, scratching the back of his head nervously as he waited for your response. He lit up once he saw you perk up.

“Oh, sure. Where do you think we should go?” You asked, interested to know, much to Stu’s delight. He clapped his hands as if he struck gold after a moment of thinking. He smiled at you, his eyes scanning the hallway that was now empty. 

“I know just the place! Hmm.. think you can handle skipping the day?” He asked, seeing your face quickly contort into one of concern. He laughed in amusement, patting your back assuringly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll cover for you this time!”

• Jason Voorhees

He assumed that he had seen every type of person who trekked along his home, but never would he expect to see someone who came alone and blended in with the environment. Jason watched you, waiting in silence for you to do something that would allow him to strike. You never did.

~

Jason’s hands were tightly balled into fists, his gaze boring into your back as he followed you around quietly. He waited for you to commit a discrepancy, a mistake that would lead to your death and yet here you were, taking photos. You avoided the trail that led into his territory—meaning you followed the signs to not trespass. Your orderliness initially irritated him, as he presumed it wouldn’t take long before you broke it—so he kept watching you, waiting.

The more time passed, his frustrations with you turned into one of simple respect. You kept to yourself and made sure to keep away from the sectioned off areas. Jason returned to his routine, from where he began to watch you less. What he didn’t realise was that he would be sighted in those very photos you took, which didn’t go unnoticed by you. You were alarmed, though you kept that concern aside in case it were a fault of the camera. Despite that, you attempted to entertain yourself by getting flowers by one of the many spots he was sighted.

When you returned to that spot, the flowers were not rotting as you expected. 

They were gone.

 Instead, a fresh pink rose laid under the ‘Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake’ sign. 

• Michael Myers

  • ’78/OG

Crossing paths with someone during his downtime was something that was strange, but never unexpected. OG found himself intrigued with you—just what were you doing, walking the streets of Haddonfield at three in the morning? He was curious, deciding to watch you after that encounter.

~

Michael watched you move about on your nights once more, seeing how you weaved through the streets as you held onto the groceries. You seemed to be well established in Haddonfield, though not many of the residents were anything but mere acquaintances that you were coincidentally on good terms with. You never knew them personally, but you knew them enough to be something that can remain in their memories for a good week or two. 

Michael watched you move closer toward him, appearing distracted before bumping shoulders with him. Your head quickly faced him, apologising. Before you could leave, however, Michael grabbed a few of the bags that you had dropped when you had bumped into him, head tilting slightly. This was considered heavy? You couldn’t tell him by his face, though you asked him to help with the bags if he didn’t mind. He began to move, in which you took it was his way of saying, ‘yes’. You thanked him either way. The residents of Haddonfield were nice. 

You made your way home, taking out your keys before you heard the sound of bags hitting onto the front porch. You turned around to thank the helpful man once more, but he was gone. 

  • RZ

It was difficult to catch his attention with how he resorts to living inside his mind majority of the time, if there happened to not be any goal present to drive him. You happened to intercept it right before he was to transition into it. Your disturbance now led to you right on his radar.

~

Not once had you felt unsafe in your home with all the doors and windows locked and shut tight—ensuring any break-in attempts to be close to null. That was until now, long after you had passed that man who had been standing near that old, abandoned Myers home. He seemed lost in though, though you couldn’t know for sure. You chalked it up as him being one of those young adults who had felt like they needed to prove something by entering a scrutinised place. 

“What’s the point? Let them rest in peace..” You grumbled under your breath, quickening your pace as you headed home, unaware of the fact that the man by the home was now looking in your direction. 

Michael followed you into your home, absorbing the layout in its entirety before he hid himself out of sight as you continued your routine at home. Michael took note of the fact that you were glancing around a lot more, your face holding one of discomfort. He inferred that you felt him watching you—meaning that you were more aware than the others. He made sure to commit it to memory to replay as you resigned for the night and head to bed. You woke up later at night, feeling an urge to survey your room before slumber could return to you.

You couldn’t help but feel a shiver down your spine once you saw your bedroom window open.

• Thomas Hewitt

You had to know of him without the influence of Sheriff Hoyt in the way. You might accidentally cross paths at an abandoned area of Texas, one that was Thomas’ personal retreat whenever he feels overwhelmed by his family. With no chainsaw and you simply passing by, he let you go. 

~

“I didn’t know that there were still people living here—Sorry, sorry. I’m just passing through, really.” You stammered, staring at the man who stood before you. He donned a mask that covered his mouth and nose, the material appeared to be one out of leather, which intrigued you. 

“That’s a really nice mask you have. Did you make it yourself?” You asked, genuine curiosity ever so present in your voice as you did so. His gaze was otherworldly, as if they were staring right through you, despite the fact that he bore human eyes.

All it took was a grunt and a nod to have you letting up slowly. Thomas continued to stare, taking in your features as you stood there, similar to a deer in headlights. You didn’t insult his appearance or made comparison of him with an animal. He thought through possibilities, before he ultimately decided that you weren’t worth the chase—especially with him simply wanting time alone by himself. It took Thomas all he had to speak, the words seeming to escape from him when he did.

“..Go home.” His voice was softer than he recalled, though he chalked it up to him not finding a need to do so at this point, but you got the message. You made sure to say goodbye before leaving him be.

It felt almost fortuitous that you managed to escape the way you did.

I hope you enjoyed these headcanons and have had a wonderful New Year! I have a lot more headcanons and stories to post for you guys!

I am also extremely happy to see positive responses regarding those two fics including OG Michael and Bubba respectively.. I really appreciate it!! There will be another story, more specifically a Jason Voorhees/Reader fic. Be on the lookout for that sometime soon. (:

Once again, please reblog this post!

Thank you for reading this, have a great day/night!! (:

[vermont-writes-fanfic]

Her Special Maid

Chapter 1

Request:No

Warning: Kidnapping, the girls wanna kill you at first, nothing else tbh

Characters:Alcina Dimitrescu, Villager!Y/N

A/N: This has been giving me a little trouble but I believe it’s ready! I hope you all enjoy and I apologise for the weird cut off 😅

Directory: Prologue, Chapter 1 (You are here)

The warmth seeps through your clothes and into your bones on long the chill of mid winter right out of your body, the houses in the village are never able to be this warm no matter how high the fires roar.

“Who is this?”

“What are you doing in here?”

“You’re pretty~”

Three disembodied voices echo out in the large foyer and as you look around you see nothing and no one. That is, until a mass of flies tumble down the stairs and splits into three smaller masses, and surround you in a swirl of buzzing insects.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s pretty, she's uninvited.”

“What does she have in her hands?”

“Give it here!”

Your arms are tightly wrapped around the box, eyes wide in fear and confusion at how a mass of flies is talking at all. The feeling of hands prodding at your body and pulling at your shoddy cloak makes you flinch and step back,a sharp push lands you on your bottom but you have no time to react as you are pulled by your cloak. You slide across the floor being slammed into walls and tables, the only thing you can do to minimize the bruising is to curl up and wait for the world to stop moving. Finally, you come to a halt in an even warmer room, in the centre is a large chair by a wooden table and a fireplace, one that rages so large you think if it was in the bakery it would burn the building down. In the chair, sits a woman with pale skin, dark curled hair, a large wide brimmed hat, and a slightly off-white dress. She doesn’t strike you as odd until you realise how tall she is not only in comparison to the girls that this mass of flies had turned into, but to yourself.

“Mother, I bring you a trespasser.”

“We caught her snooping around in the foyer,”

“She’s a thief Mother! Look what she has in her arms!”

From the point on the floor, you can see a cloud of smoke puff into the air in front of the woman before dispersing. She sets down something on the table before speaking in an elegant voice.

“Very well done daughters,” She says as she stands, her tall form easily towering over you and her daughters. As her golden eyes land on your form they widen and her scarlet lips pull into a smile.

“Oh? Let her up.”

Doing as they are told, the hold on your arms is let down and you quickly sit up straight still cradling the box in your arms.

Her glowing eyes capture your attention for a moment rendering you unable to look away from their intense gaze. When you come to your senses, you quickly bow your head, heart pounding in your chest at the realisation of who exactly you were just staring into the eyes of. This is one of the four lords appointed by Mother Miranda,your mother told you this is where she lived but the reality of the situation you are in catches up with you like a slap to the face. You entered the home of a Lord uninvited, in possession of something that belongs to said Lord and then had the audacity to stare into her eyes and gaze upon her form. Your heart beats ever quicker in your chest as your breathing becomes ragged, the feeling of the silver pegs of the box as they dig into your chest anchors you. If you weren’t holding the box so close to you, your hands and arms would be shaking with nerves. The sound of her authoritative voice snaps you out of the stupor of fear you were in.

“Stand up girl,”

Doing as you were commanded, you use one arm to lift yourself up onto shaking legs and properly bow your head to her, eyes fixated on the tips of your boots which peek out from under your dress.

“Look at me when I am speaking to you.”

With a small amount of fear you slowly look up to her, golden eyes locking with yours as she speaks. The air of her authority, her power of overwhelming and enchanting all at once as she looks down at you.

“Who are you, and why have you entered my home uninvited?” She questions you, taking a sip of wine from her glass.

“I-I’m the baker's daughter from the village, I found this box and The Duke s-said it belonged to you.” You hold out the box as you speak, hands shaking slightly as you hold it up to her taller figure.

Her eyes leave yours for a split second as she takes the box. She has been looking for it for a week, assuming her brother stole it to get back at her for something she said to the incompetent fool.|| As her gaze drifts form your own, you find that you can breath a little easier, your chest rising and falling as you attempt to slow your rapid heart rate.

“Where did you find this?”

“In the snow, on the way b-back from the mill. I-I only found it today on my walk, it must’ve been buried in the snow.” You respond, stumbling over your words every now and then as the three girls around you gaze at your form with a predatory gaze. They remind you of hungry wolves stalking their prey from a dim treeline.

“And you thought to bring it here, knowing who lives here?”

You can only manage to nod your head, her tone almost condescending as she questions you. What else could you say? You knew that it was dangerous to come here of all places, even if it did belong to her. You then entered uninvited only because the door opened, and for all she knows you could have stolen it some how. The look on her face as she looks down to you again says it all: Are you brave or just foolish?

“What will you do with her mother?” The girl with brunette hair asks, walking forward a little.

“Let us hunt her, she will make a fine addition to my canvas!” The blonde spins her sickle in her palm, the blade smeared and layered in the blood of too many to count.

“No! She’s too pretty for that mother, let me keep her!” The last daughter says, her red hair draped over her shoulders a fiery contrast to the brown and crimson staining her cheeks and lips.

They spoke as if you weren’t in the room and you can’t help but shrink back as they fight like starving animals over who would get to do what with you. When you watch closer though, you can’t help but think of how they remind you of your own siblings hungry for your mother and fathers attention whenever they could get it. Despite your situation the scene brings a smile to your face, though it is all but snatched away from you when the woman silences her daughters with a single call, and relays her decision.

“Daughters. This young maiden is a guest in our home and has done me a great favour, we don’t feast on our guests. You are the bakers daughter, yes?”

“Y-yes ma’am,” The words leave your mouth quickly, afraid that if you keep her waiting to long she might change her mind.

“Girls, clean yourselves up. We will be keepin her as a guest for this evening. Do you enjoy tea?”

An amused smile pulls at her lips as she watches your eyes widen and your head tilt ever so slightly to the side in visible confusion. Only moments ago you where about to be killed or worse, and now she is treating you like a revered guest of honour. You watch as she sets the box down on a tall dresser next to another one similar, but clearly newer made.

“Tea?” All you can do is echo the last word of the question, the disbelief not quite shaken from you yet.

“Yes, or perhaps you would prefer coffee?”

“N-no ma’am, tea is perfectly fine, thank you.”

Now that you have shaken out of your stupor you answer her quickly, you’d never been fond of coffee. You liked the smell but drinking it makes you anxious and tired all at the same time, you’re father and eldest sister seemed to be addicted to it. She walks past your still shaking form and opens a door bending down under it’s frame to exit.

“Come.” It’s a single command that has you tripping over your feet to follow behind the larger woman. You are lwad down a series of hallways before you enter a decent sized room with a hearty fire in the fire place, two couches facing eachother, a table in the centre, a piano off to the side and several other furnishings throughout the room. She gestures to a seat across from where she seems to be heading and she pulls on a little string.

As you sit down, you realise that once again you are in the presence of the Lady Dimistrecu, in her home where young ladies are said to be taken and never seen again. You feel her gaze land heavy on your body once more and can’t help how your cheeks begin to flush under such an intense gaze. It’s as if she is sizing you up in some manner, those golden iris’ mapping out your every detail. Suddenly you are very aware of how messy you must look, you had come in from the winter cold and been dragged around before seeing someone of such high power. Your cloak is covered in dirt and flour from using it as an apron back at the bakery. Your face has bits of flour and the white powder somehow landed in your hair, the messy bun nearly falling out now after having been slung into walls and drug across stairs and halls. Summoning what little courage you have left after the series of events, you speak up.

“Ma’am, may I be excused to the lavatory?”

“You may, I will have Daniella take you,” The moment she says this, the girl with the red hair appears and eagerly takes your hand pulling you out of the room.

“What’s it like being the bakers daughter? Have you met any cute manthings in the village? What are Uncle Heisenberg’s lycans like when hunting?”

The entire walk to the restroom she asks you question after question like an eager child. She must be the youngest of the three, the way she was acts reminds you of your own little sister who has been at school for the winter, most of it anyway. Tomorrow she is going to come back for a short break, when the blizzards are to happen and snow people in. Your brother will be starting next year, he is sure to be a menace if he isn;t interested in what they are teaching him. Ever since he was 4 you’d been homeschooling him and teaching him how to speak and use his manners. Because of you he is one of the msartes children of his age in the village, not that there is much competition between 4 year olds to begin with.

“Here you are! Don’t take too long or mother might send Cass to get you!” Daniella’s cheery voice snaps you out of your thoughts as she stops infront of a door.

“Ah, thank you…I will do my best not to take too long.” You enter the bathroom and stand infront of the mirror and begin to right your appearance. You start with taking off your cloak, you lay it across the sink and beat off the flour and sugar the best you can making it look a little more presentable. After doing the same to your pants and your shirt, you use a small bit toilet tissue to wipe the flour off of your face before wetting your hands and slicking your messay hair back into a neat tight bun. The ribbon you use is worn and has seen better days, but is all you have for the moment and so you will need to make due with what you have. Giving yourself a once over in the mirror you crack a small smile, it’s not easy cleaning up the look of a baker with just water and some cloth but you did well. You wrap your cloak around you waist before finally turning to leave. As you walk out the door you nearly collide with the brunette from earlier, quickly you bow your head in apology only to be met with a single question.

“Why do you smell like honey cakes?

End Note: This was a little on the back burner because I’ve been planning other writing but I hope you all enjoy!

Total Words Count: 2,255

[ranticore]

you mentioned wyrms retract the human-ish head to eat, do you have an idea of how that works, anatomically? I'm trying to imagine a cross section of those necks with separate tubes for air, food, the head and the spine. does the head get packed tight in some kind of sleeve? It would be really cool to see that cross section

(also would love to know more about the time Rev spent as a disembodied head, that must have been really weird)

well i was meaning to draw it anyway

the "human" portion (referred to as the head yes all of it) has its own heart, lungs, and accessory oesophagus, though it doesn't have its own stomach. there's a little crop which is the remains of the human stomach, kind of like an appendix now really. the accessory oesophagus (green) connects to the main crop in the chest area, running parallel to the dragon oesophagus but not attaching to it. when the head is out, the dragon mouth is occupied anyway so it doesn't need to eat and the oesophagus is a squishy tube that is collapsed when not in use (unlike the trachea) so there's no issues with space here, it's fine.

the lungs in the head area are only minorly used for gas exchange - they provide very little oxygen, really, but enough to keep that human part running in a very hypoxic state in the case of decapitation. Mostly they're just used to draw air over the vocal chords. If the lungs in the main body were compromised somehow, the wyrm would straight up cease to function (not death. but comatose), while if the head lungs broke, eh nbd it just means no voice until they heal. there is a syrinx inside the chest cavity which provides additional vocals - deep infrasound rumbles. the main lungs are gigantic and in larger wyrms will extend further into the body. in the case of multiple heads, there are multiple syrinxes where the tracheas connect to the lungs and that means they can produce polyphonic rumbles :) breathing is done through the dragon nostrils, there's a sizeable cavity there for their good sense of smell. in case you are wondering how they sync up their breaths when there's multiple heads, the lungs are birdlike in that it's a series of air sacs and a passive inhalation, and an active exhalation governed by different lobes of the lung at once (using the air sacs). each head has its own lobe. so the wyrm is in a constant state of inhaling and exhaling at different rates (if there's multiple heads)

the dragon oesophagus is the main one and it leads to a crop, which is where the wyrm denatures the powerful toxins of their prey and forms a pellet out of the inedible mandibles and spicules found within a crawling beast. this is spat up later and buried (no longer poisonous so nbd). edible portions go to the stomach. the liver is very big and very strong, it's almost impossible to poison a wyrm in any way (including drugs, alcohol, etc)

so the thing about the wyrms is that the number of legs is variable, Revelation obviously has two, Onozar has four. But the two that Revelation has are actually its forelegs! The torso extends quite a bit into what we would consider the Tail area, it's rather snakelike.

as a disembodied head, Rev had no heart, no functioning lungs, and was also completely paralysed because of the severed nerve cord in its (human) neck. literally from the jaw down it couldn't move, which is what made it such a convincing corpse. life was very underwhelming for it since it was essentially running on extreme battery saver mode, always watching and sensing the world but never truly perceiving what it saw and heard and felt. animals made nests in its chest cavity, and it was infested with scavenging worms for a while, but its own flesh is distasteful to other living beings and nothing did enough damage to actually cause decomposition. just some nasty wounds.

Rev needed Wildfire to literally rip up a crawler and put the meat in its mouth before any attempts at healing could be made. when it finally got its lungs working again it found they were full of detritus - dust, spores, roots, random stuff. growing back the lower body would have taken decades more if it continued at the same pace, so it used a little bit of magic and Wildfire's other tiercels' flesh to construct the most basic shape of its lower body, and once it had those bits intact it could start properly gaining strength and growing.

[persevereforahappyending]

He Hung Up (Aftermath)

Pairing: Tara Carpenter x Reader

Summary: “I’m tired,” your voice cracked. You looked at her through blurry eyes, sniffling, “I’m so tired.” You stared into her eyes, hating to see her heartbreaking because of your pain. “How’d you deal with it?”

Warnings: Nightmares, PTSD, Past Death

Word Count: 4.1k+

Note: Here's the aftermath I said I'd write. Only 5 months later... sorry about that

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

“I got you,” you gritted out. “I got you.” You looked into Anika’s pleading eyes as you held her hand.

The voices and screams of the others were indecipherable, all you could focus on was Anika. Her terrified eyes as tears streamed down her face, the way her mouth moved as she screamed, begging for her life. You could feel the slipperiness of the blood coating both your hands. Anika’s wide eyes were the only thing you saw as she slid from your grasp.

Everything went silent, your surroundings fading to black, the only thing left was Anika’s endless falling, her face frozen in terror. There wasn’t even a sound as her body hit the ground. The only thing you could do was stare down at her lifeless corpse, head bashed open, her lively eyes now dull.

You watched her, watched as her body twitched, her head turning to stare right back up at you, her eyes remaining dead. “You failed me,” Anika’s voice void of any emotion said. It didn’t sound like her, it didn’t even sound human.

“I-I-” you tried to explain but there was no explanation. The only explanation was that you failed. You had her in your hands, and you dropped her. Your best friend was dead, and it was all your fault.

“Why did you fail me?” The disembodied voice of Anika asked again.

“I-I-I tried. I tried,” tears were streaming down your face.

Anika’s face twisted into something inhuman, a hatred you knew all too well filling her eyes, it was the hatred you saw in the mirror every day since you let this happen. “You couldn’t save me,” her voice became more distorted. “You can’t save anyone. You won’t be able to save Tara.”

The scene shifted; it was no longer Anika in front of you it was Tara. You were holding Tara up; she was slipping through your fingers just as Anika had. “Nononono,” you gripped her tighter, trying to find the strength to yank her up. “I got you. I got you.”

Tara’s tear-stained face looked up at you, her mascara smeared down her cheeks. “Why did you let me go?” She asked, her voice not matching the direness of the situation.

“What?” You asked confused.

Tara lost the terrified look on her face, instead a twisted smile appeared as she let go of your hand. “No!” You screamed, gripping the windowsill as you watched the love of your life fall to her death, her arms and legs flailing as she screamed for help.

The impact never came though. As soon as Tara would have hit the ground you shot up, your heart beating a mile a minute as you looked around, you were in your room, it was just a dream, just another dream. You buried your head in your hands as you wiped away the tears. Your entire body shook as you pressed your palms hard against your eyes trying to forget the images from your nightmare. You knew it was futile though, the images never left, you saw them every time you closed your eyes. It was only recently you were no longer just being haunted by Anika but by Tara as well. You knew Tara was alive, she has made it out, all of you had, that didn’t stop the images of her death at your hands haunting you. Dream Anika was right, you couldn’t save her so there was no way you’d ever be able to save Tara.

You slid out of bed, moving to your dresser to grab a fresh shirt when you sighed, threw the shirt back down and just made your way to the bathroom. You were drenched in sweat, your sleep shirt completely soaked through, a shower would be more useful, and it wasn’t like you were going back to sleep. You didn’t even bother looking at the time before you hopped in, feeling the warm water wash over you. You stood under the shower head, head rested against the cool tile as the water slowly went from hot to cold, you didn’t even flinch at the temperature change, you let it wash over you for another minute before finally getting out.

You put on fresh clothes and finally looked at your phone, first seeing a text from Tara.

Tara: Night, love you

A small smile tugged at your lips before forming into a frown again. Tara had asked you to come over, but you brushed her off saying you had to much homework. You weren’t trying to distance yourself from her, it wasn’t like you were mad at her or blamed her for anything, you just hadn’t had a good night's sleep since the attack, and you didn’t want to be an inconvenience to her. This was the second time Tara had been through an attack, she lost a friend, she should be focusing on herself not taking care of you. The next thing you noticed was the time, 3:42am, you closed your eyes, sighing, feeling the exhaustion that was now just a part of your life. You decided to make yourself a bowl of cereal and just turn on the TV, throwing on old episodes of Criminal Minds as you waited for it to become time to leave for class. It was rare you didn’t wake up before 4am now, you were getting used to it, the less than five hours of sleep, the nightmares, being covered in sweat, waking up before the rest of the world.

As you passed through the kitchen your eyes landed on the get well soon card your parents had sent. You scooped up a spoonful of cereal as you flipped open the card again, a basic store-bought card that your parents managed to at least sign. You flipped the card away and moved to the couch, easing yourself down. Your wounds were mostly healed but certain movements still ached, Tara and the doctors said that would be normal for a little while, after all it had only been about a month since the attack.

After a few hours of mindlessly staring at the TV, not even paying attention to what episode you were on you jumped to your feet, grabbed your bag for the day and walked out the door, triple checking to make sure you locked it. As you made your way across campus you noticed there were a few students walking about, meaning it wouldn’t be another case of you awkwardly standing outside the building of your first class waiting for Tara.

You leaned against the stone railing, rubbing your hands together to keep them warm. You don’t think to grab anything bigger than a hoodie and you almost never wore gloves, you watched as other students ran into the warm building, bundled up in their jackets. You stared as the door swung closed again, the knowledge of warmth tempted you, but the cold was good. If you were cold, it meant your mind was focused on being cold instead of the death of your best friend. The only positive after the attack was that your grades hadn’t taken a noticeable slip, yet, you were sure it was only a matter of time before the exhaustion would catch up with you though.

“Hey,” Tara greeted cheerfully, breaking you out of your spiraling thoughts with a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey,” you replied, offering her a small smile.

“How long have you been waiting?” She watched you carefully, looking for any signs that you weren’t actually okay like you were trying to come off.

“Not long,” You tried for a more convincing smile. Tara knew you better than anyone, she was the hardest to convince that you were okay, even though a part of her never seemed to believe you based on the way you’d catch her watching you.

She squinted, staring deep into your eyes, you started to fidget from foot to foot but you kept your smile on. “Okay,” she said, taking your hand in her own and led you into the building.

You sat next to Tara in class, hand in hand like you always did. The professor was lecturing about something, you couldn’t even attempt to pretend you knew what. You were zoned out, playing with your pen as you stared ahead, your eyelids becoming heavier by the second.

You saw flashes of Anika, her face, her hand in yours, you losing your grip, her falling. Your eyes snapped back open when there was a loud screech as the professor moved something. Your eyes darted around the room, you had dropped your pen, you managed to not yell at being woken up, no one was paying any attention to you except for one person. Your eyes met Tara’s; her mouth partially open, ready to ask what was wrong. You silently cleared your throat, shifting in your seat to get comfortable again, as you offered her a small smile. You turned your attention back to the front, but you could feel Tara’s eyes on you, glancing out of the corner of your eye you saw the worried look. She knew you weren’t okay now and there was no way you’d be able to convince her after class.

When class ended as much as you wanted to run out of there and avoid Tara’s questions you waited, you stood patiently by as she packed up her bag, intertwining your hands when she was done and then walked out of the building together. The two of you walked hand in hand through the quad, you swallowed nervously, waiting for the moment she’d choose to strike.

“What happened in there?” She finally asked, keeping her pace, and only sparing you a worried glance.

“Nothing,” you tried shrugging her off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, grabbing your arm with her free hand to force you to turn and face her. “Bullshit, what’s wrong?”

She was looking at you with those big brown eyes, you couldn’t take it. You looked to the sky, unable to hold eye contact with her anymore. You couldn’t lie to her, you could avoid the questions and try and brush everything off, but you could never lie to her at the end of the day. You wiped your eyes, trying to hide the tears that had begun to form, having an emotional breakdown after your first class of the day was not in your intended schedule, you were meant to save those for when you were home alone.

“Hey,” Tara said softly, gently pulling your hands away from your face and wiping your tears herself. “Talk to me.”

“I’m tired,” your voice cracked. You looked at her through blurry eyes, sniffling, “I’m so tired.” You stared into her eyes, hating to see her heartbreaking because of your pain. “How’d you deal with it?”

“Baby,” she whispered, tears filling her own eyes. You leaned into her hand when she caressed your cheek. “When was the last time you slept?”

You let out a humorless chuckle. “When I was in the hospital,” you admitted. “With you.” You dropped your eyes to the ground, finding your shoes much easier to look at than your girlfriend’s concerned face. It was true, once you got released from the hospital you had been staying at your dorm, you hadn’t stayed the night with Tara since the attack. You knew she wanted you to; she always asked you to stay when you were over at her apartment, but you always found a reason to turn her down. You didn’t have to worry about Tara staying at your place, as accepting as Sam was starting to become, she still wasn’t that accepting, she refused to let Tara stay the night anywhere that wasn’t their own apartment.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see Anika,” you looked up, meeting Tara’s gaze again, a few more tears falling from your eyes. Tara let out an understanding sigh. “And more recently, you.”

“Me?” she asked, confused.

You let out a shaky breath, this was going to be the first time you said it out loud, you hadn’t even told your therapist this new development in your nightmares. “The dreams always start off with Anika but towards the end it’s you. You’re the one I’m failing.”

“You haven’t failed anyone.”

“All I’ve done is fail!” you stepped out of Tara’s reach, running a hand through your hair. “Anika is dead because of me.” You looked Tara in the eye, trying to get her to see that it was all your fault. “I couldn’t save her. Mindy hates me because I couldn’t hold her girlfriends fucking hand for a minute.”

“Hey,” Tara said sternly, gripping you by your arms so you were forced to focus on her. “It was not your fault. And Mindy does not hate you.”

You scoffed at the notion. “How could she not? She hasn’t spoken to me since the attack. Not that I can blame her, I could have saved her girlfriend, but I didn’t.”

“You did everything you could! You were injured, she was hanging off a building, there was only so much you could do.”

“But-”

“And she’s not avoiding you!” Tara snapped, getting angry now, you flinched at her change in tone. “You’ve been avoiding everyone.”

“I haven’t,” you defended weakly.

“Yes, you have,” Tara sighed exasperated. “You’re trying,” she moved her hands to the back of your neck, scratching lightly. “I can see you’re trying but you’re pulling away. We haven’t talked about the attack once.”

“I just…” you dropped your eyes back to the ground. “You have enough to worry about.”

“Well, I worry anyway. I would worry less if you did talk to me.” You nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head,” she ran a hand through your hair, giving it a light shake. “I want to know, no matter what it may be, I want to know. I want to be there for you.” You nodded again. “As long as you’re comfortable sharing with me.”

“I’m always comfortable with you,” you mumbled. You reached across the short distance between the two of you, playing with her fingers before you linked your hand with hers again.

“Let’s go,” she said abruptly.

Your head snapped back up to hers, giving her a confused gaze. “Where?”

“Home,” she started to walk again, tugging on your hand.

“What about class?”

“Who cares,” she tugged on your again.

“What about Sam?” your feet remained glued to their spot.

“She’s at work,” she tugged you impatiently. “Besides, she’ll understand.”

You couldn’t think of any more arguments as to why you shouldn’t go so reluctantly you moved your feet, allowing Tara to drag you back to her apartment. The whole way there she refused to let go of your hand. When you got to the apartment you couldn’t help but look around, Sam had found a new place almost instantly after the attacks were done, you’d been there a few times, but you still weren’t used to the change. Tara dragged you straight to her room and started digging through your backpack before you could take it off.

“What are you-”

“Take these,” she cut you off, holding out a pill bottle for you.

You took the pills from her looking to see it was the pills prescribed for you to help you sleep. “I don’t like them.”

“They’ll help you sleep.” She shrugged off her own bag, tossing it into the corner before helping you slip yours off and tossing it next to hers. “Take them,” she said again. “Now.”

You did as she asked but made sure she could see the obvious pout as you swallowed the pills. She only rolled her eyes, moving to her bed and yanking the covers back.

“Get in bed,” she ordered.

You listened, mumbling to yourself about how she was bossy, and you didn’t have to listen to her. When you settled under the covers, she crawled in next to you. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she said, putting her hands under your shirt as she wrapped her arms around your waist, while resting her head on your shoulder.

“Thank you,” mumbled, placing a kiss on the top of her head before sleep quickly consumed you.

You let out a content sigh, feeling comfortable for the first time in a month as you stretched your arm to the other side of the bed. You blinked the sleep out of your eyes when you didn’t feel Tara next to you, the spot wasn’t cold yet, so you knew she had just gotten up. You reached over, grabbing your phone and saw that it was after two now, you had actually managed to sleep, it was only a few hours, but for once you weren’t tormented in your sleep by memories.

You sat up, rubbing the rest of the sleep from your eyes when you heard whispering outside the door. You swung your legs over the side of the bed and decided to venture out to find Tara, you knew she had to be somewhere in the apartment.

“Just be nice,” you picked up Tara whispering as you put your hand on the door handle.

“I’m always nice,” Sam harshly whispered back.

Despite your sleepy state you furrowed your brow, wondering when Sam was nice. You imagined Tara was giving her sister a similar look.

“Fine,” Sam whispered back.

You shrugged and opened the door, stepping right into the kitchen where Tara and Sam were standing. Tara whipped around, smiling at you widely, making it obvious that whatever she was talking to Sam about definitely had to do with you. Sam offered you a tight-lipped smile but didn’t glare at you, it was progress.

“We were going to order pizza for dinner,” Sam said, her voice becoming strained as if it pained her to be nice to you. “Will you be joining us?”

“Of course,” Tara answered for you. “Y/N is staying the night.”

“I am?”

“And the rest of the week,” Tara continued, ignoring your question as she wrapped an arm around your waist.

“All week?” Sam shouted; her eyes widened at the news.

You looked down at Tara for an answer, this was the first time you were hearing the news as well. Sam said she would no longer kick you out, but she also said she didn’t want you over 24/7 and you were thinking staying over for a whole week might be pushing it.

“All week,” Tara repeated, looking up at you with a small smile then raised an eyebrow at her sister, daring her to argue against it.

Sam released a sigh, closing her eyes as she most likely repressed an eyeroll. “Fine,” she shrugged. “Just don’t fall behind on school,” she gave Tara a pointed look.

Tara smiled sweetly at her sister before pulling you to the living room. You saw Chad in the chair, scrolling through a list of movies while Mindy sat on the couch, yelling at him to pick one. You froze in the doorway, wanting to run back to Tara’s room before Mindy could see you. Tara held you in place though, rubbing comforting circles on your back. Mindy glanced to the side, seeing you and Tara for the first time. You figured you’d see hatred, disgust, or any other terrible emotion on her face but there was none of that.

“Hey, stranger,” Mindy said with a soft smile. “We’re going to watch a movie. If Chad ever makes a decision,” she threw a glare at her brother. Chad rolled his eyes, glaring right back. “Join us,” she smiled at you again, patting the seat next to her.

You gave her a small smile, allowing Tara to lead you to the couch, forcing you to sit in the middle seat next to Mindy, while she sat on the other side of you.

“Any preference?” Mindy asked, looking back to the TV as Chad kept scrolling through movies.

You shrugged. “Something funny,” you said.

“I got it!” Chad smiled innocently at Mindy.

Mindy narrowed her gaze at Chad, none of you had seen what he picked and knowing Chad it could literally be anything. When the movie started Miny groaned throwing her head back.

“Dodgeball, really?” she let out an exaggerated sigh.

“They wanted something funny,” Chad defended, pointing at you.

You quietly chuckled at the twin’s argument, it almost felt like things were normal. You also couldn’t complain about the movie, you knew it wasn’t Mindy’s favorite, though she didn’t seem to like anything that wasn’t horror, you however did enjoy the movie and it was the kind of movie you needed in the moment.

So that’s how you spent the night, watching Dodgeball with the gang until the pizza arrived. There was light talking and jokes but mostly you all just sat in a comfortable silence. Even Sam joined in on the fun, taking the chair across from Chad once she placed the order for the pizza. Sam didn’t joke around a ton but there was a few moments when you saw the hints of a smile, not that she’d ever admit it.

At the end of the night Tara went to the kitchen to help Sam with the dishes, leaving you alone with Chad and Mindy. You were playing with your fingers, not paying attention to what the others were doing until Chad got up from his chair without a word and walked into the kitchen. You rolled your shoulders, trying to ease the tension in your back now that you were left with only Mindy.

“Hey,” Mindy said softly, bumping your shoulder with her own. You glanced at her out of the corner of your eye, seeing she had moved closer to you. You hummed in acknowledgement but didn’t face her, you still couldn’t bring yourself to look her in the eye for to long. “You know we’re okay, right?” you nodded unconvincingly. “Look at me,” she bumped your shoulder again until you finally looked at her. “I know you blame yourself for what happened.” Your eyes drifted back down to your clasped hands. “But I don’t. No one does. You just need to work on forgiving yourself,” she rubbed a hand up and down your back until you nodded.

It was only a few minutes later when Chad entered the room again, grabbing Mindy and the two to of them said their goodbyes as they made their way back to their dorm. You sat silently on the couch, thinking about what Mindy had said. She literally just told you she didn’t blame you for Anika’s death, even though you already knew that, now there was no arguing against it, her confirmation was all that was needed, that didn’t mean you didn’t still hate yourself though. Mindy said you needed to forgive yourself, that seemed a lot easier said than done.

Tara rejoined you on the couch, intertwining her hand with yours. You heard Sam call out a goodnight before hearing the door to her room shut a second later. Tara rested her head on your shoulder and began playing with her fingers and yours.

“Are you doing better?” she whispered.

“The best I’ve been in weeks,” you whispered back. “Thank you.”

“Good.” She lifted her head to place a long kiss on your cheek before resting it on your shoulder again. “We’re all here for you whenever you’re ready.” You nodded, placing a kiss on the top of her head. “Even Sam.” You chuckled at that. You knew she wasn’t wrong, if you really needed someone to talk to Sam would be there for you, she might not enjoy it, but she understood, and she’d be there.

“I have therapy tomorrow,” you said slowly. “Would you come with me?” your hands felt sweaty, but you couldn’t wipe them on your pants. Tara hadn’t let go of your hand, so she didn’t seem to mind the sweatiness at least. “You don’t have to,” you added quickly, rambling on, “I know it means waiting in the waiting room and I know you probably have better things to do and-”

She cut you off by grabbing your face with both her hands and pulling you in for a kiss. Your mind went blank, forgetting whatever you were rambling about. Your shoulders instantly relaxed, your hands moving to rest on Tara’s waist as you reciprocated the kiss.

“I would love to,” she whispered, resting her forehead against yours. “Only if you’re comfortable with that of course.”

You nodded, not trusting your voice anymore. The two of you stayed like that for a minute, just being in the presence of each other. You wrapped your arms around Tara, and she wrapped her arms around your waist, you shifted positions, so you laid on the couch, with Tara laying on top of you. She rested her head on your chest, lightly scratching your back as you drifted back off to sleep.

Taglist: @screechcat

[huramuna]

even in undeath - chapter 1.

lich king aemond x reader a 'world of warcraft' AU. prev | next

The Lich King is the master and lord of the Scourge. Consisting of thousands of walking corpses, disembodied spirits, beasts of the north, and damned mortal men, the Scourge is a terrifying and insidious enemy.

word count: 2.3k

@huramuna-fics - follow & turn on notifications for just my fic postings! no taglists right now, sorry.

content: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, DUBCON, smut, heavy heavy angst, graphic depictions of violence, allusions to cannibalism, imprisonment, kidnapping, murder, suicidal thoughts and ideation, mutilation of corpses, obsessive aemond, dark aemond, a happy ending is not in our future. PLEASE MIND THE TAGS! This story will be pretty dark.

story playlist

It was dark and cold. There was a faint dripping of water somewhere off to the side, but you couldn’t quite see where. The echoes of whimpers ricocheted off of the craggy walls, stinging your eardrums. 

This was the descent into madness, wasn’t it?

You weren’t sure how long you’d been chained up for— how long had it been since your village burned to the ground? Since you watched the ghouls rip apart the cow farmer from down the road. Since you watched hellhounds crunching on little Mary Jay’s bones. Since you had watched your mother and stepfather plead and beg for their lives, for forgiveness, for mercy, for absolution of their supposed sins before the death knight’s sword lopped their heads off. 

How long has it been? 

Shifting slightly, the chain tied to your throat clinked against the wall. There was no light, no passage of time to be had in the dank, pitch black cave they stowed you and a few select others in. You only had on a ragged potato sack as a dress, the sensation of dirt and grime caked on your hair and under your nails making you feel less than human. 

But— you were still human. For now. The Scourge had ravaged the Eastern Kingdoms without mercy, swiping through the North and South like a fast traveling plague, curdling and damning everything it touched. Hordes of undead zombies, ghouls and hellhounds were the first to raze the cities, driving out the people like mice from the walls. Then the banshees came, along with the necromancers to raise the dead, adding them to a forever amounting army.

Not even Quel’thalas had been able to resist it, an ancient elven city hewn in magic.

What chance did you have? 

More than most, evidently. Your mind wrought itself over and over as to why— why were you alive? Why were you still human and not merely a risen thrall? 

The clinking of armor scared you as it ascended the hallway. You pressed close to the wall and closed your eyes. 

Please don’t stop here, please don’t stop here. 

Clink, clink, clink… closer… closer… 

Then it passed, descending further away. You let out a breath, your blood still pumping in your ears. 

Clink, clink, clink. They were coming back. Clink… silence. You felt bile rise in your throat as you shook, the chains rattling noisily. You knew they were standing there, you knew they were here for you. 

A harsh tug upon your chain, your head hitting the floor— some words were mumbled, the voice sounding far away and broken. Your eardrums rang with the ferocity of your fall, drowning out any semblance of what your jailer was saying to you. Then, you were tugged upward, the cool metal of the collar biting into your skin as you were dragged like a petulant child away from your cell… 

You didn’t want to open your eyes. You couldn’t face the horror you knew was around you— corpses, living ones and dead, the clatter of bones, the heavy breathing of gargantuan abominations, bodies and faces of countless people stitched together into a new body, hewn with thread and necrotic magic until it gave way to something else entirely. Something unnatural, something made of nightmares. The dermis of those who were used to make the monsters would still twitch, reach out on its own, and if it had a mouth, it would be twisted into a scream. You swore that you heard them whispering as you were dragged by. 

The monstrosities were one of many abhorrent creatures at the Scourge’s disposal. Hellhounds, ghouls, gargoyles, wraiths, crypt lords, geists, banshees, and other things of horrific nature were only some of the power wielded by the Scourge. It felt like it was all pulled out of a child’s fairytale, changed and twisted and defiled into what it was now. 

It all felt like a very bad dream. 

Your eyes opened on their own and you took in the image of death knights, former paladins who served a higher power, the Light— now are nothing but undead heretics, glowing eyes and gaunt stares that bored through you. 

Some of the monsters chittered as you were dragged past them, leering and looking hungry. 

‘Scrawny that one. Perhaps she will suffice for hellhounds to pick their teeth.’

‘Speak for yourself, her skin will do beautifully on a new abomination.’ 

‘She won’t be knighted. Merely a maid’s bastard, I’ve heard.’

You forced your eyes to close once more, the sudden light stinging them. You forced yourself into another time, a better memory than what you were experiencing. 

They were right, you were a maid’s bastard. Your mother had served in the royal keep for years, with you under her feet. You didn’t know who your true father was, nor did you care.

You became attached to the second son of the King— Aemond Targaryen. He was a sprightly boy with near white hair and luminous violet eyes. The two of you were attached at the hip. 

Childhood friendship blossomed into more as you grew into teenagers and young adults— you shared your first kiss together, you held hands and shared sweet nothings. As he trained by day to become a paladin of the Light, he held you close by night, vowing to never let you go. You were both terribly in love and so terribly, terribly naive. He was your first in everything– your first friend, your first kiss, your first lover. You promised yourself that he would stay your first and only.

‘You can never marry a maid’s bastard, Aemond! You’re a prince of the realm-‘

‘I don’t care! I want her, father. I’ve always wanted her!’

Your mother quit her job at the castle— moreso, threatened into quitting by some of the King’s advisors. She was given a considerable amount of coin and told to take you far, far away and to not contact the prince again. 

Heartbroken, you left him your sapphire ring, the only thing of value you ever had, which had been passed down through your mother’s family for generations. 

It was left on his desk with a note of few words but much feeling. 

‘I love you. I’m sorry.’ 

That was over ten years ago. You hadn’t seen him since, but you missed him horribly. Especially now. You wondered if he was still alive, fighting against the Scourge like his knightly vows dictated. 

Maybe he was married and moved across the sea to Kalimdor where it was safer. 

Or maybe he was dead. Dead like almost everyone else you knew. 

You heard a rumor, fleeting and without much more information, that his father had died– no, that his father had been murdered. The fall of the king, Viserys, is what started the Scourge war. Did Aemond know, wherever he was? 

You imagined him holding his arms around you, kissing your neck and fanning his breath over your skin. He liked to encompass you completely with his body when you laid together— you never could emulate the feeling with heavy blankets and pillows, as much as you tried. Putting yourself back into that memory, you wrapped your arms around yourself, willing warmth into your body. 

But you didn’t feel any warmth. All you felt was cold, cold down to your bones. They felt brittle, like ice, splintering into shards as you were thrown on the floor again in a different room. Pain bloomed in your arm as it cracked at an awkward angle. Broken. 

Your ears rang again as your mouth opened into a scream, tears of pure anguish squeezing from your eyes. But you didn’t hear a thing besides the rush of blood dampening your senses— and the sickening crunch of your broken bones. 

‘What have you done to it, Lady Deathwhisper? It looks broken.’ 

‘It’s human bones are so brittle, it was merely a slip of the hand. I cannot help that their living constitution is so weak.’ 

‘His grace will not be pleased if it is broken beyond repair.’ 

‘Worry not, Lady Alys. Most things can be mended— and if not, it can always be raised.’ 

‘Physical defects aren’t the only issue. What of its mind?’

You feel an acute sensation over your skull, reaching into the depths of your cranium. Its cold, but not stinging— like a soft caress upon your brain as your mind is rifled through like a tome. You can feel your memories being perused, all of the most intimate moments of your life flashing in your head like playwright’s prose. The physicality of your mind being invaded wasn’t painful, but the act of your memories being ripped from you was damning. Tears fell down your face on their own, your mouth opened into a silent scream.

‘She is the one— I saw it. You are lucky that you did not break her mind completely, Lady Deathwhisper.’ 

‘As are you. You do not have a deft hand when it comes to memory perusal, Lady Alys. I am surprised that it still has a brain in its skull.’ 

‘Shut up and bring her to him. He will be pleased she is still alive. Barely.’ 

You felt yourself being moved again, still reeling from the invasion of your mind. You tried to put yourself back into the safe haven of memories, but they were… locked. Locked behind an iron door with no keyhole. They were lost to you. 

What were you trying to remember? 

Flashes of white hair and violet eyes flitted behind your eyelids, soft caresses and kisses, heavy breathing and love filled promises, the sensation of skin to skin… 

Your eyes opened, vision bleary. A helmed woman followed behind you, wings outstretched. You could see the glint of green eyes under her helm. Val’kyr. The woman behind you was a Val’kyr, a spirit guide who defected to the side of the Scourge. They could move between the realm of living and dead as simply as taking a breath. 

“The little human is awake,” she mused. “Your mind isn’t broken after all? I do see a glint of intelligence behind those eyes. Keep them on me, you shan’t wish to look upon Lady Deathwhisper.” 

You didn’t want to speak, words caught in your throat like food stuck in your craw. A val’kyr was basically an angel of death and talking to one must mean you are dead. 

You wish you were. 

The chains scraped against the floor, which was no longer stone like before, but rather, hardened ice. You were ascending upward, it seemed. The architecture of the building was nothing like you’d ever seen— dark metal was plated upon the walls, inscribed with glowing runes. The runes looked… familiar to you, somehow. But the memory that contained them was locked away, or mayhaps stolen by the Val’kyr, Alys. 

The temperature was cold, you were being lofted upon ice, of course, but you didn’t wholly feel it. You were partially numb, heat radiating from your broken arm. You knew you should be feeling pain— but you were just… numb. 

Your escorts stopped in front of two large doors, inscribed with the same glowing runes. Against Alys’ advice, you glanced at ‘Lady Deathwhisper’. She was skeletal, floating upon the ground with no legs to speak of. Her robes were purple fabric, molded around an incorporeal body. She spoke in a language you didn’t understand, the scratchy voice of hers coming out of a bone skull, but the mouth wasn’t moving, maw open as the words came out. 

You should have listened to Alys. 

The door opened with a rumble, opened by ancient magic, likely imbued by the runes, as they flickered and flitted above your head as it opened. The room beyond was open and bereft of almost anything, except for a throne. A throne forged of ice and swords. 

Someone was sitting upon it in a lazed position, one plated gloved finger tapping on the arm of the throne.

“We’ve brought her, your grace,” Lady Deathwhisper growled, shoving you forward. You skidded across the floor, which felt slick like grazing atop an ice-capped lake. “Alys confirmed it is her.”

The clinking of armor caught your attention, the sound of metal grazing against ice. It was irritating and made you grind your teeth. As whoever was on the throne got closer, the force was oppressive. Whimpers and tiny cries were ripped from you as they walked towards you, the aura exuding from them causing you to fall flat to the ground, feeling as if someone was sitting atop of your chest and not letting up.

The steel plated boot was in front of you now and your hair was grabbed rather harshly, pulling you up. 

Don’t look, don’t look. You cannot look.

“Look. At. Me.” the voice growled. It was quiet but commanding at the same time, rattling in your bones and making a home amongst the marrow. It felt familiar… so… 

You lifted your bloodshot eyes, not out of your own volition, but from the authority of the voice.

“Hello, little dove.” he mused.

It was him. It was… it… Aemond. You knew him so well, even with ten years gone. His chiseled jawline and chin and the dimple of the tip of his nose… 

But his eye was missing, a jagged scar bisecting it. In its place was a sapphire. The sapphire from your ring, grown into something to make home in the socket.

You felt everything and nothing all at once, your stomach flipped and flopped like a fish hoisted from the sea, sputtering for air. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t–

Your best friend, your lover, the one you vowed to never forget, to never forsake.

Aemond Targaryen. 

Aemond Targaryen was the Lich King. A defiler, a mass murderer, an unholy being in his own right.

“Now you won’t be able to leave again, will you?” Aemond murmured, his violet eye roving you. It was glowing slightly– his skin was a pale gray pallor, cheeks sunken slightly. He was undead.

Your eyes rolled back in your head, vision going black.

[fuutakaijyama]

IMITADORA! ᝰ JASON TODD . P1

¿quién es esta imitadora hoy en su lugar?

CONTAINS : ANGST, POST BREAK-UP, GETTING WITH THE "ENEMY", COMFORT, EX!DICK GRAYSON, "ENEMY"!JASON TODD. SOOTHING, NON SEXUAL INTIMACY, CUDDLING, NIGHT IN, HURT/COMFORT, FLUFF.

Did it matter? Was it worth all of the effort? Was there any love to begin with? You couldn't answer the question as you cried, looking down at the memory on your camera roll, you and your now ex-boyfriend Richard “Dick” Grayson on your phone with you as your lipstick stained his cheek, looking at each other as he smiled.

Was that real? Was he just doing it to make you happy? You couldn't tell. Feeling the hot tears of shame, grief, anger, confusion, and yearning in your soul.

Not for him, but to feel the way you felt when you were with him.

You didn't want to think about it, groaning in annoyance as you selected pictures from your camera roll, one after one erasing the digital memories that you held, a way to control the grief of your dead relationship.

You’d blocked his number, deleted his contact, got rid of all his social media, given him back all of his things, and moved him out of your apartment. But there was one thing that bit at the back of your mind, slowly eating away at you like some sort of brain eating infestation.

Jason Todd, his brother and the one member of his family he’d mildly forbidden you from interacting with throughout the course of your relationship due to some.. internal affairs.

But you had his number saved in your phone, a call wouldn't hurt. Right?

You hesitated, staring at his contact on your screen in a snowstorm of emotions that threatened to swallow you whole, one after another as the confusion, anger, fear, confusion and conflict washed over you in quick waves.

You pressed the call button and pressed the phone to your ear as you made your way to your couch, sitting with your knees pressed against your chest while your chin rested on your knees.

One ring after another, before the line clicked. “Hello, [Name]?” you could hear his brow raise from the other side of the line, the gruff, deep, and mildly disembodied voice from him hitting you almost like a freight train.

“If this is about you running back to Dick he's happier-” “That's not why I’m calling!-” You cut him off, sitting up straight in annoyance, your back pressed itself into a straight line, jeez.. sucha headache.

You pulled the phone from your ear, pressing the large red button on your screen, the call ending as soon as it started. Back to wallowing in self pity.

“Just-” You groaned, feeling as if any attempt to explain would be futile “Nevermind. I was just calling for some company.”

You both sat on opposite ends of the couch, chips and dip, alcohol and snacks thrown on your coffee table as you chugged a bit of your drink while Jason blabbed about whatever he could think of.

“And that's why he and Kory didn't work out.” He groaned while looking you down on the couch, his deep sunken eyes boring into yours.

“That's stupid.” You muttered, swallowing whatever the hell you had in your mouth while you jerked your head to look at him, shifting around to sit just slightly closer to him. He responded fluidly, both body and voice, his arm wrapping around your shoulders pulling you into his side.

“Yeah, trust me I got a front row seat to it.” He chuckled, calloused and dry hand softly massaging the side of your head and hair. Jason Todd, possibly the softest yet stoic man you've ever met.

You leaned into him, placing your drink on the table and closed your eyes, enjoying the warmth of his body as the alcohol hitting you in all the right places, the dim light of your living room making the moment feel immensely more intimate than you ever did with Dick.

How sweet.

You felt him shift, opening your eyes as you both awkwardly locked onto each other, the strange push and pull with the pseudo-stranger in your home. He patted his thigh, a silent beckoning gesture, a plea for intimacy. You complied, dragging the blanket from the couch right along with you as you settled into him, taking the blanket from you and draping it over your interlinked bodies, his hand finding your bareback and rubbing it up and down, your arms snaking around his neck.

“This is nice..” You mumbled, prompting him to respond with a firm grunt, a smile on his face as you nestled into each other.

“You know.. I know we aren't- significantly close. But I’d like to take you out some time.” He offered quietly, a hint of fluster coloring his voice. “Like dinner.” he elaborated, his hand on your back never stilling as he spoke.

“I’d like that,” You smiled into his collar, your closed eyes shining into the black void behind your eyelids.

“Yeah?- I’ll plan something and text you.”

© 2023 FUUTAKAJIYAMAS. do not copy any of my layouts / writing + translate / repost onto any other sites.

[collidescopeeyes]

HCs of Aatrox as a weapon and a reader who is his user please 😭🙏

Aatrox with wielder!Reader

- Look there's gotta be a whole character arc here before he's in a state to exist around other people. He's a man trapped inside a sword trying to escape the very nature of his existence by destroying the world and by extension himself, thereby trapping himself in a nightmarish cycle of violence and pain with no respite. Like, all he's done for the last few centuries was possess some poor fool, go on an apocalyptic warpath, get killed, and be stuck back in the suffocating sensory deprivation tank of his sword form until someone new picks him up, rinse repeat.

- You find him in sword form, but much like Kayn and Rhaast he doesn't manage to overcome you–except instead of using him to murder people, you just kinda lug him around and show him all the nice things about living (cuz honestly, leaving him there would be kind of fucked up).

- Being put in forcible time out, he very reluctantly is forced to admit that maybe existence isn't all pain and okay, yeah, maybe there is inherent value in life. The hot springs are nice, he guesses. Human, bring him to the hot springs again.

- He's gonna be a huge bitch for a while let's be real, like full tilt raging complete with threats of grievous bodily harm (and he can be a real bitch when he wants to be, have you heard some of his voice lines??). At the same time, he's terrified you'll leave him so he still tries to go the ‘temptation of power, just give in’ route, and generally emphasizes how powerful he is and how useful he can be.

- Eventually you go from being you, human, to his human. He hasn't had a social interaction that did not end with someone dying in literal centuries, much less a friend. Like he still bitches but instead of threatening you, he starts threatening anything that threatens you, which he defends with the idea that he's the only one worthy of killing you. You learn not to take it personally, your giant sword with a disembodied heart set into the hilt is a tsundere, this is your life now.

- ‘ive only had this human for two months and if anything happens to them I'm killing everyone in this plane of existence and then myself’, but to be fair that last part was his plan to begin with. Anything even begins to threaten you and it's fire and brimstone from him–unfortunately, he can't exactly do much as a sword other than beg you to use him to slaughter anyone who so much as says a harsh word to you.

- The longer you wield him, the more he becomes attuned to you–which is new to him, because Darkin usually don't have a wielder without them becoming a full host for this long, and even then the wielder is usually trying to suppress them. With you, Aatrox gradually gets his senses back–unlike Naafiri and Rhaast, his sword form doesn't come with eyes, so he basically has to magically parasitize your vision and see through your eyes. Gradually this extends to other senses too–hell of a shock to him when he starts to feel your pain. Eventually, he gets his own sense of touch back, which is kinda weird since his body is a sword now, but it's still leagues better than eternal numbness. Even if he's not really sure how to process that he can feel you literally holding his disembodied heart in your hands.

- His grand plan was to accumulate the blood from every rare instance you were forced to use him to defend yourself in order to build himself a new body and then kill you with it. The plan is amended to killing you in your sleep, cuz he likes you, even if he doesn't want to admit it. It takes literally until he's standing over you that he realizes ‘I don't….actually want to do this,’ and he has zero follow up plan or capacity for self reflection so he just stands there like a weirdo. And then you wake up.

- “Are you gonna kill me?” “....no.” “Okay, cool, I'm going back to sleep.”

- You start travelling together like normal people then, except y'know, being in human form is pretty taxing so a decent chunk of the time he just...stays a sword. This is a huge gesture of trust from him, knowing that if you happen to put him down he'll be put back into a prison of his own body, but also you've kinda earned his trust in this matter since you could've left him to suffer at any point before now and didn't. He still acts like it's some sort of honor for you to be wielding him, but you've also earned his respect by this point so the ‘puny human’ talk has pretty much evaporated.

- His protectiveness gets worse once he has a body to act independently with, but not as much as you'd think–he respects your wishes and genuinely doesn't want to upset you, so he won't hurt anyone you don't want him to (...too bad)–though he will intimidate the everliving fuck out of anyone he thinks is a threat to you. He does actually still have a pretty robust sense of right and wrong–it’s just that he didn't give a fuck about it in the face of escaping the torture of his existence. Now you're that escape, and he'll defend you with the same visciousness that he killed literal gods with.

- He does not have any frame of reference for romance. He only sort of remembers being Ascended, and barely if at all being human before that–and in all that time he was a soldier through and through, devoted to his duty above all. He doesn't even know that he's caught feelings. Like he wants to be close to you all the time (and other urges he shall not be examining), but that's normal right?? You've been carrying him around for months now, surely it's because of that. He also hasn't had anyone touch him without also trying to kill him in centuries, forget that he can actually feel it now–surely that's why the slightest touch from you makes his heart skip a beat (you can literally see it, it's right there in the sword). It's normal. He's being super normal. Denial is just a river in Shurima.

- Point being, the man is oblivious, and even if he wasn't, he has no fucking idea what he's doing and he has a boatload of unresolved self-esteem issues. You're gonna have to make the first move and you're gonna have to be very forward and upfront with him. He's gonna freeze, Aatrox.exe is working overtime; internally he goes from ‘tf do you mean I have feelings’ to ‘tf do you mean I have feelings for a human’ to ‘well obviously this is my human, she's special, why wouldn't I have feelings for her’ to ‘me?? Why the fuck does she want me??’ to finally deciding that he would have to be clinically insane to turn you down (putting aside that he thinks there's a very real chance that he is in fact insane, but he's working on that).

- Not that he knows how to be in a relationship. Mutual respect and communication can go a long way to figuring stuff like this out, but it's pretty obvious he's out of his depth–he’s struggling to adjust to existing in general, and he's got centuries of trauma and a barely repressed anger management issue. It helps that he knows you're on his side (and that he's probably already made every threat under the sun when you first met), but the man doesn't exactly have a lot of practice dealing with his frustration in a healthy way. Patience is essential here–he’s trying, and he will get better with time and understanding.

- He's actually super self conscious about his body–in his eyes, it's a twisted, filthy reminder of what he used to be. Without a compatible host, Darkin bodies start to break down without fresh blood to sustain them, and he can't help but compare it to how he used to be before the Void war. His form is stable with you, but he still has a whole lot of negative associations. You've got your work cut out for you if you want to convince him he's not some sort of malformed disgusting beast–he’s very much of the opinion that you're some kind of saint for wanting him despite what he looks like.

- Despite all that, physical closeness is a big thing in his culture, plus he's touch starved and will take any opportunity to have you close. If you're not doing anything he'll literally just pick you up and deposit you on his lap so he can be close to you. If he's in sword form, he'll sulk if you put him down for even a moment. It's funny though, because as much as he passively demands attention like some sort of large spiky cat, he also gets really flustered if you're affectionate with him. He's also a huge tsundere though, so him being flustered mostly involves stammered yelling (he’s actually kind of awkward, when he's not being intimidating–re his joke lines).

- Darkin run hot as a consequence of the hemomancy their bodies are made up of–in particular, the area over his heart is very warm. He doesn't visibly blush per se, but the glow of his heart gets more radiant when he's flustered, and he gets noticably warmer. The dark plated parts of him are hard and bone-like with the slightest bit of give, whereas the red parts feel like normal skin if slightly thicker. He has a habit of only touching you with his unplated left hand–the other one has a lot of jagged edges and he worries he'll accidentally cut you (plus, the plated parts feel less). Since his form is fairly stable with you he can manifest his wings fairly consistently, but he's stuck at a (relatively) meager 9ft tall without absorbing any new bodies. His wings are more batlike than anything, and the webbing is extremely sensitive.

- In Ancient Shuriman custom, marriage is a social arrangement wherein a couple is considered married as soon as they start living together, no ceremony or paperwork required (fun fact: actual ancient egyptian custom!). Most couples have this accompanied with a legalized property agreement, but Aatrox was raised into a warrior caste that doesn't have a concept of private property, and he doesn't currently have much of a use for possessions anyway. This is all to say Aatrox considers you to be married and you have no idea until he offhandedly refers to you as his wife.

- All that being said, he still has an extreme sense of duty to his follow Darkin, being about as close to a leader as they have left after the war and their sealing. He feels an obligation to find a way to alleviate their suffering, either by finding them hosts, undoing their binding into weapons, or finding a way to kill them and have them actually stay dead. It's a grim task and it's pretty important to him to have your support in it, however you want to approach it.

[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.

[frostgears]

We Who Will Not Bow

It had been a difficult night.

"You're not an Academy mage. You're her," the injured guard said, defiant. "Bree the Bodiless. Bree the Banished. Bree the Bloody… go on, then. Kill me. Get it over with."

"And what purpose," she said, frustrated, "would that serve? Gods, they've been telling tales about me in my absence, I see. Hold still, I think I can fix this."

She opened a module drawer on her left arm, pulled out a silvery metal module marked with a quincunx of green jade inlay, snapped it into the socket on her left palm. Thin tentacles ventured out from an aperture, tasting the air, dripping with orange ooze. The guard shrank back against the side of the checkpoint tower.

"What are you going to do to me? What is that— aaaahh!"

Bree clasped her hand over the bolt wound on the injured guard's arm. Tentacles sank into flesh, writhing between her jointed porcelain fingers, probing under skin.

"Don't squirm, that's a burrowing bolt head, we don't want it burrowing any deeper. And these are preserved regeneration glands from a nesting bog kraken. They guard their eggs, did you know that? For up to two months. But the Great Bog is a miserable environment. There's parasites, and fungi, and necrotic plague, and so the damn things evolved these organs to channel mana into their eggs and young, almost like healing spells, to give them a fighting chance. Not against me, though. I killed this one and took its regeneration glands and doomed its clutch, just to get back one more thing I used to be able to do before that fucking archon took everything away from me… okay, wiggle your fingers…"

The guard's fingers moved. Bree took her hand away, satisfied. The tentacles retracted into her palm. She held an evil-looking bit of spiraled and fluted black metal between thumb and forefinger, rotated her wrist with a series of clicks, turning it around to inspect.

"Got it. All of it. Regrowth forced it out."

Her chest plate slid open. A lurid orange glow splashed across the burrowing bolt head, the hand holding it, and the face of the guard. She squeezed the bolt head, and it crumbled, not bending as mundane metal might, but falling to dust. The glow flared brighter.

"Gotta feed the furnace. Saved your arm, paid the cost; let's go, sweetheart, I need all the help I can get. Pick up your crossbow and follow me."

Her chest plate clacked shut.

"I'm not following you anywhere, traitor!"

Bree shrugged, then held out a hand. Her other one. No disembodied organs in the right hand, although anyone who'd actually seen what she could do with the thing built into its palm would no doubt prefer to hold the left.

"The bastards who killed your mates were Crimson Vanguard, the Crimson Pact's commandos. Real dickheads even by Pact standards. Drink to your squad's memory tomorrow that you all gave nearly as good as you got, because they don't normally leave any survivors. Plus, the Vanguard always sends a backup team. So, way I see it, either you come with me, and you might live, or you run and you probably don't, and really, which one of us is the traitor then, right?"

The guard glared at her through narrowed eyes, but took her hand. Bree hauled her to her feet. And then the guard ran for it.

"It's you! You're the traitor!" Bree yelled at the guard's rapidly receding back. "In case it wasn't clear from context!"

Her voice in this body was beautifully clear and melodic, but not particularly loud; it hadn't been built for yelling, and it didn't satisfy. Not that it would stop her from trying.

Something twanged behind her. A projectile of some kind bounced off her back.

"Nice try," she said, spinning around and folding her right hand down to reveal a hand-length metal spike nestled in a cavity in the mechanism of her arm, "my turn now." An internal spring released. The spike shot out, and did what it might be expected to do to a human skull.

She wiped fresh blood off her faceplate, afterward; tasted the crimson spatter with the tip of an intricately jointed porcelain tongue. It didn't taste like anything. It never did. Nothing did.

"You didn't have to come here," she said to the headless Vanguard commando at her feet. "Any other town. Or better yet, stay home, and don't murder anyone, and I could return the favor. But you came here armed, and it lives here, and I have this little compulsion to take care of it, yeah? 'HER TASK FOR THE TIME BEING SHALL BE TO SAFEGUARD AND PROTECT HER MOST RECENT VICTIM, UNTIL AND UNLESS SAID VICTIM MAY RELEASE HER FROM SERVICE, SATISFIED'," she said, in a low, mocking tone. "Lyric's horrified to even look at me, so I doubt satisfaction and release are on the table any time soon, right?"

No answer was forthcoming.

"Well, fuck you too, buddy. Time to go find your friends."

She sped along the main road, each step a leap, her torn and patched Academy cape flapping behind her. Everyone trying to get into the town had fled when the first Vanguard team set fire to the checkpoint, with their wagons if they could, on foot if they had to. She passed several wagons that stood abandoned, stopped briefly at another to shatter a yoke with her fist and free two terrified oxen.

Then she saw what she was looking for: you'd have to be an idiot to keep driving your wagon towards a burning guard tower, unless you were the rest of the second Vanguard team, with a wagon full of bad news.

Bree knelt in a ditch by the side of the road, screened from view by a thicket, and swapped out the regeneration gland module with another set of pickled arcane beast parts in a can, which did another thing she'd been able to do on her own before her body had been taken away.

The wagon was almost to her, close enough that her upgraded senses could clearly see the outline of a crossbow beneath the driver's plain black cloak. She tickled the stolen sun-serpent pyrosis organ with an internal actuator, and flame bloomed in the night again.

They came scrambling out, firing back, the snap of bows audible over the screaming of the horses. Disciplined, she had to give them that. Bolts hit her in the face and chest.

Not to much effect, of course. She'd once been Lyric's twin, an almost peerless servant automaton frame, built by her old business partner to last, but fundamentally also built to serve tea and look good in a maid outfit. It wasn't enough. It wasn't her. She'd made Coda upgrade her again and again, until Coda's own restorative compulsion had hit its limits, and the artificer told her there was nothing more she knew how to do. By then, she was strong. From there, she'd upgraded herself.

Three of them rushed her with swords. Close enough, Bree thought; she raised her right hand, opening the palm shutter, and whispered, "Nis zerat volut, ghran."

Her soulcatcher, the glowing point of twisted light in her right palm, was, in some sense, the reason she was here, stuck in this patchwork body with its almost nil astral presence. It was an instrument of more subtlety than power and it still worked for her when the rest of her magic had died. She'd upgraded it too. Now it didn't need a soul to be loosened from its mortal shell first.

Ghostly purple light streamed over them, and a moment later, they were down. She fed their torn-off souls to her furnace. Apparent time slowed to a crawl, the high ticking of her main escapement dropping to a steady thud, thud, thud. She snapped blades, broke bones, ripped through the remaining commandos with accelerated fury. The details were messy and irrelevant, forgotten as quickly as they came. The last two Vanguard were carrying a box. She took it from them and opened the lid.

The shock broke her concentration; her time sped up again. "Titan voidwasp larvae," she said, almost reverently. They'd been covered at the Academy, briefly, not something anyone was expected to encounter. The shiny purple-black grubs were from somewhere far, far away, and their eventual monstrous metamorphosis drank souls, just like she did now, but on a colossal scale. They were city killers.

"Here's the thing, little guys, even I don't trust myself with shit like you. Sorry. Protect and safeguard, you know how it is."

She fired her spike, retracted its cable, fired again, into each one in turn, until nothing was left but ichor and chitin splinters. Then she teased a last fractional burst out of her pyrosis module, playing a jet of flame across the mess, just in case.

That was it. There didn't seem to be much else to do. She checked for Vanguard survivors. One of them wasn't quite gone.

"Who… what… the fuck… are you?"

"Just somebody's discarded doll," Bree told him. "When the Pact interrogates your ghost, tell them Bree said not to come back." She dispatched him, as cleanly as she could.

For an indefinite time, there was no motion on the bloodied road, except for the dying flames, and the wind teasing her cape and her hair.

Silver radiance kindled beside her.

"Oh no, not you, don't you fucking start with me—"

"JUSTICE."

"—can piss up a rope!"

She ramped up her speed again and tried to strike the figure of a burning haloed skeleton with fire and the soulcatcher, both at once, but hit nothing but empty air. The archon was only as tangible as it wanted to be. She'd find a way to get at it someday, but it seemed today wasn't going to be that day.

"CEASE THIS."

"Get fucked."

"IT MAY INTEREST YOU TO KNOW THAT THE SUMMONING OF THE CHOSEN HERO HAS YET AGAIN FAILED."

"Not my fault the archmages can't get it up."

"THE HERO IS SUMMONED TO SAFEGUARD THE KINGDOM. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE RITUAL. THE INVOCATIONS BESEECH THE DIVINE TO FILL A NEED AND PROVIDE A PROTECTOR IN THE TIME OF CRISIS."

"Okay, I don't care."

"IF A PROTECTOR IS ALREADY INCARNATE, THE DIVINE FEEL THEIR DUTY IS DONE. EVEN IF THE HERO IS UNAWARE OF THEIR ROLE."

"I jacked the Chosen Hero's soul and sold it to Coda and put it in a doll, right, I was there. So what, you're saying they can't do it again because Lyric's already here, even if it's a doll maid and not a hero? Tough shit, I guess. You met it, you know it isn't exactly hero material."

"YOUR ASSESSMENT IS CRUDE BUT CORRECT. IT IS NOT, AND IT WILL NOT BE. IT IS CONTENT TO SERVE AND TO ENJOY ITS NEW FORM. AND YET A HERO EXISTS. SOMEONE PROTECTS THE KINGDOM ALREADY, ALTHOUGH THEY DO NOT THINK OF IT IN SUCH TERMS. THEY DID SO AGAIN, THIS NIGHT."

"Wait."

"YOUR ACTIONS PRODUCED A HERO."

"Oh gods no."

"THE GODS WATCH. THE SKEIN OF DESTINY IS RE-COILED, A TANGLE REMOVED."

"I can't be—"

"JUSTICE MAY YET BE DONE. GOOD LUCK TO YOU."

Bree roundly cursed the archon in her annoyingly pleasant and musical voice, until it disappeared, and then another fifteen minutes for good measure, in case it felt like coming back. When it didn't, she started walking.

She looked back, once, to see the lights of the town. Somewhere back there, Coda and Lyric lived in their little shop. Lyric didn't sleep any more than Bree did. Maybe her once-twin was leaning out the window, one of its cute dresses ruffled by the night breeze. Maybe it was even looking this way.

"Well, let's face it, Bree," she said to herself, resigned. "You wouldn't have been a very good maid." □

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