#and it branches off depending on....

[toxintouch]

TOUCHSTARVED WISH LIST:

✦ Vere going absolutely feral after he sees the MC getting hurt ✦

It's a Soulless that hurts them?  The monster barely gets a swipe in before Vere is on it.  He's ripping it apart with his fucking teeth.  He can't stop growling, even after the thing is already dead, blood dripping down his face, splattering his chest, smeared all over his chains.

He's a force of nature - beautiful and deadly in equal measure.  

His ears are going to stay pinned back for a while.  He can't relax.  MC can try to calm him down and comfort him but his disposition won't go back to normal until he's satisfied.  (Satisfied with patching them up, fussing over them in a way that's just this side of an insult.)  He'll take them to bed, but only in the most literal sense.  (He just wants to listen to their heartbeat with his tail wrapped around them until he feels better.)

 . . . But what if it is a human who does it? Say, someone from the Senobium… 

Vere wants to blot them from the face of the earth but he can't.  Not with the collar on.  He has to resort to trickery or manipulation if he wants MC's assailant to stop.

 (And he has to act unaffected.  He can't let on…)

 It's absolutely maddening because he could squash their attacker like a bug if he wasn't so chained.  He wouldn't have to watch this happen if -- he shouldn't have to watch this happen, they're his -- but he can't stop it, not the way he wants to.  His hackles are up.  His claws absolutely itch with the need to tear this vermin to shreds.  His handlers will write it off as hunger, blood lust.  (They'll be right, if only partially.)

Bonus Points: Vere seeks Kuras' help willingly in order to save MC's life.

 The MC getting grievously injured…

Vere picking them up bridal style and carrying them to Kuras' clinic. 

He doesn't wait in the line.  (Not that there's going to be much of a line, people scatter like rats once they see his face.)  

He'll break down the goddamn door if he has to.  He doesn't say a word, just snarls at Kuras and refuses to be removed from the room while MC is treated.

 (Does he fume in the corner the whole time?  Or does he hover near Kuras, distrusting the angel, accepting the proximity despite his distaste?)

 Kuras doesn't say anything either.  He just gets to work.

[bigtiddygandalf]

i just had to take this ai personality test to submit a job application (to be a bartender).

[prcttyinpcnk]

Boodega (Pizza Tower AU)

Phiona Souris has always been a shy and timid girl, but as she enters her teen years, she's determined to make a name for herself. Whether be through her music or her otherworldly recipes. With her mother working night hours as an elusive nightclub singer, Phiona looks to gain her own independence through her dishes. While not your traditional cuisine, on the count that she's a demon, you'd be hard press to find a sugar skull that tastes this good! Armed with a plethora of composition books and spray, she'll show those megalomaniac corps that the best food comes from warm, loving hands.

[running-in-the-dark]

it's actually evil that you need to have a (newer) smartphone and an app to confirm the transaction every time you want to transfer money

for many, many reasons, but mostly because it's one more thing I need to keep figuring out for my mother and I don't want to!

[firep0wder]

Now what did past me say about hermits... I'm curious

[sagewhite]

Only after it's all done does it end.

[thehmn]

Just read a perfectly fine fanfiction that took place in Germany but something that stood out to me was a chapter where the characters walk across a field and is approached by the farmer yelling at them to get off his land.

I’ve come across this plot point a few times and I feel like it’s worth telling writers that most of Europe has some version of Right To Roam. The laws aren’t the same in every country but generally you’re allowed to walk and rest on private property like fields and forests so long as you don’t destroy crops or leave trash, but not gardens or fenced in areas. Depending on the country you also have the right to pick mushrooms, berries, nuts and other edible things in forests but without chopping trees down or breaking branches. The owner of the land might put up a sign asking you to follow certain guidelines like no horses or keeping your dog on a leash but but there’s no real repercussions to not following the rules besides the owner eventually fencing the area off so people can’t enjoy it anymore.

I’ve personally walked around on a field while the farmer was harvesting potatoes with his big ass machine and collected the leftovers while my dog was trotting calmly besides me and he looked straight at me and didn’t care one bit because Denmark also has an old tradition of letting people collect what’s left as a form of charity (for my fellow Danes, that’s what “rev vi marken let, det er gammel ret, fuglen og den fattige skal også være mæt” means in the song Marken Er Mejet) This is just a tradition and not a law however so it depends on the farmer.

The very north of Europe like Norway and Sweden even give people the right to put up tents and camp on other people’s private land (except gardens and such). Again, the laws vary from country to country but as a rule of thumb you have more right to roam the further north you go and less the further south but if you want to write in a specific country look up the laws there.

[sins-of-the-sea]

holy shit, you guys-

[forgaeven1]

now that years have passed and i’m looking at the reality within the series without the rose-tinted glasses as much, suffice to say, gendry’s legitimisation would have led to a succession crisis within storm’s end for sure.

[howaboutalittlehelpneos]

Good morninggggg c: I would have been up and alive before almost 4 PM, but I had a lot of dreaming to catch up on. It's how all my best ideas come to me, and boy did I dream up a lot for this fic. Very excited for the new content!

Today... I shall work on art once more. No promises on when I'll be done, but I Will get started... Today.

[alnilaem]

bury me beneath the basswood tree

pairing: ghost/soap/reader [12k]

rating: 18+ only. minors don’t interact.

tags: non-con sex, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, size kink, forced fellatio, forced cunnilingus, impact play, brief watersports, double penetration in two holes, forced breeding, implied hybrid/shifter au

Needing time away from her humdrum life at home, she ventures into the woodland for respite. Little does she know, straying into that cabin in the woods will be the worst—or best—decision she’ll ever make. Depending on who you ask.

all my thanks to @/ohbo-ohno! thank you for being the best beta reader and sitting through my abhorrent typos <3

AO3 MIRROR

The mountain’s breadth of trees and foliage are written with prose. 

It’s repetitive. Mind-numbing. She’s already passed this necrosed tree stump five times before. On the sixth circle, she treks through the undergrowth like it’s curdled milk, the tiny scythes of branches whispering against her arms and slicing her open the same way thumbs tear into oranges. 

Dehydration crystallises like sediment in her mouth. It makes her bones heavy, bending against her flesh as if they’re groceries about to tear through a plastic bag. The balls of her feet are calcified, her thighs chafed. They rub against her threadbare jeans the same way a match reacts with red phosphorus to produce a flame. It burns, and so do her muscles. They feel moth-eaten and spent. Hung out to dry. 

The stench of damp soil and sugar maple impairs her like an opiate. The peal of idle birdsongs grate against her ears. She’s sick of it—she’s been here for three days—and already, she’s sick of it. 

She tries her phone again. It’s unresponsive, no signal. She unfurls her map but it’s mottled with rainwater and mud. Her lungs feel dry, pruney, as the dew drops slipping off fern plants seem to replicate the tears thawing in her eyes. 

Evening mist hangs over the ground, and the sky turns red-bottomed as it progresses into nightfall. It’s as if the mountain is sentient. Nocturnal. Stirring from a torpor once the sun sets and awakening all that lives within it. 

A sob wracks her ribs. It has the same effect of a bullet, ricocheting. She keeps moving even though she doesn’t know where she’s going. She believes that should she continue walking, nothing will be able to catch her. Not the spindly tree branches that take the shape of arms or serpentine shrubbery. She won’t give the mountain any time to fossilise her, if only she keeps moving.  

Her movements are clumsy though. Her eyesight is hindered by panicked tears, turning everything shapeless and blurry. She keeps tripping and skinning her knees like the hide of a pomegranate, her flesh peeling back to show the red pulp of her innards. 

It was a rashly undertaken lapse of judgement that brought her here. To a conscious mountain that lives and breathes and feels her fear. It was her heart, empty, carved out and replaced by brutal loneliness. Her friends back home are heedless and her parents are never satisfied with what she does. She figured that if none of them would listen, the woodlands would. 

And listen, they did.

When she cries out, the wind howls. When she changes her direction, pivoting on her heel, the soil rumbles. She sees things—a shadow spotting her vision, not composed of matter—peeking from behind a tree trunk before quickly slipping away. She witlessly calls out, asking if anyone’s there, and is met with the forest's silent presentiment. She feels the stark pressure of piercing eyes sprawling down her dewy neck, sweeping over her body. 

The longer she spends lost, the more she sinks into Appalachia.

It pulls her down like molasses. Like she’s an innocent fly trapped in glue. Soon, she knows there’s no hope. She knows her scent is written into the bark of trees—supple, sugary. A treat for whichever predator finds her first. 

A brown bear, swinging its claws at her until her entrails are threadbare and striated. A snake, injecting venom in her blood. A bobcat if she’s lucky. It would be a quick death—sinking its loose jowls into either side of her neck until it snaps and she goes slack. 

She’s apt to let go. She’s keen to yield to the alluring call of the woodland to let go, to fall to the forest floor and sit there until she rots. Until the roots worm into her breathing wounds and branches start growing out of her mouth. The urge to stop moving and become one with the mountain is suddenly cogent, leaves no margin of doubt. It comes with the promise of eternal respite and divine mercy. She’s about to find a cliff to jump off of, but before she can, something catches her attention. 

A plume of smoke curling in the air. 

Whorls of slate-grey soot thinning and disappearing into the sky. She looks for the source and follows it blindly, shouldering past pine needles and hawthorn and all but sobbing as a cabin comes into view. It’s made of wood and the tufts of wildflower that sprout from its thin fissures. It looks neglected and eaten by the elements. Its vaulted roof is stained by the off-white assault of bird droppings, discoloured by acid rain. Some of the windows look covered with dewy newspaper, but still, she knows it can’t be vacant. The smoke undulating from the chimney tells her that.

She staggers onto the porch. Her fist rasps against the door, clippings of wood burying itself into her skinned knuckles as she wildly knocks. Silence. Not even the leaves flutter against each other. Fleetingly, a stint of panic seizes her. What if nobody’s home? But she’s twisting the knob and pushing herself inside anyway, dropping her bag to the floor with a thump, stepping inside.

The cabin makes for a liminal space, smelling of sawdust and pine. There’s a layer of dust on every surface, making the air thick. All the furniture is carved from wood and a couple taxidermied deers are mantled above the stone fireplace, looking more like warnings than decoration. The pelt of a black bear is unfurled across the floor, and a few trinkets are strewn around—a bookshelf of spine-cracked novels, dead plants hanging from the ceiling beams. A mountain of used cigarettes, but strangely, no ashtray. 

There’s everything but picture frames. Nothing she can use to humanise the cabin nor the people supposedly living in it.

She guides herself to the kitchen by feeling the walls. There’s a piped stove in the corner and cast iron tools hanging above the counter. Her stomach bubbles, and immediately, she starts scouring for food. 

There’s three barrels by the door, and upon popping them open, the stench of brine sprays her in the face. It’s fish with a crust of salt, preserved. In the other barrel is meat buried in shelled corn, and fermented poultry in the last barrel. 

It’s all raw and bloody. She steps back, gagging, turning her attention to the shelves that line the faraway wall. Jars of pickled cucumber and carrots. Garlic braids hanging from the edge. Rusty milk churns nestled in the corner. 

There’s a galvanised tub full of ice on the floor. She digs through it and almost moans at the jars of jam. She untwists one, sticks her fingers in it, and wipes it clean with her tongue and teeth. It’s tart and tangy but it’s food, sticking to the walls of her stomach, satiating her. And once she starts she can’t stop. She goes back to the wall and finds a stained jar, fishing out a handful of fermented cabbage, stuffing it in her mouth, her face tightly puckering at the sharp sourness.

The juice of the food goes spilling past her lips, sluicing down her chest. It sticks to the chasm between her tits and mixes with sweat, making her shirt cling to her skin, revealing the barest outline of her nipples. She’s so engrossed in keeling over the counter and stuffing her face that she doesn’t even notice the pointed shift in atmosphere. The deer outside stopping their rutting, the trill of birds ceasing. The leaves stilling, as if holding their breaths to hide. Thick, silvery clouds nestling together and eclipsing the sun, casting a thin overcast over the woodland, darkening the already-dim surroundings. 

She’s too preoccupied to recognise the tell-tale croak of the door swinging open. It’s tinny, but bullied by the sound of her smacking on marinated cabbage. She doesn’t notice the dull, throbbing footfalls. Pays no heed to the stench of blood invading her senses because she believes it’s coming from her dry, leathery lips that split open as she widens her mouth to fit the cabbage inside.

It’s only when the room darkens, a box-shaped shadow sweeping over her vision, does her blood run cold. She freezes with a handful of vegetable raised halfway to her lips, the brine rolling off a cabbage leaf like it’s an awning, dropping to the floor—drip, drip, drip—the rapid succession of shedding liquid hitting the floor sounds similar to the beating of her heart against her fickle, feeble ribs. 

The saline spray in her mouth gets soaked up by her tongue, making it puffy, too big for her mouth. She turns around clemently—treating the shadow like a wild animal—no sudden movements. She goes rigid. 

It can’t be human. 

It’s huge. Bigger than anything she’s ever seen before. Sweeping shoulders, broad thighs. Its neck is bent uncannily because it’s too big to fit in the doorway. Its chest rises heavily like a bull.

She tries to find a face, and when she does, the blood is drained from her.

It just makes her feel… uncomfortable. Its face is the poor imitation of a human, as if someone tried drawing one from memory but scarcely failed. Failed to capture the humanity, the animation, leaving it looking like a half-convincing resemblance. Its tapetum lucidum glows yellow, burning in the thin mist of moonlight that penetrates the newspaper sticking to the windows. 

It stares blankly at her. The hair on her arms stick up, a bead of sweat slices down her neck. 

“I’m sorry…”

The creature raises an arm and pulls on a hanging bead-chain, tugging on the light, which is simply a naked bulb in the middle of the kitchen. The kindle is weak but does more than the delicate moonlight. Just barely illuminates its face. His face.

She tries not to let her fear show. Tries not to preen under his depthless eyes, the mean twine of his lips. His hair that seems to have been shaved too closely to his scalp, if the nicks and small cuts on the shells of his ears are anything to go by. 

He grumbles an idle prusten. He rolls his elbows back—his shoulder blades unfurling like folded wings—and twists his thick neck.

“What’re you doin’ in my home?”

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, her words stifled around a wad of cabbage. “I– I’ve been lost for three days. I came up for a hike but lost my way and I saw your cabin and I’m sorry, but I’m just so hungry and–”

A deep, guttural voice peals from the living room. 

“Simon!” It says. “Where should I chuck the deer? It’s too big for the livin’ room.”

The aforementioned Simon, she presumes, doesn’t answer the unobserved voice. He keeps his eyes on her, face twisted into a puckered, mean mug.

A string of footsteps precede the face that appears behind Simon’s shoulder. A rounder, ruddier face. A salt-and-pepper stubble and eyes so blue they glow like bioluminescence. 

Johnny acts surprised as if Simon hadn’t smelled her from miles away. Her honeyed scent roiling off of her, curling into the air and thinning between the trees. Her sweat pooling in the gusset of her panties, raw and pungent. 

He’s purposely coy. It’s written into the furrow of his brows and the caper of his cupid lips but the girl is too disoriented to catch on. She looks at him and beseeches, but almost faints at the deer hanging limply over his shoulder. He holds it like it weighs nothing—a sack of sprouting potatoes.

He coos. “Who’s this?”

“Lost bird,” Simon grunts. “Found her diggin’ through our food.”

“Oh, poor lassie,” Johnny hums. More so to Simon than the girl, which makes her squirm. “She didnae mean any harm, Simon. She’s just hungry… tha’ right, lass? Are ye hurt?”

She stutters out a nod, gesturing to how her jeans cling to her knees, sun-bleached and darkened with blood. She rolls her shirt over her ribcage, showing them her wounded torso. How her skin sticks to her bones.

Johnny bristles. 

“The lass needs a place to stay, Simon,” he whispers. “And she’s hurt. Bleeding.”

They talk of her as if she’s advertised merchandise in a magazine catalogue. She squirms.

Simon turns to look at her. The depression in her cheeks due to her hunger and the split skin of her mouth. The pert curve of her breasts. The desperate look in her eyes. 

He grumbles, looks over his shoulder at Johnny. “I’ll start the fire. You take the deer out back and drain it ‘fore it hardens.”

“Aye,” Johnny says. He thumps away in clunky boots and a thin t-shirt and jeans. The deer sways with his gait and disappears behind the screen door when he steps outside. 

She redirects her attention to Simon, who’s already looking at her. More specifically, at her pulsing neck. His jowls are slightly unfastened, his pupils blown out and eclipsing his irises. 

Presentiment settles in her stomach. She blanches. 

Suddenly, Simon is grunting and gripping her arm, heedless towards her whimper of fear and fleeting stint of resistance. His nails are sharp, digging sickle-shaped impressions into her arm. He drags her down the hallway and into another room—a bathroom—and tugs the flickering light on. It lacks sheen, barely illuminates the room from its moss-covered nooks to the tiled floor caked with crusted dirt. 

(The lightbulb is so dull. It doesn’t reach the farthest corner of the bathroom where the radiator is placed. The radiator bathed in black, hidden beneath the lip of shadows, so she isn’t able to see the forgotten handcuff hanging limply from one of the pipes.)

Simon works his heavy body around the bathroom. He leans over the clawfoot tub—which he dwarfs—and twists open the spigot, watching as brown-coloured water slowly ripens into something clear, gushing out of the faucet. He stuffs a plastic plug into the rust-ringed drain. 

He straightens back into his full height. All-encompassing, panoramic. Simon is so impossibly large that it’s a wonder he has so much muscle packed under his skin. Rustic, hard thighs. A shirt that bends against his arms, about to snap. 

“Take a bath,” he commands. “Get y’rself cleaned up.”

Simon shoulders past her and ducks to exit the bathroom. There’s no door separating it from the rest of the house, but a multitude of beads hanging above the threshold to imitate one. She keeps her eyes trailed on it while she strips—peeling off her jeans, pulling her shirt over her head. Rolling down her panties and consciously hiding them beneath her other clothes. 

She clutches the lip of the bathtub for leverage and dips her toes into the water. Immediately, she melts. The hot water swallows her foot and travels like a spool of thread to the rest of her, weaving itself into her wounds, licking her open like the first thaw of spring. 

She submerges herself fully, bringing her knees to her chest. Her neck hoists backward and into the water, soaking all the grit and dirt knotted into her hair. It’s like plying through syrup as she lifts an arm, retrieving a homespun bar of soap, clutching it to test her grip. There’s coily hair knotted into it and sticking to the dried bubbles. She brings it up to her nose, sniffing. Hesitates before rubbing it into her skin and around her throbbing wounds. 

The water idly sloshes as she cleans herself. It’s a hollow sound, amplified by the echoey room. She trails her hand below her waist, slipping her sudsy fingers between her lips and stroking, rubbing herself clean. 

Beneath the tinny sounds of water surrounding her like a petticoat, something else peals out. Something like a whine. Her fingers cramp above her warm cunt and she goes taut. She turns her head to the threshold of the bathroom and nearly screams but her throat puckers before she can, blocking it, her mouth hanging open in a soundless screech instead.

It’s Johnny. He stands in the middle of the hallway, peering into the bathroom and staring at her, half-obscured by the bead curtains. He looks like a sit-and-wait predator like this—silent and unassuming, if not for his blindingly-white smile shining through the curtain like strobes of sunlight breaking past trees. He steps inside now that he’s been spotted, and that causes ice to lick her organs—she sinks her breasts below the water’s surface, squeezing her thighs together. She bristles as Johnny strides impossibly close, the lip of the tub cutting into his thighs.

He stinks of sweat and iron and wood. His t-shirt clings to his skin, darkened with deer blood, outlining the barest hint of his bulky chest.

He grins. “Brought ye some clean clothes.” 

“Oh. I… thank you,” she mumbles. “You can leave it on the toilet if you don’t mind?”

Johnny sets it down. A folded flannel and a pair of sweatpants. He idles a little longer, still smiling, before leaving the bathroom. She counts the minutes in her head and tries to find the right time to leave the tub, outstretching her hand for the towel once it comes to her. But the towel is just scarcely out of reach. The terrycloth grazes her fingertips, teasing her. It’s like it was methodically placed there. Bait at the end of a fish hook to ply her out of the water and stick her ass in the air, reaching over to grip the cloth and tug it over her breasts, stepping out of the tub.

Her eyes stay locked on the crude door while she changes. She buttons the flannel up to her neck and takes heed of the pointed absence of any undergarments, slipping her legs into the gauzy sweatpants, tying them at her waist.

Johnny bursts in as if on cue. He’s still slick with blood, his mohawk odd-angled, spun-thread and matted to his head with sweat. His cheeks bulge around another grin.

“Too big for ye, is it?” He pants. “Might as well take it off. Might trip and hurt yerself again. Wouldn’t want that happenin’, right honey?”

Johnny shortens the space between them in one stride. His fingers, thick and jaded, are already fumbling around the knot she tied, pulling it out of its bow and letting the sweatpants fall, pooling into a crimp around her ankles. 

The flannel is big enough to reach her thighs. Still, she clenches her fingers around the hem and tugs it lower, preening under Johnny’s smouldering gaze. It’s almost paradoxical how it works—his eyes are icy blue, yet they have the same effect as basaltic molten. Burning hot. He’s fixated on her skinned knees, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“Simon’s got the fire goin’,” he says. “Let’s go get yer wounds cleaned too, aye?”

Johnny’s walking out before she can blink. She follows after him, flustered, stumbling into the living room lit by a dulcet fire. Simon’s kneeled beside it, sticking his hand in to adjust a lopsided stock of wood, unaffected by the flames that eat away his arm hair. Johnny takes the girl by the scruff of her neck, guiding her to a hand-crafted chair placed conscientiously in front of the fireplace. He presses on her—the sensitive divot between her shoulder and her neck—and pushes her into the seat, unzipping a first-aid kit. 

Johnny takes her feet and pulls them into his lap. The angle makes her flannel hitch up, exposing her bare cunt to the hot embers of the fireplace, and the equally hot embers of Simon’s prying eyes. She squeaks and covers herself, averting her gaze as Simon’s stare darkens into the colour of midnight splash hanging over the sky.

“You’ll feel a wee sting,” Johnny warns. He rips the corner off a rag and drenches it in vodka, poising it over her flayed knees. “Should probably give my hand a squeeze or somethin’, ye ken? To lessen the burn, o’ course.”

She hesitates but slips her hand around Johnny’s all-encompassing one, her fingers barely meeting whilst wrapped around his palm. She winces when the ethanol meets her wound, shooting through her veins, and tries recoiling into herself. 

But the amplitude of her pain swells, and her muscles girdle. 

It’s Simon’s massive hand splitting itself across her thigh that keeps her pinned to the chair. His fingers bite rivets into her skin, the pinch overriding the sting of her tissue soaking up the alcohol.

“Stay still when he tells you to,” he grumbles. “Otherwise it’ll hurt.”

She wriggles uncomfortably. Tries not to flinch when the rag meets her knees again and burns her wound. Simon’s hand doesn’t leave her thigh until he’s throwing another block of wood into the fireplace.

Johnny hums. “So, what’re you doin’ up here? Religious retreat? Mental health?”

She smacks her lips, unsure if she should answer that. She chances a glance towards Simon and bristles because for some reason, she just knows that if she lies, somehow, he’d tell.

“Um. Just stepping away from home, I suppose,” she mumbles. “Friends. Family.”

“Oh. They dinnae care about you?”

She flinches. Not because of the vodka against her skin, but Johnny’s implications. 

“No,” she says. Her words are so fickle, so distorted by misery that not even she believes it. “They do care about me. I just needed space.”

He nods. Slowly, his eyebrows press together. “I don’t remember much of my family. It’s a wee bit odd. Can’t say if they liked me or not…”

Simon squeezes the back of his neck. “Enough of tha’. Pay attention.”

Johnny makes a sound like he’s humiliated. It’s only when he unrolls a spool of gauze, wrapping it around her kneecaps, is he afforded mercy when Simon changes the topic.

“Where’s the bird gonna sleep?”

“We’ve still got a cot in the root cellar, aye?” Johnny replies. “For hurricanes and tha’. Figured she wouldn’t mind it there. Wouldn’t ye, lass?”

Clemently, she shakes her head.

Simon grunts. He stands up, towering over them both. “The deer’s there, Johnny. What kind of hosts would tha’ make us? Puttin’ her up with a corpse?”

Johnny blushes as if he’s been scolded. His bottom lip curls out, petulant, a waspish colour flooding his cheeks. 

“Aye…” he grumbles. “Tha’s right. The livin’ room, then?”

The girl is sitting, her head oscillating between the two men like a pendulum as they talk. 

“No,” Simon says. “We’ll move the cot to our room.”

Johnny nods. He scratches his stubble, pretending to think. “It’s important we keep an eye on her wounds, too.”

“Exactly,” Simon says, petting Johnny’s head. “Smart boy.”

He clicks his tongue and Johnny shoots up, scurrying out of the living room to retrieve the aforementioned cot. Muffled sounds peal out from the root cellar below them. Johnny comes stumbling back up in mere minutes with a rickety cot fitted under his armpit and disappears into a dark room.

“Best get to sleep before it’s too late,” Simon splays his hand over the small of her back. “Y’must be tired.”

She submits to Simon’s touch, letting him guide her through the cabin and into the darkest room lit only by a lone oil lamp. 

Johnny is finishing up the cot when Simon releases her. He drapes a cable-knit blanket over the surface, fluffing up a pillow. She doesn’t point out how close it is to their bed, the lip of her cot almost touching their rickety mattress.

“Fair warnin’ lass,” Johnny begins, peeling off his shirt, kittening into bed. “Simon snores quite a bit. Dinnae be feart to smack his gob if he gets too loud, aye?”

She stiffly nods. She climbs into the cot and bunches the blanket around her, making a conscious effort to hide her bare legs. Simon crawls between them, the mattress sinking with his weight, and throws their whisper-thin blanket over his legs. 

Darkness penetrates the room when he blows the lamp out. The only smoulder is the silvery glow of moonlight invading the curtains and the reflective light in Simon’s eyes. 

He sits up impossibly straight, staring at her like a cryptid caught on a trail cam. It causes discomfort to congeal under her flesh, but slowly, the longer she looks, a bristle of sleepiness lays hold of her. She closes her eyes and falls into limbo. Her breaths thinning into a short, even pattern.

———

She’s between the threshold of awake and sleep when she hears it.

She can’t tell if it’s a dream or the amplified sounds of Appalachia. She feels as if she’s underwater or stuck in syrup, able to hear the rushing brook of her blood against her ears but unable to distinguish the sounds around her.

There’s a grunt. And a moan. The wail of the bed next to her snapping then creasing. Heavy breathing. Sprinting hearts. 

Her head is so muddled she can’t register anything. Her mind tells her that the violent slapping of skin against skin is the crack of thunder. That the strangled whimpers are the call of a cottontail. 

“Right there, Johnny?” A voice asks. “Takin’ my big cock so fuckin’ well. Greedy lil’ bitch, you are.”

A long, drawn-out whine chases after it. A choked-out scream as if something hurts, succeeded by a wet squelch. 

“Look at ‘er,” that voice jeers. “Think she’d take it? Better than you? Think she’d bleed all over it like– fuck… how I smelt it on her?”

The other voice—broken in, wispy—chokes on a response. It sounds a little stifled, as if speaking through something shoved in its mouth.

“No… nae better than me,” it mumbles. “Nae better than me…”

It’s like she’s drowning in purgatory. She can’t move, can’t speak. She’s caught in a phantasmagorical limbo between reality and fantasy. She can feel the serpentine hands of something with no material existence wrap around her and stain her slick with sweat, sweeping over the space between her legs, licking a wetness up her pussy. 

A dewy sound peals out. It’s a predator loosening its jowls, stringy and frothy, flaying its lips to bare its teeth. A rumbling roar rips out of its throat, animalistic. She can hear the popping of teeth sinking into flesh. The dull sound of skin breaking.

“Ah!” A squeal. “Simon, tha’– it hurts.”

She feels a vortex in her belly, an ache in her clit.

It’s like she resurfaces the water. All at once, she hears clearly. It’s a lone word whispered in a guttural cadence so close that she swears it’s mumbled against the hot hull of her ear.

“Good.”

———

She wakes the next morning with her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and a damp heat between her legs.

Sunlight filters through the gauzy curtains, hitting the bed next to her. The bed is starkly empty she notes, as she crawls out of her cot and pops the stiff muscles in her back, stretching. 

She pokes her head out of the bedroom and tiptoes around the cabin as if avoiding a barrage of landmines. There’s a downward force in her bladder that tells her she’s been in torpor for the better half of the morning, and a heavy crust in her eyes that shifts when she blinks. She finds her way to the bathroom and shucks the flannel over her hips, lowering herself on the toilet seat, emptying herself.

It’s the only stint of respite. The closest thing she can get to calm since losing her way in the mountain three days ago. She relishes in the idle birdsongs outside and the sound of overnight frost melting into the dew that slips off tree leaves, pitter-pattering to the ground. Listens to the stream of her pee peter out, and the ruffle of folding fabric as she tosses the flannel back over her thighs. She listens to the–

“How’d ye sleep, pretty girl?”

She flinches at the gruff voice. It’s written with sleep, barely lucid under a Scottish lilt. Her hands freeze under the running water of the tap as she watches Johnny waltz inside the bathroom, shucking his pants to his thighs and pulling out his cock, pissing in the toilet. 

She’s stiff. Fixed to the cold clay tiles of the floor, unable to be bent. She tries not to let her eyes wander, tries to block out the chubby mass of muscle swinging between his legs. 

“Oh…” her words are stifled by shock. “F-fine. I slept fine. Thank you again for opening your house to me.” She thinks back to last night—the whimpering, the croaking—and rashly decides to tack on, “But I did hear some weird noises. I could have been dreaming though.”

Johnny chuckles. “...Aye, it’s almost matin’ season ‘round these parts. I think you’ll be hearin’ more of that. It’s best to ignore it.”

Her body girdles when he sways his cock, shaking away the liquid on the tip. He stuffs himself back into his pants and pulls the flush, grinning. 

“Bet you’re still hungry. Simon’s wrappin’ up breakfast. Let’s go.”

He pats her bum and makes her squeak. He grips the hem of her flannel and reels it around his knuckles like a leash, tugging her into the dining area—which is more of a nook nestled into the living room—and pulls out a seat.

“Hope ye fancy porridge,” Johnny chuckles. He splits his palm across the top of her head, pushing her into the chair. 

She huffs and hoists her neck up, grimacing at the acrid scent of animal hide burning against the base of a cast iron pan. It takes a conscious effort to not crinkle her nose in disgust.

Simon ducks as he emerges from the kitchen threshold. He wields two bowls of food. One for her and the other for Johnny. She takes heed of how—despite his stature—Simon doesn’t have anything to eat.

However it’s a cursory thought, because she’s quickly pulling her lips into a weak smile and examining the bowl in front of her. Food is a generous word, since it looks more like coagulated milk than porridge and smells sour. Simon places a chipped plate of bacon alongside it. It’s curled because it’s overcooked, crusted with charcoal.

She swallows as Simon takes a seat next to her. Johnny, on the other side of her. 

“Looks delicious,” she hums. She turns to Simon, “Are you… not eating?”

He picks an off-white tendon from his canine tooth, flicking it away. 

He answers in a rigid tenor. “Don’t hurt your head over me. You eat your food.” 

She marginally shrinks into herself, embarrassment licking up her spine. She feels like a chided puppy, but perhaps that’s the sentiment. 

When she opens her lips and raises the spoon to her mouth, her flannel curls like a wisp of hair off her shoulder, baring her bruised albeit supple skin. She hastily pulls the sleeve back up. 

She speaks around the stale porridge and her rising apprehension. “Uh, do you have my clothes from yesterday?” She asks, squirming as her sweat glues the back of her thighs to the chair, sticky. “It’s just, uh, they fit me better.”

“Oh,” Johnny blinks, “o’ course.” 

She watches him stand up and slip through the backdoor. He walks towards a clothesline hitched between two trees and retrieves her clothes, returning with them tucked under his arm.

“Here ye go sweetheart,” he grins, setting them on her lap. Petting her head.

She slowly peels through her clothes. Her fingertips drag against her threadbare jeans, her overripe shirt, but never touch the sweat-imbued gauze of something more… intimate. Her maw tenses around the hot porridge. 

“Where are my… um…” she lowers her voice even though it’s redundant—Johnny is leaned in close, practically huffing against her ear, sniffing her neck. “... Undergarments?”

Johnny tilts his head, puckering his lips in confusion. He’s written with the innocence of a puppy—whether it’s real or fabricated, she can’t tell. The words have begun bleeding together, blotchy and unintelligible. 

“Panties, ye mean?” He laughs. “Ye never had any of those.”

She swallows thickly. 

“No, I… I did. I wouldn’t go hiking without–”

“Ye must be goin’ crazy, lass,” Johnny says. “This was all you gave me. Nae panties.”

He stares at her with large, intercosmic, unassuming eyes. His gaze flickers towards Simon. It’s so fleeting that she almost misses it. The sweep of his blue irises widening, eclipsed by his pupils. She tenses. Omniscience hits her like a brick.

Her tongue goes heavy in her mouth, melting her words. The porridge turns frothy in her gut, nausea sticking to her organs and presentiment curdling in the air. She tightens her throat around a gag.

“... When can you drive me into town?”

Johnny reaches over and grips her thigh. He digs divots into her flesh like a fish hook caught in a flayed gill.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as ye want, pretty. There’s nae rush.”

She feels bile crawl up her throat.

“Oh, well, I just don’t want to overstay my welc–”

“He’s excited to play host,” Simon growls. His words are marked by firm determination, leaving no room for objection. He leans over the table, his wifebeater clinging to his muscle, his wiry chest hair pressing against the soft cotton. “We rarely get visitors ‘round here and he’ll be upset if you leave. Y’wanna make him upset?” 

Finally, warnings blare like strobe lights in her mind. She fidgets in her seat, sweating, shooting a cursory glance to the backdoor. Calculating her chances of survival should she break through the mesh and make a run for it. 

“O-of course not. Not after everything you’ve done for me,” she stutters, feeling a bead of sweat travel down her neck. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for asking.”

Simon settles back in his seat. Johnny, too, frowning around his porridge. 

“Good,” Simon grunts meanly. “Now shut your gob an’ eat.”

She clemently chews away at her breakfast, preening under their smouldering gazes. Throughout her polishing off her bowl, she’s reminded Simon doesn’t have one. It’s unseemly for a man so sturdy to not be eating, but as Simon’s lips peel back, sated while he watches her take her final bite, she spots a spray of red liquid washing the spire of his fang tooth, glistening in the sunlight. 

“How’d you like tha’, pretty?” Johnny asks. He collapses whatever thoughts—whatever inklings—begin to seize her about Simon as he smiles and their bowls, disappearing into the kitchen.

Right away, Simon is hooking his foot behind a leg of her chair, using it to pull her closer. 

He’s centimetres away from her face when he says, “How ‘bout you start pullin’ your weight?”

Her eyes flicker up to see Simon hovering over her. He’s dewy with sweat, big and burly and drifting above her like the closet-dwelling monster from everyone’s childhood.

“You’ve caused enough trouble in my home,” he continues. “Ate a lot of our produce. It’s time you make up for tha’.”

She resists the urge to snarl. She doesn’t even want to be here yet Simon is insisting she fill her role—whatever that role may be. 

But as she hoists her neck up at him, she gets skittish and looks away, her tongue knotting. She knows it isn’t smart to upset Simon again. He’s a beefy man with sharp canines and vertical pupils, with more hair sprouting from his forearms than what’s considered normal. A man who expels deep tonal flutters instead of regular breaths. Who—despite his size—can’t ever be heard approaching.

So she smiles instead, asking, “What is it you need help with?”

“Floors need scrubbin’.”

He shoves a rag in her hand and holds out a bucket of sudsy water she hadn’t noticed before.

“Kitchen, livin’ room… just get to work.”

The water sloshes over the lip of the bucket when he sets it down. Simon stands to his full height and stalks out of the room, leaving her alone with her multitude of thoughts. 

Slowly, she stands up. She hauls the water bucket to the middle of the living room and is starkly reminded of her strength—or lack thereof. Simon had picked the bucket up so naturally, but with the weak tendons lacing her arms, she struggles. It doesn’t help that her vision is still spotty. 

She lowers to her knees, wincing at the chord of pain beneath her bandages. She awkwardly drenches the rag in the water and wrings it dry, poising herself above the floor, working the rag into the floorboards. 

She tenses when Johnny walks back in. He’s behind her. Unlike with Simon, she can feel him creeping up. She can feel his eyes on the lips of her pussy where her flannel hitches up while she’s bent over, scrubbing the floors. 

Her cheeks burn. She blindly reaches behind her to tug the hem down, covering her warm cunt. 

Johnny chuckles. “This is wha’ Simon has you doin’ out here?” 

She looks over her shoulder, her skin prickling when she sees an axe in his hand. 

“We’re goin’ to the yard to chop some wood,” he says, “but I see you’re already busy bein’ our bonnie housewife.” 

She stutters. That operative word, housewife, burns a hole in the snail-shaped cochlea of her ear. “No, Simon j-just asked me to. He asked me to.”

“I know, sweetie,” Johnny replies. He squats next to her and rubs her back in slow circles, trying to hike up her flannel again. “Simon’s just takin’ the piss. He’s a meanie like tha’.”

She tries shouldering him away but Johnny only holds her tighter. Simon reappears in the doorway, watching with his arms crossed. 

Johnny clears his throat. “Thought we’d spend time in the yard today. Doesn’t tha’ sound sweet?”

She looks at Simon who’s already looking at her through hooded, brutish eyes. She realizes that her autonomy is divested—that she has no choice but to follow what they say because something is very, very wrong here. 

Perhaps this is what the mountain had warned her of. In all of its howling and breathing, the branches gripping her and the delirium written into her psyche, maybe, it was all a warning. 

She hangs her head. “Mhm… sounds great.”

She has no time to process what’s happening before he’s folding his hand into the cavity of her armpit and dragging her up and out of the door, into the backyard. 

It’s more of a cleared grove than a yard. Dead tree stumps litter the small expanse, grass the colour of ripe lemons because it’s been seared down. There’s a block of wood sitting on a stump, split down the middle. Sun-bleached clothes hanging over the clothesline.

“Y’can watch here,” Johnny says, gesturing to one of the tree stumps. “We’ve got to chop wood for dinner tonight.”

He pulls her down on the makeshift seat, finally letting her go. And just as Johnny pivots, slamming the spire of the axe into the block of wood, she sees him scrunch his nose as he sniffs his hand, drinking in the sweat from her armpit. It goes up his nose and through his nasal cavity, making him quiver as if her sweat is an opiate. Disgust slams into her, sinking in her stomach and settling there like sediment. She doesn’t even notice Simon walking out of the cabin and reaching for the axe, raising it over his head, until the resounding sound of wood snapping peals out, and she’s jumping in her skin.

“No need to be feart,” Johnny laughs. “Just his usual routine.”

She watches Simon work. He looks like a beast on its hind legs like this—impossibly large and splayed out with his arms over his head, growling whenever he brings the axe down on the tree stump, splitting it in two. Sweat burns through his wifebeater and turns the fabric translucent, revealing the barest outline of his chest. His chest hairs are matted with sweat, his sinews straining with each chop of wood. His face is curled meanly into itself, his trimmed hair nicked in different places from at-home shaving and washed with sweat.

Every time he brings the axe down on the wood, expelling a guttural groan, something stirs in her. He does it with such force, such strength, it makes her wary. He fractures the wood along the grain without so much of a blink, without any stifling in his muscle.

All those horror films she watches alone—when her friends say they’re too busy to join, when they lead her on after planning a get-together that doesn’t come to fruition—finally catch up to her, sowing the thought in her head that if she stays, she’ll become the tree stump. Impotent beneath Simon’s hacking and eclipsed by his behemoth-like body. 

Her missing panties. Johnny’s sticky hands. Simon’s less-than-human behaviour. It all slams into her like whiplash. 

Her fear rears its head as a rashly undertaken announcement tumbling out of her mouth.

“I have to pee.”

She ignores the way Johnny perks up, as if that activated something in his brain. His ocular vein goes large, rapt, his pupils blowing out as he looks at her and then her navel where her bladder sits, suddenly grinning. 

“I can come with–”

“I’ll go in the woods,” she says. “Behind a bush or something, okay?”

Simon grunts. It’s a deep prusten sound as he splits another block of wood. Johnny pouts but lets her go, watching with those imploring eyes as she disappears behind some foliage. 

It’s now or never, she decides. 

She makes sure she’s concealed by the flowering of a tree before speeding up her walk. She moves like an unoiled machine, rusty, as her walk ripens into a run.

She doesn’t know where she’s running. She doesn’t know how far the nearest town is or how to find the trail she lost herself on, but she knows she needs to get far away from here. 

The woodland is labyrinthine. Everything looks the same. She hopes she isn’t sprinting deeper into the heart of Appalachia and straight into her new grave, but still, she doesn’t stop running. Not until her lungs wilt into themselves and turn pruney, not until her heartbeat plateaus. 

It’s as if she’s working against a rip current. She feels as if a part of herself is already woven into the woodland soil, feels herself written into the rotting, wet trees. It’s like she’s treading water instead of sprinting. And it’s like a supernova has erupted in her ankle as it gets caught under a root, sending her face first into the dirt. 

She reorients as quickly as she can. She raises to her feet but winces at the flaring nerves in her foot, and looks around for a stick she can use as a crutch. 

But something else catches her attention. 

A dog-eared paper taped to a Basswood tree. It’s been eaten by the elements, mottled, barely hanging on. She steps closer and reads the blocky letters across the front, her blood running cold in her engorged vessels.

MISSING PERSON

Fleetingly, hope seizes her, but she soon remembers nobody back home is heedful enough to report her missing, let alone realize she’s missing in the first place. Additionally, the year suggests that the flyer is three years old. Her eyes slink down, trailing over what’s still intact.

LAST SEEN: CLIFF TRAIL

$3,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION

Foreboding clings to her flesh. She quivers, her knees weakening.

FIRST NAME: J-

The tail-end of it is smeared, the ink bleeding and thinning into the paper. It’s unintelligible, so she trails her gaze lower, heeding the victim’s last name instead.

MACTAVISH.

“Sweetie!” Peals out from behind her before she can read any more. “What’re you doin’ all the way here? Had me and Simon thinkin’ ye ran away or something. Hah.”

Johnny hurries close and swallows her flinch with a tight hug. He frowns at the flyer. 

“Why’re you readin’ this silly stuff?” He asks. He tears it off the tree and crumples it up, tossing it away. “That shite gives y’nightmares.”

“Johnny, I–”

“You went pee?” Johnny asks. Nearly makes her screech when he dips his hand low and cups her cunt, feeling around for any dregs of liquid. He buries his fingers unnecessarily deep between her puffy lips, blindly massaging.

“No…” he clicks his tongue. “No. You didn’t. Did ye lie to us? It dinnae matter, sweetie. Here. Do it here, pretty. I’ll wait.”

She musters whatever pluck she has left to shake her head.

However her spine is fickle. All it takes is Johnny glowering, his eyes darkening, his pout upending and curling into something meaner, to force her back into submission.

“Simon’s already angry ye pulled this stunt, sweetie,” he says. “I’m helpin’ you out.”

A tear escapes her. It rolls down her gaunt cheek like the dew that dribbles down trees. She’s quickly crying, expelling howls that burn her energy. She trembles as she squats to the forest floor and pushes pee out of her. She sniffles as she stands back up and lets the liquid sluice down her thighs. 

“Good girl,” Johnny hums. “You’re so much sweeter when ye listen, ye ken?” 

She sobs into her palms, her ribs so brittle they rattle together. Johnny coos vacantly at her, rubbing her all over the same way one rubs stone fruit to test their ripeness, and croons at her swelling ankle.

“See what happens when you’re naughty?” He asks, picking her up, carrying her close to his chest. “Let’s get you home, honey. These woods are no place for a bird like you.”

She hates how she curls into him. It’s her repressed underbelly fighting its way to the surface because the accumulation of neglectful family and friends has soured her, carving a chasm in her heart that forces her body to respond to Johnny’s affections. He’s a warm body for her, a pair of listening ears. It’s scraps, but it’s more than she’s ever gotten.

They make it back to the cabin in what feels like minutes. Simon’s waiting next to the door with his arms tightly crossed, his face meanly pinched. He growls like a provoked animal. He hovers like an executioner. He’s the living antonym of light at the end of the tunnel, huffing like a bull as Johnny carries her inside. 

“How about you rest?” Johnny asks. He sets her down on her cot and pulls the blanket to her quivering chin, tucking her in. “Want some tea? What kind do you fancy?”

She purses her lips, trembling. Johnny sentimentally hums as if he’s sorry. As if he isn’t a part of her plight. Her piercing fear and deep-seated fatigue.

“Garden mint…” he says to himself. “I’ll be right back, bonnie.”

He disappears and returns a few minutes later with a cup dwarfed in his hand. Steam curls over the rim, thinning into the barren bedroom. He tilts it into her mouth, nursing her. 

With every sip she feels herself slip more and more back into the familiar territory of limbo. Her eyelids become heavy, her cognizance slackening.

She peels her tongue off her gums to muster a whisper. It’s so weak. Barely audible. 

“I wanna go… home…”

Johnny croons. He cups her cheek. “Honey, those people dinnae care about you. Not how me and Simon do. This can be your home.”

He raises the cup to her mouth again, stifling any protests on her tongue.

She hiccups around the drink, her eyes warm and wet.

That’s how she falls asleep. 

With hypnotic tea invading her bloodstream, turning her eyelids heavy. Turning her helpless.

———

She wakes with a start. 

It’s a crack of thunder that had stirred her, she realizes, instead of the enigmatic sounds of bed springs snapping.

The bedroom is dark and bathed in midnight light. She can barely see anything, save for the barest outline of Johnny in the bed next to her. When lightning strikes, illuminating the sky with a blinding impact crack, she’s able to see the swell of his body beneath his sheets and the shadow of his spun-thread hair. His chest rising and falling steadily. 

She’s caked with sweat. Her perspiration soaks her flannel and makes it cling to her flesh, which is flared up as if she rolled in a pile of poison ivy. Her mind is so cluttered she almost folds over as she stands up, testing the grip of her toes on the wooden floor, testing her ability to balance herself. 

She’s in limbo. A border space between heaven and hell, awaiting her execution. That’s how it feels as she tiptoes her way out of the room, reaching for an oil lamp, holding it out in front of her. 

It’s almost worse like this. A weak flame that barely illuminates her peripheral. She fears that should she turn too fast, an aberration will materialize from the margins of her view and tear her to ribbons. 

At this point, she supposes that’s a kinder fate. 

She slips into a pair of large boots because she can’t find her hiking shoes anywhere. She opens the door and pokes her head out, immediately met with the spray of rainwater on her face, the wind running through her ropes of neglected hair.

Sheets of heavy rain fall from the awning, creating another divide that keeps her trapped inside the cabin. She steps onto the porch, listening for any incongruous noises. Even if there were any, they would be bullied under the assault of rainfall. She can’t hear her own thoughts like this, can’t formulate a plan to get away from here once and for all.

So of course she doesn’t hear the floorboards settle behind her. Of course, she doesn’t hear the heavy drumming of feet closing in on her.

She doesn’t heed the body behind her until Johnny is sniffing up her neck and snuffing out the oil lamp, laying hold of her in a grudging grip. 

“You just dinnae listen, do you?”

He takes her by the scruff of her neck and pulls her back into the cabin, knocking the lamp out of her grip. It falls to the floor and flares into a crash, louder than the rain. Almost louder than her sprinting heart and the blood rushing to her ears.

She wrestles against his grip. “Fuck you both—you sick fucks!”

She almost vomits when her insults make Johnny moan, his cock fattening against her back in a crude Pavlovian response. Each time she struggles against him, his grip tightens. It reminds her of the mountain itself. The more she tries escaping its soporific arms, the deeper it drags her down. It’s fruitless for her to fight it—the whistle of the branches, the tight sinews of Johnny’s grip. 

He swings his arm around her neck, pinning her against his chest in a headlock. Her lungs stutter and her eyes turn dewy, her deep-seated fear ripening into paralyzing terror.

A web of lightning shatters the sky, and she almost dies right there.

It’s Simon but worse. A mutation gone wrong. A changeling, perhaps. He’s squeezed inside the threshold, breathing wildly. His wifebeater is torn in different places across his body, split around tufts of fur. Fur that is matted with thick ichor, wiry and sprouting from the spot behind his ears.

Another flash of lightning ignites the cabin, revealing the shaggy coat of hair on his chest. The sheet of fat over his stomach that flutters when he puffs, growling under his breath. He clenches his jaw because he can’t clench his hands, because his thick fingers have turned into claws, sharp spires covered in gore.

Simon snarls. Blood and spit drip from his bloodied teeth as if he’s a rabid animal with a limp maw. He rolls his shoulders and cracks the cartilage in his neck, the sound pealing out so loudly, it’s more like the popping of bubble wrap in rapid succession. 

She can barely see him through her tear-filled eyes. It’s the epilogue to her life as he strides in close, biting his talons into her hips and drawing out blood. A snarl of satisfaction escapes him when he smells it—her blood, sweet, albeit stale due to her dehydration. 

“Anyone ever told you you’re an ungrateful mutt?” He growls. “I give you food to eat an’ clothes on your back but here you are, tryin’ to sod off.”

Her cheeks dimple when he grabs her jaw. She opens her mouth to protest, but her grievances get smothered beneath Simon’s claws. He stuffs his fingers down her mouth, stunting her complaints. She gags and coughs around the taste of metal and mire crusted under his claws, bile shooting up her throat.

“Dogs don’t talk,” he tuts. 

He hoists his arm back and she puckers, preparing for an attack. However, instead of her cheek, Simon’s hand slices against her shirt. He tears her flannel into ribbons, making the fabric slide off her like water from a milk bath.

She stands naked, her skin pocked with fear. She shivers despite being pressed between Simon’s furry chest and Johnny’s warm arms. 

“‘Bout time someone taught you some manners,” Simon mumbles. “I was in the middle of my dinner you know? Fuckin’ rude to interrupt.”

She blanches when she sees a limp coyote behind him, splayed out on the porch. She recognizes it as the orpiment-coloured fur to the hair flossed between Simon’s teeth.

She screams as he wrestles her from Johnny’s grip, pulling her towards the bedroom. Simon throws her onto the stiff mattress, her spine shuddering from the impact. She tries covering herself, tries wrapping her arms around her body, but Simon is having none of that. 

He pounces, taking her hips and pinning them to the bed. He hovers over her, rainwater dripping from his broken nose, impossibly large as he makes up her whole world. Simon swallows her entire view, leaving her with no chances of escape. 

Her gaze flutters down to the chub outlined by his sweatpants and decides she’s left with no chances of survival, either.

She flails her legs as Simon slithers low, flattening his nose against her cunt. She lets out a protracted cry as he hitches his lungs and inhales, breathing in the musk of her bare cunt. The sweat stuck between her fuzzy hair, the sticky arousal that spreads as he forces her legs open. 

Simon hisses. It rides the ruck of his throat, expelled from his nose. It’s not in any capacity a human sound. It seems more like a bear flaring its nostrils, poised for attack.

Johnny notices the confusion between her eyebrows because he’s leaning in and murmuring against the shell of her ear, licking it.

“Remember wha’ I said about matin’ season, kitty?”

Johnny leans away, leaving it at that. Equivocal and cryptic and calcified into the furrows of her brain. She isn’t allowed to wade in her confusion though because Simon’s tongue is lolling out, sweeping a fat stripe over her pussy.

It’s like the first thaw of spring. Simon licks her open, spreads her out on his tongue. She can’t help the immediate warmth that courses through her, swathing her in silk. 

She cries out. Her back bends off the mattress when Simon pulls her lips into his mouth to suck. 

She looks to Johnny for help. She twists herself and tries reaching out, tries crawling off the mattress, but Simon is gripping her ankle and popping the gauze of her bandage with his claws, pulling her back down, wrapping his lips around her engorged clit.

Johnny’s face doesn’t show contrition, but is pinched in jealousy. He watches with a fat mass growing in his sweatpants.

She splits her hand over Simon’s shaved head, using the cauliflowered shell of his ear to try pulling him off of her. That only makes him growl, the vibrations quavering up her spine, his claws digging into her flesh. 

She folds her arms over her face, sobbing. Simon’s tongue is wet and hot against her pussy, lapping between her soft folds, slurping her juices. She flushes at how wet she is. At how pleasure leaks through the cracks in her resolve and spreads all over her, reducing her to a panting mess. 

Simon releases her clit with a pop. He raises to his knees, towering over her, and now she’s unsure if his glistening chin is because of the rainwater outside or her arousal. 

“Hold her down, Johnny.”

Her heart drums against her chest. Johnny crawls onto the bed and kneels behind her head. He pins her wrists down with his kneecaps, keeping her from squirming.

“Will ye let me put my cock in ‘er mouth?” Johnny asks. “Simon, will you–”

“Shut it,” Simon snaps. He shoves down his sweatpants, his cock springing out. All of her nerves bristle like rope, her heart sputtering to a stop.

Simon’s cock is fat and heavy. It droops between his thighs, drooling with precum. It’s stiff but hangs because he’s so large, the engorged tip angling downward, his balls plump, ruddy.

He chokes his hand around it, tugging it. Her throat closes in on itself but her legs instinctively peel apart. Her puffy lips spread open and she flushes at the sticky sound, hoisting her neck back to look at Johnny.

He has his cock out too, pumping it. He grins when they lock eyes and smacks his dick against her cheek. Johnny presses his cockhead into the corner of her mouth, using it to tilt her lips into a repugnant curl. It’s reminiscent of a smile, but it isn’t one. 

She wails.

They both make up her beginning and end. They trap her between themselves, leaving her with no escape. Simon at her feet, Johnny at her head. Each of the men are more intimidating than the other, both inspiring fear in her feeble heart. Both inspiring unwanted arousal between her legs. 

Simon slaps his flaring tip against her clit. She mewls and hates herself for bucking her hips into him. She’s dew-skinned as Simon pushes her knees to her ears, thumbing her clit.

He deeply inhales.

His chest expands, tugging at the steel-wool hair felted against his big chest. He quivers as he expels his breath, his mating call, and finally feeds her his cock, pushing past her first ring of muscle.

Her body tries curling in on itself like a Venus flytrap, but Johnny is quicker. He bites his fingers into her wrists and pins her to the mattress, keeping her still while Simon stuffs himself deeper. Johnny kisses her tears away while he does it. It’s oxymoronic and it’s betrayal—a Judas kiss—while he wraps his lips around sweet encouragement against her cheeks.

“Got so much fight in ye, sweetie,” he whispers. “Just stop strugglin’ and it’ll feel good.”

Simon leans over her, his cock slipping deeper into her warm cunt. The blood and saliva from his maw drips onto her chest, the blood is so fresh there’s still steam, hitting her like scythes.

Johnny’s getting restless. He watches raptly as Simon starts slamming his hips into her. Johnny ruts against the chafe of her brittle hair and hopes it will give him satisfaction by proxy, but it does little to offset the ache in his balls. His lip warbles.

“Simon, please,” a voice crack, “can I put my cock in ‘er mouth?”

“Fine,” Simon growls. His hips are piston-paced against the girl’s skin, unrelenting and uncaring to how her nails scratch striated lines down his chest in her struggle. “Just stop interruptin’ us.”

Her jaw cramps when Johnny cups her chin. He puppets it open and forces his fingers down. They’re caked with dirt as he swirls them over her tongue, coaxing up the warm spit from the furrow of her throat to be used as a natural lube. 

The only mercy she gets is the stint of time between Johnny pulling his fingers out and gripping his dick, laying it on her tongue. He forces her lips apart with the tip of his cock, smearing himself all over her. 

“So pretty like this sweetheart,” he hums. “Simon smelt it on ye. Hundreds of klicks away. How sweet y’are.” 

She doesn’t have the energy to decipher that. Most of it is being wrung on trying to fight the two men off, but it’s fruitless. Johnny is already slipping into her mouth, and her cunt is already stretched around Simon’s plump cock. 

Johnny starts pumping in and out, his cock embroidering a burn in the hinges of her jaw.

She lies there limply, but as Johnny’s wiry hair meets her nose, she realizes there’s one thing she can do. In her thrashing, she undertakes the lapse of judgement to clamp her teeth together, sinking them into Johnny.

He yells and pulls himself out. Johnny wraps a hand around himself, squeezing, placating the sting. A warm wash of tears twine his eyelashes together, long and babydoll-like. He looks to Simon, preening, imploring. 

“She bit me.” 

Simon slows his hips, only scarcely so. Only enough for her to fill her lungs halfway before he’s dragging himself out agonizingly slow, burying himself back inside. 

His eyes, hungry, flutter down to her. His lips wind back, revealing his sharp fangs. He snickers. 

“Now you’ve pissed him off, hm? Dumb girl. This is why puppies need owners.”

He pinches her clit, softly tweaking it between the pads of his fingers. He looks at Johnny and condescendingly smirks. 

“C’mere, boy. If she won’t suck you off, why not take a go at her other hole?”

She tenses. Fear washes over her like a rip current, all the way down to her ass that squeezes in protest. Her heart feels too big for her chest suddenly. She can’t even see Johnny’s blinding grin through her cloudy eyes as brine tracks down her cheeks, mixing with her sweat. 

She whimpers. “No–“

A palm whistles through the air, exploding into a crack of thunder as it breaks against the skin of her cheek. 

She lapses into silence. Little hiccups escape her while she peers up at Simon, sniffling. 

“Yes,” he says. 

He grips her by her hips and flips her over. This way, Simon’s on his back and she’s on top of him, his cock digging deeper. The position is etched with a degree of intimacy that causes heat to pool in her belly—she can feel his hot breath fanning over her face, she can see his feline-like eyes better.  

She almost jumps out of her skin when Johnny presses his fingers into her ass, trying to break her in. He thumbs at the puckered muscle, chuckling when it tries squirming away from him. 

“Cute little thing,” he says. “She ever been fucked?”

The way she sobs when Johnny forces his forefinger inside gives him his answer. He almost comes right there. At the sound of her slick lubing her up, at the sound of her being torn open like a stone fruit and her pitiful cries for mercy. 

“Stop…” 

“Stop?” Johnny repeats, “Sweetie, if I stop it’ll hurt when I fuck you. Ye need prep, silly.”

That only wracks her ribs harder. The patrionizing lilt in his voice, the way he pats her bum like she’s nothing but a dumb puppy. Johnny sinks another finger in, knuckle-deep, and curls himself into the walls of her ass, massaging it.

Simon starts thrusting again. He takes one of her tits in his mouth and tongues at her nipple, snapping his hips into her. It only adds more pressure to her other hole, the one being fingered open by Johnny.

“Y’think she’s ready, sweetie?” Johnny asks. He slaps his cock against her hole, teasing her. “I think she’s fuckin’ hungry. Look at ‘er winkin’ back at me.”

Johnny collects the saliva moulded into his gums and sputters out a wad of spit, wetting her tight asshole. He presses his cockhead against her opening, pushing himself inside.

She buckles, doubling over. Her cheek falls on Simon’s chest, chafing against his coarse hair. She’s never felt so full. Folded between the men and being fed two big cocks, left with no space to breathe. She isn’t given respite. No mercy. No time for her to stretch around their cocks.

Johnny splits his hand across the divot where her spine begins and shoves her into Simon. Her jaw hangs loose, her lips parted dumbly, her drool trickling onto Simon’s chest. She’s limp. Letting them have her way with her. Letting them brand her with their fingers digging sickle-shaped scratches into her skin. Letting them break her open with each of their jackhammering thrusts, letting their pants of encouragement and degradation swirl around her like whistles from the woodland, causing goosebumps to arise and her head to pound.

“Do ye feel it, Simon?” Johnny pants. “Is it comin’ on?”

His words sprawl by like a lazy river in her mind. Desultory, like lukewarm water. They don’t click into the empty chasm of her cognizance until something else happens. Something inhuman. Something that has her choking on the raw bile that scratches her throat and the spit coaxed into the rivets of her tongue by Johnny’s assaulting fingers.

Simon’s ramming gets shaved into stunted thrusts. It isn’t due to a loss of energy, but is due to something else keeping him from slipping out. A balloon pushing against the walls of her pussy, swelling inside her. It isn’t fat but is chubby enough for her to feel it, flutter around it.

The knot snarled into Simon’s cock plugs her up. She can’t pull herself off him because it’s puffed up past her cunt, keeping her stuck on top of him. It doesn’t help that Johnny keeps slamming his hips into her, riling the thin skin that separates her cunt from her ass, bending it to the shape of Simon’s cock.

Johnny gasps. “I’m close– shite, I’m close.”

She doesn’t want to admit it, but she is too. She feels her nerves begin to fray at their edges, her stomach wearing thin. Johnny slips his hand low and blindly sweeps at her clit, nibbling on the husk of her ear.

He only gets three more pumps in until he’s emptying his balls in her ass. He grabs her hair when he comes, puppetting her head back so her mouth falls open and he can spit inside. His thrusts are slow and deep and peter into something calm, his cock softening inside her. Johnny grins.

“Say thank you, kitty.”

It crosses her tongue as an unintelligible mumble. She can’t speak properly with Simon’s cock still in her.

Johnny chuckles at that. He wraps his arms around her and pinches her nipples. Twisting them, pulling them.

Simon’s so big beneath her, lounging like a bear. He fucks into her, his thrusts curtailing into sloppy snaps of his hips.

“He’s close, bonnie,” Johnny says. “Kiss ‘im when he comes. It’s what he likes.”

Finally, Simon’s knot unravels, his thick ropes of come sticking to her walls. He makes sure that the warm come dressing her is so deep, it’ll have no choice but to take. 

Her body betrays her when it crests and crashes into her orgasm. She’s flashbanged with blinding light, gushing out an off-white liquid that coats Simon’s thighs. It seizes her so deeply it hurts, the panoramic pleasure. An orgasm that makes her brain melt, makes her feel otherworldly.

Belatedly, she remembers Johnny’s order. She leans down to kiss Simon, her lips leathery against his. She only wants a modest peck—something to sate Johnny—but she can’t pull away because her bottom lip is caught between Simon’s teeth, pinched, and being sapped of its blood.

He laps it up before letting her go. 

He slips his softening cock out but keeps his come inside her with two fingers, his claws having retracted.

He huffs like a bull. He presses his heavy paw into her abused cunt, palming it. He reeks with a carnal musk, the aftertaste of his rut heavy in the air.

Suddenly, it all makes sense to her.

Simon is the crux of all cautionary tales. The mountains aren’t sworn off because of rabid raccoons or feral fishers but because of something eldritch, whose reputation and folklore precedes any proof of its existence. Whatever Simon is, it can’t be put into words or into anything material, so he’s condensed into the urban legends that have haunted the woods for centuries. The stories that keep hikers off needle-covered paths and unmarked trees and make them carry crucifixes in lieu of bear spray.

She doesn’t even realize she’s softly sobbing. It feels like that’s all she does these days.

Johnny hugs her as if he hadn’t taken a part of her dignity. 

He kisses her, kittening into her so that Simon is able to wrap his arms around them both, hugging them. 

The calm that lolls after the storm only bruises her further. They act so normal after they’ve stripped her of everything. Johnny massaging her thighs, Simon igniting a cigarette between his lips. 

“Will you ever let me go?” She mumbles against Simon’s chest. 

He exhales the smoke. “Go where, love? You came into my house, remember?”

Johnny won’t stop kissing her. He’s a pest that’s attached itself to her dewy flesh, trying to lick her clean. Simon curls his fingers in her and makes sure that’s where his come stays.

Simon takes another drag of his cigarette. “Not like anyone back home would miss you, anyhow.”

———

She watches with a smile on her face as Johnny roasts the flank of a moose on a homemade grill and as Simon chops some more firewood.

She lounges in a chair, swathed in her caribou-hide coat. Winter is at its height, laying a skin of pillowy snow across the mountain.

The cubs wriggle in her lap, pawing at the loose tendrils of her hair and trying to pinch her nose.

“Lookin’ so pretty today, mama,” Johnny hums. She giggles when he kisses her, scratching at the cubs’ bellies. 

“Ain’t she bonnie?” Johnny turns around and prompts Simon, “Our wee looker.”

Simon pauses his wood chopping and nods. He grips the hem of his lumberman’s jacket and raises it to his forehead to wipe his sweat away, revealing his chest and his hair that disappears into the waistband of his jeans. The cubs yip when he resumes his chopping, splitting a tree stump in two. 

She grins. 

She loves her family. Her providers and the offspring of their seed. She loves the cubs’ fine hair rubbing against her cheek when they jump on the bed to wake them up in the mornings, their blunt fangs biting her when they’re hungry, and the tiny chines on their back where their sharp spine will eventually grow in, just like Simon’s.

Briefly, she tries to remember her other family. The one that came before this one. But all that encompasses her mind is a supermassive black hole in place of memories. For some reason she can’t delineate them. The face of her father is blurry and the features of her mother fit together like a crudely sewn patchwork quilt.

She doesn’t remember much of her family. It’s kind of weird. She can’t remember if they liked her or not.

But she knows that doesn’t matter. Not when she has doting men around her and their litter hanging off her hips, another one currently swelling under her belly.

She pays no heed to the missing person posters taped to the fringes of the mountain that look eerily similar to her. Not to the K-9’s that try tracking scents but fail because she’s written with Simon and Johnny’s musk. She ignores the odd helicopter passing through each month, scarcely flying past their ramshackle cabin.

None of it matters because she knows she’s where she needs to be.

[caramilena]

Swing

Lumberjack!Logan x f!reader

Summary: Logan fucks you at his work

Rating: explicit

Warnings: 18+(Minors DNI), p in v, smut, dirty talk, fingering, reader has hair, Logan can pick up reader, established relationship, reader ogles Logan, nicknames (honey, baby, sweet girl), competency kink, no mention of Logan’s powers.

Divider: @saradika-graphics

Logan had left for work in a rush that morning. Work was hectic with the new contracts he’d taken on. He was also handling a management position until the real manager- a frail, old man- had recovered from his hip replacement surgery. So, he had a lot on his plate at the moment.

That’s why, when he forgot to grab the lunch you had packed him, you decided to stop by his workplace to drop it off. He was already quite overworked so you made it paramount that he didn’t skip meals, if you could help it. It was a short drive… And maybe you’d get a chance to watch him swing an axe, shirtless. 

Once you got there, Logan wasn’t in the office. After asking around, you gathered that he went into to the woods for chores. Already tickled by that information, you didn’t waste your time to go find him immediately.

The wind caressed your cheeks and flew your hair about as you walked into the forest in search of him. He couldn’t be too far. Birds flew overhead. The tree leaves danced with the wind. You stepped over any branches or uneven ground as you cautiously traversed the wilderness. A few meters away, faint clacking sounds could be heard. At last. You picked up the pace. This was a pleasant afternoon walk practically. 

As you got closer, you could hear grunts and thuds, successively. You stilled when the source of your affections and concerns came to view. He donned his white tank top, overshirt probably discarded somewhere. He raised both arms that clasped a mighty axe over his head and brought them down with enough force to halve the wood. There was a pile of cut planks to his left. Every raise of his arms would cause the muscles in his back to ripple with life and tighten under the skin. Skin that glistened with a thin, shiny sheen of sweat. The air was relatively chill, but the physical exertion was what probably caused the faint perspiration.

Every downward motion as he hit the wood, would trigger the muscles in his tricep to tighten and contract, like your insides as you watched it all unfold, transfixed. His thick forearms were corded with years of manual labour. Of course, his biceps were your favourite pillow. Extensive physical labour was the foundation of his robust and sturdy physique. He was big and dependable. Competent, like no other man you had been with before.

He hadn’t noticed your presence yet since you stood facing his back, so you took your time ogling him as he worked. Aware of the growing wetness in your panties. Your eyes travelled down to his big, veiny hands as they gripped the handle of the axe. Mind immediately reminiscing to when they were pumping in and out of your messy hole. 

As you attempted to shift your weight from one foot to other and relieve the growing tension between your thighs, you accidentally stepped on a branch. His head snapped up and back. The deep frown between his brows relaxed slightly when he saw it was you.

“Hey,” he straightened and dropped the axe on the ground, “didn’t see you there. Were you waiting long?” 

He grunted as he walked over to a nearby tree and bent down to pick up the brown flannel shirt he had originally left the house in. Pulling it over his shoulders and beginning to button up, to your disappointment.

“Not too long,” you waved dismissively. “You forgot your lunch…” 

“Oh.” He paused. “My bad, honey. Sorry you had to come all this way,” he walked over to you, taking your hands in his and squeezing. He looked apologetic as he stared down at you.

“Are you kidding? It’s not everyday I get to watch you work in a tanktop,” I shrugged as if it’s a no-brainer that I’d miss an opportunity like that.

His mouth twitched and one corner turned up. “Yeah? You like what you see?” He stepped closer, crowding you.

You looked around before leaning in and whispering, “wouldn’t you like to know.”

His warm hands that still clasped yours, squeezed, thumb running circles on your knuckles. His eyes flitted behind you to also check for people nearby. He pulled your hands behind your thighs and held them there, walking you back until you felt your back press against a tree. His eyes darkened as he looked between your mouth and eyes. “Show me.”

It would’ve been nerve-wracking doing something like this in public, but seeing him in this virile, sweaty state, ignited a fire that couldn’t be snuffed with an entire waterfall. You took his hand and shoved it in your underwear. Right where it belonged right now. Lauding yourself internally for wearing baggy, sweatpants that made the action possible.

His nostrils flared and his lips pursed. He buried his face in your hair and groaned a low ‘fuck’. His fingers immediately began to slide through the wetness and circling the entrance. You gasped and gripped his forearm. “Did you get so soaked from just watching me, baby?” He grunted as his thumb circled around your clit.

A soft, needy sound came from the back of your throat. It was ridiculous when he put it like that. But it was true… He chuckled darkly, “dirty girl.” Before slipping two fingers in to the hilt.

You gasped and clenched around his digits immediately. He pumped furiously, curling his fingers. Swearing under his breath as the motion created wet, squelching sounds. “Oh honey, did you come here just to get fucked?” He mumbled in your ear. “I don’t fuck you enough at home?Now that you’re showin’ up to my work with this needy pussy,” the last two words were delivered with two quick slaps to your cunt.

You whimpered, you wanted to protest against those sentiments but he just shushed you with a thumb to your lips. The same thumb he was rubbing your clit with previously. You could taste your arousal on his thumb as he dragged it across your bottom lip. His brown eyes were practically swallowed up by his pupils as he gazed at you. “It’s okay,” he crooned. “I’ll fuck you wherever you want, baby.” He grinned indulgently and leaned in.

His lips pressed against yours and he hummed against the taste of your arousal on them. One of his hands travelled up your nape to tangle in your hair and angled your face up, while his other hand kept pumping into you. You moaned as his tongue licked into your mouth. Deep, rumbling growls from his chest rang in your ears. His fingers were repeatedly thrusting up into the spongy wall that made your knees weak. 

“M’close, Logan…” you mumbled against his mouth once he pulled back to look at you. He responded with fast swipes of his finger on your clit. Your back arched and a moan left your parted lips. But just before you could reach the bliss of coming around his fingers, he pulled his digits away. You frowned, “what-“

In a swift motion and a grunt, he pulled you up by the backs of your thighs to hitch around his waist. Your hands immediately went to circle around his neck for balance. “How about you help me with this little problem first, sweet girl..” he said huskily and pressed his clothed erection against the damp spot on your sweatpants.

You suppressed a whine as you pulled your sweatpants down your hips and he helped jostle them down your ankles. He quickly unbuttoned his jeans and pulled out his member. Sliding it over your covered core and at the edges of your underwear with a low groan. Your toes curled as he teased you and you cried out his name in warning. His chest rumbled with a chuckle and he pulled your panties to the side. You felt his cock twitch at your entrance. “Look at her, she’s drooling for my cock… Should I give it to her?”

“Please.” You shifted your hips forward impatiently. He tutted disapprovingly at that. 

But all the same he gathered up your slick with his tip, and pushed in. In one go, he seated himself all the way to the base. You both moaned at the sensation. You were filled to the brim. Your head dropped forward to rest on his shoulder. He was sliding impossibly deep.

He picked up the pace and began to put his weight behind each thrust. You moaned in hiccuped sounds as he bounced you on his cock. There were voices all of a sudden. Distant but unmistakable. They didn’t get closer though. It just highlighted the fact that you guys were outside and anyone could happen upon you in this compromising position.

Your eyes widened in worry but you clenched around him. At that, his already thinning restraint, extinguished to nothing. His jaw clenched and the vein in his neck looked ready to pop. He snapped his hips faster. Growling in your ear as each thrust punched the air out of your lungs. “You want others to watch you take my cock like a good girl?” His hand quickly found its way to your clit again and began rubbing quick, tight circles on it.  You moaned loudly and he slapped a hand over your mouth.

Your eyes rolled back as his hard thrusts drove you up and down the side of the tree. Your hoodie was sure to be stained and possibly torn by the friction.

His hips stuttered and you knew he was close. He buried his face in the side of your neck as he thrusted a few more times. Growling when he couldn’t hold back anymore. 

Your hands squeezed his nape and he pulled his face back to kiss you deeply. Tongue in tune with his thrusts. Your entire body tensed as you came. Thighs shaking with the abrupt and powerful force of your orgasm. He ripped his mouth away to moan at the feeling of you squeezing him when he was already close. 

His teeth sank into your neck as he thrusted unsteadily a few more times before coming inside with a drawn-out grunt. He didn’t pull out until every drop was deposited in you. He panted once he was done and cupped your cheek. “You okay?” His warm, green eyes searched your face for discomfort.

You smiled and nodded, “Just peachy.” He snorted in amusement and helped you down. 

He pulled your sweatpants up and patted your mound over them, appreciatively, “don’t waste a drop. I will be checking.” 

You left that place 10 minutes later, still leaking his cum and thoroughly satisfied. 

Notes: first time writing smut, scared to post. Needed more Logan fics so I ended up writing one.. let me know if I missed any warnings!

[shirecorn]

There are many creatures in this world that earn the definition of "people." Their paths to sentience are as diverse as the shapes and sizes in which they come. For mermaids, mimicking humans and hunting them in packs led to intelligence, language, and society.

Mollusks never hunted humans. They stayed in the depths and communed amongst themselves and eventually with the mermaids who shared their habitat. Long before humans knew of their existence, mollusk and cephalopod people were part of many bustling mermaid societies.

Small wonder, then, that humans referred to them as mermaids on every occasion in which we encountered them. As far as sailors knew, things that swim are fish, and thus octopus are fish, and thus octopus people are mermaids.

In truth, mermaids evolved from fully formed fish, which had long split off from the ancestor of mollusks. The other phylum was forging a new path without bones. Thus, sentient creatures who arose from mollusks could not be mermaids any more than they could be fish.

But the name has stuck around. "Octopus mermaid" is more easily parsed than "Octopus person," despite the scientific community's insistence on the latter. Those that make a distinction have coined the term Cecaelia for them, but this has yet to catch on. Beneath the waves, mermaids refer to them by a variety of names, depending on the language. In sea common, the term they use directly translates to "Mirror."

This arose because cephalopods have skin made of chromatophores; cells that flex to reveal and hide their color. These "mermaids" use this trick to create a pseudo face on the top of their mantle, with which they interface with actual fish-mermaids. Their real eyes are held on either side of their head, in the place where our ears would be. To further the illusion, the arms branch and split in a simulacrum of mermaid form: head adornments, two arms, a chest, waist, and tail. So creatures that evolved to mimic humans were in turn imitated, though for different reasons.

There are none more talented at disguise than the mirror known as the Mimic Octopus. This creature is able to stretch its form and change its colors to look like a variety of animals to hide, intimidate, or entertain.

This specimen is seen conversing with a lionfish mermaid on a peaceful coral reef. At first, the colors and shape shift only gently, as the mimic is relaxed in its natural form. Suddenly, it stretches out its spiraled tentacles, the subtle stripes growing into thick bands to match the venomous spines of its lionfish companion.

The two of them continue their conversation, punctuated by the cecaelia's kaleidoscope of shifting skin. Perhaps this is how they laugh.

If you are curious about other people of the sea, you can find more research in the following libraries:

High Resolution || Mermaid Requests || Discord || @worldofvonder

[thefishermansharbor]

What does the arcana do when they’re caught making out with you?

The arcana x GN!Reader   

Synopsis: This won my most recent poll, so how do the main 6 in the arcana react to someone walking in on them kissing their partner?

Asra Alnazar:

He kisses you more passionately as to prove how much he loves you in front of people. He doesn’t even notice the other person for a solid minute.

If you’re conscious or embarrassed about it, he’ll happily stop. He might stop physically - but while he’s waiting for you guys to find a more private spot, he’s fantasizing about you. 

He’s completely guiltless about it as well. Doesn’t feel a tad of embarrassment or shame. Although he does blush a bit, but that’s because of his attraction to you. Not because of the situation.

The thing he might do however is politely excuse you both from the person who walked in on you. 

“O great magicians, the countess has requested an audience with you!” The chamberlain shouted, from outside your room. Displeased at your lack of response, the chamberlain shouts once more. “O great magicians, COME AT ONCE!” They sighed, shaking their head before shoving the door open. 

“ … Magicians?” 

You’re sat on Asra’s lap, facing him. The two of you are kissing passionately and there are several lipstick stains of your shade of lipstick going down his neck and around his face. He seems to be happy as ever, not even noticing the shouting from the chamberlain. 

“ .. MAGICIANS!” 

Asra rolls his eyes and looks over, breaking away from the kiss. Staring at the chamberlain, he says casually, “ .. oh, it’s you. Hello.” You slowly get off of Asra and wave awkwardly. He smiles, “ tell Nadi we’ll be there in five minutes.” Before the chamberlain can respond, Asra pulls you in again. Not caring at all for the poor chamberlain who’s stood in the doorway stunned and weirded out.

Nadia Satrinava:

Depending on who it is, she’s either only a little embarrassed or super embarrassed. There is no in-between.

If it’s a palace servant, she’ll simply blush a bit but quickly recollect herself and help with whatever task is in need of her attention. 

If it’s a friend or family member, she stutters awkwardly and is more or less unable to reply normally. She just stands there in silence but in her head she’s screaming. 

She’s not ashamed of you at all - she just wants to keep her private time private when it comes to servants, and with her family - she doesn’t tell them much and most likely didn’t tell them about your relationship yet if she wasn’t 100% sure you were the one.

Nasmira is watering the garden, one of her favorite parts of the vesuvian castle. She adores the little grass labyrinth behind the palace, and always tends to it when visiting her dear sister. She snipped off stray branches and leaves, and then crossed the corner to move ahead. 

She paused as she you and Nadia together, kissing. You have your hands running through Nadia’s long hair, and she’s rubbing circles onto your back while you both are immersed in each other. 

“DiDi?” Nasmira says, surprised to see you and Nadia.. Like that.

Nadia turns, and shrieks before covering her mouth. “Oh my! Mira, I– I–..” She immediately lets go off you and steps a foot or so away from you. “Why, I wasn’t expecting your company today..” She says, her face covered in a pinkish blush. 

“ .. Now I know why you talked so fondly of your magician friend.” Nasmira teases, smiling warmly at the both of you.

Julian Devorak:

He blushes slightly, but doesn’t really care. He’s happy when he’s around you, and not much could possibly sour his mood whenever you’re around. 

Is very polite about it. He’ll stop kissing you and focus his energy on the other person, but will still want to be showing you appreciation by having an arm wrapped around your waist, or holding your hand.

He doesn’t feel the need to keep going as soon as the person leaves, but he will if that’s what you want. He’ll do whatever you want <3

Julian peppered your face in kisses, sat in the living room of Mazelinka’s house. He moved over to your lips, kissing you passionately and planting his hands on your torso and waist. He felt as if he were on cloud 9, so infatuated with you and all of your quirks and kinks.

A figure came back through from the kitchen, carrying a large bowl of soup and staring impatiently back at the two of you.

“ oh ho ho, Am I interrupting something?” Mazelinka said with a smirk. Shaking her head at the display of love you two were undergoing in her living room. 

Julian moves his head back, stopping the kiss. His hands still lingered on your body, but he turned over to look at the older woman. “No, not at all. We were..” He cleared his throat. “ .. just being in each others’ presence.” 

“ Oh no, continue. I could use more grandchildren, it’s been a while since I’ve had some children to look after. But just not here – I’m trying to eat.” She sipped at her soup, staring at the two of you and then at the door. “ GO! I’ll only be alive for so many more years, you two could stand to speed up the process a bit..” 

He just laughed and smiled, interlocking his fingers with yours. 

Muriel the outsider:

Is the most embarrassed out of everyone else on the list. He’s blushing furiously and goes extremely quiet and timid.

He’s already nervous in front of people - he definitely doesn’t need this extra attention! Poor guy covers his mouth with his hands, as if to conceal the fact that you’ve just been kissing. 

He lets you smooth it over - he couldn’t handle talking to anyone else but you after that embarrassing incident! He’s completely and utterly horrified to say the least.

Just sort of stares at the person. To any normal person, it’d look like he was glaring to high hell but to him he’s just afraid of having to deal with it.

After a long day, Muriel  couldn’t have thought of anything better than to go home with you and have a ‘loving’ session. You two were on top of the rug in front of the fire at his hut, he was kissing your neck and shoulder. He felt so loved and appreciated.

The keylock jingled, and Asra walked through. 

“Muriellll~!” He said in a sing-song voice. “I can’t find [Name], have you seen the–... oh.”

Muriel stares at him blankly. A mix of shock and shame washing over him at once. You smile, and stand up to go hug and greet Asra. He covers his face with his left hand, his eyes never leave the floor as he can feel himself go beetroot red. He can’t help it, he’s just so confused on why he didn’t hear Asra come in and why he didn’t spare himself this situation.

Lucio Morgasson: 

Isn’t embarrassed at all. If anything, he’s angry. He thinks the person has a lot of nerve bothering him while he’s trying to enjoy his private time with his lover, how foolish of them. 

He probably either insults them or shouts at them, to which you have to tell him not to and that it’s totally fine.

If the other person is grossed out, you’re probably the one smoothing the  situation over entirely. 

His logic is ‘ I’m count and I say the shit I want.’ So he feels no remorse for shotuing at the other person either.

Lucio’s eyes traced the outline of your body with a feverish grin. He couldn’t stop himself from grabbing you by the arms and going in for a deep and long kiss. Neither one of you breaks until you’re both almost out of breath, in which you give it a minute before going back to it. 

A servant whips past the two of you, accidentally splitting you apart. The poor servant doesn’t even notice as they hurry past you and start scrubbing a spill from earlier. Lucio looks down at them in silent outrage. 

“ Do you know who I am? It is I, your very count! How dare you interrupt my private time!” He yells, the servant looks up nervously. 

“ oh, my lord! I’m so sorry my lord, please I didn’t mean it!”  they beg. 

Lucio spits at them, “ – leave my sight, please.” He shakes his head as they scamper off in fear. “ Get lost! You’re fortunate I don’t fire you!” All you can do is give them an empathetic look before tangling yourself once more with your lover.

Note:

Hello! So sorry I've been gone, my account got hacked and I had to make a new one entirely. How annoying is that? Very annoying! Don't worry though, I'll be reposting my old content as well as coming back with all of my new work.

[supershot73199]

Dpxdc prompt here.

Valerie goes to Gotham and gets a bat Boy/Girlfriend

So the setup for this is that Danny just got done helping the big bad bat with some big ghost themed problem. What was it? Doesn't matter but in the epic adventure that happened identities were revealed (its a good parent fentons so no adoption) and at the end Batman says "If there is anything I can do to return the favor let me know."

And Danny responds with "Actually there is something but it's something Bruce Wayne is better suited for."

Danny then goes on to explain what happened with Cujo and Valeries dad and how he's pretty sure that the way he was fired is illegal in some way. Now he's not asking for you to try to sue these guys but if Maybe you were able to offer him a job with a living wage so that Val doesn't have to stress so much since Danny can't do anything to fix this himself.

Bruce who had already planned to open some form of Wayne Tech branch in Amity to give him an excuse to be seen there if it was ever necessary just says he'll see what he can do.

So Damon Gray (also I love how he has such a similar name to a bat) gets a call from a Wayne tech hiring manager saying that they are opening a location in Amity and would like to interview him for a position. Damian gets the past the initial interview but he has to go to Gotham for a few weeks foe relevant training etc.

Obviously Valerie has to go with him so they pack up and are off on this all expenses paid trip with a bigger paycheck at the end to look forward to.

Now obviously Bruce's kids notice what is happening and after he explains that a young hero he met asked for his help in setting things right that he doesn't have the resources to do himself. Of course the kids have to meet the family that this (rather impressive from what Bruce was saying, which is not biased by him looking like he could be one of his kids no way) hero gave up a favor from the Batman for so they "just so happen" to stumble upon the two and in true batfam manner convince the tour guide to let them tag along.

Now here is where things get fun so depending on which bat you choose obviously determines who's all there as if you choose Dick then the only other bat's of that age would be young Jason and maybe Barbara if you drag her in. Now me personally I think the best choices are Damian who's not my favorite for this as I think Val would find it weird to date a guy who has such a similar name as her dad one of either Cass or Steph and while that could be fun i think the only Bat boy who as far as I'm aware has not had a badass vigilante girlfriend who can snap him like a twig so far is Duke.

Now some other reasons I think it might be fun for Duke and Val as a couple is maybe he can see the changes her red huntress suit causes to her with his powers thus leading to that initial curiosity that causes him to spend more time with her to get to the bottom of it.

Maybe she asks one of the Wayne's if they know somewhere she can get a good spar and the others sacrifice Duke as he's got the least experience under his belt (not saying he's a bad fighter but some of these bats have been fighting since before puberty) since they assume she's just a standard civi. He tries to hold back since again civi, but she knocks him on his ass before he can react before saying she probably should have mentioned being a black belt.

Just think of all the cute moments they could have together.

One interaction I thought of for after they know each other's vigilante identity and val learns Danny is why Bruce reached out to her Dad. (She knows he is Phantom in this)

"So that dork went out of his way to ask Batman for help even after I finally pulled my head out of my ass to see it wasn't his fault? Of course he still feels guilty over it, damn Martyr complex, we aren't even dating anymore!"

"You guys dated?"

"Yeah in civis while I was actively hunting him for revenge in our hero ids. Who dates a girl actively trying to kill you?!"

"Can't blame him."

"What?"

[catfern]

lap dog.

in support of palestine ∙ the reality of tlou ∙ resources

pairing: ellie williams x afab!reader x abby anderson

music: master of none - beach house

word count: 2k

summary: abby and ellie are best friends, never more. when you come into the picture, competition bleeds into something else entirely.

warnings: porn, ellabs, sub-ish!abby, sub-top!ellie, dom-ish!reader, marijuana use, got high and watched challengers this is what happened

fern says ⎯ this one goes out to @heavenbloom & @atyourmerci the only two pookies keeping me going at this point! rawr!

it was innocent, at first. you suppose.

a pit sinking in your stomach at the all-too-looming feeling of a foreign school, the kind smile offered was an olive branch. white teeth, skin blemished only with the soft indents of a splattering of freckles and moles, it put you at ease. this definitively friendly tour guide.

“hey, m’abby.” the squeeze of her hand was gentle, but firm. practiced. her eyes on you felt like a studied gaze, a flicker over your body that made your ears burn, your name on her tongue a syrupy temptation. “i’m s’posed to show you around, so…”

you clung to abby, in your first few weeks. you would’ve felt bad, this dependence on your only friend growing, if she hadn’t returned the sentiment almost tenfold. 

hey

want coffee before class?

- abby

the blaring screen of your phone dunking on you like ice water, bleary eyes and a dopey smile typing a response in the early morning manufactured darkness of your dorm room. 

she’d show, fifteen minutes later, in all the gloried aftermath of her morning run, shoving the iced latte at you with easy conversation. she’d wait on your bed while you dressed, poorly pretending to be wildly interested in her instagram explore page.

ellie happened later.

“she hot?”

“i don’t wanna answer that.”

the ball hits the roof, before bouncing with a mean thwack into the tangle of abby’s hair. ellie pulls herself up on the bed, teetering on her tired forearms with a servile smile. “come on,”  the rasp in her voice gives her a malignant edge, “objectively, is she hot?”

abby looks at her, swallowed in her gaze even from across the room. she rolls her eyes before returning to roughly running a brush through her hair, “she’s nice.”

“fucking prude!” the palm of ellie’s hand comes down like a rough punishment, a sting on the sculpt of abby’s shoulder that rings a small wince. her laugh is complimentary, “what? she a secret or something?”

abby shakes her roommate’s sliding hands off her, fighting her languid, teasing embrace, “no, no, she’s just- i dunno.”

a light hum fills the quick silence in the air, ellie pulls away.

“i wanna meet her.”

“what? ellie —“ abby whips around quick, something akin to a firm, stubborn fear tracing her face, “no. no.”

you shift on the floor, the scratchy carpet under your ass stinging with a strange itch. the joint is hanging weakly between ellie’s lips as she holds the lighter to it, off-handed smoke swirling and ebbing in the close air of the room. abby is sequestered on her bed, trying her hardest not collapse in on herself.

you’re taking the joint from ellie, ellie. her iced gaze flickers between the both of you, something unrecognisable sitting, gnawing at her very soul.

“so,” smoke spills from your mouth, dripping from your lips like it never wanted to leave you. you hold the blunt, firm between two fingers as you trace your thoughts with your hand, “what is this?”

ellie laughs faintly, her eyes meeting the terror of abby’s briefly, before falling over the way you’re sat, cross legged, the thin fabric of pyjama shorts riding up your thigh. her laugh is dopey, saccharine laced with a bite, “what d’ya mean?”

you’re pinned, like a dead butterfly behind glass, inspected. abby leans forward, a pique of interest crawling up her spine, her elbows digging nasty red welts into her knees. they both, as if practiced, stare, like careful animals on the other side of a zoo exhibit fence. they know they cannot touch you, but they deign still to think they can try.

 you laugh, something elevated, untouchable, bringing the joint back to your mouth, “you two — you seem, close.”

a shared look of panic and something deeper sets between them, ellie stretching her legs to knock yours as she plucks the joint from you, shooting abby a teasing glance. she pats the battered carpet next to her, “come on abs.”

the nickname is a taunt, an echo of some wild, buried intimacy that ellie wanted — needed  you to know. she’s answering your question, in a way.

abby slides off the bed, scooting over at her roommate’s beck and call. she takes the blunt tenderly, leaning back and letting ellie hold the lighter to her, the movement eased, familiar. she shakes her head, “we’re friends.”

you smile, lopsided, a low-flying buzz hanging in the air. your body loose, uncaring, as you canvas the look ellie has on her face. pensive.

“right.”

“what?”

“nothing, i just - i don’t believe you.” 

“it’s true!” the laugh shared between them is something too close for comfort to be true, but abby persists, “we grew up together, we play tennis together, we’re friends.”

“well…” the soft abrade of ellie’s voice was a testament, a challenge. for you, it was a tantalising peak behind a curtain so well guarded, a piece of themselves so rarely shared. for abby, it was an unnecessary torment. she looks at ellie, she sees the competition in her eyes. abby knows the sting of shared desire, of the punishing hand of her best friend. the brunette pouts, studying her roommate’s look of resigned pleading, “come on! i think it’s a — it’s a cute story. abby had a little, teensy crush on me when we were kids.”

“oh fuck off!” the edge in the swell of abby’s voice demanded attention, commanded respect in the abhorrent violence of something unexpected. the closeness of the two sat thick, heady in the face of the thin layer of smoke in the air. ellie’s hand slips from her thigh.

a silence befalls the three of you, foreign and raw in the space of casualty. the air of times past is not lost on you, as you watch the humiliation creep through abby’s skin in red flushes. ellie’s advantage.

“i think it’s cute,” you muse with a misaligned shrug.

— a beat.

“really?” that changes everything, in a pathetic sort of way. abby has the eyes of a puppy, a tortured lap dog as she looks at you, wide and wild, tamed on your word. a certain honey of victory sits in her stomach.

“yeah, i mean -“ you laugh, such an ardent reminder of their own pursuits of you, fresh and recognisable. of who stands on their feet, and who kneels before them. “i just don’t intend to be a homewrecker.”

“we’re not together.” they choir together in rehearsed concordance, in defence of themselves. strange, how their voices melt together in a harmony so well matched.

you hum, as if to challenge them quietly, before standing. the stretch of your legs provides a curious path, their gazes dripping upwards of you like forlorn magnets, drawn to your body. you look down on them with a quirk of your brow, pulling your pj shorts to rest higher on your hips, before perching yourself on the edge of ellie’s bed.

they look at you as if they had just lost you, something childishly snoopy glinting, matched, in their eyes. your hands run along the scratch of ellie’s bedsheets, exploring, before you pat either side of you, gently.

in a scramble, they pull themselves to your side, infringing on your summoning. ellie pressed to your left, abby to your right, inescapable, the both of them.

you meet abby’s gaze, swallowed nearly in the startling kindness of the blue of her iris. she looks so meagre, so shrunken and teetering on the edge of your existence, a planet in orbit of a raging star.

gently, with the softness you label so deserving of her, your hands wander, pulling her in, letting the chasteness of her lips fall away into a fevered triumph, the taste of the salt of her lips and the bitterness of the weed a chaser to her touch.

ellie, sat so humbly, waits in a quiet, angry defeat, her fingers ghosting the edge of your bare thigh. oh, to be the only child, so unused to sharing. impatient and derivative, she almost whines, a soft call for your attention. you answer, to the surprise of both, abby’s taste still on your lips, something so familiar.

she’s more callous than the girl she so aptly loves and despises, her movements quick and domineering as she seeks to own you. abby, tasting you and wanton for nothing, slips down to the stretch of your neck, pressing her kindness into your skin with the pliant pull of her teeth.

ellie’s hands are needy creatures, pulling over you like the ebb and flow of a vicious tide, snaking up your shirt for just a taste.

“..fuck.” your heavy breath fills the room like smoke, a complying pass for her to tease the stretch of her fingers under the waistband of your shorts. control was just a fleeting delusion, your hand grabbing at the bone of her wrist, “come on, let her go first.”

ellie, once again left waiting; abby, so all consumed with the pulse of your neck, is despondent, desperate, her breath shaky in your ear as her hand slips beneath the fabric, a soft groan dripping from her lips at the velvet of your walls enveloping her.

she’s slow, languid and unpracticed with her indigent circles around your clit. a sweet intoxication hanging heavy in the air, you laugh, coy and soft and somewhat mean. you had thought abby bigger, more unobtainable than she really was.

here, she is human. here, she bares her unspoken inexperience.

you pull a desperate, evil ellie from the swirl of your tit, so keen to pull your attention away. your thumb mindlessly swipes along the hang of her bottom lip, her breath warm and savouring in your sunlight.

“y’know what to do?” ellie nods into the palm of your hand, eager to show off, to please. “teach her.”

leaning up on the back of your elbows, you watch through a half-lidded honeyed gaze as ellie slinks down, conflicted. a certain affection in her touch, deeper than that of anything else, she finds abby’s fingers in the heat of your legs, leading them along the strings of your impulse.

a shaky moan leaves abby’s lips, the callous of ellie’s fingers along her own a dream unfounded. she can feel the press of her chest against her back, her breath in her ear, her chin on her shoulder. this was not unlike of them, not a foreign feeling, but new, still. the need in ellie’s throat is rotted, estranged to her touch.

they assess you on the bed, like an experiment. the arch of your back is artwork along the ripple of the sheets.

“go slow, you see that?” ellie’s voice is low in abby’s ear, tracing the breathy moans you drip beneath them. “just like that — good, abs. good girl.”

ellie’s hand slips from abby’s, running your slick along her arm, your thigh, a trail up your stomach as she comes to palm your tits, her mouth finding your neck, biting down on your wicked pulse in such difference to the other.

abby is lost, chasing feelings that no longer belong to her. she watches you writhe under her touch, under ellie’s touch. something wanting sits in her throat, unknown to her.

ellie is her best friend. but this — mean competition abandoned, this is something else. something buried, aged, ready to rear its head.

the blonde brings her lips to the dip of your stomach, pressing a soft trail up the curve of your hips. unsure of what she wants, what she’s looking for on the crest of your body, she presses the crook of her nose into your naval, her fingers burning, picking up their speed.

ellie comes to her, drawn to her like to her a flame. pressing a kiss to the curve of your breast, she finds the cotton of her friend’s lips so easily, as if fated. messily, they meet along the plume of your ribcage, you, an instrument for their own aches. esoteric, their tongues swirl on your skin, on their lips, tracing each other as if they had never known the other at all.

like dogs tugging at meat with the bare of their teeth.

homewrecker, indeed.

⎯ kofi

taglist; @whore4abby @endureher @beemillss @afraidofheightss @sentimentalyellow