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idiopath-fic-smile · 11 months

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more Singin' in the Rain ot3, now on the honeymoon boat

part one

part two

The ship was a grand one. Cosmo, whose nautical knowledge began and ended with that Douglas Fairbanks picture about pirates, could tell that much. There was a majestic dining room and a wide, clean promenade and state-of-the-art engines that would get them to Europe in just a few days. The dining room even featured a four-piece band, who were a little stiff but not half bad.

His room, his island of privacy away from Don and Kathy and their combined magnetic pull, was bigger than he expected, well-appointed. It went a little overboard embracing an Egyptian theme, although the decorators had tastefully stopped short of including an actual mummy in a giant stone sarcophagus. He was grateful for that. The piano, as promised, sat in the place of where a desk might normally be, keys gleaming invitingly.

There was just one problem.

“How,” said Cosmo, dropping onto the bed, “did you manage to accidentally book us two adjoining rooms?”

“I’m sorry,” said Don, crossing his arms. “There must’ve been a mix-up at the offices.”

“Maybe the travel agent heard wrong on the telephone,” said Kathy. She rubbed Don’s back consolingly. Don shot her a grateful look. It was all very sweet, probably.

“How?” said Cosmo again. “Nothing sounds like ‘adjoining.’ It doesn’t even have a rhyme.”

“Are you certain?” said Kathy.

Cosmo nodded; he’d already run through the alphabet, twice. “The closest I can get to is ‘disappointing.’” Don was leaning into Kathy’s back rub like a cat, but his face was full of uncatlike guilt. “Don,” said Cosmo, “look, pal, I appreciate the free ticket, but please tell me you’ll fix this.”

“I already talked to the cruise director and there aren’t other rooms,” said Don. “We’re out in the ocean, what do you want me to do, alert the coast guard?”

“Alert the coast guard,” said Cosmo, “flag down a passing mermaid, strike a bargain with Poseidon himself!”

“Who?” said Don.

“The Greek god of the sea,” said Kathy, like that was the important part.

“I don’t speak any Greek,” Don replied, “do you?”

“I will swim to shore,” Cosmo said, to nobody in particular.

“We can swap over to a different ship when we get to port if we need to,” said Don, shoulders slumping uncharacteristically. He must’ve felt worse about his screw-up than he let on. “In the meantime, the door locks from both sides, so—”

“I’m not—worried that you’ll barge in at all hours pestering me for a cup of sugar,” Cosmo broke in.

Don blinked. Kathy went very still beside him.

Out loud, it sounded more suggestive than he’d meant. Why had he picked sugar, the sauciest ingredient of the baking world?

“Or flour,” he amended.

“Then what’s the trouble?”

“I.” Cosmo sighed. “Why am I the only person in this room who seems to know what a honeymoon is for?”

“Why,” said Don, wide-eyed, “what’s it for?”

“D’you think, if I jumped in the sea and started paddling now—” said Cosmo.

“Don’t worry,” said Kathy. “Don and I can be very quiet.”

And the trouble was, this was worse. The prospect of hearing them from the other side of a single thin door was one thing, and honestly it was plenty bad—Cosmo had played a role during several key moments of their courtship but at least he could say he didn’t know what they sounded like in the throes of passion—but for reasons that Cosmo did not feel like examining, the thought of them stifling themselves in the act, the thought of them naked in bed together, touching each other, biting down on a giggle or a moan, and whispering, ‘Shh, don’t wake Cosmo,’ made him feel like his whole stomach was a sore tooth.

“Don’t put yourselves out on my account,” he told them. Belatedly, he realized that was maybe the worst thing he could’ve said. He blushed, and then he stood, face still flaming—Damn his Irish complexion—nodded to them both, and fled to the promenade.

The ocean stretched in all directions as far as Cosmo could see. It was dizzying, and also strangely calming. He stared out at the waves and reminded himself, hardly for the first time, that it wasn’t Don’s fault how Cosmo felt about him. It wasn’t Don’s fault, and it wasn’t Kathy’s fault that she was maybe the most charming woman he’d ever met. You could certainly blame Don for booking the rooms, for not double-checking over the telephone, but there was no malice to it. They were both, at the end of the day, wonderful people who had decided to open this trip up to him for whatever reason, and besides, his bed was piled with any number of pillows he could jam over his head if they did make noise at night.

He stood there holding onto the railing for a long time. Eventually, he heard footsteps behind him.

“Feeling better?” said Don quietly, almost lost under the roar of the water. Without really trying to, Cosmo turned to look at him. Under his coat, Don was wearing a nicer suit than before, and the color had returned to his face. He looked—well, he looked like a handsome movie star married to a gorgeous starlet. Don took a few steps and rested his hands next to Cosmo’s on the rail.

“It’s the salt air, I think,” said Cosmo, nodding. “Feels like I could do anything. Why, I might write another musical, wear my trousers baggy, become a pirate.”

“Your trousers are fine as is,” said Don.

Cosmo shrugged. “A little change can be good.”

“Sure, unless it isn’t.” Don sighed. It was an awfully sad sigh to be having about the fit of a guy’s pants, Cosmo thought, but then Don turned to him and added, “You know, we really have missed you.”

“Don,” said Cosmo patiently. “I was at your house this Thursday. I stayed for three hours. I drank all your gin.”

Don didn’t make a crack about the gin, which was probably a bad sign. “And before that?”

Before that, it had been a while. Cosmo winced inwardly. “I’ve been busy,” he said, “you’ve been busy, Kathy’s been busy—”

“We invited you over, four different times,” Don interjected. “If I’ve done something, if we’ve done something, I wish you would just tell us.”

In front of them, the sea rolled and rolled. Cosmo thought about deflection, about twisting the moment into a joke, a sword duel where cold steel met only an outstretched rubber chicken: squeak.

He let out a long breath. “Why the Hell did you bring me along on your honeymoon?”

“We brought you along because we wanted you along,” said Don. “Whenever you’re not there, we wish you were. It doesn’t need to be any harder than that.”

“So it isn’t…” Cosmo started.

“What?” “You and Kathy aren’t having problems? Hoping for a buffer, or a distraction?” It was a very new theory on Cosmo’s part, and once the words had left his mouth, he realized how badly they fit the facts at hand.

Don smiled a private little smile. “Me and Kathy are doing just marvelously.”

“That’s splendid,” said Cosmo, because he had to say something, apparently. Marvelous didn’t bode well for Cosmo’s sanity at night, but it beat his friends being sad. “Lovely.” He let his cadences drift into a so-so British accent. “Capital show, old sport. Tip-top. Simpy spiffing.” Not his best work.

Don lay a hand on Cosmo’s coat sleeve, at the elbow. “Do you want to come to dinner with us?” he said. “It’s meant to be a formal affair but you’ve still got time to change.”

Whenever you’re not here, we wish you were. Obviously, Don didn’t mean “whenever” in the strictest sense—Cosmo got the feeling he was not present in Don’s mind, say, when Don was in bed with his beautiful wife—but the thought now made him feel warmer than the gin had. It would be enough. It had to be.

“Sure,” said Cosmo, “why not,” and Don thumped him encouragingly on the back.

“Cosmo,” said Don as they headed back into the body of the boat, “piracy, really?” Cosmo grinned. “Don’t blame me, blame that salt air. Makes a man feel like anything’s possible.”

Kathy and Don looked enchanting at dinner, and Cosmo cleaned up alright too, if he didn’t say so himself.

The food was good—salmon with hollandaise sauce and French beans, braised duckling with apple sauce, some fancy beef thing, salad Dumas and ice cream for dessert—and the band had relaxed a smidge and was playing something from this century, which was nice.

Over dessert, Kathy told them about how, one night several months before meeting Don, she’d been at a speakeasy during what turned out to be a police raid.

“What were you doing in a speakeasy?” Cosmo asked before he could stop to think about it.

“Why, drinking milk and reading Austen, of course,” she replied, a picture of guilelessness. Don snickered, and she grinned.

“I walked full-speed into that one,” said Cosmo.

“Buddy, you ran,” said Don.

“I was drinking,” Kathy acknowledged, nodding, “but really that’s where the best dancing is. The best music, too.”

Cosmo, who lately only drank at parties or at home because it was easier and safer, nodded thoughtfully.

“Hot jazz?”

“The hottest, at least in Los Angeles. Once we’re back, we should all go!”

“I could always stand to take in more culture,” said Cosmo.

“Oh no,” said Don, “don’t let her pull you into her sordid past. Did you forget the end of the story is ‘and then the police came?’”

“That’s more the middle,” said Kathy. “Well, middle-end.”

“So how’d you escape the reaching arm of the law?” Cosmo asked.

Kathy swallowed her ice cream. “I saw the police were all rushing in through the front door, and I dashed to the back and through the performers’ dressing room. I’d done makeup for some of my school plays, so I fought my way up to the mirror, grabbed a grease pencil—a few lines here, a few lines there—borrowed an old coat of the back of a chair, ran maybe half a block, and pretended to be an old lady.”

“Really,” said Cosmo.

“It’s mostly in the walk and the posture,” she said. “And it helps that a few of the street lights were out.”

“And the cops were fooled?”

“One of them asked me if I’d seen any young people running that way,” said Kathy.

Cosmo clapped his hands together with glee. “Don, you married a criminal mastermind! Never make her angry.”

Don wrapped an arm around her shoulders and flashed her a besotted look. “I don’t intend to.”

Kathy nestled into the half-embrace. “Tell me more about—was it Coyoteville? With the ventriloquist.”

“Dead Man’s Fang,” said Cosmo. “And your wish is my command, but I don’t know what else there is to say. We came, we saw, we lost our sleeping arrangements to a puppet.”

“He tucked it in that night, remember?” said Don suddenly.

“He did!” said Cosmo, delighted.

Sometimes when Don started in on the official line about how they’d studied at the conservatory and the rest of that baloney, Cosmo worried that some part of Don believed it, that it was Cosmo’s job alone to remember how long they’d traveled that strange, bumpy, often farcical road together towards some measure of success and respectability in Hollywood. But Cosmo had completely forgotten that particular detail. He had burned it from his mind.

“After he fell asleep, one of you might have moved the dummy and claimed that bed,” Kathy pointed out.

“He left it with the head turned facing us, eyes open,” said Don. “Neither of us were touching that thing.”

“So instead, Cosmo had to put up with Don all night,” said Kathy solemnly.

“So instead, I had to put up with Don all night.”

He could still recall the potent mix of resignation, terror, and guilty excitement he’d felt, huddling up on that mattress together. Their act at the time had involved being in close quarters a lot—at one point, the choreography had Cosmo leap onto Don’s back and then immediately continue playing the fiddle—so it wasn’t like touching Don was a novelty, back then. But doing it offstage, out of costume, away from any onlookers except for Esther Quill the ventriloquist dummy, it had felt like an entirely different proposition.

Don had been a real champ about it, though. When Cosmo had started shaking with withheld hilarity that this was his life, the punchline of all punchlines and nobody to share it with, not just Don’s best friend but his literal bedwarmer, Don had clearly assumed it was a simple case of the shivers, and so he’d bundled Cosmo close, tucked Cosmo’s head under his chin, and wrapped his arms around him, muttering warm in his ear about how if Cosmo dropped dead, Don was out a dance partner “and that whole routine wouldn’t work as a solo number, it’d go over like a brick.”

“Just imagine what barnyard animal they’d have you opening for then,” Cosmo had whispered back, because Oatmeal, Nebraska had already happened to them. “A pig who juggles. A cow acrobat. A chicken magician. Just a little sleight of wing, folks, nothing up my feathers.”

And Don had laughed, and held Cosmo tighter, and the ventriloquist had shushed them, which had made them both crack up again. It had been a long night, and not one Cosmo would forget in a hurry.

“Who runs hot as a Holland furnace, let me tell you,” he added now, in case his tone had shifted a few shades too close to dreamy.

“Oh, I know,” said Kathy, smiling.

Don raised an accusing finger at him. “Well, you were shaking like a leaf! You’re lucky I was there, especially when we didn’t have so much as a sheet of our own!”

“Wait, why didn’t you have any blankets?” asked Kathy.

“The blankets,” said Don airily, “were for the puppet.”

And so dinner had been a joy, and after that, Don and Kathy invited him back to their room for a drink or two, because they’d had the common sense to bring alcohol, which was of course not offered by the cruise. The three of them sat on Don and Kathy’s bed (much bigger than Cosmo’s—not that he was jealous, he didn’t need the space, but the sheer expanse of mattress really did rival a small country, and Cosmo was determined not to picture in any detail how the two newlyweds might make use of that) and passed a flask around and had some more laughs and when Cosmo next got a glimpse of his watch, it was three in the morning.

“I should go,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” said Kathy. She’d shucked off her heels at some point and now her stocking feet were in Cosmo’s lap. Don sat on her other side, head on her shoulder. He’d loosened his tie early on, and his suitcoat was draped over one of the bedposts. While they were drinking, it had all felt very natural. Looking at them now, Cosmo had the sense he was intruding on something private, something intimate.

Granted, they weren’t exactly trying to kick him out, but Kathy was drunk, or tired, or else she was both drunk and tired, and it was up to Cosmo not to outstay his welcome. They had a whole two weeks together, after all, and their rooms were barely a wall apart.

“My regrets, Cinderella,” said Cosmo, “but I can feel myself turning back into a pumpkin.”

He made as if to stand, but her feet were in the way. Very gently, he picked up her ankles, lifted them off his legs, stood, turned her like they were doing some sort of a dance move, and deposited her feet in Don’s lap instead.

“There,” he said to no one.

A long pause followed. Don and Kathy blinked up at him. He sorely regretted moving her. It had seemed like the most elegant solution. Probably he should’ve found one that didn’t involve taking hold of her legs, skin warm through the thin layer of nylon–

Kathy’s brow furrowed. “What makes you the carriage?” she said at last.

“What?” said Cosmo, who really did need to make an exit.

“Cinderella,” said Don, apparently reading her mind, which was swell for them.

“Better that than the mouse footman,” Cosmo told her. “Or the lizard coachman. Or the horse.” Or—who else? There were a lot of characters in Cinderella, he realized.

“There’s a prince in that story, Cosmo,” said Kathy. “A human prince.”

“Yes,” said Cosmo, patiently, “and you’re married to him, your highness,” He sketched a little bow but Don and Kathy weren’t looking at him. They were having one of those silent couple conversations, with mostly their eyes and eyebrows. A career in movies before the advent of sound had probably given Don a real advantage in that department, Cosmo thought, although Kathy seemed to be holding her own.

“It’s a made-up fairytale,” Kathy said at last. “Why, it can go any way you want it to.”

“The lady’s got a point,” said Don.

Cosmo blinked. He knew how it sounded, knew that to the untrained ear, it certainly—there were overtones, or undertones, or just plain tones that vibrated with suggestion. Cosmo had grown up in Vaudeville and now he lived in Hollywood; these things happened every now and then. These things did not happen to Cosmo. He was good for a dance or a laugh, and nine times out of ten, that was enough for him, but he wasn’t exactly fending off amorous advances—not like Don, and probably not like Kathy, either.

Also, Don liked women. Don only liked women, as far as Cosmo knew, and they had lived out of each other’s pockets for years.

The fact that a late-night ménage à trois rendezvous was increasingly the only explanation that held water in his head—it said more about Cosmo’s fragile mental state than it did about Don and Kathy’s true motives, he decided.

Don and Kathy who were still sitting on the bed, waiting for some sort of response.

“I wouldn’t, uh,” Cosmo started, and then realized with a stab of panic that for once, he didn’t have a joke in the wings, waiting to go. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said.

“You said earlier today you might become a pirate,” Don offered. Kathy cuddled up close against his side, watching with bright, intent eyes. He wrapped an arm around her waist. “Enter pirate, stage left.”

“I said I was thinking about it,” said Cosmo, trying not to sound affected and missing by a mile. “A fella can think about all kinds of things he wouldn’t do.”

Case in point: Cosmo was not about to climb back into bed with them, no matter how cozy that bed was, no matter how warm and inviting and beautiful the two of them looked together.

His hands were starting to shake, he realized, and if Don saw that, and past experience was any judge, Cosmo might spend the night being cuddled for warmth again. What was Cosmo’s life? He didn’t go in for horoscopes, but maybe he should’ve, maybe that was the key to understanding the whole puzzle: Cosmo Brown, born under the one constellation that resembled clown shoes. He swallowed back a hysterical laugh and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Why not?” said Kathy quietly.

Because he didn’t want to ruin his oldest friendship and his most promising new one, all in a single go. Because he hated rejection, and the thought of two no’s that close together made his head spin unpleasantly. Because then there would be no more innocent touches and smiles and nightcaps in Don and Kathy’s room.

That wasn’t what she’d asked, though. Mentally, he shook himself.

“If everyone who thought about being a pirate became one, the whole US of A would fall apart,” Cosmo informed them. “Nobody would work, or pay taxes, or go to see films. Not to mention the national parrot shortage—just try to get ahold of birdseed anymore! There’d be a run on eyepatches and tri-corner hats, and the price of a simple pirate earring would shoot through the roof, in fact—”

“It’d cost a buccaneer,” Don filled in. He sounded almost sad, which was a mystery because that bit was evergreen.

“That’s right,” said Cosmo. He rocked back onto his heels, at a loss for a moment. He’d really been counting on that joke to clear the air.

“Cosmo,” said Kathy. “Do you want to go, or do you want to want to go?”

Cosmo struggled to make sense of that. He struggled to parse it in a way that worked outside his own feverish imagination. His entire mind came up short. That was where it got you, going on the road with only an eighth grade education, he thought. His was a cautionary tale.

Maybe ninth grade was where they taught you how not to twist a moment in your head to the point where it really did seem like maybe Cosmo could’ve kissed either of them, could’ve kissed both of them, and it would’ve been fine, or even more than fine. Maybe it was that, and Dickens, and Geography; Cosmo still could not locate Siam on a map. Or Paris. Come to think of it, ménage à trois and rendezvous were the only French he knew besides bonjour. This time, he did laugh. It was that or scream.

“I am both too drunk, and not drunk enough for this talk,” he said, turning for the door that led directly back to his room.

“If you’d rather stay—” said Don.

“Of course I’d rather stay, Don,” Cosmo snapped, sharper than he’d meant to. “But leave me enough dignity to fill half a shotglass, at least.” Don and Kathy said nothing. When he got to the door, he sighed. “Sorry, that was—I’m sorry. See you at breakfast.” “Goodnight,” said Kathy.

Alone in his room, Cosmo closed the door and ran his hands through his hair. Pirates in Cinderella, he thought. Offers to stay, with his room not 30 paces away, at three hours past midnight. Maybe it would all make sense in the morning.

#singin in the rain ot3

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hanafubukki · 10 months

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So my friend said she was gonna date the next card she pulled and that gave me the brainworms tm

OT3 obv

But what is nrc did a raffle and had a date with mc up. Who buys tickets, who tries to rig it, and when did melanoa get here

Pls chaos to the max

[Masterlist]

Hello Ladyzsgolla🌻🌺🌷

Okay, but you need to tell me what card your friend pulled and who she ended up dating 😂🫶

Please, this brought back so many memories of the times where this type of trope would pop up in books and shoujo romances. The chaos is always always hilarious as it is and then we add in the diasomnia crew? NRC can’t catch a break.

The only way YN ended up in the auction is because Crowley somehow tricked them or set them up because I doubt certain people would let it happen.

At one point, I think diasomnia squad would be, “Want a date with YN? Fight me.”

You sighed as you stared at the chaos in front of you. You don’t know how you ended up in this situation, but you were sure Crowley had something to do with it.

Unsurprisingly, Sam and Fellow Honest had convinced the headmaster about having a festival to raise school funds. Azul had also supported the idea for monetary gain and knew what buttons to push.

But a date auction? With you? You wondered who came up with that daring idea.

Honestly, you were surprised at the amount of people trying to win a date with you, especially given your connections and your relationship status.

Though you wouldn’t be surprised if some didn’t know or were using this opportunity to get info about others. You were pretty sure some were doing it just for shits and giggles too.

Well you weren’t worried, at this point, the bets mostly came down to your friends and family having a higher chance of winning.

…you wondered if you can get a participation fee, after all, you were the main prize and you should be able to get some of that money.

You didn’t need it of course, but you wanted to see certain capitalists suffer.

Lilia: You think you can win against me? I have centuries worth of madol.

Meleanor: You mean the money that I paid you? I can freeze your accounts. That prized date will be mine.

Lilia: Meleanor! When did you get here! Stay out of this!

Meleanor: Do you know me at all?

Malleus: I do have some money saved. I can take YN on a gargoyle exploration. It’s been a while since I last had a stroll with them.

Dawn: …I do have money set aside during my days as a commander. The interest on it should have reached a sizable fund.

Levan: The steward is going to cry again.

The riggers:

Sam, Azul, and Fellow are going to figure out a way to sell more tickets despite the odds against others. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain charms and even magic was used.

Other Betters:

Floyd and Jade: I can see them getting just to make the pool larger lol

Rook: He might find this type of challenge fun, especially with such a prize. He also has the money for it.

Idia: it depends how close you are with him and the date he would like honestly. He might just not do it because of the potential headache.

Leona: literally just to mess with diasomnia.

Kalim: he is having fun and thinks it’s going to a good cause. Jamil has to stop him of course at one point.

That poor steward/accountant of Briar Valley 🫡🤣

#answered #🌺Ladyzsgolla🌺#twst knight of dawn #twst knight of dawn x reader #twst knight of dawn x reader x lilia vanrouge #lilia vanrouge x reader #the knight of dawn #lilia vanrouge #meleanor draconia #levan draconia #general lilia vanrouge

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sparrow-in-the-field · 11 months

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My disappearance from this platform to then pop up sporadically and share a New Thought about rjk is unparalleled, but at this point I'm not gonna question it...

Anyway

Love the idea of ot3 newly dating and since Roy is kind of used to "hating" Jamie, and cuz he's kind of just bad at emotions in general, sometimes when Jamie does something cute or soft or sweet that pulls at Roy's heartstrings, he doesn't know what to do, so he just turns to Keeley with a confusingly pained expression like "help."

She finds it very amusing.

For instance:

Roy going downstairs in the morning to find a very sleepy Jamie Tartt at the breakfast nook. He makes a remark like "you'd think you'd be used to waking up early after all of our training sessions."

And Jamie, messy hair in his face, cheeks swollen with sleep, eyes barely able to stay open, just mumbles "I was always tired those mornings, I just wanted to be good."

It's like a punch in the gut for Roy. The sweet sentiment of Jamie just wanting Roy to be proud of him combined with his soft sleepy features is too much. He's speechless, frozen. How the hell is he supposed to respond to that?

He turns to Keeley, who's also in the kitchen, watching the scene unfold. Makes eye contact, expression desperate. Help.

She chuckles at him, subtle enough that the still-very-out-of-it Jamie doesn't notice, and she shakes her head as she saves Roy's ass, speaking on his behalf, "That's very sweet of you, baby."

Jamie's sleepy enough he doesn't question where the praise is coming from, he's just happy to receive it. Gives a soft hum of acknowledgement and takes a sip of his tea, none the wiser to the torment he's put his boyfriend through.

#jamie tartt #roy jamie keeley #roy kent #ted lasso ot3 #keeley jones #roy x jamie x keeley #royjamiekeeley #hello it's been awhile #who knows when I'll be back again #years down the line I'll just randomly pop up to offer some ot3 fluff because i will always love them #fluff

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anto-pops · 1 year

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Mallowsweet Muses PART 3 - Sebastian Sallow/Ominis Gaunt/Female! Reader

Summary: Sebastian had been right all along... three heads really were better than two.

The OT3 sexcapades have arrived and now I’m gonna go crawl in a hole

Word Count: 4.3k

Warnings: 18+, aged up characters, explicit sexual content, F/M/M, polyamory, rough sex, gratuitous smut

Full fic can be found here on Ao3 ! Part 1 and Part 2 are linked here for anyone interested on Tumblr.

This wasn’t the first time you’d woken up with morning wood grinding lazily between your ass cheeks. Hell, with Sebastian around, it was pretty much a given. He was a snuggler through and through, intentionally stealing your warmth throughout the night like a leech, and when that was paired with his usual half-asleep, horny tendencies, well… like you said. Powerful morning wood.

It was, however, the first time you’d woken up sandwiched between two men. After Ominis and Sebastian had made good on their promise to ‘return the favor’ yesterday, the three of you had been too tired to bother trekking through the castle to return to your respective rooms. The large, spacious bed that Sebastian had conjured for your escapades served its purpose well, and all of you had opted to remain in the sanctity of the Undercroft in favor of returning to the dorms.

So waking up warm and cozy and stuffed between two dudes, one of whom was exactly one-third awake in the brain and two-thirds awake in his cock, was relatively new territory.

You shifted over in place between the two Slytherins, stretching your arms high above your head with a strained groan before you felt Sebastian’s arms snake around your waist, tugging you firmly against his bare chest. “Mm, good morning,” you muttered softly, doing your best to keep your voice low so as not to rouse the blond man inches away.

“Morning,” he murmured against the nape of your neck, and his breath tickled against your warm skin. He curled around you impossibly further, kicking one of his knees up to drape over your legs, and through hooded eyes you watched as Ominis stirred beside you, rolling over to face you and Sebastian.

The taller man cracked his eyes open, gracing you with the sight of his gorgeous, milky-blue irises as he blinked the sleep from his mind, and when his pale arm slithered out from under the covers to feel around for your hand, you met him halfway and intertwined your fingers with his own. “Good morning indeed,” he mused, his lyrical voice raspy with sleep.

You pulled gently on his arm, silently urging him to come closer, and he obliged you easily, sidling up directly against your front so that he could idly slip his arm over your waist. He followed the feeling of Sebastian’s arm when he felt him already holding you, trailing his heated palms down to the brunet’s slowly rocking hips. The drawn out gesture effectively trapped you in the middle of the man sandwich, and you were caged between the two radiating furnaces, nice and warm. The whole affair was akin to being stuck betwixt a rock and a hard place, but you weren’t about to start complaining.

Waking up with Sebastian at your back and Ominis pressed into your chest felt right. Ominis’ own knee hitched over yours and Sebastian’s tangled legs, and the way his wiry body conformed to the two of you was tantamount to perfection. All of it. All three of you.

You’d known yesterday when you and Sebastian invited Ominis into your duo that it was far more than ‘just a mere sex thing’. Ever since the events of your fifth-year, the three of you had overcome your struggles and found yourselves closer than ever. The comfort you felt amongst the longtime friends had made it even easier to fall in love with their contrasting personalities; Sebastian’s sharp, fiery nature worked brilliantly alongside Ominis’ softer, cooler demeanor.

You were beginning to realize you had a growing need for both, if you were being honest, and ‘just a sex thing’ couldn’t even begin to cover the affectionate warmth in your chest when Ominis hummed thoughtfully at your hands sliding up his smooth, alabaster chest.

“Anything planned for today?” Sebastian questioned from behind you, the lingering remnants of sleep drifting from his brain at the sight of your palms skirting up Ominis’ slender torso, and he buried his chin in the crook of your neck so he could participate in the languid touching. His freckled hands slipped up Ominis’ arm and across his bony shoulder to play with his shaggy, sleep-mussed hair, while the other tightened around your waist to press you solidly against his growing erection.

“No plans,” you whispered, dragging Ominis closer with your legs as you reached back to thread your fingers through Sebastian’s knotted bedhead, making your intentions to both men abundantly clear.

“No plans,” Ominis echoed, letting his eyes slide shut to dip his head down into the hollow of your collarbone, sucking at a fresh mark leftover from last night without even knowing it. Whether it was from him or Sebastian, you didn’t know. It was bracketed by light imprints of teeth, though, so it was likely the latter. You shivered at the attention, rolling your hips forward against Ominis’ and back into Sebastian’s.

Sebastian let his lips wander over the exposed, tantalizing stretch of your neck, brushing light kisses down the bruised expanse of skin. He and Ominis had certainly done their best to leave evidence behind in the midst of running you ragged the night prior. The two of them reverently got to work dotting your body with kisses and featherlight touches, and you sighed contentedly. Ominis’ head steadily rose higher until he felt Sebastian’s breath ghosting against your neck and his cheek, and when those eyes swirling with moonlight slid open, your freckled lover was pulling him by his hair against his lips with a throaty groan. Wiggling against them both, you swallowed thickly at the seductive sound of both men shamelessly making out right next to your ear.

Ominis must have heard you gulp if his breathy chuckle was any indication, and he pulled away from Sebastian with a soft nip at his lower lip before moving to kiss you too, tangling his tongue with yours lazily in time to his rocking hips. Grateful for the attention, your hand delved beneath the sheets to grip Ominis’ member, pleased to discover that he was standing at attention much like Sebastian, and he moaned into your mouth at the testing pump you bestowed upon him.

Sebastian was practically vibrating with need as he ground his cock against your backside more firmly, spurred on by the barely there sound of you sighing and Ominis’ groans of blatant pleasure. Reaching down to your lower half, Sebastian’s fingers slipped through your folds gently, pulling a startled gasp from your lips that Ominis swallowed fervently, and then he was easing a crooked digit inside of you, already craving the tight heat around himself.

Ominis had gotten his turn for most of the night, aside from Sebastian fucking your open mouth until you’d been brainless and desperate– which was more than fine, mind– but he knew what he wanted right now, and he willed you to relax into his slow, steady thrusts. Sebastian twisted his finger inside of you, listening carefully to the hitch of your quickening breaths as you rode back into his easy rhythm.

“Hm, eager much?” Sebastian teased quietly, breathing a laugh against your flushed shoulder. All you could do was moan in response, pulling Ominis against you harder for a messy kiss as you jerked him off under the covers, and he groaned when your fist tightened around the head of his cock and twisted.

“Fuck–” he pulled away from your lips to grit through his clenched teeth. “D-Don’t do that.”

You couldn’t help it; you grinned wickedly at his reaction. “Why? Are you too sensitive first thing in the morning?”

Ominis swore softly when you punctuated the question with another dizzying squeeze around his tip, and his hand flew away from your waist to grip your wrist in a bid to get you to stop. “Yes,” he hissed, “and rather quick to finish after waking up, so forgive me if I’m trying to protect my ego here.”

Sebastian laughed over your shoulder, tentatively slipping a second finger inside your welcoming heat and curling it up in a teasing motion that had you trembling in his arms. “She’s a demanding little thing isn’t she? What, he didn’t do enough for you last night? That’s not what it looked like from where I was sitting, darling.”

You flushed brilliantly at the memory of Ominis’ overwhelmingly large cock breaching your walls for the first time, recalling the cries of delight that had spilled from your spit-slick lips before Sebastian had silenced you with his own neglected member to fuck your throat in earnest. The man in question felt you contract around his fingers, betraying your train of thought instantly, and he chuckled darkly into the crook of your neck.

“Please,” you choked out, sounding breathless and needy as Sebastian pumped his fingers in deeper, pressing the heel of his palm against your clit for extra measure. Ominis groaned at the sounds tumbling from your lips, every stuttered gasp pushing him closer to the brink of ‘fuck it’, especially with how your fist tightened a fraction around his cock from Sebastian’s ministrations.

“You’re going to have to give her something, Ominis,” Sebastian chidded his friend, arousal coating his every word. You shivered when his fingers slid out of you completely, whimpering as he adjusted the arm he had curled under you so that you were snug against his chest when he lined up the head of his cock with your slick entrance. “She’s asking so nicely,” he whispered the praise directly against the shell of your ear, and then he was pressing into you, slowly and tenderly.

You arched and moaned as Sebastian slid into you, filling you up far more than you’d anticipated, but you weren’t protesting in the slightest. Not when Sebastian grabbed your thigh to spread your legs open further, and definitely not when his cock grazed past your still-sensitive sweet spot, leaving you to pant loudly in Ominis’ direction.

Sebastian watched with rapt interest as Ominis audibly processed everything happening beside him, and the blond moved to sit up with his knees tucked under him. All the while, your hand stayed glued to his shaft; in part because you desperately wanted to taste him and also because he had yet to release his vice grip on your wrist. A small smirk curled over Ominis’ lips then as he instructed his friend, “Thrust a little.”

Sebastian quirked a brow and smiled, hitching your leg up higher and nuzzling behind your ear before giving you a few slow, firm thrusts. You melted against his chest, a keening sound ripping from your throat, and your hand around Ominis’ cock flew down to grip at his knee weakly. Ominis’ hand replaced yours, stroking himself a couple times under the guise of ‘planning’, before he was scooting up closer to the head of the bed.

“Do you think you can handle us both again, love?” Ominis purred, patting at the empty space between his legs in a silent command. Sebastian seemed to understand immediately what Ominis meant, and he rolled you over so you were flat on your stomach between the taller man’s long legs. He stayed sheathed in your all-encompassing heat as he sat up on his knees, gripping your hips to raise your ass invitingly before him, and you wriggled yourself onto your elbows so you could inch your way closer to Ominis’ achingly hard cock. You hastily took him in your hands once again, relishing in the soft hiss it pulled from the blond’s lips before he grit out, “I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

Sebastian pulled back before giving you a testing thrust, jolting you so that your face careened straight into Ominis’ thigh. Your breath caught in your throat, the sensation of Sebastian pushing into the deepest parts of you tantamount to perfection, and then you felt Ominis’ slender fingers gather a handful of hair at the nape of your neck to pull your face directly up to his cock.

Ominis swore softly when you angled the tip of his shaft down to press invitingly against your lips, immediately setting to work peppering soft kisses and featherlight strokes against him. You heard him groan, the sound guttural and tempting, and Sebastian’s own fingers dug into your waist at the spark of lust that shot through him at the sight.

From behind, he got a glorious view of your arched spine, and he was able to watch himself slide in and out of you greedily, his cock already glistening with your alluring slick. Ominis was one hell of a sight too; his head was tipped back against the headboard, blond locs falling into his flushed face, and those stunning eyes pinched shut with obvious desire when your warm mouth finally enveloped the head of his generous length, laving your tongue over the tip to taste the salty pre-cum beading there.

“Fuck,” Ominis cursed, his hold on the back of your head tightening just barely. “Merlin– that’s good–”

You sealed your lips around him firmly and sucked, curving your tongue through the slit in some vain attempt to coerce Ominis into giving you more. He groaned and obliged you, arching his hips forward at the same time he tugged you further onto his shaft by your hair, and his stomach tensed as he felt you open wider to take everything you were given, no problem.

Sebastian had been content watching the entire exchange, his hands squeezing gently at your ass in encouragement, but the tight heat wrapped around his cock was beginning to get to him. Hunching forward, the brunet ran the tips of his fingers fleetingly over your jaw in silent praise before sitting back on his heels again, his hands returning to your hips to hold you steady as he pulled out nearly all the way. His eyes darkened as he watched you stretch around him, eagerly rolling his hips back into your incredible cunt, and the sound you made around Ominis’ cock lit a fire in his blood.

Your muffled cries around Ominis’ massive length seemingly motivated all three of you, and Ominis found it in himself to dig his heels into the mattress before he pulled back to start gently fucking your mouth. Sebastian leaned over you and set an even rhythm, following your pleading little whimpers until he was pounding evenly into you, holding you by your waist with bruising strength that made your head spin. All the while, you continued to do the best you could around Ominis’ slowly-thrusting cock, hollowing your cheeks and working your tongue over him in a bid to pull him in deeper.

Ominis swallowed hesitantly, knowing damn well that the size of him was more than enough to gag you. But then he felt your arms around his waist tighten, and your nails dug favorably into the skin of his back to silently convey that under no uncertain terms did you want him to hold back.

With a trembling breath, Ominis readjusted his hold on your hair and thrusted his hips deeper, hitting the back of your throat with a growl, and the way you clenched around Sebastian’s thick cock all but confirmed how much you fucking loved it.

Sebastian grinned diabolically down at Ominis and licked his lips, whispering to catch the blond’s attention. Ominis leaned forward with an eager moan and let Sebastian guide their lips together, kissing him desperately while he fucked your throat. He moaned louder when he felt you gag slightly, and he started to pull back so you could take a breath, but your hand shot up to catch his hip, holding him in place while you swallowed around him, then choked on his girth.

“Fucking hell,” Ominis gasped, his thighs spasming on either side of you while his grip in your hair teetered on the brink of painful. He pulled back when you saw fit to let him, sliding out of your mouth slick with saliva and pre-cum. You pulled in a few frantic breaths, licking away the wet strands still stretched between your lips and Ominis’ cock, before you dove right back in and bobbed your head perfectly over his aching arousal. “Holy shit–” Ominis stammered, his head tipping back with an audible thunk against the wood frame.

“Showing off, darling?” Sebastian asked, panting slightly as he rammed harder into your phenomenally soaked heat, lifting one of his hands to slap your ass playfully once– then twice– and the sound echoed throughout the humid room around you. Moaning from the sting, the vibrations in your throat reverberated straight through Ominis, causing him to buck harder into your mouth as you began flicking your tongue over the sensitive spot just under the head.

“I’m not going to last like this– fuck–” Ominis mumbled an incoherent string of curses when a particularly forceful thrust from Sebastian pushed your nose into the sparse collection of hair under his navel, and your garbled cries were like music to both men’s ears before you pulled off with a shuddering gasp.

You spluttered through your swollen lips, “F-Fuck, Sebastian, right there right there–”

Sebastian groaned in response, giving you another quick slap before railing into you harder, driving his cock straight past your sweet spot in sharp, fast thrusts that left you boneless in Ominis’ lap. Your hands fisted in the sheets on either side of Ominis, tugging fitfully as you wailed out desperately for more.

Ominis sat back to listen intently again, completely entranced by how easily Sebastian was rutting into you, his brutal tempo never faltering as you writhed in earnest under him. With the way you sounded– so needy and shaky and overcome with euphoria– Ominis couldn’t decide if he wanted to fuck your mouth or kiss you again. He settled for jerking himself off quickly, listening as you buried your cries into the hollow of his bent leg, twisting and trembling with every rough pass of Sebastian’s cock.

Ominis managed to hold out just long enough, until your high pitched, incessant begging grew louder and louder, slurring out promises of “Close, close, I’m close–” just before you threw your head back to scream Sebastian’s name. The two men felt as every muscle in your body tensed under the relentless pounding, and you tightened impossibly further around Sebastian’s cock at the same time your legs began to quake violently beneath you.

Sebastian keened breathlessly at the feeling, pumping deeper into your pulsing heat until you were a moaning, shaky mess in his arms and you were finally coming around him. You sobbed as you fell apart at the seams, Sebastian’s hips continuing to piston into you as he fucked you through your climax, and he leaned forward to tug Ominis off the headboard, burying his sweaty forehead in the crook of the blond’s shoulder. Sebastian sank his teeth into the sensitive skin of Ominis’ neck, frantically sucking and biting to muffle his own needy sounds against the pale, marred flesh. Ominis could only gasp, the stinging pleasure working in tandem with the painfully hard strokes he bestowed upon himself, and when he felt your head shift off of his lap to mouth brainlessly at his sac, that cord in his stomach was wrought tight as a wire.

“Shit,” was all Ominis said in warning before his cock twitched tellingly against your cheek. Half-coherent, you found the strength to push yourself up so you could take all of him in your mouth, swallowing around him again and bobbing your head eagerly while one hand slid away from his hip to cradle his balls. “Gods– fuck, I’m close,” he gasped against Sebastian’s temple.

Sebastian’s voice was raspy as he murmured against the wet, bruising skin, “You going to come for her? Seems like she’s eager to swallow for you, right? Come on, Ominis, come for us both, I want to hear you.”

Something about the affection in Sebastian’s gravelly voice, encouraging and yet still so damn filthy, sent Ominis reeling over the edge, gasping and clawing at both of you. His sharp, choked moans filled the Undercroft, his fingers fisting back in your hair as he came right down your throat, unable to keep himself from holding you firm on his cock until he was milked completely dry.

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as Sebastian ruthlessly chased his own pleasure, ramming his cock into you with a mind-numbing pace that had your eyes rolling back in your head. When he finally came with a hoarse shout of your name, he buried himself to the hilt to grind his balls against the reddening skin of your ass, pulling away from Ominis to squeeze generously at the welting handprints that he had left behind. Your moan was stifled around the softening cock still in your mouth, the feeling of being filled from both ends leaving you blissfully high and numb to anything else.

After a few moments of labored breathing, you allowed Ominis to slide out of your mouth and licked your lips contentedly, having already swallowed everything he’d given you. Your pleased sigh filtered up to Ominis as you let your head collapse against his thigh, and his fingers were instantly smoothing out the unruly mess he had created atop your head in the throes of passion. Your eyes fluttered shut, finding it all too easy to get lost in the feeling of him playing with your hair.

On your other end, Sebastian took his sweet time pulling out– languidly withdrawing his cock to the very tip before pressing in again– effectively shoving his load deeper inside of you, and you groaned at the overstimulation.

“Merlin,” Sebastian groused as he finally removed himself from within your spasming walls, and you whimpered at the jarring sensation. Those broad, strong hands gingerly lowered you down to the mattress, limp as the day you were born, but you found the willpower to roll towards Ominis and shamelessly curl around his outstretched leg.

Ominis’ hand came to rest against your back, rubbing soothing circles there as Sebastian crawled his way up to you. He nuzzled into the nape of your neck, laughing softly under his breath as he propped himself up sideways on his elbow, and you craned your head back to fix him with a questioning look. “What are you laughing at?”

The tips of Sebastian’s fingers ghosted down the seductive curve of your waist, then trailed up the supple rise of your hip to press lightly against the finger shaped bruises that now decorated your side. “Nothing, just a random, stupid thought.”

Humming in amusement, you let one of your hands wander behind you to affectionately caress the sharp outline of Sebastian’s hip bones. “Care to share with the class?”

Ominis could hear the grin in his voice when he asked, “What’s that Italian dessert called? The one with the cream in the middle?”

Your brows slammed down in confusion at the same time Ominis’ head swiveled in the direction of Sebastian’s voice. The blond retorted before you could, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Come on, help me out here. She wanted to know, and this applies to the thought.”

Ominis huffed in exasperation, so you elected to entertain the freckled man, your body still too peacefully satisfied to let the random line of questioning shift your mood. “Tiramisu?”

Sebastian considered your suggestion, then shook his head, “No, not that one– the long pastry kind that’s folded over on itself.”

There was another brief pause before you offered, “A cannoli?”

“Yes, that’s the one! I thought that you were like a cannoli just now– getting stuffed from both ends. That’s what made me laugh.”

Ominis’ snort of horribly contained laughter had your face burning up in his lap, but even you couldn’t keep your giggles muffled for long. Sebastian shook his head, as though bewildered by his own stupid joke and lack of decorum, but that didn’t stop him from throwing himself down against the pillows, tangling his legs with your own before tugging at Ominis’ bony shoulder.

“That was quite possibly the dumbest thing you’ve said to date,” Ominis muttered as he let Sebastian pull him into your pile of limbs. You lifted your head to allow him the space to settle against the pillows, and once he had, Ominis was looping his arm under your neck to tug your head to his chest.

“I hardly think that joke wins first place,” Sebastian mused from behind you. “But now I am craving sweets. Anyone up for a trip to Hogsmeade?”

Groaning your protests against Ominis’ sternum, you rocked your head side to side, further disheveling the hair stuck to your damp forehead. “I think I’d rather go back to sleep. Maybe take a bath after– I haven’t decided yet. I can’t fathom leaving the room right now, though.”

Sebastian chuckled, leaning forward to tenderly press his lips to the smooth curve of your shoulder, and then he was peppering kisses up the bruised expanse of your neck until he reached your jaw. He playfully nipped at your thundering pulse while his hand sought out Ominis’, and as their fingers twined together, the brunet sighed heartily. “Sleep, then a bath, then Hogsmeade?”

“Works for me,” Ominis agreed quickly, already nestling himself deeper into the covers. The three of you shifted around easily, readjusting yourselves back into the loose, sweaty snuggle-pile that you’d woken up in, and it didn’t take long for sleep to creep over you once more. It was deeply satisfying to be sandwiched between the two Slytherin’s again, filling your heart with such fulfillment that you knew your thoughts from earlier had been strikingly correct.

Ominis was way more to you and Sebastian than ‘just a sex thing’. Later when your trio found itself locked in the Prefect bathroom– sneakily hoarding the spacious tub for yourselves– you and Sebastian shared a knowing look, happily finding yourselves on the same page. Because really, why the fuck not?

Covered in bubbles and love-bites alike, you and Sebastian then offered Ominis a different sort of invitation, and to your immense satisfaction, he accepted wholeheartedly.

#sebastian sallow x you #ominis gaunt x you #sebastian sallow x reader #ominis gaunt x reader #sebastian sallow x female! reader #ominis gaunt x female! reader #sebastian sallow smut #ominis gaunt smut #sebastian sallow x ominis gaunt x reader #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy fanfic #bisexual silver trio because those boys are NOT straight #my writing #f/m/m #if this is the post that takes me out it was nice knowing you all

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ragingbookdragon · 2 years

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A Buck's As Good As Any

Simon "Ghost" Riley x John "Soap" MacTavish x Reader

Word Count: 1.5K Warnings: Explicit Language, Mentions of blood and cleaning

Author's Note: @lazybutsmexy Sara inspired the OT3 and now we're all gonna fall into this hole together. :) -Thorne

**********************************************************************

It had bothered him for days, and Ghost knew it by the time he finally came to him and brought it up.

A mid-Wednesday afternoon, drizzling and dreary in Manchester like usual, Ghost was content to spend the entire day wrapped in the gray sheets and heavy comforter of their bed, resting up on all the sleep he never got whenever they were working. Soap had left the bed earlier a few hours ago to go shopping, only returning minutes after. He heard the footsteps coming the way to the bedroom.

“Do you think she left us and went back to the US because she was uncomfortable?”

Ghost cracked an eye open, staring at Soap who stood in the entrance. “Why?”

“Because she didn’t say ‘See you soon’ or anything. She just left. Didn’t wake us up.” He frowned. “She would’ve told us if she was uncomfortable being with us, wouldn’t she? I mean I know she said she wasn’t, but what if she was? What if maybe she felt like she was intruding on us? What if we didn’t—”

“You’re thinking too hard about it, Johnny,” Ghost muttered, shutting his eyes. “Relax. We’ll catch a flight Friday to the mountains to see her and ask her ourselves.”

“We are?” he asked.

“We’re gonna if it’s going to keep you from wanking all the time.”

“I am not wanking.”

“Wanking, whining, same thing.”

“You’re such an ass.”

***

“Is this…really where she lives when she’s not working?” Soap asked, staring at the small, cozy wood cabin.

Ghost nodded. “That’s what Price said. This is the address and from what the neighbors said, this is it.” He walked up the steps. “Her Dodge is here…maybe she’s home.” He knocked on the door, waiting for someone to answer, but after a few moments no one did and he knocked again. “She’s not home.”

“Where do you think she is?”

He shrugged. “Call her.”

Soap took out his phone, dialing her number; he stared at Ghost as it rang, impatiently tapping his foot until the line clicked. “Hello? Dame? Are you there?” He glanced at Ghost as a tapping echoed across the line. “Dame? She’s not answering.”

Ghost took the phone and put it on speaker. “Dame, single click yes, double no. Are you near your cabin.

Click.

“Are you injured?”

Click-click.

“Are you okay?”

Click.

“What are you doing?” Soap asked and Ghost glared at him.

“She’s obviously doing something where she can’t talk.”

Click.

“What the hell’s there to do here? We’re in the middle of nowhere?”

“We’re in the middle of a giant fucking forest, Johnny. What do you possibly think she could be doing if she wasn’t in town or in her house?”

Soap blinked. “Is she hunting maybe? Didn’t she mention a season or something on the last mission.”

Click.

“How long will you be, Dame? Less than an hour?”

Click.

Ghost nodded. “Are you almost done?” They awaited another click, yet it never came. “Dame? Are you—”

A crack echoed across the land and the two turned in the direction of the noise, watching a flock of birds escape the tops of the trees in the distance.

Her voice came over the line. “I’ll be back to the cabin in about ten minutes. Key’s underneath the third stepping stone in the rock garden.”

The line went dead and the two looked at one another before shrugging and finding the key.

***

They stood on the porch and waited for her to return, squinting into the distance as an ATV drove up the driveway and she pulled up, turning the engine off. “What are you boys up to over this side of the ocean?” she asked, slinging the rifle off her back to lay at the side of the four-wheeler. “Sorry I didn’t talk. This guy walked right in front of me when you called. I couldn’t risk him getting away.”

Ghost and Soap walked over, seeing the deer laying across the back of the ATV, a gunshot through its chest. They watched as she picked the buck up with a grunt and started carrying it to the shed behind the cabin; they followed.

“We were coming to talk,” Soap said, curiosity in his eyes as she opened the shed door with one hand, holding the deer’s feet with the other before dropping it inside. “Isn’t that heavy?”

“About one-fifty,” she said, shoving the metal hook through the deer’s back legs before she pulled away and hauled it up in the air. “So why did y’all come? Y’know I was gonna be back in a few weeks, right?”

“What?” his voice was pitched in confusion as she slid a bucket under the carcass.

“It’s hunting season here,” she muttered, wielding the cleaning knife with expert precision. “Step back, or you’ll get guts and blood on you.” Neither moved as she dug the knife into the deer’s chest, cutting cleanly all the way to its belly. “I tend to fly home during the seasons so I can shoot some game to have meat when I get back.”

They watched as she cleaned with skill, seemingly unbothered by the steam rising around them. The scent of blood was thick in the air and Soap had to step back outside to breath a little; Ghost remained. “What are y’all here to talk about?” Dame asked. “Can’t imagine it’s something unimportant since y’all flew halfway across the world.”

Before Soap could even say anything, Ghost deadpanned, “Johnny was afraid you were uncomfortable being in a relationship with both of us. That you were intruding. So, here we are.”

“Ghost!” Soap griped and she laughed.

“Oh no, I’m not uncomfortable boys,” she said. “Like I said, it’s hunting season. I had to get back to get a good buck before season ended. Can’t shoot bucks out of season or I’ll get fined and lose my license.”

“What’s a buck?”

“Male deer. Doe is a female,” she explained, pulling the deer by the leg to its antlers. “He’s about a thirteen pointer.” A grin pulled her lips. “Oh man, I can’t wait for Jackson to see this. He’s gonna shit a brick.”

“Who’s Jackson?” Soap asked, crossing his arms over his chest and she snickered.

“Easy there, boy, he’s an old friend of mine. And I say old because he’s seventy-five.”

“Oh…”

Ghost glared at him. “Will you quit being jealous? She’s not seeing anyone but us.”

“Don’t be so hard on him, Simon. He can’t help it.” She smiled at them. “This is going to take me an hour or so. Y’all go inside and get comfortable. It’s cold out here.”

Ghost didn’t have to be told twice, marching back up the way they’d come to go inside, yet Soap remained and she looked back at him.

“What’s wrong, darlin’?” she questioned, wiping her hands on the apron. “You’ve got thinking eyes on.”

Soap shifted his weight between his feet. “Are…are you sure you’re not uncomfortable with this?”

Dame sighed and set the knife down. “John, at first…I was. I didn’t feel like it was a good idea to come between, no, join you and Simon. It did feel like I was intruding in a relationship. But,” she said calmly, gazing at him with a softness. “I know that you feel the same about me that you feel about Simon. It’s how I feel about both of you and how he feels about us.” She made sure her hand was dry, even if it was covered in blood, and held it out for him to take; he did so. “I didn’t leave because I was uncomfortable. I left to come home and get things organized for next season.”

Soap frowned. “You only left a note. You didn’t wake us up.”

“I know,” she murmured. “And that’s on me. My flight left early, and I didn’t want to disturb you both. We three barely get enough sleep as it is.” She squeezed his hand. “Next time, I’ll wake you both up. I promise.”

“Next time,” he griped. “We’re coming with you.”

She laughed. “Alright, boy, if that’s how you feel about it.” Pulling away, she grabbed the knife again. “Now go inside, would you? I’ll be back in when I’m done.”

“Can Ghost and I go into town?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because without me, you’re gonna get in a bar fight with some good ole boys and I do not want to explain to Sheriff Doherty why my boyfriends beat the shit outta the entire bar.” When he said nothing, she turned, seeing him wearing a dopey smile. “What.”

“You called us your boyfriends.”

“Go inside or I’ll clean you with this knife next,” she threatened, waving the knife at him and he raised his hands in surrender.

“Fine, fine, lass, I’m goin’.”

As he turned, she called out, “John?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you and Ghost came to see me.” She smiled at him. “I missed you both.”

He smiled back at her. “We missed you.”

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bihansthot · 1 year

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Title: Guessing Game

Rating: Explicit (filth)

Pairing: Syzoth x f!reader & Bi-Han x f!reader, established OT3

Summary: Bi-Han and Syzoth play at naughty game of who’s who with you while you’re blindfolded and bound at their mercy.

Author’s Note: This is a rewrite of a Sub-Zero bros. Fic I did ages ago, but I added some things to it and padded it out a bit to make it hopefully a little better. It’s kind of short and filthy but hopefully something that will tide you lovelies over until I can find my creative inspiration again. As always please like, reblog and comment if you enjoyed it and don’t be scared to send me suggestions. I am just creatively bankrupt at the moment and need all the help I can get.

You’re bound and blindfolded, spread out on one of their beds, you can’t be sure whose it is, the room is full of an unsettling cold, so you assume it’s Bi-Han’s; Syzoth’s room is always more comfortable temperature-wise, albeit sometimes too warm for your liking. The bed is wonderfully plush, covered in soft as silk warm fur blankets; ones you know your lovers bought for you since they had no need, and soft feather pillows scattered everywhere. Luxuries you know the Lin Kuei shouldn’t have, but then again Bi-Han wasn’t exactly known for adhering to the rules, when you had his completion and kill count you didn’t have to. Not to mention he was Grandmaster now and if he wanted to spoil his lover he absolutely would do it in any way he saw fit, which he often did. You were more than happy to indulge in the spoils of his achievements, but you tried not to think of where they came from, just like you tried not to think of where the expensive and lavish presents he so often spoiled you with came from. You squirm in anticipation, the two of them had been teasing you for quite some time and you were a dripping wet mess, eager to get on with the night. You cry out as finally, you feel a cold, velvety cock slowly pushing into your soaking cunt. It feels so good, so perfect, like it was meant just for you, filling up every bit of your hole, rubbing against every sensitive nerve, so big, almost painfully so, but it was just right. You assume it’s Syzoth despite the cold, it’s too gentle to be Bi-Han, but that’s part of the thrill of the blindfold, you have no real way of knowing which one it is, but both are enough to make you shiver from desire and cold. You wouldn’t put it past the Saurian to spend time cuddling with Bi-Han first to drop his own body temperature so it would be harder for you to tell the difference between them.

Cold hands stroke your hip bones lovingly, allowing you to adjust to his length and girth, but otherwise not moving, and certainly not talking; that would give it away too easily. After a moment he pulls back slowly, until just the tip of their cock is inside you, teasing you with soft shallow strokes. Groaning softly he slides forward filling you completely again, taking his time, each thrust is slow and so deep, it’s driving you crazy.

“Mmm Ah! Syzoth!” You moan loudly, knowing your breath is coming out in condensed puffs; enjoying the slow, deep thrusting, completely unashamed by your volume, they had made you wait all night, and you were too worked up to care. You hear a deep chuckle, Bi-Han you figure; as two large hands grasp your breast, easily teasing your nipples to stiff peaks with their cold fingers. Rolling the nubs back and forth in time with the slow thrusts, pausing ever so slightly to pinch. You cry out shivering from the cold, arching your back desperate to feel more, and then all of a sudden you were empty, you curse loudly. “Stop fucking around,” you huff exasperatedly.

All you hear is that damn chuckle again, before you’re filled again, roughly this time, causing you to practically shout. There’s no pause to adjust, no gentle caresses, just a firm, cool grip on your hips as who you assume is the cryomancer pounds into you quickly and roughly.

He fucks you with no restraint, hard and fast each thrust pushing you closer and closer to tumbling over the edge, “B-bi-Han!” you cry out. You bite your lip trying to keep your teeth from chattering before you give up and cry out again, it’s so good you’re nearly shouting with each movement of his hips. “Shit. Shit. Shit! Fuck! There!’ you squeal as he hits your g-spot with each powerful thrust. “I-I’m so close! I-I, nnghhh Bi-Han!” you scream as you clench down around the alleged cryomancer’s rock-hard dick cumming hard. Your head drops to the side as your tongue lolls to the side, saliva dripping down your cheek as the waves of pleasure override your entire body. You whine and whimper as the pleasure won’t let up and you grip the well-muscled body atop you hard, your nails digging into the rock-hard flesh as you try and quiet your body. He lets you ride out your orgasm, your fluttering walls milking his cock for all its worth before pulling out, his breath labored as you hear him grasping his cock. You can just imagine the sight before you, Bi-Han’s gorgeous body hunched in anticipation, each one of his beautiful muscles tensed as he strokes his huge cock. There’s a choked-off noise and it makes you pause a moment, Bi-Han usually controls himself so well. You don’t stop to think about it long though as your tits are painted a beautiful white with his release. The cold, vicious liquid coating your full breasts in erratic spatters causing you to gasp and moan in satisfaction.

They give you only a moment to recover as you’re filled again and the slow, deep thrusts fill you once again. You arch your back and curl your toes as he rocks into your oversensitive body. “Mmm Sy, ahhh yes, ohh so good,” you praise him, each thrust can’t help but have you seeing stars, even though you had just cum, your body trembles, the cold becoming more and more overwhelming with each thrust. You can only assume Bi-Han must still be very close by, probably pressing lazy kisses to the back of the Saurian’s neck as he watches Reptile fuck you. You can hear soft groans and hisses of satisfaction above you, his hips start to falter as cold fingers find you clit and circle it in time with his powerful thrusts. Your whole body jerks from the frigid sensation, you let out a high pitch keen as you cum again, harder, more violently this time, your entire body chilled from the inside out. Your pussy squeezes desperately around his huge cock, trying to pull him deeper inside you as you tremble and thrash below him. You claw helplessly at the body above you, desperately trying to ground yourself as you come down from your high. You’re reduced to a shivering mess until you finally hear a low growl and feel yourself being filled to the brim with thick ropes of cum. The sensation sending full-body shivers through your body as you revel in the satisfaction of bringing your partner to completion.

“You’re shit at this game,” Bi-Han chastises as he peers down at you as the blindfold is finally lifted, binds cut and you see the cryomancer still buried inside of you.

You flush in embarrassment and sheepishly squeak out, “Best two out of three?”

Syzoth chuckles behind you, wrapped in several blankets at this point, his lips tinged with a blueish hue. “In sunshine’s defense we did do our best to lower my body temperature as far as I could stand. I did to my best Bi-Han impression too.” Syzoth makes a few low grunts and growls as if trying to sell his impressive acting skills.

“You two cheated! It’s hardly my fault when you act like each other to throw me off,” you huff indignantly, kicking at the cryomancer, suddenly cross with your lovers for playing such an unfair trick on you.

Bi-Han just chuckles as he finally pulls out of your spent cunt, his deep voice echoing in the stone chambers, “you’re still shit at this game whether or not we ‘cheated’, how could you not feel the difference?” Bi-Han asks with a smug grin and you know he’s implying how you didn’t notice their size difference.

“You assholes had me so worked up I didn’t give a shit what dick I had in me, I was just happy to have one in me!” You hurl a pillow at Bi-Han and pout.

Syzoth curls himself up around you in an attempt to make peace, “I’m sorry we cheated sunshine, it was Bi-Han’s idea, you know I wouldn’t do that to you.” He gives you an apologetic peck before wrapping you up in his blanket nest.

“Ugh, don’t give me that look, I can’t stay mad at you when you do,” you sigh and stroke his hair lovingly melting into his still chilled embrace.

“I’m not sorry, my ego is hurt, you couldn’t tell Bi-Han Jr. from Syzoth Jr.” Bi-Han sulks and flops on the bed next to the two of you, his hair a disheveled mess.

“You’re ridiculous Polar Bear,” you just roll your eyes and attempt to ignore the cryomancer and his hurt feelings. “Next time I promise I will pay more attention to Bi-Han Jr.” You roll your eyes again as you attempt to placate the cryomancer.

He yawns loudly, “you better,” he snuggles closer to the two of you, throwing one of his beautifully muscled arms across the two of you.

You snuggle comfortably against Syzoth’s well-defined chest, head pressed happily against his bulging pecs as his body temperature gradually warms up to meet your own. You sigh contently as you wrap your arms around the Saurian, your body worn out from the wicked game your lovers played with you earlier. You drift in and out of sleep as you try and think of a way to get revenge on the two of them for this, but for now, you can just appreciate the dull ache in between your thighs as you finally fall into a contented sleep.

#mortal kombat #bi han #sub zero #mk reptile #syzoth #bi han x reader #syzoth x reader #bi han x f!reader #syzoth x f!reader #ns/ft #established relationship #ot3 #syzoth x you #bi han x you #reader insert #afab reader

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spacedace · 1 year

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hey in your tags you mentioned a “batfam leverage au” can u explain what that is

Happily! :D

So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the show Leverage, but the quick summary is that it's about a group of "bad guys" (a hacker, a hitter, a grifter, a theif and the mastermind that directs them all) that help people who have been hurt by the rich and powerful by using their skills to pull heists and cons on the bad guy of the episode to ruin them and get back whatever was taken/right whatever was made wrong.

It's an amazing show that I can't recommend enough, very clever, very funny, big found family vibes and an OT3 that's *this close* to being canon (and has been supported by the writers). The heists are amazing and it's all around an AMAZING show.

Anyway, the BatPham Leverage Au is basically just: a collection of DP & BatFam members join together to make a robin hood heist team like in the show Leverage. I have a couple versions of the BatPham Leverage AU rattling around my head, but most fleshed out right now are:

Business of Family - the Uncle Oz AU (Penguin Adopts Jazz & Danny): My plan for this story is for Jazz and Danny to decide to start running heists in Gotham on the people in the city that tend to fly under Batman's radar but who are still very much doing a lot of harm to the city and it's people. The Leverage AU part of this story is going to have Jazz as the Mastermind, Jason as the Hitter, Tim as the Hacker, Danny as the Thief/Maker (basically engineer), and Elle as the Grifter (shapeshifting Elle for the win lol).

Another Leverage AU I've been thinking about for awhile but that I haven't turned into a story yet is one where Team Phantom (Danny, Jazz, Sam, Tucker & Elle) are tasked with finding and returning various Infinite Realm artifacts that have ended up in the mortal world. And for some reason Gotham has just so many Infinite Realm artifacts in it. Like most of the artifacts in the world are in Gotham for some wild reason (it's Gotham there doens't need to be more of a reason).

They're on the run from the GIW/Fentons, so they're trying not to advertise any ghostly/liminal powers if they can help it, so they largely do heists without powers (minus Tucker doing all his hacking and everything from the Ghost Zone and some occasional invisibility/intangibility when it's called for, but they really do try and keep any power use to a minimum).

In this AU, Jazz is the Mastermind (again, because I love that role for her haha), Tucker is the Hacker, but that's when I can't quite decide who should be who.

I love the idea of Sam being a Hitter, but I think she'd be able to play Grifter pretty well knowing the rich as well as she does, Danny would love being a Hitter and being able to fuck some assholes' shit up while being completely feral but he could also still be a good Thief. Elle could go either Grifter again, but I like her as a Theif in this one, maybe running into Damian in the vents while she's trying to get into a vault or something lol. (I think it'd go with Danny: Hitter, Sam: Grifter, Elle: Thief, but I have no idea if that'll stick if/when I ever write this lol)

Whatever the team looks like, because there are so many artifacts in Gotham & because they can't just use their powers willy-nilly to grab them and run, they're going to be in Gotham for a long time, possibly years. Which means they need some kind of side hustle to pay the bills, which leads them to doing more heists, but this time on various rich assholes that deserve to lose a bunch of money.

Eventually they get on the Bats radar, and there'd be some fun cat & mouse back and forth with the BatFam trying to catch the Phantom Crew (Danny shouldn't be allowed to name things, but he already told Red Robin that was their team name before anyone could stop him). Eventually the GIW do show up and things start getting even more complicated (and maybe someone activates an artifact, resulting in a powerful entity being released in Gotham that they all have to team up to fight).

I have no name for this au other than the DP X DC Leverage Au, but I do know that'll have plenty of Anger Management, Brain Dead (or really Brain Dead + Everlasting Trio, don't know what the ship name for that is), Serious Chaos.

It'll also have Batman aggressively trying to adopt them all because he doesn't actually have anything against them stealing from these assholes as long as they don't hurt anyone. They're acting outside of the law yes but they're doing it in order to give justice to those who have been made victims by the system and he's all about that (the real final battle of the story is between Bruce & Selina who both want to adopt the Pham, who would like to know if they get a say in any of this - they don't).

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morningstarbee · 2 months

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damn i kinda...

don't remember him.

WAIT A FUCKING SECOND. HE'S THE FIRST GUY. The first job they did, where they brought them all together. The Nigerian Job. Holy shit.

Eliot: Go go go go! Hardsion: Where's Parker?! Parker, on the fucking roof of the van: you heard the man. Go!

Quinn: Can I hit him? Eliot: ...Which one? Quinn: Either one.

Eliot: How long before video nails us? Hardison: Facial recognition software takes about seven minutes to tag us, give or take. *alarm immediately goes off* Eliot: Seven min- Dammit, Hardison! Hardison: What part of "give or take" do you clearly not understand?!

is quinn and chaos a ship?

Hardison: Wow. This must be how Eliot feels. I just realized, this is how he feels all the time. I just wanna hit something.

No baby, Eliot is in love with you. He's just pretends to be annoyed.

Eliot: You know a lot of things, Nate. You don't know how this is gonna change you. Nate: You handled it. Eliot: Well you have no idea who I was before all this...started. That guy - kid - he had God in his heart and a flag on his shoulder. Clean hands. And I ain't seen him in the mirror in over 10 years. And believe me...I get up every morning looking for him. So you can trust me when I tell you pull that trigger and two men die: the guy you kill, and the guy you used to be.

Sophie: What are you doing? What are you doing?. Eliot: I'm thinking about saving my friend some trouble.

oh, they're bffs now

YESS MAGGIE

Hardison: Did you doubt me, baby? Did you doubt me?

did he call Eliot baby? 🤔

eliot and quinn being friends, while hardison and chaos fucking hate each other is so funny

also archie approving of hardison and parker being happy about that

them all trying to talk nate down from murking victor

lmao the superhero pose

lmao nate and sophie making out while the ot3 argue in the background is soooo

they're arguing about if they can fit a car in the "batcave" lmao i love them

Hardison: Don't be so hasty! Hear me out, two words: Eliot Signal. Eliot: Hey, Hardison, man, what are you talking about? Like a light you would shine up in the air? Huh? How would that work? Hardison: *chuckles* Eliot: How would you see it during the day, first of all? And what would you put on it? Like a wolf? Parker: Ooh, yeah! Eliot: Or a knife? Or a wolf. A wolf is cooler, see I'm into that...

I love them!! I love how much of a nerd Eliot is even though he pretends not to be and how Hardison knows exactly how to get him to agree to his stupid ideas. And Parker just enjoying the vibes.

#leverage #leverage 4x18 #the last dam job #leverage ot3 #hitter hacker thief #alec hardison #eliot spencer #parker #parker leverage #nate ford #sophie devereaux

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darkhymns-fic · 2 months

Text

SOS

When a distorted radio signal calls Husk to Alastor's home, he doesn't expect to be facing the Queen of Hell, offering him the chance of a lifetime.

But monsters always have the brightest smiles.

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel Characters/Pairing: Alastor/Husk/Lilith Morningstar Rating: M Word Count: 8588 Mirror: AO3 Notes: Originally was just a throwaway fic I wrote on my sideblog, but then it morphed afterwards to be this unholy OT3. It was fun! I want Lilith to be devious because that is also fun. Inspired by several fanarts that are shared on the mirror, but special shout out to this art by @datchidatchi.

Husk is tired once he reaches the rickety house’s front steps, and maybe a little grumpy. His ears were still ringing from static.

He ignores the deer antlers perched over the door, like a morbid holiday wreath. But it’s both typical and so very predictable, and after weeks of this routine, Husk is barely put off by it anymore. Its winding antlers are almost like a beacon of sorts, pulsing and calling out to him as he traverses the city’s streets to Alastor’s home.

Part of the deal is to keep his boss company. Nightcaps and the sort. Husk knows it’s risky every time but the prospect of a drink is always hard to turn down. That, and his radio back at the casino is on the fritz lately, static and noise playing over the speakers in both long and short bursts that gave Husk a headache. Which probably meant Alastor wanted him over there right now instead of two hours later. Jackass.

But maybe, in some ways, Husk also craves for a little company. He’s not ready to admit that just yet.

“Boss, you in?” he calls out, pushing open the creaky door into darkness. He has his own key and everything, even though Alastor would usually just summon him without any warning. Maybe to see Husk get pissed off, or maybe because he was really that impatient. “Got your fucking radio message. Ever heard of using a phone?”

The house is evocative of the abandoned homes that are the staple of any low-budget horror flick—with rotting floorboards, cobwebs in every corner, and skull paraphernalia decorating every available surface. It had been a shock to Husk at first, but now it was just a little blasé for his tastes. He half-expects Alastor to put up creepy decorations like hanging plastic bats or wearing a witch’s hat to liven things up.

But he only sees the same thing, with the lights completely out. There’s a fireplace from across the room, the wood dry, the flames gone.

And it’s Husk’s first hint that something is wrong.

Every instinct is telling him to run, an instinct that he usually fucking listens to. After all, it’s the only damn reason he stayed alive for so long until an unfortunate slip up made him end up here in Hell. (He does not want to think about it, so he’s going to stop that right now). His foot is already half out the doorway, his wings opened up, in case something tries to grab at him from the darkness.

Instead, he stays. Instead, he walks inside the house. A sensation, a sound, pulls at him to move forward, hidden in the shadows, even as his mind is screaming at him to leave.

But he doesn’t think it’s Alastor that’s going to pounce on him in the darkness. If he did, he might have felt less afraid—mildly. But the feeling keeps moving his feet further inside the home, to hallways that sometimes shifted for his own boss’s shits and giggles. Husk lost count of how many times he would find himself in a long hallway with no doors to leave through, just for Alastor’s own amusement.

But the shadows that move around him, some of them with eyes, are frantic. The hallways keep rearranging themselves until he feels he has been traveling for miles. There’s always another door, always another deer skull hanging around, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to leave again once the home brings him to where he needs to be.

He also keeps hearing that same radio signal from before—those short and long bursts, high-pitched and keening inside his head. It makes him shiver, makes him grit his teeth, but he keeps going forward, even as the sound makes him want to rip off his ears. It’s distant, but it’s growing, and he knows he’s getting closer the further he goes deeper into this house.

At one point, he finds himself on the stairs. Old, creaking stairs that are covered in mildew, where a few steps in-between were entirely missing. He walks up them with no question, his wings fanning out to hover any missing places for his feet. The stairs seem to lead in a spiral, and then the wood slowly, almost subtly, begins to turn to metal grates. Instead of mold, there is now rust, much of it covering the railing Husk occasionally uses. It makes his claws screech against it, whenever he lets his hand place itself on it.

The radio tower is supposed to be on the other side of Pentagram City. But Alastor’s home has always been a place to rend apart reality to suit where he wanted to be, whether that’s a murky swamp or a glaring red tower where the frequency is always at an awful signal—and it was that awful signal bringing him up, always playing that same deformed patterns, over and over again.

But then, Husk finds himself at the top, and the red decor that makes up this place is almost all gone. It’s just dark, and it’s cold, and there is Alastor—

—and he’s kneeling on the floor in the middle of the room before a woman that Husk knows, because everyone knows who she is.

There are nights when Husk tries to sleep, and makes sure his damn radio is off. But he still hears singing, floating on the air, and he can’t help but admit that the voice makes him feel some sort of hope that he should have stamped out years and years ago.

She’s so tall, regal and timeless, with sleek and black horns curving from her head to tangle along her golden hair. In her hands is a chain made of a color that there is no name for. She looks over at Husk, who has just appeared from the dark like nothing, first with a curious lift of an eyebrow—and then finally a light laugh. The melodic sound of it makes his heart race, fends off exhaustion from his limbs.

But then he sees Alastor again who is on his knees, whose head is bowed, and over his neck is a manacle that is so tight—and then the chain pulls upward.

And the movement makes Alastor lift his head and there is a flash of something that’s terrified and broken, and any music that lives in Husk’s head is suddenly gone in a flash.

He makes the mistake of talking.

“What’s…going on here?” His voice doesn’t even sound like his own. The tone is tight, stripped of everything. It’s as if some part of him knows that if he breathes wrong, it’s over.

“Oh, look, Alastor. Your friend is here.” The woman finally speaks, her eyes flicking over the chained Radio Demon. His head is still turned away, and only Husk notices then that his once neat red hair is frazzled, unkempt.

At her tone, Alastor starts visibly shaking. His ears lay flat against his head, and Husk can even hear him breathe faster. “No.”

“You don’t believe me? But you must have heard him.” The woman smiles, something that Husk can still see, even in the dark. “It seems he’s finally caught us.”

Husk isn’t sure he wants to understand what she fucking means by that.

She bends down from her great height so she can place her hand over Alastor’s head—so grand that it looks as if she could crush the demon’s head with just her palm. Her fingers tap along Alastor’s cheeks, a thumb playing with his hair. “You should greet him. It’s only polite.”

And in Alastor’s voice, he hears something akin to terror. Panic. Shame. The radio filter is off completely, leaving no room for error to what Alastor feels, to what he’s experiencing.

“Wait, wait, no—”

“Now, come on.” A hand that grips the back of Alastor’s hair, and a pull of the chain that yanks him upward, enough to lift him just slightly off his knees. “Say hello.”

“Wait, stop it, I don’t-!”

And then Alastor turns.

Husk sees a face that is finally bare of every glimmer, of every facade, of every blistering smile. Alastor stares back at him, under the pressure of both the hand and chain. In his eyes, steeped in red that is now so dark, there is an awful and silent cry.

But in that silence, Husk hears something. It’s coming from deep within Alastor’s chest, the radio waves that had been missing from his vocal chords. But Husk hears it, those same long and short bursts of awful sound, all as Alastor keeps looking at him with widened eyes. Calling him.

Husk then realizes what he had been hearing over the radio back home: a corrupted form of an S.O.S signal.

He shouldn’t have answered Alastor’s call.

The next moments that come by are fuzzy in his recollection. The strange trip through Alastor’s home had made him lose touch with reality, so he isn’t sure just when his boss is suddenly back on the floor, dropped like a sack of rotting meat. He isn’t sure when the woman seemingly glides across the floor to stand in front of him, the chains having left her hands. He isn’t sure just when she looks down at him, as if she is an ancient mountain, and he is just some pathetic outcropping of mud that had somehow ended up in her shadow.

This is his fault, Husk thinks, all as he stares up at someone who held a certain type of beauty he could only call terrifying. Stupid fucking bastard. Yet, he keeps flicking a glance towards his boss, who is still on the floor, and wonders suddenly at the damp sensation he felt over his palms.

The signal stops—for now. It’s faint, like a fading heartbeat. Husk doesn’t know if this means Alastor’s given up.

He can’t look long, because the woman demands his attention. She bends down, her golden hair unfurling past her shoulders, smelling of lavender. And then, she places her hands over his cheeks, and grips.

Not hard. Not painful. In fact, it is gentle, the way her fingers travel through his fur. But Husk is so, so deeply aware of the strength in her touch. And even then, he isn’t ready for the voice that leaves her painted lips, suddenly softer than when he first saw her.

“He hasn’t been treating you well, has he?” she says. This close, her voice makes his ears flick, makes something catch inside his chest until he feels it’s going to burst open with thorns, coated in poison. “You poor thing.”

And from the floor, Husk finally hears the static crackle in the air. It’s a sound he is long used to—Alastor always made clear his displeasure with him—but the context it exists under makes it screech with something desperate.

The woman sighs. He feels her breath sift the fur over his face, and how her hold slightly lifts up his chin. “I am so sorry for his rudeness. You would think he’d know better by now.”

Don’t say anything, Husk tells himself. He swallows, worrying how she must have seen that. How she must have felt it. He doesn’t want to be in the middle of this, but it’s far too late.

Then, a soft little screech that builds up next to them, the feedback bursting with so much feedback. “Lilith, you—”

A hand leaves Husk to gesture towards Alastor. The chain whips up like a frenzied snake, diving into her palm, and she pulls.

She pulls so hard that Husk hears Alastor gag. He hears just how very, very close it had come to breaking the Radio Demon’s neck. The static flickers and explodes, sounding like some horrendous mass of angry flies. It makes Husk’s fur stand on end, but he can’t look towards Alastor, because the woman still has her hand on his cheek.

The Queen of Hell, an ancient soul that so few have ever even seen. And somehow, Alastor is fucking entangled with her.

Husk does realize something though. The hand on him, which is still cradling his cheek gently, is normal-sized. Nothing like the grand, engulfing claw that had threatened to crush Alastor’s head just moments ago. He hasn’t even seen her transform or anything of the sort.

Or maybe she just makes them see what she wants them to.

“Such a naughty boy,” she says, her eyes flicking behind her, all while Alastor struggles to breathe. The chain goes lax again, and then comes the sharp intake of breath. “And here, I thought you wanted me to meet him.” The chains clink again, just slightly, and the air vibrates from the very intensity of some unspoken threat.

“Wait—” Husk says, breaking his own promise. He whispers desperately, his hands reaching out in instinct. Maybe he’s thinking that he’d reach for the woman’s shoulders, or even for her hands, where one was still resting against his face. Instead, his claws grasp onto black fabric, and his palms meet the solidness of her knees.

At that, the woman—Lilith, Queen of Hell—smiles down at him. “Getting handsy with me now?”

Husk sweats then. Shit shit shit shit.

He thinks he can feel Alastor grinding his sharp teeth together. The sound is in his skull, worming inside his very ears. He has no idea why it’s so invasive, why it seems to live inside him like some parasite.

But maybe bound souls were always close like this.

Husk quickly lets go, but he tries to calm his heart a bit. He tries to act fucking normal, but it is getting harder to even pretend when he once again stands before her. A part of him still remembers hearing her songs over the radio frequency, and that part of him wants to get lost in it completely…

“Look, I don’t know what…all of this even is…” He vaguely gestures at the space that was the radio tower, to where his boss still lies on the floor. “But, it just doesn’t seem…”

Right? Good? He isn’t sure of the word. What does goodness have to do with anything or anyone in Hell?

“Aw, I see. How sweet.” Lilith runs a gentle thumb against his fur. She hums, a soft melody. Slightly jazzy, even. It sets something stirring in his chest. “You were worried about him. Even after all he does to you.”

Husk doesn’t like the idea that she knows anything about what he has to deal with. And yet, the way she stares down at him, still humming, makes him suspect that she knows every little detail.

Did Alastor tell her? Or did she pull it out of him?

“Well, as you can see, he’s doing just fine.” She doesn’t even turn, still smiling down at Husk. Suddenly, Alastor appears next to her, still on his knees, a hand at his throat as he rubs at the manacle over it.

He sees Alastor stiffen, eyes darting all around as he realizes he’d been taken. His grin stays on his face, but it looks so close to breaking, the sharp points of his teeth trembling in their rictus shape. Reality shifts, and to Alastor, she is a giantess with horns of obsidian and a smile that is biting, eager to draw blood.

And when she sings, it’s so easy to fall under her spell.

“You should learn to cherish your friends more. All that fame, getting to your head.” An index finger, curved like a talon, presses against the very middle of Alastor’s forehead. Right where a certain symbol was engraved, inflamed and permanent and full of rage.

But Alastor only shakes instead. His eyes fixate on that finger, on her, on the glow of the chain that lays on the floor. He smiles so wide that his lips draw back from his gums, and soon there is blood, dripping from his mouth to slide down his chin.

Husk wonders how easily it would be for Lilith to slide her fingers inside the other’s skull, picking apart brain matter. He pictures it so easily, and so suddenly, with such a ferocity to it, of viscous fluids falling around him, and shards of bone that would pierce from Alastor’s head like broken porcelain. Husk stays frozen in place, visualizing bits of meat dropping to the floor all too clearly and all too detailed. What the fuck.

It’s not like he isn’t used to seeing such violence and gore, in his everyday life, or experiencing it himself. But it had played out before him like a feature film, and who the hell had put that in his head?

Lilith laughs, her tone so low and smooth. “It’s not healthy for you.”

The signal that had been sleeping inside Husk’s head, low and dull like a building headache, is suddenly deafening.

He winces, but Alastor remains still. A deer in headlights. Suddenly very fragile, and weak, and so very small.

“Now, what do we say?”

Husk closes his eyes, but it only makes him focus on the signal even more. It echoes inside his head in those same repeating patterns, until he’s surrounded in it. He doesn’t want to hear this anymore.

“....ry.”

“You’re mumbling.” The finger presses more against the forehead, and even though Husk isn’t even looking, he can somehow see it. He can even feel it. Like he’s the one there kneeling before her and staring, and watching as the light in her eyes brighten, as the smile on her face turns so sharp.

Like he’s in Alastor’s place. Somehow. What is even fucking happening anymore?

“Again.”

Teeth that grind against each other further, filing down canines. Weakening himself for her. Husk feels the familiar weight of the manacle over his neck, and it only makes things even more confusing. This is never something he wanted to share with Alastor. He didn’t want to be here.

“I am… trying …to be apologetic—”

The finger bores down through bone, with a sickening crunch. Alastor—or Husk—gasps in pain, but still remains on his knees. Lights flash in his vision. This was death, slow and methodical. Permanent.

“Mean it,” Lilith speaks. Or sings, her tone so sweet and airy. It sounds much too beautiful for what she’s doing to him.

The finger burrows further in, like a hungry maggot. Alastor and Husk and whoever they are now are shaking, with tears in their eyes. It won’t stop until she’s satisfied. And they just want it to stop.

“I-I-I…I’m s-sorry …”

And even then, it’s said through gritted teeth.

Lilith hums, her face so close, even as her claw still digs through meat and bone like it was just a bit of dust she was cleaning up. “Now, that wasn’t so hard. Very good.” Then, she leans down to kiss him.

And it’s the moment she kisses him, or Alastor, or maybe himself still, that Husk is wrenched away back to his own body. He doesn’t feel the pain, or the softness, or anything else. Only the hand on his cheek.

She hasn’t let go of him all this time.

Alastor then slumps to the floor, breathing hard again, his ears laid flat against his head, and his antlers pulsing and threatening to grow, but just stop short. Lilith ignores him, turning back to Husk, and now petting at his ears.

“I’d like to get to know you more,” she says.

At some point in the night, Husk found himself having a drink with the Queen of Hell.

It’s something that the Hell-papers would have chewed on for a week—’Our Beautiful Queen Gives Charity to Some Drunk Loser!’ the headlines might have spun—and then keep recycling that story for weeks. But Husk isn’t one to care about someone’s certain station in this messed up landscape that was his afterlife. He’d already been an Overlord once, and those hanging from the higher rungs of the ladder didn’t always do so with style, let alone any sort of decorum. The closest he could say was any such thing was Zestial, but he’d never known the Overlord on a personal level.

And Alastor could always put on a persona when one didn’t know of his petty nature.

But as Husk is forced to sit before her, in some weird imitation that reminded him of Rosie’s little get-togethers, he has to give something to all that reputation. He has to admit to himself that he’s scared shitless by what she represents, all while still having little to no idea of who she truly is.

Except for what she has done to Alastor. And except for the songs that Husk could still recall from memory.

“You seem a little stressed,” she says to him, holding up her drink, and smiling pleasantly. It seems genuine. Or maybe it’s a trick of the light. But so little light pierced through this space—they were back in Alastor’s home in one of his second-rate nightmare parlors, with all of its stupid hunter decorations, its shoddy wallpaper, and its animal skulls that were even on the very table they were sitting at.

To the side, far off in the corner, Husk could just barely catch the shape of Alastor. Hardly any noise except for a brief crackle or two, his face just faintly lit up by the manacle on him.

“Not exactly a relaxing place, if you get my meaning.” He doesn’t even remember how they got here, but he stares over at the cup in front of him and kinda wishes he at least had some whiskey to spice it up.

…And just like that, a whiskey bottle appears, elegantly-shaped, the liquid inside looking as if it was distilled from ambrosia. The label on it is vintage, or actually, even older than that. As if Lilith has just pulled out the alcohol from a time long past, a time that she lived through.

Only one other person has ever bribed him with drinks like this.

“It’s a smooth flavor, I guarantee it.” Lilith nods, looking over at Husk with golden eyes, then takes another sip of her drink. He wonders if there’s already anything in the liquid, if it’s something that will bind him down if he dares.

“I’m good,” he says, though not without his tone becoming a little snappy. “I’d rather not be drunk for this.”

“Ohh, are you a lightweight? I wouldn’t have guessed.” She places the glass back on the table, flicks a glance towards a deer skull that had bits of cobweb stuck to the antlers. She looks at it, and hums, then turns back to Husk. “Maybe you and Luci would get along.”

In the corner, he hears another crackle. A sharp pain jams into his skull. Yeah, alright. So whatever Alastor was feeling, he was going to feel now. That was fantastic.

Husk’s tail flicks, swatting away at invisible flies. “I think meeting one of Hell’s royalty is enough to spice up my night.”

His tone is brisk, but Lilith doesn’t seem to mind. She simply lays her elbows on the table, places her chin on the top of her hands, and leans forward. “Sounds like you know how to make someone’s night very exciting.”

There’s a part of him reeling at the fact just now. The Queen of Hell is flirting with me.

And yet, there’s another part of him that wants to act like a bastard. Maybe it’s Alastor’s influence, or the ache in his head. Or maybe it’s because he hasn’t slept fuck-all since coming here.

“Oh yeah? Sure, lady, I can show you a good time…”

With a sharp-toothed grin, Husk takes the whiskey bottle that the Queen had conjured, dangling it by its neck as he holds it between two fingers. He shakes it slightly, back and forth like a metronome, then flips it up into the air above them.

It doesn’t shatter into a thousand pieces or spill. Instead, it instantly transforms into a long-stemmed rose. Husk catches it without even a blink, handing it over to Lilith. The grin on his face is tight.

“Here’s a shitty little party trick for you, your Highness. ”

He still feels kinda pissed off at that weird torture session he had the pleasure of enduring.

If Lilith is angry at his comment, she doesn’t show it. She might even have the best poker face Husk has ever seen, all as she graciously takes the rose and brushes the petals against her chin. “If this is what you can do now, I can’t wait to see you when you’re in a good mood.”

Her voice is low, a soft timbre quality to it. Almost like a purr. Husk clears his throat. It’s been a while since he’s been in this type of game, and he’s way rusty at it now.

“Listen, can we cut through this shit and tell me why I’m still here?” He doesn’t feel like being polite, or even smart. He just wants to leave. He keeps his eyes diverted, trying to look at anything in this house that is vaguely normal. The closest is a piece of lint that’s caught on the edge of the carpets. “I didn’t mean to walk in on whatever fucked up game you and the boss do. I’ll just forget it. I’m good at that.”

And when Lilith speaks again, he expects disdain, or even some kind of anger. He’s just some low-life nobody that’s talking back at what is one of the oldest beings of mankind.

Except, and here is where she is suddenly at his chair, right where his wings are laid across them. And her hands place themselves over his shoulders, and her hair falls over his face, like the gossamer strands of a frail curtain.

Except, she suddenly sounds so very sad.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

There is no fucking way, he thinks, but as her voice is so close to his ear, it’s hard to focus on all the misgivings in him.

“And as I said before, I only want to get to know you.”

Reality shifts again.

Husk used to care, once long ago, how he presented himself. Clean-pressed suits, slick-backed fur, and his wings carefully preened so that feathers didn’t fall into the customer’s drinks. Even the occasional ‘kitty’ comment he’d endure as long as they were paying for a game at one of his tables, or were desperate for deals that he was open to negotiate on. The only messes were the occasional blood spatters on the carpets when he had to take out the trash himself, or bullet holes in his walls from those who excelled at winning the game of stupidity.

Alastor’s deal made him forget all that. What did dignity matter when one was forced to work behind the bar, or made to match his owner down to the shade of his bow tie? So he drank, and he would forget, and it was better that way.

Until Lilith is facing him, holding both of his hands, her dress covered in rhinestones, and her gloves made from black satin, the material soft against his claws. Husk looks down, and the suit he is wearing now is like a second skin he’d long forgotten he missed. Barely a thread out of place, with even his favorite designs—heart and spade next to each other—on his lapel, and his bowtie a classy shade of gold instead of stark red. His wings stretched, and they remained up instead of dragging to the ground like they mostly did these days.

A quick, furtive look around, and Husk sees them both on a stage. The audience before them is faceless, just a mass of black with bobbing heads. The lights above them are so bright, and they halo around Lilith specifically, brightening up that wonderful smile.

She lets go of his hands, and waves to the crowd. Still, she keeps her eyes on him. “You’ve always been a stage man.”

She says it like she knows him. And going by his outfit, and the fancy lights around them, she probably, actually does.

He spreads his hands wide before him, then notices the gleam of heart-shaped cufflinks just at his wrist. How did she know every detail? “Well, I’m not much of a performer anymore,” he tells her.

And suddenly, a saxophone appears in his arms, the sash already looped around his shoulder. The weight of the instrument is almost like nothing to him.

“Let me hear you play.”

Husk stares at her, then back to the instrument in his hands. His claws fell over the keys, molded for his own touch instead of just anyone else. “It’s been years.”

In Lilith’s right hand, a microphone forms out from the stage lights. She brings it close to her mouth, while her other hand reaches down to stroke Husk’s cheek. “But you haven’t forgotten.”

She’s right.

Husk isn’t immune to the allure of a beautiful woman, even if there is something behind her eyes that terrifies him, and how he still remembers the pain she had inflicted on Alastor. The ache of it still lingers inside Husk’s skull, but when she hums so sweetly into the microphone, so much of it simply washes away. The stage lights focus on her, making her dress sparkle.

He knows her songs, some of them uplifting and powerful, and others so sweet and melancholy that it drives souls to the brink of madness. It’s a coinflip to what she would sing next for that radio show, where her songs simply served as a backdrop to the array of screams.

The brief reminder makes Husk blink. Shit. Where’s Alastor? He looks around, but there is only the stage and the audience, which is only dark shapes and nothing else. They applause when Lilith begins to sing, her voice caught on the sweeping melancholy that already makes his limbs feel heavy, as if his bones were being slowly filled up by honey.

It’s a nice feeling. Almost addicting.

Husk knows he should be high-tailing it out of here, but when Lilith sings, it seems to move his limbs in other ways. His wings stretch wide, and he already presses down on the saxophone’s keys as he plays along with a song that he already knows. It doesn’t seem to matter if the lyrics she sang move through his head, losing shape and meaning, until it was just the melody itself. Maybe that’s what she wants, after all.

“You have such talent, Husk” she tells him between the verses. She says it casually, her voice showing no fatigue. She controls her notes as easily as changing into her dress. “It’s such a shame you don’t get to use it.”

A question that wrinkles the smoothness of the moment. Husk pauses on his playing, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “Lady, not that I don’t appreciate the compliment, but no one’s stopping me from just busking around.”

He really could, like the old days when he would put up small side hustles of card tricks to make a little extra cash, accompanied by playing out in the streets when he didn’t feel like grifting. Hell’s own streets weren’t always as receptive to a random show (and in some places like Cannibal Town, sometimes they were too eager) but he knew the good spots. And back in his casino heydays, he had to stop himself from going out to play old melodies on stage just for the heck of it.

Lilith only smiles at him, and then brings the mic close again, turning towards that faceless audience. Another note, one that builds higher and higher, and it pulls at his hands again to play along, to use his breath to match the beats of her own.

And it’s suddenly akin to the feeling of being pulled by the strings.

Husk can’t even will himself to stop, his thoughts becoming only filled with that music, one that writhes and lives inside him. It’s euphoric, and it’s terrifying. Isn’t it better to just play like this? A part of him says, something that doesn’t even sound like him. Husk can’t shake it away though, still not finished with the song that Lilith leads.

Don’t you want to be a freer soul?

And as the music slows, Lilith towers over him, humming the last note into the microphone. She smiles, and it’s only for him. She is a beautiful soul, decked out in lights, so bright that it blinds him. It’s almost like a dream, but he knows he’s not dreaming—only dead.

As she hums, she extends her hand, its touch silky as she grips his chin. She raises it as the spotlight rings around them both, leaving the rest of the world in darkness.

“Wouldn’t you rather make a deal with me?”

The voice in his head is her, her music repeating in his skull like a tune he can’t shake off. It’s to the point where he can’t listen to anything else. And, for a second, he almost answers her before he even knows what to say.

Then he hears it. The signals, thudding in his head, three short bursts, then three long ones.

What?

Husk blinks. The stage lights pierce right into his eyes with a terrible ache. The sound continues and it makes it all worse. Stop it. Stop it.

With a snarl, he wrenches his head out of Lilith’s reach, taking a step back.

And just like that, the stage disappears.

It’s almost like cold water is dumped on him immediately. The glitz and glamor that had been their surroundings is snuffed out, and he’s already shivering from the lack of clothes. No more of the clean-pressed suit and dazzling cufflinks, or even the shining instrument that was in his arms. Husk is back to his loose trousers and suspenders, the hat on his head nearly close to falling off him. He can’t even summon the energy to lift his wings.

Lilith, by contrast, still looks radiant as always, but there is a sharp glint in her eyes that isn’t there before. Then it moves to the right, back to a corner that is in the dark—

He hears Alastor’s static before he sees him again, a barely seen shape in the shadows. Turning to him, and his boss is glaring with eyes so brightly lit that it seems to engulf his face.

Wait, Husk thinks. Did we even leave? Has he been watching the whole time?

And then the chain that connects from Alastor’s neck is given a sharp tug that sends his boss sprawling face-first into the floor.

“That’s enough.” Lilith brings the chains to wrap around her palm, the light of it reminding Husk of the stage. “Trying to disrupt my business, after all I did for you? Now you’ve just confused the poor thing.”

The chain’s links ringing together makes Husk grit his teeth. Alastor doesn’t even say words, still on the floor and glaring poisonous daggers in their direction. Was he mad at Husk too? Fuck me, I didn’t even want to be here!

Lilith has that strange look on her face, all as she slowly twirls the chains around her fingers. Husk snaps, full of exasperation and fatigue.

“The hell was all that about before? What did you just do to me?” Husk shakes his head, trying to rid himself of whatever strange effects Lilith put on him. “Just…what are you even…?”

Stupid thing to say. He knows exactly what she is.

With those words, she shifts her attention from Alastor back to Husk, and suddenly her smile is much sweeter than before.

“I was only giving you a peek into your possible future.” Her eyelids lower, along with her voice. “If you’d like to switch deals, that is.”

Her voice sends another shiver through him, one he tries to ignore. “I’m fucking through with making any more deals.”

Like he’d risk getting another bad hand.

“Oh? But you haven’t even heard my terms,” she says.

Maybe Husk is a little more on edge than he realizes, because he stares up at her with slightly bared teeth. Or maybe, he already misses that stage more than he thought, and is angry at the thought that he left it so soon.

“No offense, lady, but if you made a deal with that whack job there, I can’t imagine one with me is much better.”

A risky glance to said whack job, but Alastor is barely looking now. His boss is still face-down on the floor, even if the static and signals are still thudding inside Husk’s skull.

“Then, let me show you at least.”

Her hands reach up to his neck, and he stiffens. He can only imagine bad things, because nothing in Hell was gentle. But her fingers only hover over him, just barely catching onto the fur, even though she has already held him and certainly knows how he feels against her touch. He doesn’t like that a part of him is almost aching for her to touch him, that a part of him wants her to sing again.

Then he feels that familiar weight of the manacle that signals his status, his fuck-ups, and his desperation—all rolled into one embarrassing accessory that he could never take off. It’s only loosely-hanging on, like an oversized collar, and it only slightly burns whenever Alastor would will it so. He expects it to burn right now, but it doesn’t, even as Alastor is right there in the corner, consumed with so much angry static that’s like flies buzzing around incessantly.

The green of the chains light up Lilith’s eyes, just for a moment, before golden irises swallow it up. She presses one finger over the manacle, sliding over it, like it was the rim of a wine glass.

“I can get rid of this for you.” She raises her eyes to meet his own. “And I would never clip your wings the way he has.”

The words are so sweet that it makes his teeth ache, and it stings right at his heart.

“It’s also such a troublesome thing for you, isn’t it? Alastor has never been so good at keeping to himself. I’ve always told him it’s bad manners.”

That, however, is not what Husk expects to hear. He stares. “What are you getting at?”

Lilith’s eyes seem to express some sort of pity, and he’s not very sure if he’s pissed at the idea or not. “The way he just drags you to him, like a child.” She then brings her hand to his forehead, a thumb rubbing a circle over it, oddly soothing. “You’re not his whipping boy. His punishment wasn’t meant for you too.”

The memory of her finger digging through bone and meat, and then leaving no trace of it at all.

Fuck, so she did know of what happened.

She holds onto Husk’s chain, but takes care to not pull at it, or even tug. He doesn’t feel any pressure at all. “I’ve always been a solo artist, but lately, my songs have felt like… they’re missing something. So I’ve been looking around lately for someone who could help with that. Alastor’s radio show can only do so much. The people want so much more.”

Husk can’t believe what he’s hearing, once he’s finally caught on. “Are you saying you just want me to be part of your band? ”

It sounds so simple and so easy—and he can’t trust it all. But then Lilith smiles down at him, and suddenly it feels like he’d be crazy to not accept the offer.

She curls her fingers around his chains, and he hears something crack. Metal snapping, slowly, one link at a time.

“I love finding those who have talent, Husk. And baby, you have it.”

The promise of freedom, and the sweet words from someone who looked like a goddess—who practically was—is enough to make Husk consider falling down to his knees and accept anything she was offering. If he was younger, he would have. If he was still an Overlord, with all the money and power at his fingertips, he still would have.

But…isn’t this just changing one leash for another?

The signal bursts again, loud and grating, breaking the spell. It’s hard to focus, and it pulls at him like nothing else, and so he has to turn to that corner, and see Alastor get up to his knees. He has to see him glare and grit his teeth, and there’s something so incredibly feral there. Inhuman. Desperate.

“You can’t have him!”

It’s just a split-second but Husk sees Lilith drop her smile before she also faces Alastor. She stands tall instead of crouching down to meet Husk’s level. For Alastor, she will only view him from up on high.

The signal keeps bleating, in time with Alastor’s boiling words.

“He’s mine.”

Husk doesn’t want to admit that the word does something to him. He’s still half-sharing a space with Alastor, feeling his rage that sends his teeth shattering from the strain of it. He can also feel how the Radio Demon is engraving that word deep in his chest, past the bones of his rib cage and squeezing painfully at his heart.

Lilith only stares, her silence so deafening that it overpowers the static until it’s fizzling out, like the hisses of a dying fire. Alastor keeps glaring and his teeth look ready to tear, but he doesn’t move.

In Lilith’s hands are two separate chains, entwined together. She wraps both different-colored links around her fingers, and seems to consider.

“You never seem to understand that what’s yours is mine. Your power. Your radio show. Your souls.” She tilts her head, golden hair cascading, the strands nearly reaching Alastor’s face by just half an inch. Distance seems to mean nothing to her, already with Alastor, with Husk. Everywhere. “You have plenty of others, don’t you?”

The signals inside Husk’s head transform into a monotone, blaring and digging further inside. It��s panicking. It’s reeling over from fear. Husk feels the urge to run over to Alastor and shake him so that he could fucking calm down and not make this all so much worse.

“Ah, but maybe…” Lilith has her smile again. She wraps the chains tighter around each other. “It’s only him, isn’t it? Oh, Al… you should take better care of those you love.”

At that, the signal is so loud, so awful, like claws slowly tearing through metal, that Husk collapses to the ground.

He just barely hears the chains clatter at his motion, but he’s already clutching his head, ears pinned down, and fur standing on end. He can’t even open his eyes. The sound is unreal. It’s torture. His head is literally going to explode into tiny bits and pieces from the sheer pain of it.

You should take better care of those you love, he hears again, and then it gets even worse. Like he was caught in a spiral and kept descending and descending, knowing there was no end to it.

Why was Alastor doing this to him?!

By then, it’s only her voice that finally saves him.

It’s faint and distant, like a far-off light through the fog. Husk feels his soul stumbling towards it, but as she sings, the pain seems to recede. It takes him a while to know that she’s holding his face again, like before, lifting him up, and humming what sounds like some sort of lullaby.

The static and the awful signal seems to disappear. He tries not to think about what that means.

Lilith bends down, and he wonders if she’s about to kiss him, the same way she did with Alastor.

“Husk…” she whispers, her lips just brushing against his pointed ear. He feels her breath across his fur. “My deal still stands. My voice, your music.”

He clasps her wrists, tightly. He shakes, and he considers.

A curious note in Lilith. “Did you change your mind then?”

He doesn’t hear anything in his head now. Only her beautiful voice, and the lingering memory of a song they played together. It should have been easy to decide. After all, how many times in the middle of the night has he wished to finally escape the means of his deal? How many times has he wished he would never see that infuriating smile of Alastor’s ever again?

Instead, Husk just holds that position, looking down. He waits, almost sure of what he would say.

“No,” he says instead.

“Hmm. I see.”

It’s not disappointment in Lilith’s tone, just acceptance. Somehow, that’s worse.

With the pain gone, Husk lets go of her, and slowly gets to his feet. He tries not to think about how he somehow keeps touching her. But then again, back in the day, he’d have done everything he could to lay his hands on someone as beautiful as she is. Even if right now, he can barely look her in the eye.

But she’s also touching him too, hands still over his cheeks. And she hasn’t let go just yet.

She’s expecting him to say something. So he does so, struggling.

“I only came here because the boss called me.” He won’t say his name right now. “I didn’t come here for deals, or to be part of some new music crew. And right now, all three of us in this room is doing none of us any fucking favors. So maybe just….” He trails off.

But there’s no polite way to tell someone to leave, especially when he’s not sure he wants her to.

He doesn’t think Lilith would hurt him, but he flinches when she leans forward again. But it’s simply to plant a kiss just over his forehead. He feels the pressure, the warmth of her mouth, the feel of her lipstick. There’s a part of him that wants to know the taste of it.

It’s blackberry, from when she kissed Alastor before. He resists the urge to lick his lips at the memory.

At both the thought and her face, Husk looks up as she smiles down at him.

“I can see why Al likes you. Such a rare kind of soul. But I really hope he takes better care of you.” Then, her voice, only for him right now. “And if he doesn’t… call me.”

Husk isn’t sure, but it almost sounds like she means it.

It’s sudden when she leaves—like a dream from an intense hangover, leaving him reeling and wanting to fall back down to his knees. Everything about her is gone; from her hands that were once on his face, to her song that’s barely an echo around him. There’s just the creepy house of Alastor, still with its grisly decor and torn-up wallpaper, its decaying stairs and its array of skulls placed on the bookshelves. No evidence at all that there had once been fancy lights once upon a time.

“God damn—” Husk stumbles, trying to keep himself from banging his head on the floor a second time. That’s it then. He’d told her to hoof it and she did. He feels a sense of relief. A sense of anxiety. A sense of unimaginable loss. Almost like she’s already taken his soul without him realizing.

And without her to even provide even a modicum of distraction, Husk hears that same stupid, godawful signal that had ruined his entire fucking night. The bursts of static are low and jarring, but faint, like the wings of an annoying, dying beetle.

Alastor is still in that corner, probably having his own pity party right about now.

Husk feels sick. He’s not in the mood to feel sympathy. Still, it comes regardless. He rubs at his face, missing the softness from before.

“ Boss, ” he calls out, pulling on the word like it’s a bad taste on his tongue.

He doesn’t get a response, Alastor still lying on the ground like some dead fawn.

“Fucking asshole, you keep calling out to me this entire time and now you won’t say a damn word!?” The dazed feeling from before is now fully gone, his anger evaporating it all. Husk goes to Alastor, kicking aside stupid cobwebs and stray bits of bone from the decorations to kneel on the floor and grab Alastor’s shoulder. Not like the fucker was going to hurt him for touching him. Not now. “You wanna explain to me why the literal Queen of Hell was even here? Christ, what did she even mean when she said you…”

Hell, he can’t even repeat it.

But Alastor just groans, lifting his head. Weak eyes flicker in their depths. But no answer.

Husk feels himself start to shake. So he shakes Alastor more for good measure. “Well?! Ya really got nothing?”

“Husker…” Alastor says, then raises an eyebrow. “So… you didn’t leave….” He then lets out a soft exhale. “That’s good.”

Maybe there’s a hint of triumph in his voice, if it hadn’t been so, so weak. Husk wants to punch him more than anything.

Still, his boss is alive and barely functioning. Alastor’s eyes slowly close again, the static fizzling out, as if a storm has finally cleared. The man passes out.

Husk shouldn’t feel glad about any of this.

“Dammit, Al. Why should I even give two fucking shits to what happens to you?” he growls out, voice trembling. “Someone finally offers me a way out after everything. I should have left. Why didn’t I leave?”

He pauses, speaking to nothing, to no one. Just the darkness of this home and an unconscious demon who has the faintest smile on his face.

“Why did you call me of all people? Niffty, Rosie…. Hell, even fucking Vox. Why me?”

But he’s not going to get an answer, no matter if his boss is awake or not.

Even so, after everything, he grabs Alastor’s shoulder, pulling him along from his pathetic position. It’s instinct almost, barely feeling anything for it. It’s not the first time Alastor would be exhausted like this, whether from going hog-wild on an Overlord killing spree, or stressing his magic to give someone a real good scare. And Husk was usually the fall back, the one to watch out for things. Reliable, Alastor had once told him. For a washed-up drunk, he’d also add.

Yet as Husk brings Alastor up, close enough to see those small antler stubs, to hear the subtle breathing, he can’t help but remember that soft hand on his cheek.

That soft hand that had also made Alastor writhe in pain.

With a held-in sigh, Husk digs a hand into his pocket. Another instinct as he determines how to carry Alastor without having him get tangled up in his wings. His claws feel out the familiar edges of his playing cards, sort of a calming habit of his—except, this one felt different.

Husk pulls out the card, its surface a gleaming white instead of the red and black of his own. On the front, there was a phone number, all written in an elegant flourish. And then, there was her name, followed by a little command. The presence of it sends a thrill through his spine. He can’t tell if it’s from excitement or fear.

Maybe the difference doesn’t really matter.

Call me.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #husk #lilith morningstar #radiohusk #radioqueen #husk/lilith ship name??#i am too tired to remember if there is one #fanfiction #one shot #also whoops just fixed the mirror link this is why i shouldnt post when im tired..

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