#and your thoughts kinda spiral out of control so you decide to just keep digging and looking for connections or coincidences

[amihyperfixatingagain]

Nana Morri and The Matron of Ravens

So we’ve all already seen the similarities between Nana Morri and The Morrigan from Irish Celtic Mythology. I only know a smidge about this goddess, so I wanted to do a bit more reading on her, mostly so I’d feel fully informed for when we get to see her more next week. Upon my first search of her and scrolling through images to get a sense of visuals, I can’t stop thinking of the Matron of Ravens.

“The Morrígan was an Irish goddess of death, destiny, and battle. A trio of sisters who could take the form of a single goddess, she was the keeper of fate and a purveyor of prophecy.” (from Mythopedia here)

So The Morrigan is a shapeshifter; she can appear as three individual sisters who can act independently or appear as one goddess. She commonly takes the form of a crow/raven, a young maiden, or an old woman.

This will sound wild, but what if Nana Morri, who has two faces and two voices, and the Matron of Ravens are altogether an Exandrian version of The Morrigan?

Could Nana Morri and the Matron somehow be the same goddess but in split bodies and across different planes? Sure it may not make a ton of sense, especially rules-wise, but the Matron is a god, after all.

This could tie into Morrighan Ferus’s destruction of the Matron of Ravens bust in EXU Kymal.

The Morrigan is also known for foretelling doom, death, or victory in a battle. The Matron of Ravens foresaw the Calamity and the destruction it would rain down.

We know the Matron was a high-level Wizard who developed “rites” to ascend into godhood. What if she had cast the 8th level necromancy spell, Clone, before she performed these rites as like a failsafe? Did the Matron retain her mortal soul when she ascended? Or did her soul still return to the clone? Maybe her soul split? What if that clone became the Hag we know as Morrigan Calloway, The Fatestitcher? It’s a wild thought, I know. But it’s a fun thought nonetheless.

Idk how to fully explain my thought process, and it’s a super wild theory, but still. I feel like there’s more to explore here, but I will wait until we know more about Nana Morri next week to keep digging.

[dairy-farmer]

Ooooh~ Had a THOUGHT(TM)~☆! Accidental Meta Powers Groping Au! :D

Consider all the Weird Shit(tm) Batman gets exposed to during the course of your standard Superheroic Adventure. Goo and Rays and Beams, curses and countercurses. Gods. Alien nonsense. It's A LOT for the body to handle!

He goes away to help the JLA on some Alien Distress call. Gets VERY fucked up. Big ouch. Might not make it. But he saved the building full of kids he was trying to evacuate and stopped the alien's planet from being blown up.

So? They make an exception for him. Since he's their HERO.

They use their Super Advanced Alien Healing Pod on him. Don't worry buddy! We scanned the OTHER human with you and know what a healthy human looks like! We can fix you!

Problem? That other human? A dumbass. So worried about Batman... they forgot that THEY were Meta and HE was NOT.

And Batman is a little too unconscious and full of holes that shouldn't be there to remind anybody. #OhNo.

Bruce wakes up on the flight back. Feels a decade younger. Which he SHOULD because the Meta Dumbass is in his TWENTIES. You dense, dense mother-fucker! Bruce has VISABLY lost a DECADE. He wants to hit him.

A chair flies from next to him, directly at the guys head.

What.

He's telekinetic. WHY does he have telekinesis? Meta Dumbass starts sweating. It's... a long flight.

Worse? Green Lantern stayed behind to help organize relief efforts. It'll be AT LEAST a year before he's back and can get Bruce back to normal. He knows, because he strong arms a deep space video call.

They kinda used their LAST function pod on him. Great honor and all that. Are horrified they fucked up. But can't fix anything until the planet is less... flattened.

Bruce breathes. Remembers his meditation training. This is Fine(tm). He understands. Take your time, not your fault. He's just gonna have to get this under control until it can be fixed.

Problem is? It responds to his thoughts. Usually before he's aware he's having them. Thirsty? Here's a drink. Vaguely tired? Chairs. Note to self? Why not ACTUAL notes? Pen and paper!

He gets home EXHAUSTED. Explains what happened to Alfred. Not so much Tim, but Tim overhears, since he's eating dinner in the room. Weird things happen and things moving? Don't be alarmed. Just Bruce. Got it.

Tim feels someone ruffle his hair. Hug him.

Bruce is across the room and already turning away. Ah. Better not mention it. He's already jumpy around affection. Barely getting better. If he thought even THINKING about stuff like that was bad? Because it would "betray him"? Yeeeeah, hard pass, Tim decides. Besides. Hugs are nice, even if Bruce doesn't know he's giving them.

But of course~ Bruce is obsessive. His thoughts fixate and spiral. Tim gets used too, very quickly, the panicked pat-downs by hands that arent there, looking for injury. The lingering holds on the back of his uniform, ready to drag him back from danger or jumps Bruce doesn't think he can make. The hair ruffles. The almost needy, full body hugs.

Touches no one can see. That Bruce doesn't realize just WANTING, makes happen.

Tim has a great Party Mask. Has long been able to ignore choking suits and pinching shoes, the exhaustion, all the bruises from chasing his idols, and keep his face serene. This is no different.

Then the classic Go Wrong. Our beloved Ivy.

No place for Robins. So Bruce goes alone. Saves the day. But is hit, as usual. An unfortunate reality of her escapes. Has already hit himself with the counter-agent... but... he suspects this might be a new strain. It wasn't as effective as it should be.

He stumbles out of the car and into the emergency wash. Tim is there to help him get upstairs, as he all but falls out. It's a mistake.

There are hands and tounges, licking and groping and sucking EVERYWHERE, the second Bruce locks eyes on him. Digging into and worshipping places NO ONE has ever touched before, so hard his legs lock up and he freezes. He can barely move. Doesn't know what expression he's making but knows he's choking on the noises he's trying hard NOT to make.

They collapse half way to the stairs. Bruce pulling him into a vice tight hug, panting against a shoulder, as he trembles and refuses to give into what he so badly wants to DO to him. Not realizing he already IS. That fingers and tounges are working his holes open. Plunging in and in and IN. Finding things and grinding.

Tim can only shake and try to suck in air. Try not to let the noises out. Because he's afraid if he gives in, he won't be able to STOP. Everything's gotten so wet. He can't move. It's too much, all at once. Feels good but is scary. But Bruce is here. And he's trying NOT too. Not his fault. And, and-!

Alfred saves them. Is able to haul Bruce up and off to his room. Give Tim an anti-agent.

Because he got "exposed" too. Helping Bruce.

He doesn't argue, even if the shot makes him feel sick for a while. But, the thing IS? Bruce has become... AWARE of him, now. Because now the hands massage and stroke. He feels them palm his chest or butt, just to tease or squeeze a bit.

And after patrol? When they go to BED? Tim has to read Bruce's mood. Decide if he wants to stay at the Manor or his house. Because? When Bruce his stressed? He... relieves it. Perfectly normal, of course. But his THOUGHTS? Tim knows they're of him.

Because he feels them.

And he... he doesn't know if he's READY. It was so, so MUCH.

But of course, Bruce is better at hiding things then even HE is. And eventually he slips up. Is staying over. When one moment he is getting comfy, the next? Hands are pining him to the bed. His own pajamas used to muffle him, pushed up and out of the way. So mouths that aren't there can tease and abuse his nipples. Lick his skin like they want to devour him.

Go lower and lower. Pajama pants gone and hands holding him wide. For the world and no one at all to see. Bruce's clashing thoughts and desires meaning Tim gets both. Fingers teasing him AND mouth eating him out. Squeeling and panting, thrashing but unable to escape. His orgasms secondary to the fantasy happening a few rooms over.

Having a tounge fuck him even as fingers do. His chest being teased. Being able to HEAR the wet shlick noises and see his skin react. Feeling his hole being held open for something BIGGER. His ass being teased. Bruce unable to decide but turned on none the less.

Filled up, his first time on a cock that isn't even THERE. And, oh. Tim feels good and terrible and so FULL. Then it's moving and it's just good and full. Pounding all the good parts. Punching little noises out of him. And he wish it wasn't the powers. That Bruce was HERE doing it. But it's GOOD. And he ends up gushing wet and boneless.

LOVES Bruce's Stress Relief nights. Would go over and HELP if he could.

But Bruce is still affection shy. And Tim is still working on that. But hey.

Now Tim has a goal.

(And is DEVASTATED when they fix Bruce's "Gene Spliced Problem" even if he won't say why.)

-🐼🐼🐼

bruce using his surprise psychic powers to molest tim 🤭

[twst-bs]

NRC Students and an Anxious MC

And with this, I've done all of the students at NRC!! Well, with the nervous MC, anyway, I have some other stuff in the works too.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, I'm open for both requests and commissions!

-----

Ace: “You look awful.”

The Ramshackle Prefect shot Ace a glare, but it lacked their usual fire. “Thanks, Ace.”

“Come on, I didn’t mean it like that and you know it.” he caught up with them easily when they turned around to keep walking. “I just meant you looked like you had a rough night. Or like you’re stressed out. You know.”

“Your grave only has to be six feet, Ace, you can stop digging now.”

Ace rolled his eyes. “You aren’t usually this crabby. Seriously, what’s up?”

They sighed. “You’re right, I had a rough night.”

“Any particular reason why? Or just ‘cause?”

The two of them had reached Crewel’s classroom, but they still had a few minutes before they had to be in there. The Prefect bit their lip nervously. “I kind of freaked out last night because of the homework.”

“It was pretty hard, huh?”

“Well, that too,” they crossed their arms, almost like they were trying to hide themself. “But, it’s like...I feel stupid, you know? You guys all know this magic stuff, but I’m struggled to handle even the basics. Then I thought, well, if I can’t handle the basics, I’m going to get punished, and I would deserve it because I’m an idiot, and...you can see how the spiral went.”

Ace was quiet for a moment, studying them with an unreadable expression. Then, he heaved out a side and grabbed their wrist, tugging them into the classroom. “I guess it can’t be helped, then.”

“Huh?”

He plopped unceremoniously into his seat and dug around in his bag. “Be quick about it, okay? Queen only knows what Crewel’s punishment for getting caught copying homework is.”

The Prefect stared at Ace with wide eyes. “Seriously?”

“It’s better than nothing,” Ace shrugged, slapping his notebook down on the desk. “If he says anything, I’ll tell him you helped me word it. Now, come on!”

Deuce: They weren’t getting anywhere.

The longer they stared at the question on their worksheet, the less they could focus. Apparently this was supposed to be basic stuff, but there were so many strange ingredients with different magical properties that they couldn’t keep track. And the more that had to flip back and forth between their textbook and worksheet, the more stupid they felt.

“...right? Hey, are you alright?”

Deuce’s voice broke through the panic that was beginning to set in, and when they finally looked up, his blue eyes were wide with concern.

“What? I’m sorry, Deuce, I kinda...spaced there for a minute.”

That only made the crease in Deuce’s brow deepen. “You looked really freaked out. Is something wrong?”

The two of them had made a habit out of studying in the library together. Since Deuce wasn’t the best student and the Prefect was playing a very intense game of catch up, they figured they could motivate each other while studying. But lately, all they had been able to do was sit there and be anxious about everything.

"I...um…" They absent-mindedly clicked their pen, unable to look Deuce in the eye. "I'm sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?" he asked incredulously. "For real, are you alright?"

The genuine worry in his expression made something in them burst. They threw their pen down on the table and buried their face in their hands. "I don't know what I'm doing! I went from magic not existing to suddenly having to study it, and I can't even master the basics! I'm terrified that I'll fail and Crowley will kick me out and -"

"Whoa, whoa, hey, it's okay!" Deuce's chair scraped against the floor as he hurried over to their side, grasping their hands in his. "Everything's gonna be okay."

Their chest heaved as they tried to suck in enough air. "But -"

"Listen," he cut them off. "The stuff you have to deal with is a lot. And I'm sorry for not realizing it earlier. If you want, we can go to Professor Crewel and ask for some tutoring, or even remedial lessons. Whatever you need, I'll help."

Cater: “What are you looking at?”

At the sound of the Ramshackle Prefect’s voice from behind the couch he was sitting on in the Heartslabyul lounge, Cater lolled his head back to grin at them. “Heya! Just scrolling through Magicam, what else is new?”

“That is your favorite pastime, huh?” they leaned on the back of the couch, looking at the screen.

“What are you doing in Heartslabyul, anyway?” he asked.

“Ace thought he could get away with not studying if he ‘forgot’ his textbooks at Ramshackle. I’m returning them before Riddle thinks I was in on it.””

“Yeah, that tracks.”

The two of them lapsed into a companionable silence, the Prefect watching as Cater scrolled. However, out of the corner of his eye, he could see their expression gradually get tighter and tighter, like they were trying to control whatever emotion was trying to show through.

“What’s with that face?”

“What face?” they asked defensively. “This is just my face.”

“That’s the face you make when you start having bad thoughts but don’t want anybody to know.”

“Get out of my head, Cater.”

He snorted, turning so he was sitting sideways on the couch and could get a better look at them. “Come on, tell Cay what’s on your mind.”

They hesitated, picking idly at the loose thread on the couch. “...It’s just me being stupid.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“...The people on Magicam are way more good-looking than I am.” the finally mumbled, looking away. “I keep wondering when you’ll realize that.”

Cater’s green eyes widened before he giggled. “Nope.”

“Nope what?”

“I won’t realize it,” he reached around them to pull their face closer, kissing them affectionately on the cheek. “Because it’s not true. And whenever you start to think like that, you tell me, so I can reassure you.”

Jack: Something felt off.

Nothing in particular had happened, it was just one of those days. But, it was bad enough that they thought about just going back to Ramshackle instead of waiting for Jack like they normally did. Waiting outside of the classroom just made them feel even more antsy.

Just as they were about to shoot him a text to say that they weren’t feeling well - which wasn’t technically a lie - said wolf came out of the classroom, tail wagging involuntarily when he saw them waiting like it wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

Before he could even greet them, however, his nose scrunched up. Furrowing his eyebrows, he leaned down and began sniffing them.

“Jack, what the hell?”

“You’re nervous about something.”

Right. Nothing could beat that canine sense of smell.

“It’s nothing.” Jack opened his mouth to reply, but they cut him off. “No, literally. Nothing actually happened, it’s just a...a weird day, I guess.”

It was clear from the expression on his face that Jack didn’t quite understand, but the guy was nothing if not sympathetic. “Do you need help with anything?”

“Nah, it should eventually work itself out.” They tried to muster up an encouraging grin, but from the look on Jack’s face, they didn’t quite hit the mark. “I’m fine, Jack, promise.”

His tail had dropped, and his ears were pressed against his head. “...When I get worked up, going for a jog usually helps me. Gets all the energy out.”

They raised an eyebrow. “You and I both know that your jogging is my sprinting.”

“Then I’ll walk and you jog,” he grinned. “If you want to, that is.”

They paused before shrugging. “I probably won’t do a good job on the homework if I’m like this, anyway.”

Floyd: Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. Crewel will turn you into a rug if he catches you falling asleep.

Their internal monologue was the only thing preventing them from passing out onto their desk. They had had a hard time falling asleep last night, and of course they were working on sleeping draughts in Alchemy today. The vapor wafting from the cauldron was enough to knock them out.

They hadn’t noticed that their eyes had closed until a hard knock on the classroom door startled them open. When Crewel called out for whoever it was to come in, the door opened to reveal Floyd.

“The Headmaster wants to see Shrimpy!” he sang, leaning against the doorframe. Crewel nodded, motioning with his pointed cane for the Prefect to get out.

Physically shaking themself awake, they stood. Next to them, Ace went “Oooooooh~”

“Trappola, just for that, you’re responsible for giving them the notes for the lesson.”

“Aw, come on!”

They didn’t even have the energy to stick their tongue out like they usually would. They just inched past all of the other students until they were at Floyd’s side. The merman casually slung an arm around their shoulder and steered them out of the classroom.

“What does the Headmaster want?” they asked. It could literally be anything, honestly.

“Oh, I lied!” Floyd giggled. “He doesn’t need to see you at all.”

“Huh?”

“You looked exhausted this morning,” Floyd tugged them closer. Not quite a squeeze, but there was something intensely protective in the embrace. “I figured you could use a nap.”

“So you busted me out of class?”

“Yup! This makes me your favorite, right?” he grinned, showing all of his teeth.

“Definitely.”

Epel: They always did have a nervous stomach.

There was a test in Trein’s class that day. No matter how much they studied the night before, they didn’t feel prepared, and their stomach was committing mutiny in response. They hadn’t been able to eat any breakfast, so now they were nauseated and hungry at the same time. They were either going to puke on the test or eat it, they hadn’t decided yet.

“Are you alright?”

They jumped. They had been so caught up in their own head that they hadn’t even heard Epel approach. “Hey. Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit of test anxiety, haha.”

Epel didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure? You look kinda pale.”

“Really, I’m fine. I was just a bit too nervous to eat breakfast.” they insisted.

“Well, that’s not good.” Epel frowned. “You’ll do even worse on the test if you’re hungry.”

Oh, why did he have to phrase it like that? Just the thought made their already roiling stomach turn, and they whined softly as they hugged themself around the middle.

“Ah, wait, I didn’t mean it like that!” he backtracked. “I just meant it won’t do you any good!”

Epel reached into his bag for a moment, mumbling to himself. “I know I have some in here...ah-ha!” he pulled out a bag of dried apple chips. “Here! It’s not exactly a full meal, but it’ll help. And they’re really light, so if you’re sick because of nerves, they won’t upset your stomach.”

“Are you sure?” they asked as Epel handed them the bag.

“Pos’tive.” he grinned. “I’ve got plenty back at the dorm. And Ma’s always sending me stuff from the farm anyway. So go ahead, I don’t want you passing out!”

Sebek: They had no idea what he was talking about.

It was a feat in and of itself to be able to not pay attention to Sebek. The man was a walking lightning bolt. But today was just not a good day, mentally.

A pity, too. They always liked walking around in the woods with Sebek. Something about being in nature and listening to him talk passionately about whatever was on his mind was almost soothing, but it just wasn’t working this time.

“Are you listening?”

They jumped when he said their name. They had gotten so sucked into their own head that they hadn’t noticed him turn his monologue into a conversation. “I’m sorry!”

“What are you sorry for? Is everything alright?” he looked them up and down with sharp amber eyes, scanning for anything that could present any danger. “Are you ill?”

“No, no, it’s not…” they sighed, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Nightmares.”

Bad dreams had been a problem before they arrived in Twisted Wonderland, but now they were really plaguing them. It made concentrating difficult, even on simple things such as a walk with their partner.

Sebek stepped in front of them, forcing them to stop in their tracks. His angular features were serious, thrown into deep contrast from the light of the sun setting between the leaves. He clasped both of their hands in his own, holding them tightly as he looked into their eyes.

“You needn’t worry about such things. I will not let anything harm you, even your own mind.” he squeezed their hands. “On my honor as a knight.”

Silver: Watching Silver train with a sword was...something else.

They could watch him all day, going after the training dummy like it was actually an enemy.

Well, usually, they could.

It had been another sleepless night, up worrying about all the various things they needed to do. They only managed to fall asleep around four AM, and they needed to be at their first class by eight, so they hadn’t exactly gotten well-rested. They were impressed that they had managed to stay awake during their lessons, but now it was catching up to them.

The warm sun shining on their face and the rhythmic swishing of Silver’s practice sword was vaguely soothing, and before they really knew it they had slumped against the tree they were sitting under, fast asleep.

When they awoke, they were moving. It took a minute to gather themself, and they blinked sleepily at their surroundings.

“You can go back to sleep.” Silver’s voice rumbled against their side. He was carrying them. “We aren’t that far from Ramshackle.”

“...You could have woken me up.” they mumbled, nuzzled closer to his chest. “I would have walked.”

“You looked so peaceful.” he responded, adjusting his grip. “Unless you want me to put you down?”

“No.” they sighed. “This is nice. Me and Grim are always saying that it takes forever to get to Ramshackle from anywhere in the school, I’ll take the ride.”

Silver chuckled, leaning down to press a kiss to their forehead. “Go to sleep.”

[fandom-collective-writers]

Want (Wolf!Lucifer x Reader)

Fandom: Obey Me!

Pairing: Lucifer x Reader

Prompt: werewolf, full moon, heat scenario

Warning: Smut!!! - oral sex (female receiving), breeding, internal cumshot, biting, knotting

Intended Audience: Female Audience

Word Count: 4,322

Requested by: anonymous

Written by: @lordsister​/@lordsisterxotome (Click here to support me on ko-fi!<3)

Disclaimer: I do not own Obey Me or any of its characters. I do, however, own the plot of this fanfic. Please do not repost this on any other website.

Other notes: So I meant to get this out a long time ago and then I had a burnout from university work and couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to write a full sentence, so here we go! Never written something like this before, but hoping it’s good!

       You wouldn’t be able to outrun him for much longer, that was a fact. 

       Everything had started out so innocently, a simple mix-up on Luke’s part leading to yet another in a series of weird but amusing events at the House of Lamentation. Why the syrup turned the brothers into animals of all things, you didn’t know, but you didn’t think much of it when you found out it would pass eventually. Better to just enjoy the fact that your boyfriend had a pair of cute, fluffy wolf ears sticking out of his head, right? 

       Things had started to take a much heavier turn, however, when the moon rose, full and yellow and drawing out a hidden side effect of the syrup. 

       It was like everyone had just...disappeared. One moment you were joking around with them just like you normally did, laughing at the way Mammon kept teasing Levi over his giraffe horns, and the next moment they were all out the door and gone, claiming they had other things to do. Even Lucifer had somehow left without her notice, probably headed to his room to quietly work on his student council stuff.

       You’d tried relaxing in your room, but something about it was still off to you, having spent enough time around the brothers to know when weird was particularly weird. After wandering aimlessly around the halls for a while and receiving no answer when you knocked on the brothers’ locked doors, you’d made your way to the kitchen to ponder over a late night cup of tea. 

       What happened there was what led you to your current situation, crawling through one of the tunnels beneath the House of Lamentation.

       You had just been starting to unwind, accepting that whatever the demons you lived with were dealing with was probably something they could handle themselves, when Levi had burst in, out of breath and panicked. Rising to your feet, you had just enough time to squeak out his name before he grabbed your wrist and dragged you out of the kitchen. 

       “Levi, what - what’s happening? What’s wrong?” you managed, stumbling as he dragged you down the hall.

       “Lucifer’s gone into heat,” he answered, just as the sound of something smashing to pieces echoed from the second floor. 

       You heard the voices of the other brothers shouting, animal snarls, and growls, but you couldn’t dwell on it as Levi picked you up and hoisted you over his shoulder before launching into a full-on run. Over the uncomfortable feeling of Levi’s shoulder digging into your ribcage, you heard an outraged howl, and the first curls of fear began to form deep in your belly. 

       “I’ll rip your head off if you touch her!”

       The sounds of the struggle disappeared as Levi threw open a door and descended a long, dark flight of stairs into the bowels of the House. Honestly, everything was happening so quickly you were having a hard time keeping up with it all.

       “W-Where are we going?” The jolting made it hard to talk, and your fingers clutched at his sweater, desperate for a hold on the rapidly spiraling situation.

       “There’s a tunnel, it leads to the woods,” he answered shortly, nearly missing a step and sending you both tumbling the rest of the way down in the dark. “You need to be through before Lucifer fights the others off.”

       The end of the staircase emerged into a circular chamber, a black hole, barely large enough for one person to walk through standing, gaping at the other side of the room. You didn’t want to go through it, especially in the dark, but it seemed Levi wasn’t giving you an option. 

       He’d barely placed you on your feet before he was shoving you into that cold, black mouth, giving you a last, “Go!” before he was turning back towards the stairs. 

       Reaching out, you clutched at the back of his sweater before he could go any farther. “I-I don’t...I still don’t understand, Levi. He’s in heat?”

       The third born frowned, running a hand through his frazzled purple hair. You hadn’t noticed before, but he was bleeding from his lip and a dark bruise was forming beneath his left eye. “It’s an effect of being turned into a wolf is my guess. A werewolf heat kinda thing?”

       “So...what does that mean for me exactly?” You were getting frustrated now, confused and in need of answers before you fled through a tunnel in a basement in the middle of the night. “Why do I have to escape like this?”

       Levi’s cheeks flushed bright red and he looked away, stuttering, “I-It means he wants to...y’know...do what animals do in heat...to you.”

       “Oh.”

       “Oh?”

       That explained a part of it maybe, but you’d been through worse with Lucifer, would probably be through worse still with him. “I still don’t understand why I have to leave like this. Isn’t there any way I could help him?”

       “He isn’t listening to anyone right now.” Through the dark, you could see Levi was starting to fidget, balling and unballing his fists and taking nervous glances back at the stairs. “I don’t even think Diavolo could talk any sense into him right now. He’s completely lost control and if he were to get his hands on you like this...it’s better you go.” A hard thud sounded from somewhere far above. “Now.”

       Shoving you into the tunnel entrance once more, he rushed to say, “Listen, once you’re out, go to Purgatory Hall or Diavolo. Either one should be able to keep you safe while the rest of the syrup wears off.”

       “But-”

       “Go!”

       And with that he was gone, flying back up the stairs to help his brothers with their heat-crazed sibling. You stayed there for a moment, hovering in the entrance and looking back and forth, but finally you decided to follow Levi’s instructions. If the brothers were fighting so hard to keep Lucifer from getting to you, then he truly must be in bad shape, mindless with the need to mate, and you knew that if you were ever to get hurt again, it would destroy him.

       Moving as quickly as you could in the dark, you kept one hand on the damp stone of the tunnel wall, using it for stability and to make sure the passage didn’t split away into side tunnels or something. It felt like forever passed since you began walking, and panic started to rise in your throat, your heart thumping in your chest at the thought that you were lost down here in the dark. The walls started to press in, and you could barely breathe the moist air. All that kept you from turning back or sinking into a ball was the mantra you took to repeating under your breath, to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, don’t think about what was behind or ahead, but just about what was beneath your feet right now - which were still bare, by the way. You were only dressed in a sweatshirt and comfy sweatpants, ready for an evening of relaxing in bed rather than running down a dark tunnel away from your lust-crazed lover.

       An uncomfortable heat prickled at the corners of your eyes as you continued down the tunnel, your hope of finding the exit dwindling with each heavy step. You should have reached it by now, right? Levi wouldn’t have sent you down here where you could get lost so easily.

       Just as you were about to stop, you saw it - a shaft of light marking your freedom far ahead. Your relief was cut short, however, as a ghostly howl echoed from the tunnel behind you and your heart froze in your chest. You could barely breathe as you took off, sprinting towards that point of light. 

       Had Lucifer really made it past all of his brothers? It seemed impossible, but you didn’t know what overpowered state he was in right now. All that mattered was that he was following you, and you didn’t think it would take him long to catch up.

       Another howl echoed behind you, closer, and you ran faster, legs burning. Slipping on the wet stone, you tumbled into the fresh air. You didn’t have time to enjoy being out of the dark and damp, barely managing to get your feet under you again before you were off again, this time headed in what you hoped was the direction of Purgatory Hall. 

       Your feet skidded on the frozen ground and dead leaves, bare tree branches arching over your head like fingers, caging you in. You wondered how long it would take to get to Purgatory Hall, if you could make it before Lucifer caught up, but a pained howl of your name behind you, clear in the night air, nearly made your legs give out beneath you. If it had only taken him that little time to get through the tunnel, there was no way you were going to make it to Purgatory Hall before he caught up. The best hope you had was probably finding a place to hide and hoping he didn’t find you. 

       Chancing a look back, you caught sight of him through the trees in the distance, thundering after you, his red eyes visibly glowing even from this far away. A squeak left your mouth on a gasp, and you darted to the side, hiding behind the trunk of the largest tree you could find.

       You weren’t going to make it to Purgatory Hall, not at the speed he was chasing you, you couldn’t call on the other brothers, knowing he’d already gotten through them, and so your best option was to try to hide and wait this out, even though you knew he could probably smell you, probably hear your heart beating. Covering your mouth with both hands, you curled into a ball at the base of the tree, trying to calm your breathing as you listened for the sound of his footsteps. 

       Heart pounding against your ribcage, you heard him approach, racing closer and closer, inhumanly fast, and you hoped he would just run by, too lost in a lustful haze to realize your scent veered away from the course he was following. Unfortunately, such was not to be the case because he stopped abruptly, sending up a small shower of dirt and dead leaves. You could hear him panting and your heart ached as he whimpered and walked in a slow circle, trying to determine which way you had gone. Never had you heard anything so mournful in your entire life, most unexpectedly from the Avatar of Pride. 

       “(Y/n)!!” he whined gently, softly, but his voice still echoed off the trees, half-coaxing, half-ordering you to come out. You didn’t move, despite the strange heat pooling in the pit of your belly and your instincts screaming at you to go to him, to comfort your needing lover. Levi and the others had done so much to protect you, to warn you. Was it really okay to give in so quickly?

       “(Y/n)!!!” Lucifer howled your name this time, his voice desperate and you bit your palm, trying to keep quiet as you jumped at the noise. Curling up tighter, you still refused to reveal yourself. 

       Then everything suddenly got quiet, really quiet. You couldn’t hear him panting, didn’t even hear him walk away, but there was no indication that he was still there either. Minutes passed and you stayed like that until you started to shiver and you couldn’t take it any longer. Slowly, you peered out from behind the tree, careful to be as quiet as possible. There was no sign of him, not a bit of movement as you scanned the clearing and the trees beyond. Nothing.

       Sitting back against the tree trunk, you sighed, but movement out of the corner of your eye nearly made your heart stop. Your eyes met glowing red, your lycanthrope lover unnervingly still where he stood not three feet away from you on the other side of the tree. You stayed like that, staring at each other, until the need to breathe became too prominent and you took a shaky inhale. 

       “Luci,” you breathed his name, trying to keep him calm and gentle. His eyes glowed, but his usual composure and poise was gone, lost in the hazy depths of his heat. You didn’t even know if he was aware of what was going on right now.

       A slow, joyful smile spread across his lips at the sound of his name on your lips and then he dove forward, tackling you as he wrapped himself around you. “Mate,” he purred into the side of your neck, kissing tenderly at the skin as he breathed in your scent, “I found you.”

       Your arms hesitated around him, unsure, before returning his embrace. This was different than what you had expected. Based on what Levi had told you, you’d thought he would have had you naked by now. “L-Lucifer?” you stuttered, trying and failing not to lean into the protective warmth his overheated body offered. “Do you know what’s happening right now?”

       Removing his face from your neck, he blinked slowly at you. 

       “Do you know what’s happened to you?” you tried again.

       “There was Luke…” he breathed, returning his face to your neck and closing his eyes. His tail thumped wildly behind him, betraying his excitement and pleasure at having completed his game of chase. “And the syrup that turned us into animals…”

       You nodded eagerly. “Do you remember what happened next?”

       “Mmm, I suddenly felt so hot,” he groaned, his grip on you tightening. “It’s so so hot, (y/n). It’s unbearable and yet it feels so good.”

       “But Luci, I - ah!” You squealed as he nipped at the sensitive skin just below your ear.

       “I need you so bad,” he husked against the shell and you shivered as a hot tongue licked over it. “It hurts…!” The world spun as he rolled you over, finding yourself pinned on your back and the solid weight of your boyfriend pressing you down into the leaves and grass as he wedged himself between your legs. You could feel every inch of him now, holding you so close, like he was trying to meld your bodies into one. A hard rock of his hips against your clothed core made you cry out, a sudden rush of heat flaring within you and making you arch into him. He growled into your neck at the pressure against his erection as you bucked beneath him, mouthing at the skin and teasing it with his fangs.

       “L-Lucifer, wait!” He groaned, displeased, but stopped, his wolf ears flipping back to lay flat against his head. “I...I don’t know about this. Levi-” He snarled at the other man’s name on your lips, making you freeze until he rubbed his cheek against your neck, appeased. “The others,” you tried again, careful not to mention any names that might set him off, “warned me that you might lose control in this state...that you might hurt me.”

       He jerked back, wide red eyes staring at you like you’d just slapped him across the face. “Hurt my mate…” his voice dwindled, his ears drooping and his tail ceasing it’s insistent wag. You almost felt bad for saying it now, but you needed to draw a line, for both of your sakes.

       His hand reached up and cradled her face with surprising tenderness, careful of his elongated, red claws. “I will never hurt you,” he said, his eyes clear of their lustful haze for a moment as he spoke. He uttered the words like a spell, a prayer if he was still an angel, an oath that made the tightness in your chest finally loosen. “Please,” he murmured, his low voice reverberating through your bones, “Let me have you. True, it might wear off soon, but I want...I want…!” 

       Tongue darting out to lick your lips, you reached up to run your fingers through the dark waves of his hair, feeling the soft velvet of his ears. A low rumble started deep in his chest, his eyes narrowing and hazing until he had fallen back into the lustful state he’d been in moments ago. You were more aware of the bulge pressed between your legs now, of the dampening in your own panties.

       Leaning up, you felt his grip around you tighten as you whispered in his ear, “I’m all yours, Lucifer.” A roll of your hips up into his drew a long, desperate growl out of him. “Do with me as you will.”

       There was a split second of utter stillness, not a move or sound, and then cool air met your skin as your clothes were torn away by sharp claws. You gasped, clinging to your boyfriend as he nipped and sucked ravenously at the side of your neck. He barely left you time to process, his lips moved so fast, the sting of a lovebite arriving long after his mouth had already traveled to the other side of your neck. 

       “My pretty, little mate,” he growled, licking at your collarbones, “all ready for me to fuck.” You shivered, mewling his name as his hands grasped your breasts, your bra already sliced away for his ease. “So perfect,” he sighed, drawing whines from you with each rough squeeze. A cry echoed against the trees as a hot mouth encased your nipple, sucking and rolling the hardened bud between sharp teeth. Your hands tried to find a hold in his hair, but were forced above your head with a hand around your wrists, leaving you to writhe and buck helplessly beneath his touch. 

       His moans warmed your skin as he let go of your breast with a noisy pop. “You taste so good,” he purred, a lust drunk smile curling at the corners of his lips. “I can’t get enough.” Trailing down your body, he paused at your stomach, making you shiver as he kissed affectionately at the soft flesh. The slow, meaningful caress of his hand against the spot just below your navel felt at odds with his hurried ministrations thus far, but was pleasant all the same, drawing a sigh from your lips as you relaxed into him. 

       Lucifer hummed approvingly, murmuring something you couldn’t hear against the flesh, but didn’t linger, continuing on to his real target before you could ask him what he’d said. 

       The cool air made you shiver as he spread your legs, hulking figure kneeling between them. His tail thumped against the ground behind him and his ears pricked in interest as he stared down at your wet core, a growl making you freeze when you tried to close your legs from his burning gaze. “Try and hide from me,” he rumbled, red eyes pinning you in place, “See what happens.”

       He held your gaze as he lowered his face to your dripping pussy, making you forget how to breathe for a second as hot breath fanned against your clit. You moaned when his tongue licked a stripe up your slit, sucking the swollen bundle of nerves into his mouth. 

       “So wet already,” he groaned, tone laced with sin, and then, without warning, he seemed to lose whatever control he’d regained, his mouth descending on your core with an urgency and force that would have made you flinch away but for his hands on your hips, holding you immobilized and spread for his enjoyment. Lips, teeth, and tongue were merciless as he feasted on your arousal, sending hot pleasure coursing through you as you writhed and moaned in his grip. Your head spun as his tongue dove inside of you, your fingers clawing at his shoulders as you cried his name. 

       You sobbed, tears of pleasure blurring your vision as the fingers of one strong hand pawed over your thigh and hip bone, the tips of sharp claws grazing your clit and making your back arch as your walls fluttered around his plunging tongue.

       You were so close, the edge of that sweet wave of pleasure teasing your body, and the next second it was ripped away, his mouth and fingers gone, and you cried out in agonized loss, scrambling for him as desperate tears finally fell. Your hands fisted in dead leaves and cold dirt instead of reaching Lucifer’s warmth, finding yourself on your knees with your front pressed into the ground. A thigh moved between your own, parting you to your lover’s liking as he loomed behind you. 

       “Lucifer,” you called softly, whimpering. His pheromones were definitely affecting you if they weren’t already. You felt so painfully empty without his cock stretching you, thick and hot and merciless. The thought alone was enough to make your walls clench pathetically around nothing, wiggling your ass against his still-clothed crotch.

       “I know, my love,” he chuckled, reveling in the need radiating from you. You could feel him smirking savagely against your neck. “By the time I’m done, everyone will know what I’ve done to you, how I’ve claimed you.”

       His warmth disappeared for a moment, the sound of tearing cloth indicating that his clothes had met the same fate as your own, and then bare skin met your own, too-hot against your oversensitive skin. A shiver wracked through you as his cock, swollen and pulsing, slapped against your dripping core, coating him in your juices as he slid through your folds. You didn’t have time to look back or think about whether you could take him like this, screaming as he thrust into you, hard and fast. He didn’t give you a moment to adjust before he started pounding. Lucifer was well-endowed as it was, but he felt even larger than usual, stretching you nearly to the point of it being too much. The position forced you to be aware of every inch plowing in and out of you, allowing him to hit against your cervix from the first thrust. The overwhelming, pain-tinged pleasure immediately rocketed you into your climax, leaving you spasming helplessly around him as you cried his name.

       “Fuck!” he snarled behind you, hips stuttering as your walls clenched down on him. His claws dug into the soft flesh of your hips as he grunted, shoving harder into your tight, oversensitive core. You could feel your release dripping down your inner thighs, the lewd sound of Lucifer’s soaked cock thrusting in and out of you echoing off the trees, too loud even with the sound of his panting in your ear.

       Blunt nails dug into the dirt as his mouth latched onto the patch of skin where your neck met your shoulder, drawing blood as he marked the spot. His hips moved animalistically, hammering into you without rhythm as he held you in place, his balls slapping against your clit. He answered your whimper with a deep purr as he wrapped an arm around your waist to pull you closer against him. His length barely left your velvet walls before finding home deep within the welcoming warmth of your core once more and it was driving you crazy, leaving you to writhe and moan as throbbing veins rubbed your g-spot with each hump. 

       Through the haze of lust clouding your mind, you could feel something swelling at the base of his cock, stretching your entrance every time he seated himself within you. “L-Luci,” you gasped, “What - What are you - hahh!” You screamed as he shoved in deep, the knot forming at the base of his cock stretching your entrance before leaving again, still not quite large enough to plug him inside of you. 

       “Going to breed you,” he snarled against your ear through clenched teeth, “Going to fill you with my children and get you nice and pregnant so they all know who you belong to.” Lucifer grunted in frustration, feral as his hand pressed into your lower back and made you arch even more. You screamed as the angle stretched you open for him and his monstrous cock, engorged with the need to fuck his babies into you. 

       “Tell me you want it,” he coaxed, his hands grabbing at any part of you he could use to pull you back harder onto him. “Tell me you want my cum, you want me to get you pregnant for everyone to see.”

       “Yes!” you pleaded, glancing back at him. Every inch of him rippled with virility, with the need to pump you full of his seed. You needed it now, needed to give him exactly what he wanted. “Yes, Lucifer, please! Please, please, please give it to me!”

       The sound that echoed from deep within his chest as he successfully pushed his knot inside of you was half howl, half roar, locking your bodies together as he reached his climax. The hot explosion of cum against your cervix threw you into a second orgasm, mewling and crying your lover’s name as he filled you to the brim.

       He continued to hump against you for a few moments more, milking himself within your walls, before he slumped on top of you, panting against your shoulder.  “(Y/n),” he murmured hoarsely, “Are you alright?”

       “Y-Yeah.” He shifted slightly, and you shivered at the tug of his knot within you, still swollen.

       “I’m sorry. I can’t move for a little while,” he sighed, and you could hear in his tone that there was more to his apology, a plea for forgiveness for everything that had happened tonight.

       You giggled softly, reaching a hand back to run it through his dark hair. The wolf ears were still there and they fluttered against your fingers. “I don’t regret this,” you murmured softly, meeting his wide gaze as you turned your head. A soft smile spread across your face as you kissed his cheek. “Not a single thing.”

[hazbincalifornia]

Amount of writing I’m getting done for OT and my IZ fic: Some.

Amount of writing I’m getting done for self-indulgent bullshit: Somewhat more.

Anyway, wrote out Bella meeting Sir Pentious because I was bit by the muse bug. This is written for the four people who know who they both are, f.

Wordcount: 2075

The second she saw the airship soaring through the red-tinted sky, shooting anything that looked at it funny, Bella knew she had to get inside of it. Let Kit flirt with their host (or, if she was honest, fail to flirt with, man, she didn’t even like flirting and even she knew that he turned into a pile of goopy mush when he was around a guy he thought was cute) and let Vee attempt to kidnap yet another animal to try and smuggle home, she wanted to find out who the heck made a steam-powered airship in the twenty-first century.

Or maybe Hell was actually stuck in the year 1900, who knew? Time probably passed funny in the afterlife, but the fact that nobody had shot them out of the sky yet said that there was something else afoot- the pilot had to have some way of warding off attacks considering rivals probably had, like, grenade launchers, and she wanted to find out how. Style merged with substance, ruling the air with confidence- and she wanted in. 

“Hey! Hey you!” She flagged down somebody with four arms and purple fur who looked short enough to be less likely to punt her into orbit- Mom had warned that most people down here were mean as, well, Hell- and pointed up at the ship. “What’s the deal with those?”

“You a newly dead?” The demon raised one of their four eyes, and Bella nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, newly dead. Anyway. Story?”

“They’re made by Sir Pentious, one of the Overlords. He’s some kinda inventor, I’unno. Never blew up anything that mattered to me, so I never cared that much.”

“Sir Pentious…” She rolled the name around in her mouth, plucking the ‘T’ in the middle thoughtfully along with the rubber bands wrapped around her braces. “Got it. Thanks!”

“Er- you’re welcome.” They darted off, but that was fine. Now it was just a matter of actually getting onboard.

____________

She couldn’t find a rocket pack anywhere- lousy Hell lagging behind Earth technologically- but ended up stumbling across the next best thing in a warehouse that had an extra ship that had clearly been in some sort of accident. This one was only partially-reassembled, and there was a lot of burn damage sustained to the aluminum and copper outside, but that just meant that she could see the skeleton without having to slice through a lot of layers, so it was almost better- and a lot easier to crawl in one of the big holes in the front window via a pile of parts in front of it.

The interior was decorated like a mansion, with vivid yellows, reds, and blacks- she could respect the commitment to the aesthetic, especially with torn-open snakesheds and red eyeballs plastered everywhere. It looked like something out of Mom’s old comic book collection, toxic and yet intoxicating, every detail chosen for maximum dramatic potential. It must look even better with all the lights on and more than her phone’s flashlight illuminating bits at a time.

It was the best playground that she could imagine- nothing but her and a massive ship the size of an apartment building. Oddly enough, there wasn’t much dust- maybe it had crashed recently and was being held here for repairs? It was certainly of a similar design to the one that she’d seen from the ground, so she couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t just an iteration or two away.

Her fingers ran over the sleek machinery like it was sacred- some of it looked like it belonged in a museum, but the rest was cutting edge, and the seamless way they blended was like something out of a dream. A genius indeed- if she’d been born a hundred years ago and was suddenly thrust into the modern day, she could only hope that her tech would look this good. There was room for improvement of course, there always was, but it was loads better than most of what she saw digging through the junkyard, and a lot closer to the stuff she made with Grandpa Zim using his irken tech. Impressive for someone who’d clearly been dead for some time, considering he’d made enough of a name for himself that some rando off the street knew it.

“Genius inventor, huh…?” Bella pulled out her screwdriver, starting to work on freeing the control panel. It had a touchscreen and levers, what was that about? She had to know what it looked like underneath- did Hell even use cables and wires or was she going to need to drag Kit in to do his magic business here?

It took some doing- whatever had taken this particular ship down had welded the panel into place and it took a crowbar to pry off, ha, take that Venus for saying she ‘didn’t need to bring it’- but eventually she got into the guts of the thing. Sure enough, it was wiring, spiraled all into itself in a knot- it must have gotten all messed up at some point, maybe that was what caused the crash on top of whatever burnt the outside? 

She was about to start taking it apart when she heard a pitter-patter behind her.

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it, ya know,” she said, rummaging around in her pocket before pulling it out. “Mom insisted I bring the one that can vaporize people since apparently half of you can’t even die the normal way anyway? Bunch of freaks.” Her finger twitched towards the trigger as the pitter-patter became a shadow as the thing scrambled up towards the same hole she’d come in. “I’m warning you, I’m a great shot. Won’t take two to blow your brains out.”

“Whoever you are, bossman says you gotta go!” 

It was an egg. Not like some kind of insult, it was literally an egg, and probably a third of her size. It was also wearing a little hand-tailored suit and top hat. She stared down at it, and it stared up at her. 

“Who’s bossman?” Bella asked after a few very long seconds of silence.

“You know… bossman!” It blinked. “He doesn’t like people pokin’ around his cool, cool stuff and you tripped the motion sensor. Hey, is that a ray gun?”

Bella’s finger eased off the trigger. “Yeah, it is. It can probably scramble you.”

“Oooh! Fun! Not as good as boss’s, I’m sure, but-”

“Hey, what say you take me to this boss?” Bella crouched down, knowing this was incredibly stupid but also already entirely committed to it. “Then he can decide what to do with me in person.”

“Hmm… alright, but no funny business!” The egg looked her up and down before turning heel, starting to clamor down the pile of parts. She had to hold back a snort when she saw that it had ‘#69’ written on its back.

Some things never changed no matter where you went.

____________

The egg blabbered on all the way back to the ship, mostly about jazz music oddly enough, but soon enough they were nearing a different ship that had settled behind a building. It was either the one she’d seen before or a duplicate, and she felt a shiver run up her spine as she got close- it looked a lot cooler in one piece and lit up bright yellow. Her phone buzzed, and she discreetly pulled it out as the egg launched into a diatribe on the importance of the saxophone. It was a text from her sister. 

dolittle 🐭: bells where ARE you

dolittle 🐭: kits distracting clove so I could grab one of those bugdog things but moms gonna be asking how were doing soon, what should I say

Bella thought for a moment before sending back a reply. ‘im checking out that airship we saw earlier. have weapons. ill be fine. meet you back at the cafe later’

dolittle 🐭: be careful ok? know you can handle it but still

Bella smiled a little at that, sending a thumbs up before tucking her phone back into her pocket as they ascended the bridge.

“And then, then he saysss to me, he sayssss- Ah, there you are! Good, good.” She heard him before she saw him, voice booming as he welcomed his hench-egg back. “And what was poking around the warehouse?”

“This, boss!” The egg tugged at her jeans by the knee around the corner before pushing her forward with surprising force. “They said they wanted to see you!”

“Well well well!” 

Bella’s antennae twitched as her eyes widened. The man in front of her was a jet black snake, with fangs, a top hat, a bowtie, and eyes on his face as well as nestled on the open space on his chest and hood. Best she could pin from Venus’s nature lectures he was a cobra of some sort, and there was a smug fang-y grin on his face as he slithered up to her, taking advantage of the height that his tail gave him- he’d probably be seven feet easy to Bella’s mere five foot one. 

It took her only a moment to shake off her awe. “So you’re the famous Sir Pentious!”

His grin widened. “Ah! You’ve heard of me, little tresssspassser?” 

“Obviously, considering I knew your name, right?”

“Er- yes!” He faltered for just a moment, and she went in for the kill.

“Your work’s fantastic, but you really need a way to keep the gutty stuff in order in case of a hit- that’s probably part of why that other ship went down, y’know? But your sense of design and how you mold your century-old designs with the new stuff- it’s fantastic, I just want to cut it all open and see how it works.”

“What did you do?” His hood flared, and she twirled the gun in her hands.

“I only touched the control panel, and your little egg boy got at me before I messed with anything, but I’d give anything for a couple of days working on the interior of this place- I bet I could make it run faster and with less fuel.”

The eye on his hat rolled itself as he narrowed the eyes on his face. “Who are you to come in and think you know better than I about my own shipssss? I should end you right here for your insolence and your trespassing!”

Bella folded her arms, glancing around. “Hmm… far left column, the one with a yellow eye instead of a red one.”

“What about it?” He folded his arms as well, waggling his head. “Are you-”

“It’s welded weird. Something went wrong with the metal when it was being forged, so you put it in the back so you wouldn’t have to look at it. You didn’t want to waste a perfectly good column because somebody screwed up one little part. And that’s just what I see looking around in, like, five seconds- gah!” The end of his tail had wrapped around behind her while she’d been talking, and struck before she finished her sentence, lifting her up to his eye-level with her arms pinned to her sides.

“Little wrench! How dare you?” 

“I’m…” Her legs kicked a little, ribs feeling uncomfortably bendy at the moment as his scales pressed against her chest and back. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

His tongue darted out as he hissed, just barely brushing her nose before sliding back into his mouth.

“What do you really want, missy? I don’t like competition, you know.”

“You to let me breathe, for one,” she wheezed, fingers turning to try tickling what she could reach, and his cheek twitched funny before she dropped bodily to the floor, only managing to roll in time thanks to muscle memory from combat training. Thanks, Grandpas. “I really do just wanna see how all your stuff works. The ways I could improve my own inventions if I just could figure out how to blend different functionalities the way that you do...”

“I am quite impresssssive, aren’t I?” He puffed up his chest a bit. “And you have no intention to-”

Bella drew an X over her chest. “Cross my heart. You’re the bossman.”

He looked her up and down. “Hmm. Get back to me when you have a proper uniform and not those ragssss, and I suppose I could show you around a bit, if- if!- you show me something of yourssss.  ”

Bella’s grin slipped into a smirk as she gave a bow. “Bella Donna at your service, then, Sir Penny.”

[justanotherlifeff]

My type of love

Warnings: Reader has yandereish tendencies, mentions of stalking, depressed reader with suicidal tendencies

Before you found your way into the villain league, you wanted to die. Honestly, what good came out of living anyway? You were always a quiet person ever since you were a child, always on the sidelines. Back in middle school, you were that girl who always sat at the corner at the class without being noticed by anyone. You were that one weirdo that no one wanted to talk to. Your parents weren’t bad. Infact, they were quite good. Atleast you thought your family was perfect at that time. Your mother and father seemed to love you. Sure, you were an only child and you were lonely both at home and school but it was all okay. You were happy. That was until your quirk showed up. Your quirk allowed you to give bad luck to anyone you touched with five fingers of your hand. Infact, their luck would be so bad that they would die somehow in the next one hour. You were already the weirdo at school and now, no one wanted to be around you. Saying that you were careful would be an understatement. You didn’t want to hurt others and you separated yourself from society, from your parents. A part of you thought that atleast your parents would try to get back to being involved in your life but that never happened. After all, your quirk killed a few of your classmates when it appeared. However, your desire to keep everyone out of your life came to an end when you fell in love with a guy. You were in Junior high and he was a transfer student. He didn’t judge you and the two of you started dating. That was until you found yourself checking his chat history when he left his phone with you to go to the washroom on a certain date. You knew you were violating his privacy but you just couldn’t help it. Your parents were completely disconnected with your life because of your quirk and you had doubts about why your boyfriend would be any different. Turns out that you were right. He was cheating on you. That one time lead to your downward spiral towards extreme trust issues and insecurities. You had seven breakups in a span of three years. At the end, when you finally turned 18 and your recent ex left you because you couldn’t bring yourself to trust him, you had enough. You believed that your quirk made you unlucky, you believed you weren’t good enough for anyone. Your ex told you that the way you love people was toxic and that was one thing that you didn't believe. Why was it wrong to know exactly where your loved one is at all time? Why was it wrong to know who he's talking to and what he's talking about? Why was it wrong to keep a control on who gets to be his friends and who doesn’t? You never had friends and gave him all your time so why couldn’t he do the same for you? You did all that because you cared so why didn't he understand you?

When he left you, you ran away from home. You were done. You knew that this life wouldn’t give you anything. You just wanted to die in the streets. That's when you came across a 16 year old girl named Himiko Toga on the streets. She was a vigilante and was on the run and let's just say, you touched the police that were chasing her and they died in a car crash immediately. Toga was 2 years younger than you are (you're 18) but she seemed to find the way you love normal. She had an abnormal way of loving people as well. "I don't think it's wrong of you to know everything about your lover, (Y/N)! You're just so cute! I didn’t think I'll ever find someone like me! We can be besties! You know, I like killing people I love!" Toga exclaimed to you. That's when you made your first friend. You were sure that you would stay away from love in fear of rejection or being left until you were taken into the league of villains with your best friend. The burning crimson eyes of the boss caught your attention on the first day. You couldn't help but admire his low drawling voice that was tired of the world because you could relate.

You were always used to being on the sidelines, away from attention but Shigaraki wouldn’t have it. He had an interest in your quirk as it meant like him, you couldn't touch anything with all five fingers. He understood how hard your life must've been and he decided to be kinder to you than the others since you were relatable. He didn’t know what that was doing to your feelings. You were on a high, you couldn't explain how happy it made you. You didn't have the courage to confess to Shigaraki but you knew you'd die for him. You were absolutely smitten and like usual, that wasn’t going to end up well. If Shigaraki thought he had privacy, he was wrong. You made sure that you knew everything about him. You checked his phone when he was busy with games, you had figured out all his passwords of any social media account he had, you followed him everywhere he went to (mostly without him knowing), you even had pictures of him sleeping when you sneaked into his room to get some. Honestly, it was all going well till he decided to recruit another female villain. One who decided that it would be a good idea to hit on Shigaraki.

While Shigaraki did give you more preference over the other members of the villain league, you were always this quiet girl who minded her own business. Honestly, he was intrigued at the begining because you barely shared anything about yourself, almost like you had a double life. He made sure that you weren’t a spy from the heroes by doing some digging but your extreme quietness was something he found odd, specially for someone who was friends with Toga. However, that personality seemed to change drastically when he recruited the villain Killer Queen (Yes, it's a Jojo reference). Shigaraki knew that Killer Queen clearly had a thing for him and while he clearly wasn’t interested in her, he sure was interested in the sudden change of attitude that came over you. Suddenly, you were like a feral cat, ready to pounce on her. You tried to convince Shigaraki to kick her out way too many times and you always threw passive agressive insults and death threats at her. Shigaraki never saw you throw a death threat before and he had to admit it was kinda hot.

The ship had sailed when Killer Queen thought it was a brilliant idea to kiss Shigaraki on the cheek out of nowhere. Infact, even Shigaraki was surprised and disgusted by that. Without a warning, you held her hand, looking at her with a sadistic grin. She was confused at first before realising that all your fingers were touching her. The realisation gave her a heart attack. As the woman laid dead before you and Shigaraki as the two of you were in the bar, Shigaraki looked at you, raising an eyebrow which made you realise that your feelings for him or atleast, your jealousy was obvious. "I couldn't take that... I love you and I hate it when anyone thinks they can take away who I love. I've.... I've let a lot of people walk away from me and I felt guilty about not being good enough but it doesn't matter anymore. I'm not going to let anyone else have you even if you don't want me. I know it's wrong but I can't help it." you muttered, looking away from Shigaraki as tears escaped your eyes. "Who said anything about it being wrong? I just saw a badass girl who has the right to be the player 2 of my life cause she just killed a bitch over me. You're fucking cool and honestly, the way you tried to keep her away was hot." Shigaraki answered with a grin making you look at him, completely shocked.

"You... You don't hate me for killing a member of the league? You don't think the way I love people is wrong?" you stammered, looking at him, awestruck. "Tch... Why the fuck do you think I'm a villain? These normal people, they put labels on things that shouldn’t have labels. You fucking get to love someone in any way you want and no one gets to judge that. They need to suck it up instead of using it as an excuse to run from relationships. Plus, I'm kinda similar. Honestly, I love all the pictures you took of me sleeping. I dunno how you can make even me look good..." Shigaraki answered, making you almost choke on your spit. "You know about the pictures?" you asked with wide eyes. "Yeah. I also know that you check my social media and my phone and that you follow me around everywhere. Seriously, why the fuck do you think I'm the boss of this stupid league?" Shigaraki scoffed as you looked away bashfully. Someone finally understood you... "Do... Do you check my stuff too?" you asked shyly. "Can't say I don't. It's fun to see you obsessing over me." Shigaraki gave you a smug grin. "So... Are we like... dating now?" you asked, twiddling your fingers. "I suppose we are..." Shigaraki answered before pulling you into a kiss, the dead body forgotten.

[popculturebuffet]

Animation Reviews:Star Vs: Mr.Candle Cares

Tom is back! Yeah I know this took about a month, with the pride month reviews and life being kind of chaotic, I put these next two tom reviews on the back burner, even doing another star review in the meantime for Father’s Day. But with Pride Month winding down and our next episode up being gaytatstic, it was time to come back. It’s just a shame it had to be this one.  We’re in Season 2 now, and early in it, with this being only the third episode and the first to not involve the main plot, as the first two dealt with the fallout of the first season finale, and set up some of the main conflicts for the season. I WILL cover those arcs eventually and recap parts of them if necessary but for now they have zero impact on what happens here. That being said just because it dosen’t tie into the main arc with Ludo and Toffee-Wand, dosen’t mean it’s not important, as this episode both marks a major turning point for tom and also digs into the recurring theme for the next two seasons of star grappling with her responsiblities.. in this case future ones. We also get a peak into her mom’s personality. So with not much exposition to cover, I will see you under the cut.. please?

We open at school and it’s career day, something my school didn’t have for whatever reason, but is a common thing as new Gudiance Counsler mr candle has so far been giving everyone really great advice that fits what they want. Star is eager to have her turn and soon does.  Inside the office Star is offered Candy, which she politley refuses before we find out, unsuprisingly, Star thinks he’s a fourtune teller. A great bit. The mood quickly drops deep into the basement when Candle hammers into star that her destiny is to be queen and it’s carved in stone despite what other plans she may have. THen things get.. a bit creepy with Mr.Candle asking if Star’s dating marco and when she says no and that i’d be weird to date given they live together he urges her to start thinking about her future husband.  And yes I’m aware Tom probably wrote his script, and Tom knows about as much about school as star Does or else Mr Candle would’ve been suspended, at least for this, it’s still unnerving to hear a grown man not only before this tell a teenager she has no choice in her future, but then try and set her up with an unstable teenager in the creepiest way possible and somehow not get fired. It’s hard to watch Star leaves depressed and it’s marco’s turn.. and once again Mr.Candle proves to be a pretty terrible minon, suggesting Marco be a janitor on garbage island. Now as probably isn’t a shock to you given most of you have probably seen this ep, and we’ll find out in a minute anyway, Tom is behind this: trying to keep star and marco apart and get her back with him. And while parts of this do stink of Tom’s own lack of understanding of star, more on that later, and hatred of Marco, as well as not getting earth, as we’ve seen Mr.Candle is actually godo at his job and we see a bit of a real session that’s not part of an emo’s poorly thought out scheme that proves it. He could EASILY manipulate both, or at least try to with marco, but instead just goes along with a script written by a teenager that instead makes one of his targets depressed and the other instantly ready to tell him off or , had Candle been less lucky, go to the principal with this. Now granted this level of gross incompence is another day at echo creek, but it just dosen’t work. I don’t buy that tom couldn’t of found someone more competent with the giant amoutns of money he has to throw around. Then again Tom is really bad at evil when you think about it: I mean sure he can throw hands, as we’ll see in later episodes, but his evil schemes are poorly thought out at best and i’m certain if he had stayed a bad guy after this episode, he would’ve dropped to just proposing to star every time he sees her like teddy from brooklyn nine nine. 

So naturally Marco and Star talk about this with Star really depressed about seemingly being trapped becoming queen, while Marco gushes about how great being queen would be from his perspective... including never having to pick out clothes, fair enough, and never having people not like you, which is depressing. Poor boy. I missed this Marco: Awkward, insecure, but likeable. and also very much possibly gender fluid. Why they threw that out i’ll never know, but it’s canon for me now at least.  Anyways, Marco decides to confront candle int he bathroom because why not. It’s not any more awkward than Candle trying to convince star to make out with tom without saying tom’s name. But yeah as I let out of the bag early above, Marco finds Candle talking to tom via the toilet, and tom is livid he didn’t mention his name, while Candle insists he’s working on it and that Starco, and he uses that word exactly to Marco’s confusion and my delight as I do like when writers latch on to fan terms and poke a bit of fun at them, is platonic. Tom tells him to be sure and Mr Candle dismises him. Before tom can get too mad about this, Candle reveals i’ts becaue he has to pee and tom insists he flushes first. A really great gag.  So to try and compete with tom and candle for dumbest person this episode, Marco has his own stupid plan: Brag about being “smooch buddiess” with star to piss him off.  I assume the next two steps are ???? and profit. I”d also like to note for those unaware that this clip was used in the promo and assumed it was a love spell or some sort of altered mind thing, as it was way too early in the series for them to get together, and smacked of “let’s bait the shippers and hope they don’t get too pissed”. Given I did ship them at the time, it was massively annoying knowing this was obviously out of context, but it’s better than when I watched avatar first run and any hint of kataang was played up and an entire fucking episode was dedicated to fucking with shippers heads. I really need to rewatch avatar on netflix I have NOOOO excuse. Anyways naturlaly the obvious happened; A pissed off tom, who Need I remind you last time nearly killed marco and only didn’t because star used freeze dry and it was super effective, who drags marco away to a tourture wheel. Meanwhile, Star goes to her mom for support. So I get to talk about Moon: Star’s distant mother who’s her exact oppsite: strict, stone faced and in control at all times. And she does LOVE her daughter and get some development later on, but it still dosen’t change her core and she still has real issues actually listening to star that, like some of star’s own issues, she never really grows past. So natrually this goes about as well as trying to get a cat to do anything: She confirms star is kinda stuck inherting the throne before , in an oddly sad moment.. being genuinely confused when Star asks if she’s happy. It’s... a really good character moment to be honest, and sets up her character well now she’s being fleshed out better this season: Moon just.. really dosen’t care about herself or her own hapiness. I mean her marriage is , paradoxically, one of the only marriages in the mewni queenship that not only lasted but is very healthy, but otherwise she just dosen’t care. The kingdom comes first... and to me it comes from the later revlation she was orphaned around 15. She just spent most of her life putting the kingdom FIRST, just like she figured her mother would’ve and probably did, and putting her heart and soul intot hat. And thus she can’t really fahtom someone being SCARED of all that responsiblity and drudgery when for her, it was just a fact she had to accept at star’s age. She probably woudl never be happy but the kingdom’s what important. The thing is A) that’s deeply unhealthyt o begin with and B) it’s easier to accept something like that when you’ve lost your mom, your dad’s never been around and you have only one other person in your life supporting you. Star has LOTS Of other things to her life: friends, hobbies things moon never had a shot at. Not only that but Star’s lived her life iwth a mother who, rather than be supremley happy and beloved like moon’s own mother, seemd miserable, strict and a workaholic.. things star wants to avoid being. Their very strained relationshp probably isn’t helping this. Moon quickly leaves the conversation, but it instead just makes Star spiral further and decide to do something.. drastic.  Meanwhile in hell. 

Okay not that bad. Let’s try this agian meanwhile in hell. 

I said not THAT bad. Jesus. 

Close enough. So in hell, specifically Tom’s room. Marco admits he was just getting tom’s goat, which his goat skull objects to, and while Tom is oddly mad Marco lied marco actually gets to tom by countering he lied to star... which is true not just this time but last episode too. Tom relases marco from his pain wheel. 

And states that he can’t let him go, he knows too much etc etc, and challenges marco to a fight to the death, which marco acccepts.. inping pong. However tom is really great at ping pong and destroys him.  Back with star she’s gotten a great punk makeover. I do wish that star had a permanent outfit change at some point as her temporary looks are always great, and it woudln’t of killed them to do it in season 3 when they had to change over the intro anyway. Alas. She plans to do something drastic.. we’ll find out why in ab it. Back at ping point Marco challenges for double or nothing, despite tom having multiple paddles and him having none and the scorring demon begging him to stop. Tom obliges him, and the two.. actually start to bond. We’ll get way more of that next time. Btu the two bond over how star just tends to cheat, making up rules or changing them to win at the last minute, and how she just does what she wants.. and it’s then.. Marco FINALLY gets through to tom and points out the obvious: Star won’t get back together with him unless it’s what Star wants and Tom gives a face that screams ‘my god what have I done” realizing both how hew’s screwed up and how for now at least, he may never get her back and no amount of scheming will fix it. It’s a great character moment: Tom finally realizes that he can’t just.. MAKE star love him. You can’t MAKE someone love you, they have to want it too. And star dosen’t want him right now and his stalking is only hurting her.  It’s here Tom turns a corner. This episode was his lowest moment for sure, as while the blood moon ball scheme was sleazy, trying to make her love him via a magic moon thing was creepy, it wasn’t horribly intentioned and while I do think tom knew it’dmake her love him again I don’t think he knew the full extent of the moon’s magic or how it’d tear her apart inside if she say loved someone else, as ended up happening since it didn’t let her let go of her feelings for marco while with tom himself. Here he knows what he’s doing is wrong,  as Marco’s comment makes clear, but is so desperate he’s gone with an insane, dumb and really creepy and manipulative scheme. He TRIED being nice, that didns’t work so he probably felt he had to get more creative and more manipulative... i’ts just he didn’t realize while he LOVES being Royalty, star hates it. While Tom’s parents, who we’ll get into more in a review or two, were loving and supportive, even if his dad may not have been at this stage again we’ll get to his parents when they show up, are fully loving and supportive star’s are loving.. but one of them as we saw just dosen’t GET HER. So while to tom the crown is a great thing to star it’s not so mucha nd given he has trouble with empathy, Tom simplyc an’t understand how much he hurt her until marco spells it out for him And it isn’t just in the text either; As I said in the previous tom review, the writers clearly weren’t wure which way to go with tom, so this episode was the turning point: would tom get worse and become star’s enemy fully.. or would he do the unexpected, at the time anyway, and truly try to change and become another loveable member of her inner circle? And honestly.. I feel they made the right decision. Tom really dosen’t fit into the mewman oppresion cycle as neatlya s the other antagonists who are either the opressors or the result of them. He’s a privlaged kid on the outside of it, as , again , i’ll dig into more in the future. And the show kind of.. outgrew recurring antagonists by season 3. They had a few set up this season, but most either faded away or went all the way up to big bad, and I feel the writers realized that tom just.. didn’t work as that and worked better as a kid struggling with being better than as an incel douchebag antagonist. And given he’s one of the two things that helped prop the show up during it’s worse moments in the latter half, it was the right call and the reason i’m doing this arc at all.  Anyways Tom and Marco head back to the diaz house where Star.. has a mermaid and is complteplating chopping off her tail so she can legally never become queen... yeah I meant what I said when I said drastic. Tom however reveals his deception, and .. genuinely apologizes, another sign of growth, letting star go for now. He does get a WELLLLL earned slap, as I said his actions this episode were the lowest he’d sink and still really creeptastic.. but accepts his apology after that, appricating that he at least apologized and grew a bit.  Star, while now not going to disfigure someone to save herself, I mean that sort of thinking did give us the doom patrol but still, is still bummed about being queen when Marco, in a good bit of ship tease back when this ship wasn’t in my nightmares, tells her that yeah she’s stuck being queen.. but tid osen’t mean she has to be miserable. Don’t do it like moon, do it like you. They hug, and Tom, in another great bit of growth, just smiles and heads off, letting them have this moment and letting star go.  We get one final scnee where candle bails on local alpha bitch britney after tom recalls him which sends her into a depressive spiral later in the series. Ha ha... why did they bring this character back for Season 4?  Final Thoughts:  This episode is the queen of mixed bags. Seriously on one hand there IS some really damn good character stuff, with Star confronted with the hard truth of her becoming queen and begining this and next season’s theme of star building up to her future, and Tom going from 1 and a half dimensoinal douchey stalker to the complex and relatable character he’d become in future episodes. However the good is smothered like bad.. just like smokey the bear had to smother his joint before each PSA. Like “Red Action to the Future: over in my OK KO reviews, it feels like wasted potetial: the idea of both Star and Marco rexamining their future and Star being confronted with having a fixed path and trying to avoid becoming queen are great.. it’s just Star ends up being a supporting player in the episode, and I feel it would’ve been better if moon had been forced to deal with the effect of her words on her daughter, as she’s gone after her scene and what she nearly caused star to do never has any effect. And Mr.Candle is just an.. awful character. Incompitent, even if parts of that are on tom, unfunny, kinda creepy.. ther’es just nothing really enjoyable about him and it makes the first  few minutes a slog as he gaslights two teenagers for money and we never learn just what the hell he is or what his deal is. He just drags the episode down.  Really whiel i’ts not TERRIBLE like some of the series worst episodes (Lint Catcher, Stump Day, Marco Jr, Mama Star), it just feels like it could’ve been better paced or made a half hour so star and moon could have more of a plot.  If you enjoyed this you know the dril; like, reblog etc and if there’s a star or other animated show or movie you want me to review , just shoot me a suggestion or comission it outright for 3 bucks! I’ll get back to tom this weekend hopefully with freindenimeis and hopefully get to my last two reviews before pride lets up. Until we meet again, later days. 

[gaylotusthatexists]

rises the moon - part two

Pairings: currently no major ones, but eventually parental moxiety and intrulogical, possibly either royality or roceit but haven’t decided yet 

Summary: After running away from home, Virgil find the Forest, where he is appointed as the new Lord of Spring. 

Trigger Warnings: sympathetic deceit, remus mention

Word Count: 2k 

Taglist: imma just tag @theloveliestsweetspongy​ but if anyone wants to be tagged let me know 

previous || next || ao3

sun digs its heels to taunt you

Virgil froze, staring at the... animal? Person? Staring at the thing crawling out of the shadows. No, not crawling, walking. Like a human. But... it - he can't have been a human. 

He had horns, for a start. Two brown horns curling out of his head, his wavy hair sliding between them and falling over his... glowing red eyes. And he seemed to be surrounded by an... aura, an aura of something. A sparkling white light, covering his red dress like a sort of cape, or gown, or robe. And he was staring at Virgil, as if he was waiting for the right moment to strike. 

Virgil stepped back, cringing as he heard a quiet snap after stepping on a twig. But the person, thing, whatever he was just stepped closer to him. He tried to steady his breathing. 

"Who are you?" he asked, coming right up besides Virgil. 

Virgil gulped. "Um, my name's Virgil," he said, meekly. 

He frowned. "How did you get in the forest?" 

Virgil blinked. "I, um, I just sorta... walked in, I guess?" 

"Humans don't just walk into the forest," he said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. "Who are you, really?" 

"I told you, my name is Virgil." 

He frowned. "We'll see about that." He grabbed Virgil's wrist and began to drag him deeper into the forest, not really giving Virgil much of a choice but to follow. Virgil glanced back, noticing that he couldn't even see the entrance to the forest anymore - but that couldn't be right, because he'd only just entered the forest. He couldn't have walked in that deep already... right? 

"Could you maybe explain what's going on?" Virgil asked. 

The man - he must've been a person, if he was able to communicate with Virgil - huffed. "Don't act all innocent. You know exactly what's going on." 

"Actually, uh, I'm very confused about all this," Virgil said, eyes darting around and taking in as much as he could of the forest. It looked... somewhat normal, he supposed, but something felt off. 

"You're not fooling me," the man said. "I bet Remus sent you, didn't he?" 

Virgil blinked. "I, um, don't know anyone called Remus." 

"Don't play dumb with me," the man snapped. 

Virgil was silent for a moment, realising that the man wasn't going to listen. It was best to just go along with him at this point, maybe get this whole thing over and done with so he could leave the forest and continue his life. 

"Hey, any chance you could let go of my wrist?" Virgil wondered. "It's kinda hurting a little." 

The man glared at him. "Why should that be my problem?" 

"I-I dunno, I mean, you're the one kidnapping me, or whatever." He shoved his free hand in his pocket. 

" You're the one trespassing in our part of the forest," the man claimed, tightening his grip. 

Trespassing. Ah. That was something that Virgil had thought about earlier, wasn't it? Maybe walking through the field hadn't been such a great idea. 

"Listen, I'm sorry, okay?" Virgil said. "I didn't know this was your forest, or whatever. I was just walking and found this place." 

The man growled. "You don't just walk into this forest. I know that Remus sent you, you don't have to make excuses." 

Virgil sighed. "I literally have no idea who this 'Remus' guy is." 

"Remus. The Lord of Darkness. You know. The person you're working for." 

"I am seventeen years old and unemployed," Virgil said, only half-telling the truth - technically he did have a job, working retail for some extra cash, most of which they took away anyway, but he supposed he didn't have that job anymore. Since he ran away and all. 

The man laughed. "Seventeen, that's funny." 

Virgil frowned. "How is that funny?" 

"C'mon. I mean. You're fully grown." The man shook his head. "You must be at least five hundred, right? Maybe into the thousands." 

Virgil blinked. "That... You are joking, right?" 

The man stopped and turned his head to face Virgil. "You're not?" 

"Well, obviously I'm not joking, I don't think it's physically possible for me to be over five hundred years old." 

His eyes widened. "Wait, you're a human, aren't you?" 

"What else would I be?" 

"So... Remus didn't send you?" 

Virgil groaned. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!" 

He let go of his wrist. Sighing with relief, Virgil began to rub his wrist, glancing down to notice a red mark forming. 

"Could you please explain what's going on?" Virgil requested. 

The man sighed. "I suppose so. If you're really not with Remus." He bowed his head. "I'm Roman, Lord of Summer." 

Virgil snorted. " Lord of Summer ?" he repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?" 

Roman rolled his eyes, continuing to walk deeper into the forest. "It's kinda self-explanatory." 

Virgil ran to catch up with him, before slowing down and walking by his side. "Well. Not really. May I remind you that I have absolutely no idea what is going on." 

Roman looked over at him. "How did you get into the forest?" he asked, again. 

"I told you, I just walked in," Virgil said. 

"Huh." Roman looked ahead. "That's never happened before. I didn't even know humans could come into the forest." 

Virgil wondered if that meant that Roman himself wasn't a human, which in turn led him to question what the hell Roman actually was. He called himself the Lord of Summer , which must have meant something, right? And being the Lord of Summer also implied there were others 'Lords' - presumably of Spring, Autumn and Winter. 

Roman stopped walking, so Virgil did too, a little confused. They stood in front of a giant tree, so tall that Virgil couldn't even see the top. It's leaves had fallen, and had been replaced by icicles, with frost lining the branches. That didn't seem right. It didn't seem right at all. 

At the base there was a wooden door, which Roman walked towards and opened, stepping inside. Virgil followed him, becoming more confused by the second. Roman led him down a spiral staircase, carved out of the tree's wood, until they reached a large hall, almost like some sort of... throne room. 

At the end of the hall, another man sat on a chair, staring at the two of them with a scowl on his face. As the two approached the man, Virgil tried to get a closer look. His yellow eyes were surrounded by green scales, and he had a scar running all the way down the right side of his face. He wore a black shirt with yellow lacing, and a black cloak falling all the way down to the floor. He seemed angry. 

"Roman, who is this?" he asked, leaning forward in his chair. 

Roman bowed, kneeling down. "Prince Janus, Lord of the Forest, this is Virgil," he introduced. 

The man - Janus, Virgil presumed - frowned. "Is this one of Remus' servants?" 

Roman shook his head, standing back up again. "No. He's a human." 

"A human?" Janus smirked. "And how did a human get into the forest? Did you bring him here?" 

"No, your highness." Roman glanced at Virgil. "He says he just 'walked in'." 

Janus raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. Is that the truth?" he asked, turning to Virgil. 

Virgil cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah. I was walking and found a forest and walked inside." He paused. "Well, no, actually, I was kinda pulled inside by... I dunno, the wind, or something. But yeah, I walked here." 

"Pulled by the wind, you say?" Janus repeated. 

"Yeah." Virgil glanced down, refusing to look Janus in the eye, but he could still feel Janus’ gaze fixed upon him, digging into his skull. "There were leaves, or something. The wind picked up and... I dunno, I couldn't really control myself." 

Janus stood up, and stepped towards Virgil. He reached out a gloved hand and raised Virgil's head, forcing him to look into his eyes. He glanced over at Roman. "Do you think...?" 

Roman moved over to them, looking Virgil up and down. "He could be. But... he's a human. Can they..." 

"Call Logan," Daemon ordered. 

Roman nodded, and walked out the hall, leaving Virgil alone with Janus. Great. 

"Follow me," Janus instructed, beginning to walk to the side of the hall. Virgil followed, however reluctantly. They walked out of the hall and into a sort of garden, stopping once they reached a fountain. "Touch the water." 

Virgil frowned. "What?" 

"Touch the water," Janus repeated. 

Confusion only growing, Virgil reached out and let the tips of his finger fall onto the water's surface. He felt stupid, as Janus stared at him expectantly, but he wasn't about to argue against Janus. Roman had called him a Prince, so he must have been important, right? 

He drew back his hand in shock, as a small lotus flower bloomed on the water's surface. He looked down at his hands, beginning to grow tiny petals on his fingertips. 

"What... What did you do?" he asked, turning to Janus. 

Janus smirked, although he was unable to hide the excitement in his eyes. "I did nothing. That was you." 

Virgil felt his hands shake. He took a couple deep breaths to calm down. "What are you talking about?" 

Janus smiled at him, and then began to walk away, through another doorway on the other side of the garden. Virgil ran to catch up with him, slowing down as they entered another room. Four orbs were stationed in the middle - a glowing blue one decorated in snowflakes, a red one decorated in leaves, a yellow one decorated in a drawing of the sun, and a faded grey one decorated in dying flowers. 

"I'm... aware that you don't know much about the place you are in," Janus began, walking towards the orbs, "but I believe you may be of use to us. Here in the forest, we have the four Lords of the Seasons, who take turns in keeping the forest alive. I, myself, am the Lord of the Forest - I, of course, aid in keeping the forest alive, but mostly I'm here to rule. You've already met the Lord of Summer - Roman, as I'm sure you're aware, and soon enough you'll meet the Lords of Autumn and Winter - Patton and Logan." He picked up the grey orb. "We currently don't have a Lord of Spring." 

Virgil frowned, stepping towards Janus. "Why?" 

"That's... That's a story for another day," Janus said. "However, I believe you might be able to take his place." 

Virgil blinked. "Me?" 

"Yes. Hold this, please." 

He handed the orb to Virgil, who took it. It vibrated upon contact with his skin. But nothing else happened. 

Janus sighed. "Perhaps you're not ready yet." He took the orb back, putting it back in place. 

"Ready for what?" Virgil asked. 

Janus just smiled. "You'll find out soon enough. Come," he said, beginning to walk back towards the hall, "I'm sure Logan is ready by now. He'll have something to say." 

Virgil walked besides Janus. "Logan is the Lord of Winter, right?" he recalled. 

"Yes," Janus confirmed, "and he's been on the job for a hundred years." 

Virgil glanced down. "Is that... Is that because you don't have a Lord of Spring?" 

"What do you think ?"

"Ah." Virgil put his hands in his pockets. "Sorry." 

"Don't apologise," Janus said. "You're new here." 

They entered the hall. Roman stood there with another person - Logan, Virgil assumed - floating a couple feet off the floor. He had icy blue skin detailed with light blue cracks on his forehead, along with light blue hair in plaits either side of his face and one down his back. He wore an outfit very similar to Roman's - blue, floor length dress and a cape made from a light. A pair of rectangular glasses sat in front of his piercing blue eyes, and a chain with a moon charm hung around his neck. 

He floated towards Virgil, running his fingers down Virgil's cheeks. "Interesting."

[righthandwriter]

Pretty Princess Chapter 2 ::Habinny::

here’s an update to my brainwashed Vinnie fic! Happy Halloween, Hybrids! Also holy shit EMH updated twice in a row, is it a miracle??? @slendersmut

Read the Second Chapter on AO3

Summary: Vinnie knew he had to pay HABIT back for breaking something expensive, he just didn’t know that HABIT wanted a different kind of payment. He didn’t know that HABIT wanted to use him, and slowly it spiraled from there until Vinnie lost his fucking mind - literally.

Tags: brainwashing, hypnosis, hypnotic cum, bottom!Vinnie, mind break

Vinnie’s eyes slowly opened, staring up at the dull ceiling as he blinked away sleep. He felt weird. Weirder than he usually did when he awoke to the sound of white noise and the occasional ticking of his alarm clock when a minute passed.

He slowly sat up, but flinched as his lower back ached.

Oh.

That’s right.

HABIT had some fun with him again last night. This was the third time that asshole had fucked him and the third time he woke up feeling strange, like his mind was rearranging itself.

Glancing at the clock, Vinnie realized it was 9 in the morning, and after deciding that he wouldn’t get much more sleep than that, he stood and slowly limped his way to the bathroom for a quick shower. Hopefully a nice hot shower would wash away his disgust and the sticky purple substance that clung to his thighs.

As he passed by the mirror, he froze. Vinnie turned to look at his reflection and almost panicked at the sight of his gaze. The whites of his eyes had begun shifting to a deep purple. The last time he had checked his reflection, the color was a lighter shade of purple, like lavender, but now it was getting deeper. Did this happen every time HABIT….?

God, the thought terrified him. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t want to think anymore at all.

Turning on the water, Vinnie slowly enters the shower and cleans up. He thinks of nothing, letting his gaze rest blankly on the shower wall, and before he knew it, the water ran cold and he was forced to get out. Somehow he ended up getting dressed and heading downstairs to get breakfast without breaking down, so that was good.

It didn’t last though.

Vinnie only had the effort to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but as he grabbed a knife to spread the peanut butter, a hand grabbed his own. He jolted at the sudden touch, trying to wedge his own hand away.

“NOW, NOW, PET~ IS THAT ANYWAY TO TREAT YOUR MASTER?”

“Get away, Habit,”

The wicked grin on HABIT’ face faltered and his teasing gaze turned into a sharp glare. His hand reached out, grabbing Vinnie’s chin and squeezing hard as he jerks his face to the side so they’re looking at each other.

“HMM….ONE MORE SHOULD DO THE TRICK, DON’T YOU THINK, PET?”

Vinnie wrenched his face from the other’s grip, turning to finish making breakfast.

“WHY DON’T YOU MAKE ME ONE OF THOSE SANDWICHES, VINSTER?”

“I’m not going to……” but he trailed off. Before Vinnie could stop himself, his body had already moved to set up another plate and make a second sandwich for Habit. He blinks, realizing what he was doing. But….WHY was he doing it?

HABIT reached over, taking the plate off the counter and leaning over Vinnie’s shoulder, “WELL LOOK AT THAT! FOLLOWING ORDERS SO WELL~”

The feeling of Habit’s breath against his neck made Vinnie shudder, his hands gripping the edge of the counter as hard as he could. “G-Go...away…”

“IT’S NOT THAT EASY, PET~ YOU CAN’T JUST EXPECT ME TO LEAVE WHEN YOU SAY. BESIDES, I’M IN CHARGE HERE, NOT YOU,”

And suddenly Habit’s fingers are sliding down Vinnie’s sides. Vinnie tries to shove the other away from him, but he only spurs Habit on. Suddenly his pants are yanked down and Habit’s are too and before Vinnie can plead to be left alone, he’s giving a pained yelp as Habit pushes inside of him.

“AW, LOOK AT YOU, PE, MAKING SUCH PRETTY SOUNDS.”

“G-get off of me!! H-Habit, I don’t want-!!!”

“OH NOT YET, BUT KEEP BEGGING, IT’S KINDA HOT~”

Habit’s already thrusting at a brutal pace, not letting Vinnie adjust at all. He’s only chasing after his own pleasure. Vinnie’s sobs and begging are barely heard, muffled out by Habit’s dirty talk and growls that only make Vinnie’s toes curl.

Eventually, the sobbing gets on Habit’s nerves, so he slides a hand over to shove over Vinnie’s mouth, muffling his noises as he continues his brutal pace. The other’s tears are still rolling down his cheeks though and land on Habit’s hand instead of the countertop below. Pulling his hand away, Habit smirks and licks the salty tears from his hand.

“OOOH VIN, I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT YOUR TEARS TASTE /GREAT/,” he growls, grabbing Vinnie’s face and yanking his head back enough to lick the liquid from Vinnie’s cheeks.

A soft whimper leaves Vinnie, along with whatever fight was left. He was exhausted, his limbs ached and Habit didn’t seem to be anywhere near finished with him. Even as the demon dug his teeth into Vinnie’s neck and came deep inside of him, he didn’t seem to be done.

Although…...suddenly, he felt like he didn’t WANT Habit to be finished.

As the last of Habit’s purple seed spills into him, Vinnie’s eyes squeeze shut, and as he opens them...they’re the same bright purple that swirled through Habit’s own gaze.

“IT’S ABOUT TIME. BEING PATIENT ISN’T EXACTLY ONE OF MY STRONG POINTS. HELLO PET, WILL YOU BE GOOD NOW~?”

His voice rings through Vinnie’s ears, a question that can only be answered one way. Slowly, Vinnie nods, a sweet mewl leaving him as he manages to shift in the demon’s arms and wrap his arms tightly around him, holding onto his master with a new sense of obedience and need.

“Y-yes. Good….pleeease, more, p-please want more-“

“OH? BEGGING ALREADY? NOW THAT’S WHAT I LIKE TO HEAR,”

A soft whine is his response.

“SINCE YOU’VE DECIDED TO BE A GOOD BOY, I THINK YOU DESERVE A REWARD NOW. WHAT KIND OF REWARD WOULD YOU LIKE? YOU CAN RIDE ME,” he suggests with a toothy grin, “OR YOU CAN SUCK ME OFF, MAYBE SIT ON MY COCK FOR ANOTHER MOVIE MARATHON, LIKE WE DID THE FIRST TIME,”

His fingers graze Vinnie’s arm as he speaks, suddenly much softer now that he has the human under his control.

“Wanna, Wanna ride you! Please, master, please, please, please, pl-“

A finger rests over his lips to quiet him.

“HUSH, PET. NO NEED TO BEG UNLESS I WANT YOU TOO. YOU’VE ASKED SO NICELY THOUGH, HOW CAN I SAY NO?”

With a smirk, Habit leads his brainwashed toy to the next room, sitting comfortably in his recliner and flicking on the tv without a second thought. He grabs Vinnie’s squishy waist and yanks him onto his cock, a wild smirk on his face when Vinnie gasps and whimpers once more. His pet makes such pretty noises.

It doesn’t take much encouragement to get Vinnie started, and seeing his pet slowly lift himself up and drop back down is such a treat. He should have brainwashed Vinnie ages ago!

Habit gets lost in his own monologue thoughts as Vinnie rides him, holding tight to his new master’s shoulders as he focuses on reaching his own orgasm. The faster he moves, the louder his moans become, and it isn’t long until he’s sobbing with need.

“Ah! Ah! Habit! M-master please, please, please, more! Nnn-!”

“YOU MAKE SUCH A CUTE PET, DON’T YOU, VIN?”

Habit’s fingers dig into Vinnie’s sides as he speaks, purring at how good his new pet is being. Taking everything he gives him, begging for more, doing as he’s told. This is perfect!

“BOUNCING ON MY COCK LIKE SUCH A SLUT! THAT’S WHAT YOU ARE, AREN’T YOU? A SLUT! /MY/ SLUT. MY PERFECT LITTLE COCKSLUT, YOU'LL TAKE ANYTHING I GIVE YOU, WON’T YOU?”

“Ye-e-e-es!” Vinnie gasps as he bounces, his thighs aching as he moves, but he keeps going. “P-Perfect for- for you! Ah-ah-ah! Wanna be perfect, mmm!! For you!!!”

Habit just grins and reaches down to grab his cock, stroking quickly to get his pet off. The moans and sobs that follow only spur on the sick entertainment he’s getting from this. Even the sound of Vinnie sobbing and cumming all over himself make the demon laugh loudly.

As Vinnie comes down from his high, a defeated sob leaves him and he crumples forward in Habit’s lap. The demon’s arms wrap around him, gently rubbing his back.

“SHHHH, VIN, IT’S ALRIGHT NOW. IT’S OVER. THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG NOW,”

And with a tired moan, Vinnie can do nothing but believe him. His eyes close, his breakfast forgotten for now, and the last light of hope draining from his eyes.

This is where he belongs now.

[my-fanfic-soul]

No Need to Regret: Ch. 19

From the Beginning

The car ride home was a slow blur.  I felt like there was a roaring in my ears and I couldn’t focus on anything else. I wasn't raised religious, but I can't count how many times since he walked into our lives that I'd prayed he'd leave. That god, I can handle my mother but please take this monster away from me. I'd get hopeful when he was late coming home from work, hoping he'd decided to just leave without a warning. Over the years I had given up the very thought but now here we were. If there is a god, he's taken his sweet time getting around to answering prayers.

Abi told me over the chaos happening in my head that from what she had gathered, apparently things had been getting worse and worse at my mom’s house for the past two months.  The frustration of not having access to money from my relationship with a rich man was a constant source of anger for Mike and the lack of information to sell to magazines made him even angrier.

They had tried to weasel information from my younger siblings, but nothing had worked.  They hadn’t known enough for it to be juicy.  They contacted one of my exes, the one that works for the university newspaper, but he only knew what was already public information.  They had even tried to call my work and get Samantha to fire me or garnish my wages to send to them, but she had refused (and apparently neglected to tell me as well).

With any access to my nonexistent money, Mike had even sunk to the level of telling my mom that he refused to pay for anything regarding “her brats,” that she should be trying harder to get money from me.  Naturally, this caused even more fights between the two of them because I wasn’t playing along with their demands and one of the things Mom loved the most about him was his paycheck.

On top of their growing arguments about money, there was growing tension from the lack of a break from the kids.  They weren’t getting their every other weekend free because they were refusing to send the kids to my dad on the off chance I’d get to see them.  They didn’t get their two-week break over Christmas and they were home all day since school was out.  They didn’t even get a reprieve when they went to sports because Mike was refusing to pay for anything not offered through the school.

It was easier when I was still at home, but Noe spends so much time at school he’s rarely around to “parent” the younger kids and Bethany can’t stop Ethan and Olivia from bickering.  She can’t even completely stop herself from bickering with them, which draws Mike’s attention, which leads to more yelling, and it continues to cycle that way.

It all came to a head when Mike saw the shots of me and Niall celebrating New Year’s together in New York.  He had never bargained for raising seven children and the fact I had gone to New York City by myself with Niall must have made it look like they had lost all control over me.  Him and Mom fought over her inability to get me back into line and he told her he was gone.  He was out of the house by the next day and Mom had been in a downward spiral ever since.

If I had thought that would mean better things for me and my siblings, I was quickly proven wrong.  When my phone had finally caught up from being turned off for so long, my voicemail was full of my mom screaming at me.  Abi was right, she did blame me for Mike leaving and had no intent of changing her stance on me getting to see them.  If I had just gotten in line, he’d still be there.  If I had just sent them money or given them information or items Niall had touched to sell, her husband wouldn’t have filed for divorce. If I had just been less selfish, my siblings would still have a ‘father figure.’

“We both know he wasn’t a father in any way, shape, or form.  I would be a better dad, and I’m twenty-somethin’ and spend my life never being in the same place for longer than a week,” Niall commented over Skype after I let him listen to the latest of my mom’s voicemails.  He had insisted on wanting to hear them, too.  He said it was because he wanted to be in the loop on what was going wrong, but I knew it was because he was making it his mission to make sure I knew how wrong she was about everything she said to me.

Flipping back to my voicemail page, I said, “Just wait.  That’s not even the worst of them from yesterday.”

Niall was shaking his head.  “I still can’t believe that they’re blaming all of this on you.  In what world would they be able to get what want out of you?”

“A word of advice? Never try to find the logic in what my parents say or do.  It’s a lost cause.  There’s no logic to be found.”  Before I hit play on the next crazy message from my mother, I said, “It was never a strong relationship, anyway.  They always fought, he was always suspicious, and she was always just a little too clingy.  That doesn’t matter to them, though.  They’ve never claimed responsibility for anything in their life.  Something would have been the catalyst eventually, and they always would have found someone to blame.  It doesn’t matter if their logic is convoluted and has no basis in truth.”

A week later, I found out just how little logic my mother was working with.

The morning had dawned cold and rainy, the perfect combination to make me want to stay cuddled up in bed and never move again.  It hadn’t been aided by Niall’s text talking about how much he missed me and how he was dreaming of being holed up in our New York hotel together, again.  The only thing that got me out of bed and into the shower was that work meant money and money meant getting to live, so I crawled out from between my warm sheets, made breakfast, and trudged my way to work.

Normally, I would have stopped for a coffee first, but my extended stay in bed meant that I strolled into the museum just as it was time for me to clock in.  “Cutting it a little close today, are we?” Samantha asked as she looked up at me from the table in the staff room with a coy look on her face.  “That Irish gentleman of yours keeping you up too late?”

I felt my face go red as I shook my head.  This was the first time she had been in since I had come back from New York.  “No, he’s not even here.  I was just too cold to function this morning.”

“It wasn’t too cold in New York?”

I probably could have functioned as a stop sign with how red my face was turning.  I was putting fire trucks to shame.  I had only told Brad and Abi where I was going, and I assumed the worst about Samantha finding out where I had been.  It would mean she had seen the pictures, and if she had seen the pictures that most likely meant she knew my boyfriend wasn’t a low level which meant I could kiss my peaceful days at work goodbye.  “How did you…?”

Samantha smirked as she got up to put her coffee mug in the sink.  “Apparently even bottom of the chain actors deserve a little bit of paparazzi fame somewhere besides in the Austin area.  I saw the pictures of you two locking lips on New Year’s Eve.”

“Of course, you did…” I mutter as I reach for the coffee maker myself.  I knew that pictures had made it online and into magazines, for some reason I had just figured that people wouldn’t notice them unless they were specifically searching for it, like my parents and One Direction fans.

From there we talked about what I had seen in NYC and how her winter holidays had gone.  She had been in Washington visiting her daughter since a few days before Christmas and was full of humorous stories of her adventures in the Northwest.  It was a slow morning, which was to be expected, and things were going well.  I thought that was the end of the conversations about my love life and that the rest of the day would be smooth sailing.

Around 11, Joe came in with a concerned look on his face.  This wasn’t unusual, Joe was a worrier on the best of days.  The unusual bit was that he seemed shocked when he saw me smiling at him.  “Who pissed in your cheerios?” I asked him once he had dropped his stuff in the staff room and come back out to where we were looking through the catalog for an exhibit that was supposed to be shipping to us soon.

“The question is why you aren’t acting like anyone pissed in yours.  I can’t believe you’re this relaxed,” he retorted as he slid onto a stool next to Samantha.

“Why wouldn’t she be relaxed?  I run this place with the specific purpose of making it a relaxed atmosphere.  I expect for the two of you to be so relaxed you fall asleep standing up while leading a group of third graders around this place,” Samantha teased.

Joe shook his head but kept his attention focused on me.  “You really don’t know?” he asked.

My stomach started tying itself in knots as an ice-cold feeling filled my bones.  “Don’t know what?” I asked and my voice sounded hollow, like it belonged to someone else.  Whatever it was, I could feel that it was bad already.

He was shaking his head.  “If you don’t know maybe I should tell you…”

“What’s wrong, Joe?”

He swallowed hard, but pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened it, and slid it across the counter to me.  It was a news article.  I couldn’t tell you which news source it was, because the only thing I could see was the bold printed title: Blinded by Love or Digging for Gold?  Kendra Freeman’s mom spills about her daughter’s relationship with pop star Niall Horan.

I felt like I had stepped into a vacuum.  All of the air in the room was gone and my chest felt like it was going to cave in on itself.  “There’s nothing for her to spill,” I snapped.  “She doesn’t know anything!  I made sure I didn’t tell her…”

Joe shrugged apologetically.  “She kinda used that to her advantage,” he said timidly, like he was worried I’d bite his head off or Hulk smash his phone.

I finally forced myself down to the article itself.  She did a beautiful job of spinning her web to make nothing look like something while throwing me under the biggest bus she could imagine.  She talked about how she, my poor innocent mother, knew nothing about our relationship because I had cut everyone off.  That I refused to let him meet any of them and that I had become cold towards them since the relationship had started.

She talked about how I was self-centered as a person, and that as a mother it pained her to admit that she had gone wrong somewhere with me.  That I was refusing to see my siblings and that they were suffering from my spoiled attitude.  She went on to say that she didn’t blame Niall for my theatrics, that he was just a pawn in my scheme to become better than I am.  She went as far as saying that Niall was the newest victim of my emotional abuse, that I was using him, and that she hoped he’d “see the light and realize that Kendra isn’t the angel he thinks she is.”

The writer added in that maybe I was just blinded by my new relationship and that I might come down from my self-centered ways after the new wore off, but it was such a small part of the article I knew it wouldn’t be the part anyone clung onto.  98% of it was catering to my mother’s image of me as a horrible person that took advantage of anyone that I could, from my doting parents, to my innocent siblings who were guilty of nothing but adoring me, and my new boyfriend who didn’t know me well enough to know about my parasitic ways.

The roaring in my ears was back and I barely made sense of Joe’s sympathetic expression and Samantha taking his phone from me before telling me to take an extended lunch.  I felt like a zombie as I grabbed my bag and walked across campus.  I felt like everyone was staring at me and talking about me, and yet I felt nothing at all.

I knew I should check my phone.  I knew that Niall was probably blowing up my texts and voicemail by now.  That it was possible that Harry and maybe even Abi were trying to get a hold of me, too, but I didn’t check.  I couldn’t check.  I knew they’d be beseeching me to ignore it.  To not read the comments.  To avoid social media until things had blown over.  But I couldn’t do that.  As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t do that.

Just like the morning I met Niall, instinct more than thought brought me to the coffee shop.  I stood outside the door, confused by the strong smell of coffee beans and how I had ended up here.  I hadn’t had a goal at all other than to get away from the museum.  But if I was here, I might as well take advantage of it.  

When I walked into the coffee shop, I felt a mixture of warmth at the memories of being in the place where I had met Niall and frigidness because this was where my life had changed forever.  Where my life had started down a path that I was not prepared for, but I could see no reasonable way out of.  I wouldn’t trade Niall for all the peacefulness in the world because life is never peaceful forever and he was a good rock in a storm.  Even if I did walk out now, the press attention would quickly fade away, but gears were already in motion to destroy my family structure.  There’s no going back, now.

My face must have looked haunted, because Michaela immediately knew what I was there for.  “Kendra…” she started as she pulled a cinnamon roll out of the display case.

“How bad is it?” I asked, my voice hardly recognizable.

“Kendra, sweetie, no… you don’t need to…”

“What are they saying about me, Michaela?”  Because that’s why I was here.  I knew that Michaela would look through this with me.  I knew that Michaela would be the only one to help soften the blow while actually being real with me about what the blowback from this article would be.  Because that’s what this was.  My mother knew that Niall would recognize all the lies in her story.  If it planted a seed of doubt in him, that was just lucky chance to her.

This was because she knew the insanity that was the One Direction fandom.  I didn’t have to look at her search history to know that she had spent the last few months looking for every detail that she could use against me as she could.  She’d know by now that most of the fandom doesn’t trust me because I’m an outsider and not active on Twitter or Instagram.  That even if they don’t actively dislike me, they’re still on the fence about my intentions with Niall.  That a large chunk of them were willing to be as nasty as possible at the faint prospect their fav was seeing a girl, and even more so if they were openly dating.

She knew perfectly well that tarnishing my name with his fans would make my life miserable.  She earned a buck while also punishing me, making it clear that if I wouldn’t feed her information she’d fight back in the only way she could.  Through lies and attempting to ruin my relationship.  Through confirming to the ones that already had a problem with me, from the woman who birthed me herself, that I was a bitch set out to use Niall for his money and fame.

Michaela sighed.  “Let me go clock out.”

I was correct in assuming that the article had exploded across every social media platform.  Comments like, “Damn, even her mama don’t like her” were light in comparison to some of the others.  There were people defending me, saying that it was fishy for my own mother to do an interview like that and maybe there was a reason I wasn’t giving her details but for the most part people seemed determined that this was the confirmation they’d been looking for.  That I was a monster only using Niall for his money, that they had known it all along, and it was time for me to go.  People talking about how wonderful my mother was for calling me out and wanting to protect Niall from a potentially abusive relationship.

There was even a petition on Twitter that they kept tagging Niall in to get him to leave me before I ruined his life forever.

“It’s all bullshit, you know,” I told her quietly as she got me a third cup of coffee, assuring me that it was on the house.  “I mean, it’s true that my parents haven’t met him and that I hid my relationship from them, but that’s because I knew they’d try to exploit it in some way.  I never expected them to jump from 0 to 60 the way they did, but I did everything I could to protect Niall from their craziness.”

“Girl, you don’t have a mean bone in your body,” Michaela assured me.  “Everyone who knows you already knows this.  Even when that jackass cheated on you last year, you didn’t have a bad word to say about him.  You even told me that he probably just didn’t know what else to do.  That this witch can find anything wrong in you is beyond me.”

It was a nice gesture, and I knew she meant to be comforting, but I just couldn’t find it in me to be comforted.  Somehow, I found the strength to make it back to the museum where I dealt with Samantha and Joe trying to be comforting and assuring, but it was hard when Samantha couldn’t get over the fact that Niall was “that Irish guy from One Direction, why didn’t you tell me?”  It was like that last layer of anonymity had been ripped away from me.  Everyone in my life knew I was dating Niall Horan from One Direction and my family life, not even a truthful representation of it, was flapping in the wind for everyone to see and comment on.  I was even more grateful than usual for a slow day, especially when Samantha sent me home twenty minutes early.

I was sitting in the middle of my bed before I pulled my phone out to look at it.  As I expected there were ten texts from Abi telling me “don’t pay attention to that bitch, she’ll only get what she wants” and five texts from Brad telling me that everyone who matters knows that’s not true.  Briefly, I wondered if this was what MSN Messenger had been like back in middle school after someone had trash talked them on MySpace.  I hadn’t had either, but I remember them being discussed in class at school.

There were a few texts from Harry checking up on me and letting me know that Niall was freaking out.  Honestly, I could have figured that one out on my own.

Kendra whatever you do, don’t go online.

Kendra?

Don’t listen to her I know it’s not true.

Please answer your phone.

I’m trying to fix this I promise.

Please talk to me, Ken.

Keni?

Don’t talk to her, ok?

Please let me know you’re ok.

The first of ten voicemails he had left said pretty much the same thing and I closed out of it before I could hear any more.  Instead, I dialed his number and prayed that he wasn’t busy and could answer.

“Keni,” his voice was like a breath of fresh air in what had otherwise been a toxic fume filled day.  He put so much relief and emotion into that one word that for the first time today, I broke down sobbing.

Niall isn’t the type of guy that handles tears very well, but I was grateful for the effort he gave me in those five minutes that I couldn’t stop sobbing.  I heard him move into a quieter room, the door shutting and muffling the noise of wherever he was.  He made quiet, comforting words, letting me know that he knew she was crazy, that he knew she was being cruel, and that he’d handle it as I continued crying.

I’m not a crier.  Growing up, crying was a useless habit that most of us gave up by the time we were five.  I tear up sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve sobbed like this since I was a little kid.  I’ve never wanted or needed to cry more, though.  I always knew my mother was heartless, but this was something I had never expected.  Maybe it’s because we always expect the best from our parents, even when they’ve continually lowered the bar for their actions.  Maybe it’s that we always hope that they’ll be better this time, but in my experience, they never are.

Sniffling, I managed to get out, “I never imagined that she’d twist the truth around like this.  I never thought she’d tell outright lies just to earn a buck.  I’m so sorry, Niall.”

“You’re sorry?” he asked, his voice gentle.  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Keni.  Nothing to be sorry for at all.  We don’t get to choose our family, we just get to clean up the messes they leave behind.”

“They’re still going to harass you about things that aren’t even true.  The fans and the interviewers and the gossip magazines.  They’re going to take this and run with it.”

Niall grunted out, “Not any more than they already do about lies the internet perpetuates.  It’s part of my job, unfortunately.  Sometimes these stories come from the people that can hurt us the most and not complete strangers.  Have you talked to her?”

“No,” I mumble, fiddling with a hole in my quilt.  “I didn’t even check my texts until I got home from work.  I didn’t want people throwing me off any more than I already was.”

“That’s good,” Niall replied, sounding relieved.  “I’m checking with legal, seeing if there’s something we can do about it.”

“What?!”

Niall sounded tired as he said, “Sue for libel or something.  It was definitely a defamation of character if I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve seen quite a bit over the last few years.”

I shook my head numbly, touched by his knee jerk reaction to protect me but knowing that it wasn’t a practical approach.  “That’s weirdly sweet, but I don’t think we’d have a case.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s my mother and even if we could, it would make it worse for my siblings.  She’d really never let me see them again.  Besides, she’s twisted it in just the right way that it’s not completely lies. I did hide it from my parents, just not for the reasons she stated.  My siblings are suffering, but it’s because of what she’s doing.  And I could see them whenever I wanted, if I just gave her what she wants.  I’m not, so in a way I guess I am refusing to see them…”

“Ok, so maybe there isn’t a case and you may not want to sue her anyway, but don’t let her gaslight you into thinking this is alright or that any of that is true.  It’s not, Keni.  You’re one of the best people I know and nothing she says will ever change that.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, the muffled sound of what was happening on Niall’s end the only thing breaking the silence.  “I wish that for once in her life she would think about somebody besides herself,” I say, looking at the paintings on my wall that Noah did for me, wondering if he’d ever do artwork for me again.  It was dramatic, but I wasn’t in the mood for rational thinking.  “This was more than just money for her, she knew that it would hurt me and was probably hoping it would end up ruining our relationship.”

Niall heaved a long sigh.  “You looked at the comments online, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”  My voice was quiet.  “I had to.  I’d rather know the damage now than be confronted with it for the first time when someone is yelling at me on the streets.  I know Eleanor get’s yelled at about stuff between her and Louis, I don’t want to be blindsided.”

He was annoyed, but I could tell he was trying to keep it under control.  “Plenty of ‘em will be ugly as sin online but wouldn’t dream of saying a word against you to one of our faces.  Eleanor will be the first to tell you that she’s taken fan pictures with people that were nice to her face but said nothing but shite about her online.  Just because they’re being mean online doesn’t mean they will be in person.  It’s better to just ignore them, not let them get under your skin.”

He meant well, I knew he did, and in a perfect world that would work, but it wasn’t practical for me and I told him as much.  “The younger ones are in public school, Ni.  While they can’t use social media and don’t have access to the internet, their friends do. I need to know the information they’re getting so I can talk to them.  I know I can’t actually talk to them right now, but I need to be able to answer their questions if we ever do get access back to each other.”

“Come on Keni, you know they won’t believe that nonsense.”

“They’re kids and it’s been a pretty long time.  Their friends at school will have seen all the drama and with mom feeding them lies, they may just start believing it.  Right now, they know it’s not true but what happens in two weeks or four or six?  They’re going to think I abandoned them.”

“Kendra.”  Niall’s voice was stern.  “They’re growing up in the same house you did.  They know their mother is a snake.  They know you’ve bent over backwards for years to be with them.  They know you wish you could be with them now.  They know.”

I knew he was right somewhere deep inside me, but on the surface I was hurting too much to acknowledge it.  For all the ways my life had been changing for the better, it felt like my world had been ripped out from under my feet and I didn’t know how to put everything back to rights.  In some ways, I would never be able to get everything back to normal.  I had been gripping at sand for months, and weird balance I had with my parents in the past was now slipping through my fingers.  I had always wanted to be free of them, but not at the expense of my younger brothers and sisters.

Chapter 20

Master List

[shadowofthelamp]

Behold, some context for this, specifically Bella’s part. I’ll add more when I actually write more about Kit’s bit.

Wordcount: 2075

The second she saw the airship soaring through the red-tinted sky, shooting anything that looked at it funny, Bella knew she had to get inside of it. Let Kit flirt with their host (or, if she was honest, fail to flirt with, man, she didn’t even like flirting and even she knew that he turned into a pile of goopy mush when he was around a guy he thought was cute) and let Vee attempt to kidnap yet another animal to try and smuggle home, she wanted to find out who the heck made a steam-powered airship in the twentieth century.

Or maybe Hell was actually stuck in the year 1900, who knew? Time probably passed funny in the afterlife, but the fact that nobody had shot them out of the sky yet said that there was something else afoot- the pilot had to have some way of warding off attacks considering rivals probably had, like, grenade launchers, and she wanted to find out how. Style merged with substance, ruling the air with confidence- and she wanted in.

“Hey! Hey you!” She flagged down somebody with four arms and purple fur who looked short enough to be less likely to punt her into orbit- Mom had warned that most people down here were mean as, well, Hell- and pointed up at the ship. “What’s the deal with those?”

“You a newly dead?” The demon raised one of their four eyes, and Bella nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, newly dead. Anyway. Story?”

“They’re made by Sir Pentious, one of the Overlords. He’s some kinda inventor, I’unno. Never blew up anything that mattered to me, so I never cared that much.”

“Sir Pentious…” She rolled the name around in her mouth, plucking the ‘T’ in the middle thoughtfully along with the rubber bands wrapped around her braces. “Got it. Thanks!”

“Er- you’re welcome.” They darted off, but that was fine. Now it was just a matter of actually getting onboard.

____________

She couldn’t find a rocket pack anywhere- lousy Hell lagging behind Earth technologically- but ended up stumbling across the next best thing in a warehouse that had an extra ship that had clearly been in some sort of accident. This one was only partially-reassembled, and there was a lot of burn damage sustained to the aluminum and copper outside, but that just meant that she could see the skeleton without having to slice through a lot of layers, so it was almost better- and a lot easier to crawl in one of the big holes in the front window via a pile of parts in front of it.

The interior was decorated like a mansion, with vivid yellows, reds, and blacks- she could respect the commitment to the aesthetic, especially with torn-open snakesheds and red eyeballs plastered everywhere. It looked like something out of Mom’s old comic book collection, toxic and yet intoxicating, every detail chosen for maximum dramatic potential. It must look even better with all the lights on and more than her phone’s flashlight illuminating bits at a time.

It was the best playground that she could imagine- nothing but her and a massive ship the size of an apartment building. Oddly enough, there wasn’t much dust- maybe it had crashed recently and was being held here for repairs? It was certainly of a similar design to the one that she’d seen from the ground, so she couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t just an iteration or two away.

Her fingers ran over the sleek machinery like it was sacred- some of it looked like it belonged in a museum, but the rest was cutting edge, and the seamless way they blended was like something out of a dream. A genius indeed- if she’d been born a hundred years ago and was suddenly thrust into the modern day, she could only hope that her tech would look this good. There was room for improvement of course, there always was, but it was loads better than most of what she saw digging through the junkyard, and a lot closer to the stuff she made with Grandpa Zim using his irken tech. Impressive for someone who’d clearly been dead for some time, considering he’d made enough of a name for himself that some rando off the street knew it.

“Genius inventor, huh…?” Bella pulled out her screwdriver, starting to work on freeing the control panel. It had a touchscreen and levers, what was that about? She had to know what it looked like underneath- did Hell even use cables and wires or was she going to need to drag Kit in to do his magic business here?

It took some doing- whatever had taken this particular ship down had welded the panel into place and it took a crowbar to pry off, ha, take that Venus for saying she ‘didn’t need to bring it’- but eventually she got into the guts of the thing. Sure enough, it was wiring, spiraled all into itself in a knot- it must have gotten all messed up at some point, maybe that was what caused the crash on top of whatever burnt the outside?

She was about to start taking it apart when she heard a pitter-patter behind her.

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it, ya know,” she said, rummaging around in her pocket before pulling it out. “Mom insisted I bring the one that can vaporize people since apparently half of you can’t even die the normal way anyway? Bunch of freaks.” Her finger twitched towards the trigger as the pitter-patter became a shadow as the thing scrambled up towards the same hole she’d come in. “I’m warning you, I’m a great shot. Won’t take two to blow your brains out.”

“Whoever you are, bossman says you gotta go!”

It was an egg. Not like some kind of insult, it was literally an egg, and probably a third of her size. It was also wearing a little hand-tailored suit and top hat. She stared down at it, and it stared up at her.

“Who’s bossman?” Bella asked after a few very long seconds of silence.

“You know… bossman!” It blinked. “He doesn’t like people pokin’ around his cool, cool stuff and you tripped the motion sensor. Hey, is that a ray gun?”

Bella’s finger eased off the trigger. “Yeah, it is. It can probably scramble you.”

“Oooh! Fun! Not as good as boss’s, I’m sure, but-”

“Hey, what say you take me to this boss?” Bella crouched down, knowing this was incredibly stupid but also already entirely committed to it. “Then he can decide what to do with me in person.”

“Hmm… alright, but no funny business!” The egg looked her up and down before turning heel, starting to clamor down the pile of parts. She had to hold back a snort when she saw that it had ‘#69’ written on its back.

Some things never changed no matter where you went.

____________

The egg blabbered on all the way back to the ship, mostly about jazz music oddly enough, but soon enough they were nearing a different ship that had settled behind a building. It was either the one she’d seen before or a duplicate, and she felt a shiver run up her spine as she got close- it looked a lot cooler in one piece and lit up bright yellow. Her phone buzzed, and she discreetly pulled it out as the egg launched into a diatribe on the importance of the saxophone. It was a text from her sister.

dolittle 🐭: bells where ARE you

dolittle 🐭: kits distracting clove so I could grab one of those bugdog things but moms gonna be asking how were doing soon, what should I say

Bella thought for a moment before sending back a reply. ‘im checking out that airship we saw earlier. have weapons. ill be fine. meet you back at the cafe later’

dolittle 🐭: be careful ok? know you can handle it but still

Bella smiled a little at that, sending a thumbs up before tucking her phone back into her pocket as they ascended the bridge.

“And then, then he saysss to me, he sayssss- Ah, there you are! Good, good.” She heard him before she saw him, voice booming as he welcomed his hench-egg back. “And what was poking around the warehouse?”

“This, boss!” The egg tugged at her jeans by the knee around the corner before pushing her forward with surprising force. “They said they wanted to see you!”

“Well well well!”

Bella’s antennae twitched as her eyes widened. The man in front of her was a jet black snake, with fangs, a top hat, a bowtie, and eyes on his face as well as nestled on the open space on his chest and hood. Best she could pin from Venus’s nature lectures he was a cobra of some sort, and there was a smug fang-y grin on his face as he slithered up to her, taking advantage of the height that his tail gave him- he’d probably be seven feet easy to Bella’s mere five foot one.

It took her only a moment to shake off her awe. “So you’re the famous Sir Pentious!”

His grin widened. “Ah! You’ve heard of me, little tresssspassser?”

“Obviously, considering I knew your name, right?”

“Er- yes!” He faltered for just a moment, and she went in for the kill.

“Your work’s fantastic, but you really need a way to keep the gutty stuff in order in case of a hit- that’s probably part of why that other ship went down, y’know? But your sense of design and how you mold your century-old designs with the new stuff- it’s fantastic, I just want to cut it all open and see how it works.”

“What did you do?” His hood flared, and she twirled the gun in her hands.

“I only touched the control panel, and your little egg boy got at me before I messed with anything, but I’d give anything for a couple of days working on the interior of this place- I bet I could make it run faster and with less fuel.”

The eye on his hat rolled itself as he narrowed the eyes on his face. “Who are you to come in and think you know better than I about my own shipssss? I should end you right here for your insolence and your trespassing!”

Bella folded her arms, glancing around. “Hmm… far left column, the one with a yellow eye instead of a red one.”

“What about it?” He folded his arms as well, waggling his head. “Are you-”

“It’s welded weird. Something went wrong with the metal when it was being forged, so you put it in the back so you wouldn’t have to look at it. You didn’t want to waste a perfectly good column because somebody screwed up one little part. And that’s just what I see looking around in, like, five seconds- gah!” The end of his tail had wrapped around behind her while she’d been talking, and struck before she finished her sentence, lifting her up to his eye-level with her arms pinned to her sides.

“Little wrench! How dare you?”

“I’m…” Her legs kicked a little, ribs feeling uncomfortably bendy at the moment as his scales pressed against her chest and back. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

His tongue darted out as he hissed, just barely brushing her nose before sliding back into his mouth.

“What do you really want, missy? I don’t like competition, you know.”

“You to let me breathe, for one,” she wheezed, fingers turning to try tickling what she could reach, and his cheek twitched funny before she dropped bodily to the floor, only managing to roll in time thanks to muscle memory from combat training. Thanks, Grandpas. “I really do just wanna see how all your stuff works. The ways I could improve my own inventions if I just could figure out how to blend different functionalities the way that you do…”

“I am quite impresssssive, aren’t I?” He puffed up his chest a bit. “And you have no intention to-”

Bella drew an X over her chest. “Cross my heart. You’re the bossman.”

He looked her up and down. “Hmm. Get back to me when you have a proper uniform and not those ragssss, and I suppose I could show you around a bit, if- if!- you show me something of yourssss.  ”

Bella’s grin slipped into a smirk as she gave a bow. “Bella Donna at your service, then, Sir Penny.”

[davidcarner]

Hotel California Ch 7, I’ll Have What She’s Having

A/N: So, housekeeping. I wrote nothing last week. I have a few I've held back I'll go ahead and post, but Grace, well….her foot's not better and my wife is working 80 hours a week so….hi, my name is David and I am Daddy Uber…I'm doing what I can guys. I am working on Casey & Walker, but that is a huge moment, so I need to get it right. I know you're getting this and at least one chapter of Wanting it All this week, and for next week….I have no idea and I'm sorry.

Okay, that out of the way, get ready, we're gonna have fun with this one. Now we have two choices, get rid of Bryce quickly and a lot of the conflict in this fic is gone so then it probably won't last long OR torture the poor guy…heheheheh BTW Dillwg, good catch on the title….Welcome to Hotel California Ch 7, I'll Have What She's Having

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, and parts of When Harry Met Sally may have influenced this fic just a little.

"Think I should call Ellie now, or wait until later?" Chuck asked Sarah as they entered the restaurant.

She started to answer when she saw a couple sitting in a booth. The woman's eyes met Sarah's and they both smiled. "Don't think that's necessary."

As the hostess walked up to them, Chuck gave her a look suggesting she was crazy. "A table or a booth?" the hostess asked.

"Actually they're going to join us," Ellie said, as she arrived from her booth. Chuck turned around, mouth open. Ellie had that smile on her face.

Chuck's wheels started spinning. "Uh, Ellie, are you sure that's a good idea, I mean you and Awesome get so little time together."

Sarah smirked at Ellie. "We'll be over there in a minute." Ellie winked at Sarah, turned, and walked back. Sarah turned to Chuck. "What is wrong?"

"You don't understand what you're doing, that is Ellie, the hurricane, if she even thinks there is anything going on between us, she will lose her mind, and if you don't want people to think you're dating your coworker, then she is the last person we should have dinner with." Chuck was nearly panting from rushing all of that out as one super-long sentence.

"You done?" Chuck nodded sheepishly. "Ever think perhaps I thought I'd want to meet my partner's family, since they have done so much for him. Ever think if I'm going to help him shop for Christmas presents for his family I might need to meet them?"

"You got her contact info from my phone!" Chuck said suddenly, like Sherlock Holmes solving a case.

Sarah eyed him. She held up a finger. "One, how else was I going to meet her?" She held up another. "Two, I needed emergency contact information for my partner, what was I supposed to do if something happened to you?" Chuck had no response for one or two. She used her counting hand to brush one of his stray curls to the side. In his peripheral vision, he saw Ellie's eyes widen as she took that in. There was no damage control for this. "Besides," Sarah went on explaining, "I told you, we're more than coworkers, so if they think we're dating, what can I do to stop them from thinking...well, whatever they think?" With that she turned and headed toward Ellie. Chuck's head was spinning again, but the more he studied what she said, the more he liked it.

He reached out and gently caught her wrist. "Hey, wait a second." She stopped and danced toward him, stopping very close. He caught his breath facing her warm, playful eyes. "Listen, you keep saying we're partners, but partners are just that. So far you've been running this whole thing, and while I have no problem with it, sometimes I'd like to be informed. Meeting my sister like this….it's kinda a big deal."

"So, we're partners, really?" The look on her face was hopeful. He nodded slowly. "Okay, in the future I'll remember to keep that all in mind."

"That's all I ask." They finally realized at that moment they were standing oh-so-close in the middle of the restaurant. That really didn't bother either of them, but Ellie was staring at them with a look on her face that that echoed the hope on Sarah's. What none of them noticed during these frozen seconds was that Bryce had sauntered into the restaurant, seen them, and jerked to a stop. He stared, his eyes narrowing at for a few seconds before he stomped out.

At the table, formal introductions were made. Chuck watched Awesome and Ellie both fight to contain their mounting excitement. Sarah was telling them about how hard Chuck had been working and how he hadn't wanted to watch a horror movie.

"He's always been a little squeamish," Ellie explained, grinning fondly at her little brother. "He wouldn't even watch my favorite show for a long time until Hannah showed up."

"Hannah?" Sarah asked, looking over at Chuck. "What show was this?"

"Dexter," Ellie offered. "He had a bit of a crush on her."

Awesome snorted. "More like a full-on crush." He pulled up a picture of Hannah McKay on his phone. "Huh, he might have a type." Chuck blushed all the way down to his roots. Sarah turned to him, an amused smile on her face and then looked back to the picture.

"I don't think she looks like me," Sarah deadpanned.

Everyone at the table was quiet at that, but Chuck knew what he wanted to say, but did he have the courage? He lifted his glass, ready to take a drink. "I figure Awesome meant the crazy part," he said, and then quickly drank his water. Sarah's mouth fell opened as she laughed out loud. Ellie's eyes nearly popped out of her head. Awesome…was just awesome. His laugh rang through the entire restaurant.

"Chuck, you can't say that," Ellie hissed.

"It's fine, Ellie," Sarah assured her. "It's kinda our thing, I mean I don't think I've ever killed anyone with poison…I don't think." She looked at Chuck out of the corner of her eye, making sure everyone saw her do it. She smiled enigmatically.

"This drink tastes funny," Chuck said with a completely serious look on his face. The entire table cracked up again.

-ooooo-

Chuck grumbled to himself and looked at the clock. It was 3:00 am. He didn't know when he was getting out of the hotel. After dinner, Ellie and Awesome invited Sarah back to their place for movies, and Sarah accepted. Chuck wasn't entirely sure where he was supposed to sit on the couch, but Sarah solved that by plopping down right beside him and then snuggling against him. After the movie ended, Sarah said she should get going since the two of them had a big day planned tomorrow. Chuck walked her out and they stopped at the fountain.

"Come out here to think a lot, Chuck?" She was looking at the fountain, up at the stars, just enjoying the beauty. He sat and patted the spot on the fountain beside him. "I think I'd get lost looking up in the sky if I tried to think," Sarah mused.

"The sky actually helps." He was looking up, not noticing her watching him. "When you're looking up there it helps see the big picture and all the crazy, petty stuff of this world gets put into its place, in perspective. Here and at the beach are two of my go-to places to think."

"I'd like to visit that beach."

"I'll take you." He paused. What was it about her that just made him speak without thinking, from the heart? He knew he was mostly honest with people, but with her, it was complete, spontaneous. "I mean, er, that is, if you want to go."

"Why wouldn't I, Chuck?" She breathed the question out softly.

"What are we doing, Sarah?" He turned to look at her. The smile on her face looked like it was only for him, private between them. "This thing with Ellie, us doing stuff, what is going on?"

She swallowed, and decided he deserved the truth. "Do you remember me asking you for coffee?"

"Yes." She waited for more, and eventually he got the hint. The wrong one. "I know, I know, I'm not a coffee guy."

She leaned in close, shaking her head a little. "Chuck, did you know some people use that line to ask someone else out on a date?"

"Really, good thing I didn't….OH MY GOD! You were asking me out!?" She pressed her lips together and slowly nodded. He continued in a mini-spiral. "And my final was that night and you must have thought I was an idiot." She kept her lips pressed together, but gave a shrug that answered his question. "So the thing tonight, you just did it because you were afraid I'd do something stupid and say no." She nodded. "Sarah, was tonight a date?"

"I don't know." There was a playful grin on her face. "I'm afraid you'd feel forced to kiss me if it was."

"Forced?" She nodded. "Sarah, I mean I could suffer through it, although you might run yelling and screaming."

"It'd be that good, Bartowski?" She deliberately widened her eyes.

"Don't think so." Chuck said, shrinking from the challenge, suddenly afraid of disappointing her.

"Why don't you let me be the judge," she said, leaning in and drawing him to her. It was at that moment she heard the Imperial March playing.

"Oh, COME ON!" he yelled, digging his phone out of his pocket. "Sorry, hotel emergency." She snickered. "Bartowski, IT." He dropped his head and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. "Seriously? I'm gonna have to wipe it, to clean it would take hours. Bryce, dude, are you serious? I know, you are in charge, but….okay, I'm on my way." He hung up and turned to her, and she grabbed him by the shirt and pulled his lips to hers. Their lips met and Chuck mind became a stranger to his body. Sarah ran her tongue across his and he moaned into her mouth, making her smile even as she kissed him. She twisted his shirt, pulling him in closer, and their hips made contact. She put her hand on the back of his neck, her thumb right under his ear. His hand came down her shoulder, and slipped down her back slowly. His hand lightly touched her hip bone. She moaned into his mouth, and he grinned even as he kissed her.

She pulled away slightly. "You better go, you know...before," she stopped talking but the look she gave him suggested a lot. A WHOLE lot. He understood for the first time why a look could be called 'suggestive'.

"You're right." But Chuck showed no signs of listening to his own advice. In fact, he was embracing her tighter as he talked, if that were possible. "It's Bryce, though, and I don't want to dilly dally." Dilly dally? Why, why did he keep doing this? He shut his eyes and felt her head fall forward onto his chest. She was laughing silently.

"Chuck Bartowski." He opened his eyes and saw hers staring up at him, smirking. "Don't you ever change."

"Well, I haven't yet, so I think you're stuck with me like this." He paused, that might have sounded a bit presumptuous.

The look she gave him made him so want to stay. "Good, I can handle it."

He had to know. "Still haven't figured it out, Walker," he said softly. "In fact, I think I'm farther away from figuring it out than I've ever been."

"Oh, I think you have." She was smiled her enigmatic smile again, but then her expression opened. "I just hadn't met the right one."

"Really? Because 'hadn't' implies that your circumstances have changed."

"I thought that's what that kiss did?" He gulped, and she laughed. "Go, you'll piss Bryce off, and you don't need that. I'll see you in the morning." She leaned forward and pecked his lips. "Thank you," she said softly.

"For what?"

"For not giving up on my crazy."

A beep pulled Chuck out of his thoughts. He looked at the computer and saw that the last scrub was about to begin. His eyes were heavy. He set a timer on his phone and laid on the couch. He'd get a quick 20 minute nap, and by then the last scrubbing should be done. Hopefully he'd be home by 4am. Hopefully.

-ooooo-

"Chuuuuck." He heard the voice softly in his dream. She was leaning over him, whispering into his ear.

"At least you're clothed this time," he mumbled. He was on his side facing her, his back against the couch. She was wearing jeans and a shirt of some sort. Normal attire. He was glad his dreams were more respectful. His eyes burned and he really wanted to close them.

She smirked and something sparked through him. He was too tired for this, but someone forgot to tell his brain. "I can get unclothed if it will help."

"No, that's not nice of me. Sorry about that dream."

She had squatted down and was gently stroking his hair. "Was it a good dream?"

These dreams were getting ultra-realistic. It was so real. He couldn't believe how real it felt. How good her fingers running through his hair felt. It felt like she was really doing it to him. "I mean I probably shouldn't tell you this, but since you're a dream it doesn't matter. You weren't unclothed, exactly, you were just wearing...a thing."

That grin. God, he'd give anything for her to look at him like that in real life. It was a little naughty, with a whole lot of something, what he wasn't sure, but something good. "A thing?"

"Yeah, it was lacy, gauzy, and your legs…"

He spaced out, and she ran her hand down his jaw. She leaned in very close before she spoke. "Chuck?"

This was a dream, right? "Sorry…please, for the love of God, tell me I'm dreaming." The smile on her face told him he was not, in fact, dreaming. He'd dream-confessed his real dream to his dream-Sarah but had really confessed to the real Sarah. He was ready to crawl under the couch. She stood, then stretched out on top of him. Him on his side, her on top of him.

She could tell he was nervous, from this her placement, or from what he had told her, she didn't know, but if it was the latter, she knew what to do about it. "You weren't wearing anything lacy in my dream," she said softly. His eyes shot open and looked up at her. She hummed as she grinned at him.

Things had obviously changed, but how much? "So, for the record, have you revised your no dating policy?"

"No," she said, playing with his curls. "We're partners, Chuck, we do things together, and what we do together is our business."

He thought about what she said for a minute. "That's semantics. Too much semantics on too little sleep."

She leaned in close, her lips inches from his ear. "I prefer to think of it as syntax. Partners do ALL sorts of things together." She felt him gulp. "You want to check your program and us get out of here?"

"Yes, yes I do." He checked his watch. "Wow, what a nap." She got off of him, a perpetual grin stuck on her face. He went over and checked the main frame. "Thank God, I got it. That thing kicked my ass."

"I didn't think it'd take you all night," Bryce complained, entering the office. "Must be getting distracted." He shot a look at Sarah.

"Seriously, Bryce, he's busting his ass to get the security ready, he's worked on this, he's barely slept, and you're giving him grief?" Chuck watched Sarah defend him, and he was more than a little shocked at her intensity.

"I think maybe he's distracted."

Sarah stared daggers at Bryce. Chuck could almost imagine her throwing actual daggers. "I think he's trying to figure out your system, Bryce"

Bryce swallowed and his eyes narrowed. "That can be…difficult. Good job, Chuck." And with that, he retreated. Chuck turned to Sarah.

"Don't say a word, Chuck, you're not fighting these battles alone anymore." He smiled at her. That's the best thing he had heard in a very long time.

-ooooo-

"Come on, let me buy you lunch for helping me all day, Sarah." They had shopped for several hours and for the first time in his life, Chuck had really enjoyed it. Which was surprising given the amount of coffee he drank and bathroom trips that were required because of it.

She gave him a little shoulder bump. "First, thank you, but no."

He grinned at her. "Because then it's a date?"

She shook her head and smiled. "Chuck, maybe I want to buy you lunch."

He shrugged. "Okay."

She looked at him in surprise. Most men would have had a problem with that, but then again, most men weren't Chuck Bartowski she was realizing. "Really?"

"What, I can't let a woman, a beautiful woman, buy me lunch?" She rolled her eyes. He looked around, leaned in, and whispered softly. "Like, are there strings attached to this lunch." She giggled.

"Yep, I need more details of that dream. A complete, three-dimensional re-telling"

"Guess I'll be buying my own lunch," he quipped flatly. She laughed as they came to the food court.

"Also, I really don't want mall food." He looked over at her.

"Oh," he said with a grin.

She caught the tone, knew he was playing, suggesting she was high-maintenance, but she decided to fight back. Her jaw dropped like she was in shock. "Oh, don't start that mess. It's not that I'm picky. I want a cheeseburger, a good cheeseburger."

His eyes lit up. "I know a place. A hole in the wall."

Her eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Wow, Walker, Now I know!" He sounded Sherlock Holmes again. She looked confused. "I mean if a guy you were dating saw you look like that at the mere thought of a cheeseburger, he could feel jealous, or seriously inadequate."

She laughed. "Do you feel jealous? Or inadequate, Chuck?" she asked very softly and emphasized the "k"

"Why should I?" he asked, grinning and shrugging. "Anyway, we're not dating."

She shoulder bumped him. "That's right, we're partners."

"Partners who kiss?"

"Oh, yes, and other things."

He gulped. She was crazy, but so was he, about her. Completely crazy.

-ooooo-

"You okay, you're not eating much?" Sarah had noticed Chuck hadn't taken many bites of his food, and frankly wasn't even looking in her direction. He had a grin on his face, and he looked a little red. She was wondering if he had been awake for too long. "How much more do we have to do?"

"Oh, I think we've gotten all the necessary stuff that I needed to get for my family, it's my partner I can't figure out." He still wouldn't look at her. He seemed to be fighting off a laugh. She took another bite of the burger. Dear God was that a good burger, it might be better than…oh. As soon as it started to dawn on her, he spoke. "Have you ever seen When Harry Met Sally?" His eyes were dancing as he looked up at her, his jaw trembling, barely preventing the explosion of laughter.

Was he implying…? "It wasn't that bad…was it?" The look on his face said it was. Well, two could play at that game. "Sorry, Chuck, you're the first man to ever satisfy me." He went red as a Santa Claus suit. "With a burger, of course, and a pickle."

"Of course," he choked out.

Oh, this was too much fun. "I have half a mind to take your phone from you, drive you to my house, put you in bed, and make you stay there for several hours." He turned redder. How that was possible, she wasn't sure. She'd need sunglasses to look at him soon. "I mean…" she held out the pause for a long, long time, "you've barely slept the past few days."

There was a slight look of relief on his face, but was that disappointment as well? The grin on her face was growing into a smirk. He knew he had to get control of the situation. "Sarah, you have teased me to no end the past few days." She bounced a shoulder. "I don't want to upset you if I tease back, and I've taken it too far." She plopped the last bit of the burger into her mouth, and folded her hands together as she leaned forward. She looked him right in the eye.

"Chuck, can I have some?" she asked seductively. He was red again all over, or so she supposed.. "Of your burger, if you're not going to eat it." He shook his head, a grin on his face, and pushed it to her.

He leaned back watching her smirk and chew at the same time. A yawn forced its way out of him and she gave him a look. "I'm not gonna lie, spending time in bed does sound nice."

"Me in my lacy, guazy...thing?" she asked with a wink. He shook his head, he was losing at this game, so far behind, and he found he didn't care, in fact, he quite enjoyed it.

"And me...not," he replied. She began to giggle.

"Nice, Bartowski, nice." She finished his burger. "Come on, I'm taking you home and putting you to bed."

"You know I have no idea what you even mean by that, but I find I don't care." He scooted out, turned, and she was standing right there.

"Just remember, I take care of my partner." She winked and sashayed toward the door.

"God, I hope you know CPR," he muttered, and headed after her.

A/N: I am having too much fun with this story…just way too much…come on back next time fro An Exclusive Partnership…too much fun…take care…see you soon…til next time.

DC