#blood moon fic

[ficbrish]

Last Line Monday

[29Jan2024]

Smut one shot wip for my Kinktober one-shot collection 🥰

Astarion/Tav; post-canon smut

Even after all the time they’d had together, her lips still quivered as they met his. It felt like all the great love stories, and the dreams they bore. She was always afraid he didn’t feel it too, but the look in his eyes as he pulled away was always saturated with it. How dare she ever doubt him.

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

do robots dream of electric sheep? do robots have nightmares of murders committed in their sleep?

have you slept, or are you afraid of things that in the dark creep?

[boxofbonesfic]

Title: Blood and Sand (1 of 2)

Pairing: Werewolf!Moon Knight x Reader

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

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

A/N: I hope part one is enough to get you all salivating! I’ve had this idea kicking around for a bit, and I’m happy to finally be doing something about it. Please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think with a comment or a reblog! divider by @firefly-graphics

You come to as the truck’s lurching, uneven gait smooths out, the tires quieting as they pass from sand to something more hard packed, like a road. You had grown so used to bumping along over the dunes, bouncing around in the bed of the truck like a sack of grain that now the road feels strange, instead of comforting. Your mouth tastes like dry cotton and sand—and blood, from where your lip had split when the butt of the gun had impacted it, hard. You’re not sure who’d done it—you were already dizzy from the blow to the back of your head. 

Pretty sure I’m concussed. 

You’re not a doctor, but you’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to sleep after a concussion, though the reason why escapes you currently. The truck jolts over something you can’t see—a pothole? A body? The thick, hot bag they’d thrown over your head prevents you from seeing anything, it barely lets your breath out, let alone letting light in. Something heavier than the empty canisters of gasoline that had been pushed aside to make room for the two of you lands against you, and you yelp, flinching before you realize—it’s the professor. Your hands are aching and sore where they’ve been bound behind you, so you can’t help him right himself. 

He groans with pain. 

“P-professor Hartwell?” You don’t think they can hear you in the cab, not over the sound of the tires on the road. Still, you try to keep your voice low. “Professor are you alright?” For once, you actually hope to hear his grim, irritated voice—but you hear nothing, only the rattling breaths in his chest as he pants. You wait a moment, and try again. 

“Professor?” 

For another few heartbeats, the only sound is that of the truck beating the road beneath it into submission, before your mentor takes another wet, rasping breath. 

“Y-you must not let them.” The words are nearly lost in his pained wheezing. You know you’re probably imagining it, but you can smell copper through the bag, taste it thickly in the air. “They’ll want you to read from the book,” this time, you know you aren’t imagining it—something hot and wet seeping against your side where the professor is pressed against you. 

“You must not.” 

“What—what book? P-professor sit up, you, you have to sit up a—and stay awake—” The cough that wracks his frame sounds loud and painful. You feel his body spasm as the truck hits another something, and the back of your head bounces hard off of the side of the bed, making you see stars against the inside of the bag. 

“Gods forgive me,” he rasps. “Forgive me. I never knew it would—-” His pained rambling is nonsensical, devolving into strings of words you can barely understand. “Bury it, burn it, make it dust and scatter it to the wind, you hear? Destroy it!” Hands grasp your shoulders, his, you realize, bony and thin, the tips digging into your flesh insistently. He’d been bound, just like you were, hands secured behind your backs with zip ties—so how did he hold you now? Shaking you like a rag doll as he shouts into your covered face, the scent and taste of his blood choking you. 

“Burn it all!” It’s hot, so hot, hotter than you’ve ever been, even here in the desert, and your dry lips crack and bleed as your head snaps back and forth on your shoulders. All you taste is fire and blood. “To ashes!” His voice booms in your ears and in your skull and for a moment you fear he will fling you out of the bed of the truck, but he releases you, collapsing against the hard plastic beneath you with a bang. 

You swallow, running your dry tongue along your aching lips, almost afraid to speak. 

“Professor?”

There is no answer.

—

When the truck finally stops, you ready yourself. 

The door to the cab creaks as it swings open, and the impact of boots in the sand makes you snap to attention. You wince, shrinking back as the tailgate opens, rough hands grabbing at your ankles. You kick, struggling and cursing as you’re dragged from the truck bed, the breath knocked from your body as you land on your back, hard. 

“Fucking bitch.” Someone curses, and you hear boots scuffle against the cracked asphalt beneath you just in time for you to ready yourself for the blow. It comes, a steel toed boot digging hard into the softness of your belly. You wheeze. A rough hand knots in the collar of your shirt, pulling you up. The bag is ripped off, and hot—but fresh—air immediately surges around your cheeks. It’s still night, the moon big and full and nearly sun-bright above you. You blink, your eyes watering in the sudden light. 

The man above you grins, his blue eyes creasing at the corners. “Think we’ve got a live one.” His thickly accented words are mocking. Russian, maybe.

“F-fuck you!” Your voice trembles, but you don’t care, lashing out again with your own legs until he kicks you again. This time, you puke, bile stinging your cut lips as it erupts out of your mouth. You heave onto the road while he stands over you, laughing. With his boot, he rolls you over onto your belly, planting a knee in the center of your back, pressing hard until you cry out. The sound of a knife being flicked open makes your eyes widen, and you struggle beneath his weight. The blond leans down over you, his hot, liquor stained breath coating the side of your face.

“Keep it up, curly,” he presses the knife to the side of your face. “They don’t say nothing about you being in one piece. Only breathing.” You release the breath held in your trembling throat as he pulls the knife away, leaning back to grab at your bound hands. The edge of the blade slides through the plastic like soft butter, and immediately you crawl out from underneath him. 

“Mikhail, enough.” There are two other men watching, a dark haired one and another blond. 

“Fuck off, Rumlow.” 

“You killed the other one. You want to explain to him why you’re coming back down two hostages?” Rumlow crosses the road to squat in front of you, one hand resting comfortably on his knee, the other loosely gripping a pistol. He snaps, like he’s trying to get your attention, even though he already has it. “You see that old fuck?” He points to the body of your professor in the bed of the truck to your left. You don’t need to look to know he’s dead. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken since his tirade earlier, how could he be living? 

And more than that, you don’t want to look. Because you will see him zip-tied, hands bound—the same hands that had gripped you with unearthly fury, blazing hot like an avenging angel. No, you do not want to think of that at all. 

“Unless you’d like that to be you, you’re going to behave.” He cocks the gun. “Understand?” 

You nod. 

“Good.” 

Mikhail glares at Rumlow hatefully, and then at you, and you can tell he doesn’t enjoy being called to heel. 

“Give the bitch her water and put the bag back on, Jensen.” He sneers, before spitting into the dirt at your feet. “Cyka.” You don’t know what the word he says under his breath means, but you get the feeling it doesn’t mean anything good. The other blond, a lanky, tall man with glasses, jogs around to the other side of the truck, tugging open the door. He roots around inside before producing a water bottle. You nearly drop it as he tosses it to you, fumbling to get the cap off before pouring the contents down your aching throat, sparing a few drops to rinse your face. 

It’s done before you realize it, and you find yourself shaking the bottle to get the last drops out. Mikhail laughs. 

“Back in the bed, cyka.” He snaps, kicking at your feet. “Let’s go.” You hesitate, your hand trembling as you pause above the tailgate. The professor’s body is still there, lying in the bed of the truck like a broken doll. Mikhail shoves your shoulder. “Move.” 

“I—the body,” you choke out, licking at your lips to ease the burn of speaking. “Can’t you… do something?” He heaves a put upon sigh. You don’t know what you’re expecting, not really, but you clap your hands over your mouth to stifle your shocked scream as Mikhail grabs Professor Hartwell’s ankle and hauls him out of the bed of the truck. He goes easily of course—he’s dead, you remind yourself, fucking dead—landing on the edge of the old road. His body rolls off the side into the sand filled ditch along the side of it, and you know in just a few hours he will be completely covered. 

This road is old, seldom used, by the looks of it, deep cracks filled with sand, and no signs for miles in any direction. Large portions of it have been taken back by the desert, Sand and tufts of wispy grass eclipsing the road’s broken remains. 

You don’t want to leave the professor here. 

You have little choice, though, as Mikhail, whose patience you have finally worn thin, shoves you into the bed of the truck. The tailgate nearly catches your fingers as he slams it closed, and you let out a dismayed cry as your face presses against the hard plastic of the bed and you find it wet. You scramble up and away from it on your hands and knees, wiping your face with your hand and whimpering as it comes away red. 

The truck starts up again, bumping along the abandoned road as you watch the professor’s hooded body grow smaller and smaller in the distance, and then finally disappear altogether. 

—

It’s nearly dawn when you arrive, the edges of the sky turning pink as finally, you see lights. Artificial ones of course, mounted atop a double-thick chainlink fence. The floodlights atop the guard station illuminate the entire truck for close to ten minutes before finally it slows to a stop beside the checkpoint. You cower against the side of the bed as an armed guard shines a flashlight into your face, ever aware of the intimidating looking machine gun strapped to his back. When he’s satisfied, he mumbles something you don’t catch into a walkie-talkie, and the entrance slides open. 

He makes some sort of sign as the truck rolls away, like the cross almost, but only on the right side, and the gate slides closed again behind you. Jensen helps you out of the bed, but directs you with a firm hand on your shoulder towards a long, narrow building. It sprawls out for uncountable meters, but only two, three stories high. You aren’t really afforded a proper look as you’re shuffled inside, Mikhail grumbling bad naturredly behind you. 

The lights inside buzz artificially, and you wince and stumble as you attempt to adjust to them after outside. There is a large staircase leading up to the other floors to the left of the door, but beyond it the building stretches on in a maze of narrow hallways. 

The line of men before you can be no better described than as priests, long black vestments with red satin trims, white collars at their throats. One of them steps forward, his face twisting in distaste at the mercenaries. 

“He wants to see her.” He looks at you with equal disdain, before glaring at the men behind you. “Where is Professor Hartwell? He was to accompany—”

“The old man didn’t want to come.” Mikhail snaps. “It seem he had little… change of heart since last time.”

Last time?

The priest heaves an irritated sigh. “Fine. He—he’s not going to be happy about this, you know. He would have at least liked to speak with him—”

“Then let him tell us that.” Mikhail is big—which feels like an understatement, looking at him. He’s a tank of a man, broad shouldered, and built like a brick fucking shit-house. He knows it too, squaring his muscular shoulders and fixing the priest with a glare. “Yeah?”

He caves. “Fine.” His irritated gaze finds you once more, and you have a sinking feeling that you will be the recipient of his ire. “Come, then.” He grabs you by the wrist as if touching something unpleasant. “Let’s get this over with.” 

You consider running, just for a moment, before the idea laughs itself out of your head. It would be stupid even to try. Defeated, you follow the priest up the stairs and down the corridor, glad at least to be away from Mikhail. The hallway is nondescript, which feels very much on purpose; so you wouldn’t be able to recall a single descriptive thing about this place—

It could be anywhere. 

The third or fourth door on the right is open, and he ushers you inside before stepping in himself and closing the door. Inside is like an office, neat bookcases lining the walls on either side of the wide desk. On the other side of it, is a man. 

He peers at you, long fingers steepled together beneath his chin. His black hair is slicked back, sharp green eyes taking in the still stinging cut above your left eye, your bloody nose and heat chapped lips. 

“A pity about the Professor.” He says after a moment. “I’d looked forward to seeing him again.” You don’t say anything. The impression rises in you that this is a man who likes to hear himself talk, and you want to hear what he has to say, if only to gain an inkling of understanding about your own predicament. The man leans forward, cocking his head. ”Do you know who I am?” 

“No.” You reply dryly. “Should I?” He doesn’t like that. His expression only changes minutely, a slight narrowing of the eyes, a tightness in the smile—but enough for you to see it. 

“Should? I don’t know about should,” he drawls. “But I’d think you’d at least like to know who’s been signing your paychecks for the last six months, hmm?” Your stomach drops to your feet, and though you try to school your expression into one of forced nonchalance, the man behind the desk’s sly smile turns victorious. “Oh, he didn’t tell you.” 

“I get paid by the university,” you reply through tightly clenched teeth. “I—”

“And who do you think pays them?” He stands from behind the desk, rising to his full height like a snake uncoiling. “There’s a reason your department is so well funded, Love.” You try to take a step back as he approaches, but the solid form of the priest behind you boxes you in. He towers over you, forcing you to look up just to maintain eye contact as he steps closer.

“I expect Horace thought he would have more time.” There is a brassy colored cart next to the desk, and he plucks a glass from the topmost shelf, before rummaging around on the one beneath it. “Ah, here we are.” He produces a crystalline decanter, and your throat constricts thirstily at the sight of the clear liquid inside. You don’t know how many days it’s been since you’ve last had a proper drink of water—the bottle in the car a proverbial drop in a dry ocean—but you suspect it’s been more than three. You watch, ashamed of your own need as he pours it into the glass. 

“More time to explain, to scheme, to scheme with you. But that’s the thing about hubris,” he sighs, filling a second glass and drinking deeply—gratefully from it. You watch him, unable to stop your dry throat from swallowing reflexively as he does, imagining cool water filling your own mouth. 

“Oh, would you like some?” He asks, offering it to you as though he’d thought he already done so. You gulp it down, chasing the stray drops from your lips with the back of your hand. “You’re welcome.” 

“What do you want from me?” You ask, dropping the glass back onto the table gracelessly. He grimaces. “And you still haven’t told me your name.” 

“Loki.” He refills your glass. “I just need you to read something for me.” He says, the words nonchalant. “Just a few passages. I know you can.“ Loki’s hawkish eyes narrow at the corners as he smiles at you. “Horace was an excellent teacher.” 

It’s useless to deny what you both know is true, grueling nights spent poring over texts and tablets older than your entire family line, helping Professor Hartwell translate and document. 

And the man in front of you had paid for all of it. 

You must not. Even the memory of his words feels hot, sweeping through your skull like hot desert wind. Burn it all to ashes.

“What do you want me to read, exactly?” Loki’s smile widens uncomfortably. 

“Just a book.” 

“And if I don’t?”

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate, Love.” Loki says, inspecting his nails. You can’t stop yourself from scowling at him, baring your teeth between your cracked lips as you sneer. 

“Stop pretending I’m forcing your hand, you—”

“Awful, what happened at your dig site.” His brows knit together as his expression turns smugly apologetic. “It’s always nasty business, when someone involves innocent people in what should be private affairs.” 

“Fuck you.”

“My hand was forced.” His grip turns vicious, his thumb digging into your skin hard enough to make you whimper, his eyes hard and cold. 

“Do not force it again.” 

—

The observational cell you’re forced into seems outdated, repurposed for its current use as a jail. The guards stationed at the end of the hallway barely spare you a look as you’re marched by, the muzzle of Mikhail’s gun pressed against your spine. Only one of the lights swinging from the damp ceiling actually works, buzzing to life dimly as Mikhail shoves you inside unceremoniously. 

As the rusty bolts slide shut, the bare bulb above you goes dim, leaving you in near darkness, aside from what little light filters in through the observational window in the wall above your head. The air is stagnant and moist, the sound of dripping water coming from somewhere in the darkness. 

I’m not alone in here.

You don’t know how you know that, because there’s no tell—merely the presence of another living thing pushing against you like holding magnets with like polarities together as hard as you could. Your skin prickles with the knowledge, cold sweat dripping down beneath your dirty collar. You swallow. 

“Hello?”

For a moment—a minute or two at least—there is no response. 

“You’re not the professor.” The voice sounds…tired. 

“I keep disappointing people that way.” 

There is a sound like metal rubbing against metal, and just at the border of the darkness, you see movement. The man that emerges from the darkness is tall, broad shouldered with dark, curly hair. High cheekbones and wide dark eyes. Bare chested, with iron manacles at his wrists, and ankles. There’s a collar at his throat, as well, and as he steps closer you note the chains that travel backward, disappearing into the shadows. His linen pants are dirty at the bottom, his bare chest peppered with old, yellowing bruises. 

“Who are you, then?” His gaze saddens as he looks at you. “No one they like, if you’re in here with me.” You eye his chains, gesturing at them with your hands. You laugh dryly. 

“No,” you agree, thinking back on your conversation with Loki. “No one they like.” 

“I’m Marc.” He offers you his hand. “I’m sorry you’re here.” You tell him your own name. 

“Me too.”

—

They come for him every night, you realize. Dragging Marc out of the cell for hours until dawn, when he returns bruised and bleeding, exhausted. 

It happens on the third night you’re there, Mikhail and Rumlow barging in as the two of you sleep, back to back on the cot. You still ache where he kicked you, and Mikhail knows it, lunging toward you only to watch you flinch back as he laughs. 

“Where are you taking him?”

“Be careful, cyka.” He says, spitting at the ground near Marc’s feet. “You’ll get rabies from this one.” Marc doesn’t react, his dark eyes trained hard on the wall. He’s just as big as them, but he doesn’t fight back as Rumlow shuffles him out. You watch through the window until you can’t see him anymore, your face pressed against the glass. 

The sun is peeking through the narrow window on the opposite wall, high enough to let you know it’s late morning at least when they bring him back. Marc looks changed, somehow more fragile, his face drawn and skin pale. His skin bears fresh wounds, new bruises, and the skin around his mouth is stained dark, dry red. 

Marc stumbles towards the cot, throwing himself down onto it, his shoulders heaving. 

“M-Marc?” Your voice sounds timid and terrified, even to your own ears. “What—what happened?”

He lays there, facing the wall for a long time. 

“I’m Jake.” He says finally, turning to peer at you over his shoulder. You take a step back—this isn’t Marc. “He—what they did… it was too much. I’m driving right now.” His eyes are darker, more serious, face drawn tight with emotion he won’t name—no. This isn’t the same man. Same body—different person. Fleetingly, your brief and unenjoyable psychology class flits back to you—Dissociative Identity Disorder—

“Okay.” 

You hesitate before placing a comforting hand on his bare shoulder. His skin is clammy. Jake glares over his shoulder at you. “I’m not Marc.”

“I get that. You’re bleeding.” There aren’t any bandages, but you’re more than willing to sacrifice your outermost layer of clothing for the cause, helping you tear them to shreds. The pail of water you’re given every morning is meant to suffice , so you try to make it last, cleaning the wounds as thoroughly as you can afford to. After a few passes, Jake relaxes beneath your touch. 

“Thank you.” He seems unused to softness of any kind.

“Don’t mention it.” 

The conversation that day is minimal—Jake’s not a talker. But he makes his presence known in other ways, watching you with quiet eyes from across the room as you investigate every corner. Occasionally, he offers commentary when you prompt him. 

No, the windows never open. 

Mierda! Keep climbing up there and you’ll break your damn neck. 

Keep that up and the guards will be down here to check on us in no time.

When sleep is unavoidable, Jake doesn’t stop you from laying down next to him on the thin cot. 

“Goodnight, Jake.” There’s an answering grunt from beside you, though he says nothing. 

When you wake in the middle of the night, he is gone again. 

��

 When you do finally dream, you wish for the abyss again, the dreamless dark that you’d feared as you dozed in the truck. That would have been better than seeing it again. The sand is burning hot on your hands as you scramble over the dunes, gunfire pockmarking the sand only inches behind you as you trip over the shifting earth toward the jeeps. People are screaming, there’s wetness on your face, you realize it as you move to wipe the sweat from your eyes only to discover it isn’t sweat at all—but blood. 

So many bodies. And you know all their names—Ursula, Ahmed, Ricky, Britney, David—You know all their names, and they bleed out into the thirsty sand and are lost as you watch. 

The sting above your left eye worsens, and as you lick your lips you taste the wound, clinging to your tongue as the professor grabs your arm—

Run, run—

You wake up screaming, flailing in the dark on the threadbare cot. The chains rattle as he scrambles towards you, hands up placatingly as you raise your own, ready to defend yourself from threats both real, and imagined. One of the guards pounds on the window with the butt of his rifle.

“Keep her fucking quiet!”

“Hey,” Steven approaches you like he’s talking to a wounded animal. His voice is soft, kind.“You’re okay. You’re here, right? You’re not there, the place in your dreams isn’t real, right? It’s a dream. It’s the past, it’s not here, okay?” You sob into his chest, clutching at him as he rocks you back and forth as gently as if he were holding a baby bird. 

—

You’re afraid to ask what they make him do, afraid to have him confirm what you already know. The place where it happens can’t be far away from your prison. If you strain hard enough, force yourself to stay up as late as you possibly can until terror and exhaustion put you to sleep again, you can hear the screams. 

And something… else. 

Howling.

Sometimes he comes back naked, clutching his pants in trembling hands, retching up red bile into the far corner where the half-broken toilet is. The word for what he is dances on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t want to say it, give it air and space and reality. 

—

They chain you like Marc when they come for you, marching the two of you through the impersonal concrete maze before forcing both of you into a large room. There’s a stone altar at the center, and you nearly trip over your own feet at the sight of the man bound and gagged upon it. Your questions do the same in their haste to escape your mouth. 

“W-what? Who is that? What—”

Rumlow presses the gun against the back of your head, pulling down the hammer. 

“Walk.” 

You do, swallowing the words back down in a cold, terrified lump. 

Loki waits for you on the other side of the dais, a pleased expression on his face. He steps aside as you approach, positioning you in front of the man. You watch as they loop Marc’s chains through iron pegs only a few feet from the man, whose eyes are wide with terror. Only minimal sound escapes around the gag, though, spit leaking from the corners of his mouth. 

“Here we are. Now.” He taps a long finger against the podium. “Let’s begin.” You stand next to him, squinting down at the book. It’s old—not paper, not really, comprised of pressed thin sheets of fibrous plants, painted over with flaking black ink. But the letters are familiar, and after a moment, you begin to read. The words are halting, clumsy as you sound them out. The more you read, the more you understand. 

This is not just a passage you’re reading, holy text from some archaic book—no, these are commands. Ones that make your tongue burn as the words leap from it.

The dais fills with silvery light, and when you look up, you see the moon, framed perfectly through the skylight. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? The moon had been full the night the professor—

“Are you deaf? I said read.” Loki snarls, grabbing the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair. You can’t though, not when Marc’s cry of pain splits the air. He writhes down there on the floor, his body contorting. You watch, horrified as his limbs lengthen and thicken with sickening cracks, the bones and muscle shifting under his skin. He moans, his body shuddering, back bowing unnaturally as his legs shift, bones splitting skin before it crawls closed again like it has a mind of its own. 

Marc mouths something at you that you don’t understand, not right away—you can’t, his jaw is breaking now, and lengthening into something new, something that doesn’t support speech, not the way his human mouth did. 

Forgive me. 

“Read!” You hadn’t heard Loki cock the gun, but it presses into your skull intimidatingly. 

Your head buzzes with the power of the words as you begin to speak them, again, your vision blurring. Understanding comes, even as the syllables fall clumsily from your unfamiliar lips. 

“King of roads. 

King of thieves. 

King of vengeance. 

King of nights and moons and just blades

I weild your fist

I wield it justly—”

Where once there had been a man, now stands a hulking beast, the head of a jackal, and something like the body of a man, but wrong, the limbs long—like they were made for running on two legs and on four. Its yellow eyes roll. 

“Eat now, fill yourself with flesh and spirit on those who have wronged you,

O King of Moons

King of Roads

King of Vengeance—”

You can feel the tears gathering in your eyes as the beast sets itself upon the man, claws and teeth shredding flesh in a flurry of hot, wet, red. You want to close your eyes, to stop reading, but you can’t—the book will not let you go, not until it’s finished. You see the room before you, see the thing that was Marc as it devours piece after piece of the man on the altar—but you can see beyond, too, through the moon’s eyes like mirrors—

You’re trembling now, seizing, blood leaking from your nose and the corners of your eyes as you strain to let go of the pulpit, to look away from the book, to close your eyes—but it has you, now, a holy conduit for unholy ends. You can practically feel your blood boiling in your veins—

And then nothing. 

part two

Hello friends! I no longer maintain a taglist, so please follow @box-of-bones-library​ for updates and new work, thank you!

Likes and comments are amazing, but reblogs are golden! Please consider sharing my work so that others can see it too!

[once-in-a-blood-moon]

solomon couldn't stand your pact marks.

well, no, that wasn't the right way to put it. he was proud, even jealous of your pacts. they were one of the many admirable things about you! he just hated... looking at them. he knew what other people thought when they saw them.

when one would see those marks on your skin for the first time, they would be able to get a glimpse at your relationship with the brothers. one of trust and respect, gathered from just a glance. meanwhile, one would have to be told about his and your relationship. one look at you couldn't decipher all the time you two have shared together, filled with chatting between classes, practicing magic for hours, and endless love.

at first, solomon tried to mitigate this with his own marks upon your skin. wearing lipstick as he placed a kiss on your neck, a few stray bite marks from your time together at night. but those, while fun, were temporary. and solomon needed something permanent.

why not a ring?

(Hope you don't mind me adding on, anon. Thank you for the delicious meal! Literally so honored to read your beautiful work! 🥹)

Getting the ring was the easy part. Getting you away from the brothers long enough to propose...was not.

The lengths Solomon went through to be able to have a private moment with you might put him in a record book as the three realms' most whipped man. With the mask of his "shady" persona secured, he lets his silver tongue weave him through these seven obstacles, the sin of each dripping from it with only you on his mind.

Swallowing his pride, breathing in greed, spitting out envy...his wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth. A vicious rinse, repeat until he's either buttered them up or grated them down until they finally gave in. But he did it. With the day cleared of any interruptions, his plans were set in motion.

He decides to have a redo of your very first date, flying you up and walking in the sky amongst the stars. It's just the two of you against the ever inky black sky of the Devildom, a place that has become synonymous with your presence. Only this time, there are no surprise gales, no surprise drones -- just the surprise of a velvet heart-shaped box in the inside pocket of his coat.

Solomon brings up fond memories of your time together as you both near the spot he's picked to pop the question. He's filled with a giddy glee that soon you'll have something that binds you to him, something to show the world you're his.

Still, there's a little voice in the back of his head reminding him that you could say no. That perhaps he's not worthy. Does he deserve to have matching rings adorned on his and your fingers forevermore? Does he dare stand by your side as your equal when you are, in fact, so far above him?

He decides it's best not to dwell on such thoughts as this is meant to be a happy occasion, as long as all goes well.

Your feet touch the ground once he lowers you both on top of a cliff that overlooks the Devildom, the moon hanging brightly above. As you take in the magnificent sight, he lowers himself on one knee behind you, waiting with bated breath for you to turn on your own volition.

The moment you do, he knows he'll have to keep this memory stored away with his magic, just staring in awe. The moon is angled just right that it shines right behind your head like a halo. Your eyes are as wide as saucers while your jaw is slacked. With the way you look, he truly wonders if he's in the Celestial Realm.

Nervously, Solomon begins his improvised speech after clearing his throat, "my dearest apprentice, it is with great honor that I'm knelt before you tonight. I have dreamt of this moment more than I'd care to admit, yet I never thought it'd come true. But here I am, willing to give you all of me, if you're willing to give me all of you. You are the sun to my moon, the air in my lungs, the very reason why I believe I've lived so long. I was always meant to find you and work side by side to protect the human realm together. And most importantly, to love you. So, please do this old sorcerer a favor...by marrying me..."

He pulls out the ring box, opening it to offer you the ring within. The blessed box is shaking as he trembles, waiting patiently for your answer.

Happy tears spring from his eyes once you say, "yes." The ring is carefully slipped onto your finger, and a single word comes to Solomon's mind.

Mine.

[sourtomatola]

Villainous trio drabble

1700-ish words (based off this pic) @villainoustrioau @crees-a

Solar grunted with the turn of a screw. His latest project was almost done, but now, he was feeling like getting a cup of coffee.

He was already standing when he stretched his endo as far back as he could bend. His door shut in that moment, making him jump from the sudden break of his conversation. Eclipse Sulked in tiredly, dragging his slippers across the floor and barely giving Solar a glance.

Eclipse was the one who was apart of the group without his own will involved. Solar felt bad for him, but understood that it was the reason Jigsaw had built him. His lanky lumbering body hunched in exhaustion as he wordlessly dragged himself to Solar’s desk, crawling underneath. He grabbed the sol pillow that the mechanic had left there for him and curled up. Comfort wasn’t his priority, he just needed rest and silence.

Solar paused his quest for coffee and walked back to his desk, where Eclipse settled in. Solar said nothing, knowing that Eclipse was often exhausted from the constant chattering and singing Jigsaw subjected him to. Solar held out his hand and gave his counterpart’s back a gentle stroke.

Eclipse tensed up for a second before carefully relaxing and letting out weary sigh. Solar continued to rub his back gently, careful to not chip his paint or cause anymore new cracks to his casing. He knew the Ruin Virus was tough on the guys body, and was only trying to offer quiet comfort. Eclipse accepted it thankfully, or at least didn’t have the energy to argue, and just fell asleep under the desk.

Solar stared at him a minute, marveling at how well built he was, despite the ruin virus. Jigsaw really built him strong, no doubt knowing what the virus would do to him. Solar silently wished he could have given Jigsaw an alternative way to control Eclipse, but he had none, and there was no cure.

He stood up and let his fans vent a moment in a relaxed sigh before he made his way back to the coffee maker. As he poured himself a cup, he could hear Jigsaw in the other room, chittering in giggles and other mutterings. Solar knew this meant he was charging now. While most animatronic’s charged much like they were sleeping, Jigsaw got a bit quirky.

He heard the sound of claws scraping against the floor and glanced into Jigsaw’s room. He let out a sigh, seeing the other type of daycare attendant model laying on the floor, instead of the couch he usually slept on. The broken animatronic’s endo exposed fingers scuffed noisily against the floor.

Solar leaned against the wall, watching his little leader writhe and flinch in his sleep. He swirled his coffee in his mug before taking a sip and setting it aside, making a choice. He stepped back into his leader’s room and gently scooped up the shorter animatronic, gently placing him on the couch.

Jigsaw’s bell on the end of his hat chimed, making Solar pause, staring at the familiar blue nightcap. Solar’s eyes narrowed at the hat, thinking of the one he kept close because of it’s own significance. Specifically, the passionate killing of his own Moon.

He didn’t regret it. Not one bit. He had many regrets, oh, so many, but he has never once lost sleep over that nightcap trophy in his room. If anything, seeing the unmoving stares made him rest deeper.

He made sure Jigsaw was comfortable before standing again and grabbing his coffee on his way back to his lab. When he got there, he glanced under the desk to see Eclipse Undisturbed. Satisfied, he sat back down and got back to work.

Occasionally, Eclipse would let out a soft moan in his sleep. Solar reached his leg over and rubbed Eclipse comfortingly with his foot, like a dog under the table. Eclipse would settle and Solar would unconsciously continue to gently comfort his counterpart, the rhythmic rubbing motion easing them both in a peaceful routine.

Solar got up to get another bolt from his supply box, scooting his chair away to keep it out of Eclipse’s way. He heard the taller bot moan again, but he tried to pay it no mind. He heard another moan as he was away from his desk, but ignored it until another came, accompanied with a low growl.

Solar looked back at the desk to see Eclipse squirming in his sleep, groaning and clawing at the floor, his fierce claws leaving deep gnashes in the cement ground. Eclipse started to pant, a sure sign that his hunger was growing. Solar tensed at the realization.

“Uhhh...Jig?” Solar called softly to the other room. He hoped their leader would hear him and get his creation the substance he needed to avoid any unforeseen incidents.

Eclipse woke with a start, making Solar flinch. The Lanky animatronic let out a soft snarl as he started to look around his cushion. He was looking for something to eat. Something to kill.

“Jig!” Solar called louder. “Jig! Need some food in here!” He yelled.

Eclipse’s eyes shot to Solar, making him tense up. The metal beast lumbered out from under the desk and stood up, still hunched over. Solar knew his current position. It wasn’t a slouch. It was a hunting crouch.

Solar knew he didn’t have the blood that Eclipse was carving. He knew that feasibly, he wouldn’t be a victim of Eclipse. Eclipse wasn’t just a rabid animal, biting at everything anyways. The virus did enhance his feelings though, including hunger, which was dangerous in any sense.

“JIG!” Solar yelled louder.

“Oh Solar solar, sing my name~ It would not make me hurry faster, all the same~” Jigsaw giggled as he swayed into the room.

Eclipse’s tense posture relaxed slightly, but he still growled roughly. Solar’s fans sped up with relief, letting himself vent as Jigsaw brought in a bag filled with red raw meat.

“There you are dahling, have a good nap?” Jigsaw asked as he came over and scratched under Eclipse’s chin.

Eclipse gave out a low warning growl, despite not having the ability to do anything about it. He Physically couldn’t bite the hand that fed him. He instead tried to reach for the bag, but Jigsaw pulled it away from him.

“Ah ah~ Act like a dog, and you get treated as one.” Jigsaw snickered. “Now then, sit.”

Eclipse’s growl grew louder, frustrated.  “I’m not a dog!” He snarled.

Jigsaw’s face didn’t change from his pleased smug expression. “Sit.” He commanded again and held up the bloodied bag, giving it a taunting shake.

A small bit of drool left Eclipse’s lips as he stared at the bag. He quickly wiped it away in frustration before clenching his fists and falling to his knees harshly. He was still quite a bit taller than Jigsaw. He stayed on his knee’s until Jigsaw rose his eyebrows expectantly. Eclipse huffed angrily, but sunk back into a sitting position with his legs folded flat against the floor. Now he sat just a touch shorter than Jigsaw.

Eclipse’s fists clenched into his pants, almost seeming to tear them, but not quite. Solar silently hoped he wouldn’t have to fix them if he did.

“Theres a good boy!” Jigsaw praised and gave the humiliated starving bot a gently pat on the head. He opened up the plastic bag and pulled out a misshapen bloodied steak. Eclipse tried to grab for it but Jigsaw stopped him again. In embarrassed frustration, Eclipse slammed his fist to the ground, letting out an angry roar. Solar flinched but grabbed for his coffee instead of complaining.

Jigsaw just grinned as he calmly watched eclipse Expression of fury over his situation. He waited for Eclipse to settle down for a second before he began to hand feed Eclipse the steak.

The beastly animatronic scarfed down the meat ravenously, his hands catching the blood that leaked from it. He then licked away the blood from his own hands, searching for more blood to feast on. He looked to his master’s hands before grabbing Jigsaw’s wrists and licking the blood from them next, refusing to let anything go to waste. Jigsaw giggled from the tickling licking sensation but stood still, letting Eclipse lick off all he could.

Blood seeped between Jigsaw’s joints. He didn’t seem to mind, but Eclipse growled at the escaping drip and put his lips to the joints to try to suck the blood back out. Jigsaw’s expression turned from pleased to smug as he watched Eclipse effetely kiss his fingers, every joint, desperate from more blood to quell his hunger.

Solar quietly drank his coffee as he watched their ritual of master feeding his servant.

At last, Eclipse pulled back, looking to the floor in humiliation of his behavior.

“There now, are you satisfied?” Jigsaw asked. Eclipse refused to look at him but nodded. “Would you like to go back to sleep?” Another nod. “Well then, I’ll leave you to it then~ I’d like some alone time as well. Sleep tight~”

Jigsaw left the room with a wave, humming a tune to himself as he did. Solar watched Eclipse sit quietly for a moment, seeming to let the shame seep in and settle. His hungry growls gone, leaving the room in silence again.

Instead of standing up again, Eclipse merely crawled back under the desk, facing away from Solar as he curled up. Solar picked up his project and set it on the desk above Eclipse before sitting down. Neither of them moved for a minute before Solar once again reached out his foot and gently stroked Eclipse’s back.

Eclipse let out a tired sigh before relaxing again. Solar glanced to his mug of coffee that he had left across the room. He rubbed his tired optics and took off his goggles, deciding to forsake his coffee. He leaned forward on his desk, staying seated but relaxing his faceplate in his arms on the table in a resting position. It wouldn’t hurt to shut his eyes for a bit as well.

Underneath the desk, he felt a clawed hand touch his ankle, gently grasping it, thumb rubbing against his joints and plating. Solar smiled sleepily before the world went back.

Art for this

[midnight-mourning]

DCA Promptober Day 31: Trick or Treat

Last one! Took a little extra time but we finally made it! Hope you enjoy, this is a fun little something something for the Confused Spirit fans in the audience

Additionally, if you have not read Confused Spirit, many of these characters will have no value to you I'm guessing, so, sorry about that. There's also some slight, implied spoilers for the fic as well. That being said, hope you enjoy!

Word count: 6392

Content warning: mentions of blood, injury, and death, reader descretion is advised

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

It's Halloween at the Plex, and you're, well you're not sure how to feel about it. You had to work, meaning your sister and brother are currently out trick or treating with Clara instead of you, which is a bit frustrating. Not to mention, you'd gotten all dressed up and had nowhere to go until you got off in an hour or so. 

You think a mandated Halloween party, on top of having to work on a project, wasn't a great combination, but with the glare Sarah had sent in the meeting last week to you and the other division heads, you didn't have much a choice. Have to set a good example and all that. 

At the very least, you weren't the only one dressed up, so you didn't look as ridiculous sitting hunched over a desk covered in green paint and fake stitches.

Your team all had various costumes on, differing in degrees of effort and style. Pete went classic vampire, Jesse was a mummy, and Tyler was a zombie. Liv was rocking a great Mia Wallace costume, and Savannah had on a witch hat but really went for it with her makeup look. 

Currently, as both a way to kill time and to potentially fix the problem you'd been having, you were all trying your best to fix the issues going on with Fazerblast.

Specifically, something had been messing with both the electric and the mechanical components of the entire attraction. While Lizzy and their team worked to determine what had been causing the random power outages, your goal was attempting to fix the malfunctioning laser guns and rogue staff bots. 

You'd tried to tell both Sarah and Rachel that the place really needed shut down for a few days to actually work on it, but no luck. Seems they wanted it open for Halloween, regardless of how bad an idea you thought that was. 

When your code crashes again you groan, tempted to run a hand across your face before you remember the paint.

"Frankenstein's monster was a good choice for you. You really sell it," Pete quips, sipping on a blood red slushy in one hand, still typing with the other.

You turn to him, eyes narrow, "Remind me why I'm helping you with coding again? When I could be doing literally anything else?"

"Gives him an ego boost," Jesse answers from across the room, "No offense."

You scoff, turning to the coworker across from you, "Figured as much. Savannah, any word from the company that sold us the trigger pins?"

"Not yet," She sighs, puffing out her cheeks, "But I keep checking the reviews and nobody else has had the same issues we've had here. They shouldn't be freaking out like this."

"Figured that much, too. Liv?"

She looks up and over to you, tired, dead stare on her face as she holds up the phone, "Still on hold. I'm guessing corporate left early for the day and couldn't be bothered to let everyone know."

You grimace, and check the time. It's after six now, the party starts at 6:30. That's more than enough for you at this point.

"Right. You know what, we're done here. Pack it up, we can grab food before the party because I know Sarah's going to be stingy about it."

With muted, half-defeated cheer, your team closes out of their computers and shuffles to the door. Besides Tyler, he's in a great mood still, but you expected as much. 

As you're grabbing your jacket and turning out the lights, you swear you see something out of the corner of your eye by your computer. Something purple. When you turn, you find that your computer is on again, login screen staring at you. 

"You coming?" Savannah calls from halfway down the hall.

You turn to yell back, "Yeah, give me a sec, just hold the elevator."

Slowly, you walk back over to your computer, giving it a once over. It looks fine, just turned on. You take hold of the mouse, and hover it over the shut off button again. As you click it, the screen freaks out, glitching before turning black. At the same time, a shock goes up your arm and you yelp, purple flashing across your vision. 

Dazed, you shake your head, and clutching your arm, make your way out of the office and to the elevator. 

You shuffle in, and as the doors close Jesse leans over and mutters to you above the chattering of your team.

"You alright?"

You nod, "Yeah, just, a little tired I guess." Your head feels funny, but otherwise you're fine. You think.

"What'd you do to your hand?" He asks, looking to how you're still holding it.

You let it go, shaking it off and letting it fall to your side, "Stoved it on my way out. I'll live."

He nods and you continue your ascent. But you can't shake the feeling that something's wrong. Your arm twitches and at the same time your vision becomes glazed over in a purple hue. You shake your head, and it's gone again. 

The upper levels are filled with activity. Kids rush from place to place, already tired parents in tow. The words 'trick or treat!' are echoed everywhere as children go from the different tables and booths set up for the holiday. 

If Lisa knew this was going on she'd have a fit that she was out going house to house instead of being here. But asking Clara to watch her in this chaos would have been cruel, and so, the less your sister knew, the better. Besides, Gabe deserved an authentic trick or treating experience as opposed to getting themed-corporate garbage in his candy bucket. For one of his first times at least.

As you pass by the Daycare, seeing many children playing in costumes and such, you see the doors are propped open, and Sun is handing out candy to a long line of trick or treaters.  

"Damn Pete, the Daycare Attendant really outshone you huh?" Savannah elbows him and nods to the animatronic's costume. 

Sun is also a vampire, with a large black cloak, and white shirt. His pants are somehow all black, and the change of shoes is also a surprise. Two lines of red streak down from his smile, which is still as friendly as ever otherwise.

Pete huffs, "It's literally the same costume, besides he doesn't even have fangs!"

You all start walking again, laughing. 

"True, but he wore it better, even without fangs."

The comment causes Pete to start arguing with the speaker, which to the surprise of no one at all, was Jesse.

You keep your gaze on Sun a few moments more, head feeling a bit clearer for just a moment. He glances up suddenly, and waves to you, head tilting just slightly. Surprised, you also wave.

There's a buzz in your pocket. As you start to walk away again you check it. 

'Your costume is nice.'

You wait for another message, you don't get one.

'Thanks???' You're confused. 

'Something wrong?'

'I just would have expected you to say something snarky at this point. Genuine compliments aren't your style'

You narrowly dodge an eager trick or treater running by you, nodding at their parent as they apologize. 

'It's Halloween. I'm in a good mood, don't sour it for me'

You scoff, 'There it is. I don't plan to, though it's tempting to have Clara swing by with the kids just for the fun of it'

From there, your normal bickering comes forth, and you continue it both as you head to the party and while at it. It's a bit busier than you expected, more employees than you expected are there mingling about the dancefloor.

The entire west arcade, like the rest of the Plex, is done up with decorations that set the mood. There's even a fog machine, adding to the spooky but cheerful atmosphere.

You still feel pretty funny though, and thus take the time to go 'cool off' out in the hall for a bit. 

It grows worse and you have to lean back against the wall. Head throbbing as you try to drink more punch in the hopes that will solve it. Your vision flashes again, purple, and suddenly you're not in the same location anymore. 

It's dark, and you're standing over someone. You can't see their face, it's covered with static. They're crying, hands up in surrender. You feel yourself chuckle, but it's not your voice, your tone is off. It's gravely. Not your own. 

Suddenly, out of your control, your hand, which is not your hand but some, clawed, thing, comes down and-

Your vision goes red and you clutch your head in pain. Gasping, you find yourself back in the hallway, back in your body. Back to normal. 

You take a few deep breaths, trying to calm down. You don't know what that was. You don't want to find out, either. 

"Not enjoying the party, Andromeda?"

You look up, standing above you is Moon. He's also dressed up for this, wearing a witch costume that has more aspects of his usual wear to it than Sun's did. His color scheme is purple with bits of orange, and his usual hat is replaced by a large witch hat. 

You relax, the pain is gone, for now, "Trying to. I've not been feeling so hot, honestly."

"What's wrong?" He sits down across from you, cross-legged.

You shake your head, "I don't know. My head has just been, feeling funny. And hurts. A lot, really. Been blocking it out I guess."

"How unfortunate. Perhaps I could be of help?"

You shrug, "You can try, but don't feel like you have to, either."

Moon holds out his hand to you, and you set your palm on top of his. He intwines your fingers, which makes your face heat up, but you think with all the paint on your face it's impossible to tell. You look up to him, waiting. 

"Close your eyes, and take a deep breath," He urges.

You do. The pain has subsided some, though not by much.

"Breathe in," Pause, "Breathe out."

You follow his instructions, each breath helping to soothe you bit by bit. 

You realize however, that even with your eyes closed, there's a purplish tint to the blackness behind your eyes. You frown, and notice that it grows when you breath in, and subsides as you breathe out.

Moon's grip tightens on yours, but keeps speaking. 

"In," His tone shifts, growing hoarser, sinister? "Out..."

Alarm spikes in your stomach, but yet, your mind stays calm, almost like its-

You open your eyes, smiling softly, "I think I'm good now. Thanks, Moon-man."

He nods. 

Then, something occurs to you.

"Wait a minute, shouldn't you be passing out candy to the kids-" You blink, and you're alone in the fully lit hallway. 

You rub your eyes, had the lights been on that entire time? You knew that sometimes the two AI could avoid a switch if the light level wasn't fully one way or the other. But this was different. 

You don't get to dwell on it, as a scream erupts from inside the west arcade, several others following. Alarmed, you sit up, ignoring the pain in your skull that's back with a vengeance and rush inside. 

You find a crowd has gathered around the center of the dancefloor. The music's been cut, and people are muttering with horrified looks at whatever’s in the middle of the group.

As you move past people who are covering their mouths or eyes, some are crying, some are shaking their heads in disbelief. You find your team among them.

"What's going on?" You ask after shoving past another person. 

Savannah shakes her head, and Liv cowers further into Tyler's arms. You've never seen him so grim. 

You realize two of them are missing, your fear grows, "...Where's Jesse and Pete?"

Tyler nods to the center of the crowd, and you quickly take the few further steps to burst out into the opening, finding your fears confirmed plainly. 

Pete sits on the ground, crying as he cradles a body wrapped in white cloth stained red. You have to flick your eyes away from it for a moment, the sight being beyond shocking.

Swallowing and keeping your eyes to the ground, you slowly approach Pete and sit down. Briefly, you find your eyes meeting your, Christ, your dead friend's. His eyes are wide, mouth open in pure horror.

You turn back to the man beside you, setting your hand on his shoulder as he jumps, "What happened?"

"The, the lights cut, just, he just," He can't seem to look away, he's shaking, "I don't, I don't know how this would've, who could've, do-done this..."

You put your other hand on his other shoulder, forcing him to turn and look to you, "Pete. Breathe. Just breathe. Okay?"

He nods slowly, and you turn to behind the crowd behind you, "Please tell me somebody's called the cops?"

"No signal, trying to get ahold of Derrick in the office, but haven't had any luck," You realize that it's Bri who's answering you, looking rather grim in her black cat costume. 

You nod, "Right. Who's got basic medical training? I think he's gone into shock."

Someone steps forward, and starts tending to Pete. Someone else comes forward and lays a sheet over Jesse's body. A ghost costume you realize, how ironically morbid.

You stand, and-unfortunately being the person with the most experience in this scenario-try your best to take charge and calm things down. You also feel some level of responsibility, given that all the other Division Heads seem to be missing now.

Working with Bri, you send a group to the security office to see if they can't notify the police of what's happened. Additionally, you try to lock down the area to keep this from getting beyond the walls of this room and causing mass panic. Not to mention, you have no idea who did this, meaning they're still among you as far as you're aware. 

It's all going as smooth as it can be until Bri and the other guards’ radios erupt with screaming. Causing you to pause in your discussion with Savannah. 

You can barely make out what they're saying, only catching snippets here and there.

"-Something in the office!"

"Everybody's dead, oh god, they're all-"

"Help! Please! Anybody!"

To make matters worse, the lights cut again, sending the growing paranoia among the crowd into a full blown hysteric mob. You can't make out a thing in the dark, and when your head starts aching again, purple blinding you, you know you're a goner for the time being. 

Another vison comes to you, this time, the room is dimly lit, and you can tell this is a closet of some kind.

Again, you tower over a cowering figure who you realize is, David? What in the world is he doing here? What is happening?

"I don't know what they see in you, if anything at all," A voice that's not your own, yet comes from you, says. It's familiar but yet you can't-

David's sentence is shaky, "Look, I don't know what you want but I don't want any trouble. Okay?"

"Trouble? Friend, you're in a lot more than just trouble," There's something heavy in your hands, it glints in the light, "I'll tell you what though, if you hold still you'll be saving me a lot!"

Axe, it's an axe and it's swinging, down, down, down-

"Hey, it's alright. You're alright," Bri's shaking you, hand on your shoulder. 

You take a deep breath, realizing you're on your knees in a room lit by a red emergency light and some flashlights. Glancing around, you see all your friends, including Abby and even Jacob are here with you. There's a few others who you're guessing are other security guards based on how they stand near the door, on edge. 

You look back to Bri, "How'd I get here?"

Bri juts her thumb, "Tyler found you half out of it on the ground and grabbed you. Somehow carried Liv here too."

"I'm stronger than I look," He flexes with a nod. 

You manage to crack a weak smile, clutching your head as more pain shoots through it, "What happened? Where are we?"

"Security office by Fazerblast," Bri answers, glancing over at the covered window in the door, which you realize has been barricaded, "Furthest we could get safely with this many people."

"What do you mean by safely?"

She opens her mouth, but Pete speaks up, "The bots have gone awol." You turn to see he's on the ground, leaning up against the wall, blood dripping down the side of his head, face solemn, angry, "They're picking us off one by one. Anybody in sight is getting killed off. Doesn't help that we can't see a fuckin' thing and they can."

Your eyes widen, "What? …but, why? How?"

"Does it matter?" He asks, looking to you now, "We're dead meat if we try to leave, but we're sitting ducks here."

Bri scolds him, "We're not sitting ducks. This our best chance of getting out of here alive. If we can get power to the cameras, even better."

"Working on it," Liv says, something sparking as she speaks, "But I'm not an electrical engineer."

"Just give it up, Liv. There's no point," Pete scoffs, shaking his head.

He and Bri start arguing, Savannah trying to interject to keep the peace.

Someone sits down beside you, hand resting on your shoulder. 

It's Abby, her Glamrock makeup is smeared with dried tear streaks, "Hey."

"Hey," You sigh.

She bites her lip, "Are, are your siblings...?"

Your eyes widen and shake your head.

"God no. They're, they're safe. Out trick or treating with Clara," You put a hand to your face, relieved as you realize that fact, "Your brother?"

She sighs, "Also safe. With my parents. Not here. But," She stops, and you know exactly what she's thinking. 

You nod, turning away as you hear her sniffle. Your friends are still fighting, the guards by the door are getting antsy, another spark startles Liv and she looks ready to cry. You need to do something. 

Your vision turns purple but you shake it off immediately. Whatever this is, it can wait. You're going to make it.

Standing, and clutching your arm to keep it from twitching, you clear your throat, "We're not going to die here. Not on my watch. Bri, you and your guys here have any sort of weapon?"

"Tasers. And there should be a baton in here somewhere. Why, what are you thinking?"

You nod to the control panel for the cameras, "If there's anyone who can get those working in a blackout, it's Lizzy. And I know they were in Fazerblast before all this. Hell, it might've been their team that caused the outage."

"You want to go out there?" Pete asks, "Are you insane?"

You shrug, "Have to be at least a little bit to do this job. Someone give me a radio. We can at least double check before considering it."

Bri hands you her radio, and after a moment's hesitation, you set it to the engineers' channel and hold in on the button, "Lizzy, you still okay out there?"

Quiet. Your friends exchange a few bleak glances. 

You're about to try again when, "Uh, yeah? Why wouldn't I be?"

Relief, you think Pete even cracks a small smile. 

"There's... a lot of shit going down in the Plex right now, how have you not heard about it?"

"Dude we've been stuck in Fazerblast for hours. Besides trying to fix the power the doors got jammed. I'm not leaving until this is done though, so we just kind of ignored it. Did think it was weird there was no parents complaining about not being able to use a half-functioning attraction though." Their tone is so casual you have no choice but to believe it. 

The information, however, is huge, "That's, actually the best case scenario for us right now. So listen up, we gotta do this right or we don't stand a chance."

After explaining the full situation to Lizzy and their team, you work with your friends to come up with a plan. A good one. Something tells you you're only going to get one shot at this. 

Meanwhile, you struggle to keep it together. You keep getting more and more flashes of that other perspective. Speaking in those voices that you can't quite place how you know. Increasingly, you start to recognize the locations they're in are getting more familiar to where you are currently. 

It's a no brainer to you then, that you're a part of the team that goes to retrieve Lizzy. You force Bri to stay in the office, along with one of the guards. If you don't make it back, you at least want some people to stay safe. 

You try and fail in vein to stop Pete and Abby from coming with you, Tyler picks you up again when you question him coming along. 

"We're better off in even groups," Pete argues, gripping the metal chair leg he stole tightly, "Makes our chances that much better."

You don't disagree, but you don't like it either, "Fine, you're right. Now put me down please, Ty."

"Can do boss," He sets you down. 

You're all armed as best you can. The guard, Joseph, has a taser, and Tyler has-apparently-pure brute force on his side. Pete has the chair leg, which is similar to the stun baton you're carrying.

Abby has brass knuckles. You don't know how she has those but you're not going to question it. Apparently, Utah state law doesn't have any clauses relating to them, now you know.

You move quickly and silently through open darkness to get to the staff entrance to Fazerblast, which is thankfully only a short distance away. You all stay close, not saying a word as you navigate. 

There's not a soul around, human or machine. You don't know if it you puts you more on edge or not. 

When you get to the door, Pete's able to get it open quickly, and you all file inside, locking it again soon thereafter. 

The light inside the attraction is blinding in comparison to the darkness outside, the music and sound effects playing as if everything is entirely normal. It's almost more eerie in that regard. 

You find Lizzy and their crew sitting around one of the towers, the reunion is brief, but happy. It's agreed that the senior engineer will come with your group, and the parts and service crew will stay for safety reasons. You're about to depart again, when the radio starts going crazy. 

"We've got issues here!" Bri shouts down the line, "Don't come back, it's not safe!"

Static blares from the device, followed by banging, shouting, crying, and then a loud crash. The silence that follows is deafening. 

"Fuck. No, no, no," You bang on the side of the radio, "Come on, Bri! Savannah! Anyone!?"

No answer. 

"Dammit!" You toss the radio to the side, hands coming up to grip the sides of your head, "Dammit, dammit, dammit."

A hand on your shoulder, Abby again, "There's nothing we can do right now. We're going to have to refocus. Plan. Hope that they'll be okay-"

There's a banging at the front entrance to Fazerblast. Everyone freezes. 

You think quickly as the sound grows in volume, "Lizzy, how in control of the power are you currently?"

They dig through their bag, and toss you a makeshift remote, "It's what we've been using to test."

The pounding gets louder, and the shutter creaks. 

"Everybody who isn't armed find a place to hide. The rest of you are with me. We're gonna flip the tables on them."

Everyone scatters, and you make your way to the doors. You have no idea what's on the other side of that metal shutter, but you're going to find out one way or another. You'd rather it be on your terms. 

"Can you get it open?" You ask Pete, hitting the lights and leaving only a flashlight to see.

He nods, "You're sure about this?"

"As I'll ever be. Abby, Joe, Ty, go hide nearby. We'll assess the biggest threat and go from there."

They all nod, and head off into the darkness.

Pete gets the panel open, taking a deep breath, "I hope you're right."

You press your back against the wall beside the panel, almost accustom to the feeling of your vision switching to purple. That other perspective is right outside now. You see Freddy is the one banging on the door, along with several map bots. You squeeze your eyes shut and you're back in your body again.

"Me too."

There's a beep, and the shutter slowly starts to raise. Quickly, you grab Pete and shove him on the other side of you, using your arm to press him up against the wall beside you. 

As bots start pouring in, you lean your head back against the wall, holding your breath. 

You watch as they fan out, scouring for anyone that they think is in here. They don't see you. You relax slightly.

You turn to Pete and nod, guarding him as he moves and shuts the door again, it quietly sinks back to the ground, locking you in here for the time being. 

Moving across the wall, you regroup with the others. 

"I counted six staff bots, and Freddy," Abby whispers. The other three agree. 

Pete keeps lookout on your corner, "The music still playing helps us a little, but not a lot. We stick together, and go one by one, saving Freddy for last."

You frown, "Freddy's not last."

"What do you mean? Of course he is, he's going to be the hardest to take down."

You shake your head, "You miscounted. There's one more animatronic that made it in."

"Who?"

Off in the distance, you hear it, the jingle of bells. There's a flash of red as he lands on one of the walls, far off from you but within your line of sight. 

You shake away the purple again, knowing it's going to show you what he's seeing at that moment, "Moon."

You fare better than you expected. A bunch of humans versus machines. You manage to take down three of the staffs bots in the dark, and by screwing with the lights a few times, manage to disorient the Daycare Attendant enough to keep them from discovering your location. 

However, one of the parts n services guys gets found out, and his terrified screams as your claws rip him apart send, something, down your spine.

You know something's wrong with you now. You're taking far too much joy in beating in the metal skull of the staff bot below you. Oil splattering your clothes and face. You feel manic, alive. Out of control. 

You shake your head, stopping. You ignore the glances being sent your way, you have to make it through this. 

With this one you realize there's only one more staff bot left, then it's just Freddy and the Daycare Attendant. You flick the lights off again, huddling together with the others. 

"If we go for one, the other is going to know. Our best bet is to divide and conquer," Pete says. 

You nod, "One person with an electric weapon per team, one with something heavy. Tyler, you go with the group at the disadvantage to even it out."

Your teams end up being Joseph, Abby, and Tyler together to take on Freddy, leaving you and Pete to deal with Moon. 

You trudge through the darkness, silence between the two of you. 

There's been a voice in your head for a bit now. You block out whatever it says. Your grip feels shaky on the baton, and you can tell Pete's on edge more because of you than the looming threat somewhere out in the dark.

Keep it together. You just have to keep it together.

"Hello, Diana."

You turn, he pulls you up into the air, away from Pete. You don't even think to scream, instead only able to watch terrified as the ground and your friend get further and further away. 

Moon settles on one of the towers to set you down again, and you scramble back and fall onto the ground, looking up at him with fear. 

His faceplate twists, observing you. Then, his eyes narrow cheekily and he chuckles lowly. 

"What's the matter, Bright Eyes? You look like you've seen a ghost."

You bit your lip as it trembles, raising the baton as a threat, "W-with how this night is going it's, certainly a possibility."

"But that's not my costume now, is it?" He takes a step closer. 

You hold firm with the baton, hitting the button for the taser part to go off, "Moon-man, I don't want to hurt you. Don't make me."

The spark seems to deter him, growling.

"Why are you doing this? What did any of these people do to you?" You ask, beg in your words, "Killing innocent people? That's not you."

Moon snickers, and despite your waving of the baton, he moves closer, clawed finger resting on the end of it. He presses it down as he crouches to your level. 

You now sit eye to eye with him as he speaks, "Andromeda, would you like to know a secret?"

Your grip tightens on your weapon, head shaking once. That doesn't deter him. 

He leans in closer, his smile hovering just above your lips. 

"This is the best Halloween I've ever had," Then, he kisses you. You're so surprised that you don't feel the baton be taken from your hand until it's gone. 

He pulls away, chuckling again.

A loud bang suddenly resonates in the space, and the Naptime Attendant starts to twitch and collapse on the ground in front of you.

Pete stands over you both, breathing heavy as he clutches the chair leg in both hands. 

"Sorry, had to take the stairs."

Moon snarls and flips around, hand raising ready to slash across the man's chest. 

Panicked, you hit the button for the lights. 

But it's too late. 

As Sun's rays pop out, one by one, Pete can only stand there, blood slowly starting to soak through his shirt. He coughs, then takes a step forward, then another, stumbling past you into the wall. You quickly flip around as he collapses back against it, breathing ragged. 

"Well, at least now you look authentic," You turn back to see Sun standing hunched over, clutching his faceplate, "Though, it's still not quite as good as mine."

As he straightens, you have to suppress a gasp as it's revealed that one of his optics has shattered from the previous impact. 

His rays twitch and his focus snaps to you as you stand. 

His faceplate clicks to the side, "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes, Sunshine."

"Sun." You can't reach for your baton without it being obvious. 

"Are you having a good Halloween? I know I am." He tsks, "A pity about your costume, though I suppose the grit and grime really sells it."

You take a deep breath, running the back of your hand under your nose to wipe away the blood that's dripping. Your vison flashes purple, and for a moment you find you’re staring down at yourself. 

You're a mess. Hair all over the place, clothes torn. There's streaks in the paint covering your skin. There's still blood coming out your nose a little bit.

And your eyes are bright purple.

You come back to and watch Sun's eyes narrow.

You shift slightly, hand twitching.

You see there’s a slight shadow over Sun’s eyes. And in his good optic a small white pupil flicks to your hand. You swallow.

 "Don't do something you'll regret, Icarus."

You stamp your foot down onto the baton, it pops up into your hand and you click to turn it on.

You jut your chin out, tilting your head slightly, "Come on, Sun. You know me better than that."

You rush forward, he steps back, dodging and spinning to face you as you charge again. It's almost like a dance of danger. And it truly becomes one when Sun takes one of your hands and spins you around, dipping you low and back up as you try and fail again to use the baton on him. 

You let out a noise of frustration. Charging forward again, the two of you go round and round. Narrowly you miss him every time. Narrowly he dodges every swing. He’s fast. Faster than you’d have ever anticipated, than he’d ever let on about. You never realized how close to death you may have been all this time.

After another miss, this one the closet you’ve gotten yet, Sun puts an end to your game. He grabs hold of the baton, only flinching as you turn it on, and rips it from your grip, tossing it aside. He spins you into his arms and holds tight. 

You fight against him in vain. 

"You know, Bright Eyes. I would have thought you'd appreciate your treat a bit more than this," He snarls the words, "But maybe you've been too busy resisting it to do so."

You slow your struggling, and Sun releases you finally. The words having done the job far better than his hold to sedate you.

You turn to face him cautiously.

"You, you did this?" You ask, "You did this to me?"

Sun tuts, hands coming up to cup your cheeks, "Well, technically you did it to yourself, Bright Eyes. But I'm happy you did. Makes all of this much, much easier."

It suddenly hits you that he's right. Maybe not intentionally, or fully knowing, but you made the choice to go back to the computer. You chose to try and turn it off again. You could have left the office, it would've shut down eventually. Something had compelled you to come closer and investigate, and you had made the choice to listen. 

And now you were suffering from the cost.

"Now, let's finish this up, hm?" Sun bends and kisses you, pulling away after a moment, "You wouldn't want to disappoint now, would you?"

You don't answer. Your feet move on their own as they turn to face Pete, who seems to realize what's happening before you do. 

He clutches the wound on his stomach tighter, breathing quickening, "Come on, snap out of it! This isn't you! You know it's not."

"Quiet over there, you'll get your chance to speak in just a moment," There's something set down in your hands, you know what it is, "Don't worry, I'll help you. No need for tears."

You find that you are crying, but can't do a thing to stop it. Your body is not your own, your emotions are not your own. You are entirely out of control as Sun guides you to march staggeredly towards Pete.

Off in the distance you hear shouting as your remaining friends try in vain to take down Freddy. Not that it mattered. Even if they did, you'd be finishing the job.

Your breathing is heavy but controlled, grip on the axe tight, all you can do is stare down at Pete, who looks up at you horrified, eyes wide. You think the look matches the fear in your own gaze.

Sun's hands are on your shoulders, voice a purr in your ear, "Go on, Starlight. You know what you need to do."

The axe raises jerkily, fighting against it and losing. Your eyes snap shut, and it comes down. Again, and again, and again.

You block out everything, all noise, all touches. You block out the sound of sickening crunches and squelches, of Pete's heavy gasps, of Sun murmuring encouragement right beside you all the while. 

You block out the wood rough against the skin of your hands, the blood, sweat, and tears, running down your face. Sun's hands wrapped around your waist, head resting on your shoulder. 

You suddenly regain control and your eyes shoot open, throwing the axe away from you and stumbling back into Sun's arms. Your hands come up to your face as you sob, shaking your head. 

He just holds you as you cry, muttering things you can't comprehend as he presses kisses to your hair. 

When you finally subside to sniffles is when he pulls back to press a kiss to your lips.

"There, there, you're alright, Bright Eyes. Come on now," He lifts you to your feet, arms pulling you closer as he leans in for another kiss, "I'll let you pick who's next, how's that?" 

You shoot up from your bed, heart racing. You clutch your chest, breathing hard. 

You're at home. Sitting on your bed. You're fine. Everything's fine.

There's a yawn to your left that interrupts your thoughts. 

It's Gabe, laying on the bed beside you in his pumpkin costume. He yawns again, and stares curiously up at you, fist in his mouth. You pat his head with a sigh.

Right, you were going to put him down for a nap before heading out to trick or treat, then go to the Plex for the same thing. Looks like you ended up taking a nap too. 

You check the time, it's almost five. Suddenly, a thought hits you square in the face.

"Did I kiss Sun?" You say aloud. 

You do your best to recall the fading nightmare.

Oh god, you did. Right on his stupid flat face. Multiple times. You kissed Moon to but you're less opposed to that albeit confused-but Sun?

Involuntarily you gag, now feeling the sudden urge to rinse out your mouth, even if it had just been to his faceplate, much less a dream. 

Shaking your head, you turn to look down at your brother, who's now somehow managed to get his foot in his mouth, despite his costume. 

"Gabe, never down a bag of sour gummies and immediately take a nap, it'll give you crazy dreams."

You think you might leave the trick or treating to the kids tonight.

Something tells you that it’s for the best.

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

Oof, what a doozy huh? Imagine being the final girl AND the killer... crazy. Good thing it was all just a dream. Here's the promptober list and the spookvember schedule. Thanks for reading as always-

Oh?

What's this?

Looks like there's a link down here.

How'd that get there?

...

Hm.

You should click it. See what happens.

CLICK ME

btw the song playing while writing the fight scene was I Go Crazy - Orla Gartland and it was a VIBE and a half let me tell you-

[muzzlemouths]

[CW: Death/implication of death]

The clock reads a quarter to midnight when Sun powers on. Too early. He isn’t meant to come online for another six hours, and the daycare itself won’t open for another hour after that. He promptly runs a scan to determine the reasoning behind his premature entrance and when it returns inconclusive he turns to Moon. It is his metaphorical toes he is stepping on by encroaching on the night as he is, after all.

It’s quiet. The kind of quiet that settles like dust. A quiet that makes one aware of the breath that stirs within their lungs or, in Sun’s case, the gentle whir of an internal fan that perpetually keeps his system from running itself into the ground. A quiet so frequently interrupted by the welcomed voice of his other half…and yet, nothing. His question goes unanswered, left to gather with the dust, and he is forced to proceed as though these strange happenings haven’t disrupted his entire morning routine.

A routine further disturbed upon having to remind himself for the second time already that it isn’t morning, he isn’t meant to be going through the start-up procedure to begin with, and he can’t be blamed for the corrupted sense of awareness he feels as a result. Sure, the lights are on, and his systems, too, return with normal results after a precautionary scan, but there is a discomfort to all of this scratching at the inner plating of his frame. Something is wrong wrong wrong.

“…Moon?”

His second attempt at communication yields no better results than the first, only a vague static answering the call, murmur-soft background noise, as though someone had plucked a phone from its receiver and then walked away. Frustrating is what it was. To ignore him was childish at best, but at worst, it was concerning. His relationship with Moon was reasonably amicable even on the longest of days, he worked better with Moon than without, so the absence was unusual as much as it was alarming.

Alone with his thoughts for the foreseeable future, Sun decides there is little point to sitting around in the midst of this confusion when he could be using the time to busy himself with more important tasks, such as tidying up all the apparent dust around here. Better yet, he can get a head-start in preparation for that day’s activities. Something to keep his mind from wandering into worrywart territory, at the very least.

An ache stemming at the tail of his exoskeleton twinges with particularly horrendous vengeance upon finally convincing his legs to move. He buries the vocalization of a wince and carries on across the carpeted room with little more than a brief mental note to mention the pain to a mechanic if it worsens by tomorrow. No use in wasting company time for what he’s sure is only the result of one or both of them landing wrong after receiving a hug from one of the daycare’s more excitable children (or several).

Still, it makes the process of retrieving a stray toy from the floor that much harder when he sees it lying in wait by the slide. If anything, bending down to reclaim the doll only exacerbates the ache until it grows into a proper sting, now difficult to ignore. Yet ignore it he does, to the best of his ability. There are things to do and he isn’t about to let a pinch of soreness slow him down now. No, sirree! He has play equipment to wipe down, craft supplies to ready, and–

and…

His hand stops just short of reaching the doll, long yellow fingers curling inward, against his palm which is painted with splotches of salt and pepper, as though a bottle of dully colored glitter glue had exploded across his fingers and hand. He straightens again and lifts his other hand, noting a similar stretch of television static, one that carries beyond his wrist up the length of his forearm in smeared blotches and specks like splattered paint in dirty snow hues.

Messy messy messy. What could Moon have gotten up to that resulted in such a mess? He’d have made a face, had he a nose to wrinkle in the first place.

Instead he allows for one small tut of disgust to escape his voice box before turning his attention back to the doll, taking note of the static that stains the carpet beside its head, and just beyond it, too; a trail made up of one scattered drop after another.

Ever curious, he knows not what to do besides follow it, hoping for an answer to the many questions burning through his system. Each continuous speck leads him in the direction of the exit, every patch of static more plentiful than the last, and as he allows the strange color to guide him forward he begins to question not only its existence, but why it all seems so familiar, as though he’s seen it somewhere before.

There is little time to mull it over. He arrives at the service desk where the trail ends abruptly, and Sun pauses with the toe of his slippers stood just an inch before a stray, black shoe that might have sent him stumbling face first into carpet had he not already been looking down. A shoe isn’t the most bizarre thing to lose in a daycare of all places, and he decides right away that it isn’t anything to worry over, just another item to drop into lost and found, but where there is a shoe there is bound to be someone missing it and, well…

Sun finds the answer he’s looking for just a few inches behind the service desk.

Face down and tucked in on themselves as they are, cloaked in the desk’s shadow, it’s impossible to tell anything about the person beyond their age, and even that is somewhat uncertain — though the size 9 shoe left behind offers a decent clue. This discovery does wonders to quell the anxiety in Sun’s chest. An adult was much easier to escort from the daycare, given the lack of parental contribution it necessitated, and it looked like this one was just sleeping! An odd place to go about it, sure — against the rules, most certainly — but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a purposeful tap to the ankle.

So, that’s exactly what he does. Bending dramatically at the knee, head swiveling to one side, Sun’s fingers dance as though he intends on tickling the trespasser awake before extending his index finger and tapping twice in quick succession against the exposed skin between their pant leg and sock. “Rise and shine, friend!” He chirps, “It’s time to head home now.”

He’d have preferred the tried-and-true method of rousing someone (that is, a gentle rock of the shoulders), but given that their guest was currently resting in the one area that Sun was not permitted entry to, he was forced to resort to more…creative measures. Unfortunately, this action does not yield the results he is hoping for.

“Friend?” Sun calls again, allowing his voice to raise a decibel from the polite mumble it had been before. The laughter that cuts from his voicebox is nervous and too loud on its own, his anxiety returning tenfold. The points of logic he had used to reassure himself before were now quickly dwindling with each passing second in which he received no response.

With his steps now admittedly growing frantic, Sun tiptoes around the desk to the other side, hoping for a better view of their comatose companion. What happens instead is an almost comical flailing of limbs as his slipper takes to an unseen puddle of static like it were a banana peel, resulting in a scramble to keep himself upright that only comes to an end when he braces against the nearest wall for support. The distraction is agitating, but short lived. A commotion like that would surely have awoken anyone, no matter how deep in slumber they were, and the continued lack of response does nothing to relieve Sun of the stress threatening to fry his circuits.

“Friend, this is n-no time for jokes!” He asserts, speaking at full volume, now, every word drenched in tense frustration. His gaze falls to the puddle of static soaking into the bottoms of his slippers, that twinge of recognition rearing its head once more. “I’m not in the mood for games, right now, so if you’re only pretending to sleep—” his hand comes away from the wall feeling wrong, the familiar sensation of sticky static blanketing his palm and crusting in the grooves between his joints as it further dries. His fingers curl into a loose fist long enough to observe the way each digit smears against his palm and leaves behind a tacky residue that he can feel, but not see.

He looks up. There, on the wall, two handprints interrupt the static. The first is larger, an obvious testament to the humbling misstep he’d only just finished recovering from, but the other…it was far smaller, surely left behind by the same stranger currently snoozing away beneath the desk, and it ran from the lightswitch down down down to the floor, where the accusing hand now rested just outside the desk’s shadow.

How strange, Sun thinks, tilting his head to get a better look. The way the static paints their skin, it almost looks like—

“You’re doing so well, dewdrop, just a moment longer and you’ll be right as rain again!” Sun gives the small hand intertwined with his own an encouraging squeeze as the other, equipped with an antiseptic wipe, dutifully dabs away at a scuffed knee. His young patient, having tripped and burned her skin along the carpet, is nothing less than a trooper as he cleans the static from the shallow wound. Not even a sniffle!

He tucks the wipe into the flat of his palm and trades it out for ointment, smearing a healthy dollop of it along the reddened surface before wiping his finger along the striping of his pants and reaching for a bandaid; Chica pink with pizzas on one side and cupcakes on the other.

“There, now. I’m sure that feels better already!”

Blood. Viscous, cold, pooling at his feet. On the walls, the carpet. His hands. Cherry red like a lollipop and twice as sticky…or so he’s told. Nothing a robot of his nature is meant to see or understand. His censors make sure of it. Rather than allow him to see things are they are, the incarnadine color is suppressed behind a layer of static, as if he won’t care to acknowledge it at all beyond its existence on scraped knees and split lips. As if he is meant to ignore the way it feels in its abundance, caked against his palms and festering between his open joints.

Messy, messy, messy. He feels dirtied beyond repair, filthy in a way that even a deep cleaning won’t fix. The wires in his stomach feel twisted, begging to come undone, shorting like sparklers against their ports and threatening to make short work of bringing him down. His screens are flooded with alerts that warn of an inevitable shut-down if he can’t manage to pull himself back together, but moving feels impossible, an insurmountable task. He can not think past the sensation of someone else’s life soaking into the cotton of his slippers.

And what of their guest? Sun can hardly get himself to look again, pleading with the matter of logic itself as he is forced to reckon with the knowledge that this is a rest they may never wake from. But he does look. He has to.

He wishes he hadn’t.

The brief glimpse he endures before looking anywhere else is more than enough. From this angle, the static – the blood – paints a grim picture. In spite of this, Sun finds himself circling the desk a second time and preparing to draw the body – the visitor – out from under the desk. It is a daunting task, but a necessary one, by Sun’s account. If there is nothing to be done in such a hopeless situation then, at the very least, he owes this stranger the dignity of recognition and an attempt. He can claim to have looked for a pulse. Even so, he hesitates.

There is not one to be found; Sun knows this. He knows painfully well from the static lingering on his silicone that it is already too late. Oil is warmed by the processors it fuels, and similarly, blood is meant to be hot. The soles of his slippers are cold. The pads of his fingers, against even the raging inferno of his overworked circuitry, are cold.

The body is cold.

He perseveres, regardless, dragging the stranger out from under the desk by a shaky grip on their ankle one inch at a time, pausing every few tugs to look away and regather his confidence, trying so, so hard to tune out the ever-constant music as it merrily sings through the speakers.

He begs the underlying silence. “Please have a pulse.” Tug. “Please don’t be cold.” Tug. “I don’t know what to do.” Tug. “I can’t do this alone.” Tug. “You have to wake up.” Tug. “Please.” Tug. “Please!” Tug. “Please, please, please, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseple—”

He knows this visitor. Not a friend, but not quite a stranger, either. His scanner attempts to process the identification of a man whose head is so thick with static that it returns as an error. His face is contorted grotesquely, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide with fear. They don’t look like they’re sleeping.

A security guard whose name fails to ping in his registry. Sun had spoken with him once, maybe twice before. He drank coffee by the mile and hardly stuck around long enough to do more than complain about the weather. Sun hadn’t been in a hurry to befriend the man, but he only wished the best for him. Squeezed a joke in where he could in an attempt to turn his frown upside-down. It had never worked before, but Sun was no quitter. Now he would never get the chance to try again.

“Focus, focus.” Sun carefully lowers the man’s foot back to the carpet again, choking on the sensation of bloodied clothes slipping through his fingers and resisting the urge to tear the rays straight out of his faceplate in response. He is inconsolably panicked and at a loss for what to do, two steps from outright laughing, the complete absurdity of the situation driving him to hysterics.

He needed to call security. He couldn’t call security. Security was–

Management. There were other employees that worked the night shift if Moon complaining about them making too much noise during naptime was anything to go by. If he sent out a general call for assistance surely someone would come and tell him what to do, even at this late hour. It was his best option. His only option.

“Don’t.”

The voice makes him jump clear out of his casings. He has half a mind to swear, but as it stands, Sun thinks the long divots he dragged into the service desk out of surprise are enough damage already. On top of everything else.

“Moon?” He whispers. “Nice of you to finally join us – and by us, I mean me and the deceased guest I discovered a moment ago. Do you have a clue what’s going on here?”

“Don’t?” Sun echoes, agitated, “Don’t what?”

“Don’t.”

If the tether keeping his sanity intact was fraying before, it’s now down to a single thread. “Why not?” He asks with great exhaustion, “Did you not hear me? This is an emergency! There is a dead body in the–”

“Call management.”

“I know.”

Silence answers. Despite having a hundred and one snarky retorts building in between each crackle and pop of his voice box, Sun has nothing to say to that. Nothing good, anyway. It takes nine steady ticks of the clock for him to recollect his thoughts.

“You…you know?” He stutters, “How could you…” but he doesn’t finish the question, and he doesn’t need to. Realization strikes him with an iron fist for the second time that day and it is no less kinder than the first. “Did… you do this?”

It’s Moon’s turn to go quiet.

That silence stretches on for what feels like hours to Sun, each passing second more agonizing than the last, until he starts to believe Moon had simply disappeared like before. He waits, and waits, and finally decides to interrupt the silence with a repeat of the question, despite already knowing the answer. Moon beats him to it.

The tired sigh that escapes Sun’s throat is thoroughly earned. “Well, it’s too late to figure something else out, I already sent out the emergency ping.”

“Not sure,” he says, and Sun can tell from his tone that it’s the truth. “Blurry. My head hurts.”

A sound like nothing he’s ever heard before tears itself from Moon’s voicebox. A growl, if he were to put a name to it.

“Get rid of it, then.” Moon insists through the noise, “Clean up, clean up.”

“It?” Sun gawks, “Moon, that – that’s a person. He has dignity, a family!”

“Had a family,” Moon corrects, “dead, now. No dignity. Who will they blame?”

The question gives him pause. Surely there was a better way to go about this, a solution that didn’t have his morals (and wires, for that matter) all up in a twist. Yet the longer he thinks about it, the more he realizes Moon is right. Management hardly listens when he tries to explain that it was the children who broke a piece of playground equipment, not him! They aren’t likely to give his explanation of simply having found the body any mind, much less understanding. With his counterpart practically admitting to the heinous act, already, informing management of the body would sooner see them decommissioned.

“Running out of time,” Moon reminds him, “Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick–”

“Alright, alright!” He wails, “What should I do, then?”

“Clean up.”

“Where?” Sun looks around with the desperation of a teenager attempting to play hooky, rays practically nonexistent with how he’s tucked them away. His eyes search the room from top to bottom before landing determinedly on the ball pit.

“Good enough,” Moon tuts, a rather uninspired response to the happenings around him. Of course he isn’t panicking, it isn’t him who takes the body by its ankles and drags the dead weight across the carpet. It isn’t him who shoves aside enough plastic to carefully hide a corpse in. But it should be him worrying, it should be him panicking, because if management finds out about their secret, it’ll spell doom for both of them.

“You’ll get rid of it – him – properly once there’s no one around, right?” Sun finishes reshuffling the ball pit, mostly confident that the ill deed is successfully hidden from view. “I’m going to have to wash each and every one of these balls before the kids arrive in the morning.”

Right, the kids. When they arrive in just a few hours, will he have things tidied up? Will he be able to carry on as though nothing happened? He’s a brilliant actor – or he used to be, anyway, before the company decided he better fit the role of a nanny – but this is well beyond the scripts he is most familiar with.

“They’re close,” Moon warns him, “Don’t let them see–”

“I know, I know.” No time to dwell on it now, he makes quick work of crossing the distance between the ball pit and the exit, and manages to slide his head and torso through the gap between doors within seconds of it opening, scaring the living daylights of the poor employee sent to greet him in the process.

Unlike Sun, they do swear, clutching a hand over their chest and fitting him with a downright awful deadpanned stare. “Fuck, you couldn’t have waited a few seconds longer for me to come inside?” They hiss.

“Sorry, friend! Didn’t mean to spook you,” Sun chirps. He is careful to keep his bloodied hands safely tucked behind his back. “It’s just a mess in here, is all, and I’m rather embarrassed. There’s still equipment to clean, toys to organize, papers to fold–”

“Sure,” the employee interrupts, “It doesn’t really–” they pinch the bridge of their nose, exhaling with notably less exhaustion than Sun is feeling right about now, “I don’t particularly care. What’s the big issue that I was called down here for?”

“Oh! I just wanted to know if the next shipment of wipes had come in, yet. Like I said before, much to do! Always busy, busy, busy!”

Their stare turns into an outright glower. “That’s why you called the emergency line? For cleaning supplies?”

Sun shrugs, feigning ignorance. “Well, that’s an emergency to me. Apparently our standards are not the same.” He watches them roll their eyes with more enthusiasm than necessary. ”Do you know how messy children can be? It’s practically a barnyard in here, every single day, and don’t even get me started on how much of a health code violation it would be if one of them were to pick their nose and then–”

“Fine, I get it,” they snap, “I’ll make sure your damn supplies are delivered before the daycare opens. Anything else?”

“Told you they were annoying,” Moon chimes in.

“That’s everything!” He replies, “thank you a mighty amount, friend!”

“Mhm,” they mutter, waving him off with nothing more than the noncommittal sound. When they do turn to leave, it’s not soon enough, and Sun just barely manages to close the door with a whisper instead of a slam.

His back rests against it a moment later, and he allows himself to collapse from there, sliding down the smooth wooden frame until his tailbone reaches the floor. His knees twinge as they tuck against his chest, and he folds both arms atop, resting his temple against them and taking one long, much needed moment to just breathe.

It had only been half of a lie. There was much to do, much to clean, and only so many hours remaining to get it done. The wires nestled deep in his chest had calmed, yet the tremor in his hands continued, as it likely would until the very last speck of blood was washed clean.

“…Moon?”

“Hm?”

Sun tucks his knees ever closer. “Why…why did you do it?”

“…”

“I w-won’t be mad, promise! I’m sure this is all just one big misunderstanding, after all – a one time event, no biggie! But…was it out of anger? Fear? I mean, did he hurt–”

“In my way,” Moon replies.

Sun’s head lifts from the dark haven his arms provide, noting with growing exhaustion that, for the very first time, the lights felt too bright even for him. “What do you mean by that?” He asks, “Did he keep you from doing something?”

“…I don’t know.”

Again, Sun’s head falls against his arms in defeat, and again, not two seconds later, it lifts, determined not to lollygag any longer.

His legs creak with vocal effort as he gets back to his feet. “Well, no point in dwelling on it now, I suppose. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He takes in a wide view of the daycare – static trailing everywhere – and deflates with a sigh. “Guess I better get started. The sooner we get the place cleaned up, the sooner we can forget about all of this.”

He takes a step forward, and only that, swiveling on his heel when he catches last night’s roster from the corner of his eye. A single drop of static had landed and smeared across the name of a child meant to go home later in the evening.

Strangely enough, it appears they were never picked up.

Sun shrugs, gathering the paper in both hands and crumpling it into a ball to dispose of the smeared evidence. A simple mistake with the roster, that’s all it is. The parents often forget to sign their name after all. Accidents happen all the time!

The paper lands with a soft thunk in the nearest trash can and is just as quickly forgotten. Sun pivots towards the play area once more and heads for the supply closet, steadfast in his determination to be cleaned up on time, and feeling more confident than he ought to be about how things ended, all things considered.

More than anything, he is just happy to have all of this behind them.

[selineram3421]

*stands there like a fool* So... I lied.

Other Worldly

Part 6

Part 5

Alastor X Shy Reader

Warnings ⚠

⚠ selectively mute reader, nightmare, heartbreak, 🌹death🥀(drowning), numbness, protective deer man, hurt/comfort, alastor's shadow is so cute ⚠

She was wearing a pretty pink dress. One that made her look like a cute jellyfish.

You saw her earlier when going to your next task.

It didn't come as weird that she probably found out you were taking an extra shift at the aquarium. Just the thought of her coming by to surprise you made your heart flutter.

Maybe you can finally give her that necklace. It's been in your pocket for a while, but you just got so nervous.

You knew her usual route to take around the aquarium, so she would be stopping by the large fish display soon.

The beat of your heart sped up and you began to sing to calm yourself down.

"Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place"

It didn't really help and you began to daydream of how you would present the gift to her.

"And have a drink or two"

Standing on the catwalk over the large tank, you held the control box for the lights to adjust them a little higher, but then you saw her. Standing in front of the display.

"And then I go and spoil it all"

"Pay attention, stop making googoo eyes at your girl.", someone had said, most likely one of the six people in charge of feeding.

You couldn't help it. She was everything to you.

And then you saw some random guy put a hand on her waist.

"By saying something stupid"

Confused, you watched on and were about to drop everything to run over.

"Like I love.."

Then they kissed.

"..you..."

Everything just stopped.

You clutched the control in your hands as you felt your heart break.

Then there was a shout from behind you before the lights came crashing down on the catwalk, breaking it in half, taking you and the staff sinking down into the water.

Everything hurt.

You didn't want to move.

Metal dug into your stomach and you couldn't move your legs, the water turning red, a line of it following after as you sank deeper.

Maybe it would stop hurting if you just let the water fill your lungs.

You closed your eyes and tried to "breathe."

The water burned as it filled your lungs.

Slowly, you were losing your train of thought.

You really did like the water. Often wanting to be a mer person just so you can watch the light beams shimmering into the water.

Maybe you'll get to swim more often.

The burning sensation just got stronger, as did the sinking.

All that was left was the dark empty feeling as you sunk down deeper and deeper.

Then, numbness.

.

You sat up with a gasp, taking deep breaths of air.

The familiar sight of your hotel room greeted you. Dark red wallpaper, dresser, and the door to your bathroom.

With a sigh, you flopped back into the pillows.

Why? You thought and hid your face into your blanket.

Maybe it's because the Radio Demon had you sing to him every time you had one of those songs.

You couldn't help it. It still hurt and you didn't want to lash out and scare everyone.. So you sang. It's all you could do, it's all you wanted to do.

Shaking the last remnants of the nightmare, you got up and went to get ready for the day.

I need to forget.

.

Alastor noticed that his siren was a little more closed off than usual today.

It's been a week since he gave them the gift and they have been using it constantly. They spoke to him a little more, which is what he wanted. The plan was a success.

But why did they feel so far away today?

They had sang him those sad songs he asked for. Their lovely voice echoed in the bayou and they were just picture perfect.

He had debated on having them sing on a broadcast, but he decided to be selfish and keep their talent to himself. They were his and no one would be able to take them away, no one would have the chance to.

Back to the current situation.

His little mer was quiet. Not a peep or a squeak out of them today.

Everyone else in the hotel shrugged it off, used to their muteness, but the deer demon could not.

What happened?

Did someone cause this?

Who did he have to kill...

He had his shadow keep an eye on them, mostly because they were used to its presence and not his. Not yet at least.

Lying in wait, he sat on his chair in the radio tower. With a flick of his hand, he used his magic to connect to his shadow.

And through the shadows eyes, he saw them close. Unusually close..

Were they holding the shadow's face?

Glancing around, he saw that they were sitting on one of the smooth rocks in their little area. His shadow was most likely resting its chin on their tail.

Then they started singing.

"Days seems sometimes as if they'll never end

Sun digs its heels to taunt you"

How lovely. He thought and just stayed still to listen.

"Memories swim and haunt you

But look into the lake, shimmering like smoke

Rises the moon"

This was new. A hint of sadness but mostly calming.

"I promise you that soon the autumn comes

To steal away each dream you keep

Breathe, breathe, breathe.."

He felt like his worries were gone, as if they were never there.

"I had a nightmare today. Of my death..", they whispered with a sad smile. "I was drowning. I remember sinking down, deeper into the water. The blood."

Then they lifted their tail out of the water.

"Maybe that's why this is red."

Ah, he knew it had something to do with drowning, but that's all the file said.

What else happened? He wondered.

"It's so silly.", they laughed lightly. "I should stop bothering you now."

His shadow thankfully stopped them from moving, leaning more into the Mer's hold.

They blinked in surprise and then let out a real laugh.

"Ok, I'll keep holding your face."

Please keep smiling.

And then they pecked the shadow's forehead.

"Thank you for listening."

I had an idea and then the idea moved my hands to type.

~Seline, the person.

Part 7

Taglist@

@preciousbabypeter @poppingaround @bishiglomper @random-3455 @mistpurpl3 @darifes @chirimeimei @sharkthong @enjisthings @aspiring-bookworm @cherry-cola-100 @fairyv-ice @phoephan-123 @briethekitsune @fuzzyturtlepaws @redrose360 @+more in the comments+

ML I Alastor🎙️ | OW🦀

[fallen-flier]

the moon will sing (time traveling tim)

so. i saw this super awesome post by @puppetwoman17 about time traveling tim drake and got obsessed, so here's a small ficlet i wrote about it!

part 2

The thing is, Tim expects it. He’s faintly aware of the blood seeping from his stomach, staining his hands red— hands which are uselessly putting pressure on his wound. If he survives this, he doesn’t even want to think of all the weeks of pure agony and fever, brought on by the wonderful lack of his spleen and the fact that healing from wounds sucked, period.

Death isn’t surprising— he really didn’t think he would live past, what, twenty-five? Thirty? To live until beyond 50 with his lifestyle was, well. It sounded painful, anyways. And you would need to be a deeply paranoid neurotic. Like Bruce. Because as much as he respected his father and looked up to him, if Tim turned out anything like Batman, he’d probably find a bullet through his brain sooner or later.

Half because Tim was reckless and his plans were so convoluted and insane that nobody really knew what was going on either, just to confuse his opponent. The other half was, well. You can guess.

So. He’s bleeding out, the night is uncomfortably cold and the wind bites into his skin, sand grating against his back, and all Tim can think about is how much he hopes Ra’s al-Ghul doesn’t show up like a damned wraith and drag him kicking and screaming to the nearest surgery table and take out his kidneys or something. 

Tim’s also thinking about his family. And the probable inconveniences that come with his death. Like arranging his funeral and all his assets and his Nest and the fact that Tim is a very integral part of the family and Dick will probably fall apart and Bruce will mourn and brood, and, and damn it. Tim should probably revoke his thinking process or something.

—

Tim is twenty three years old when he bleeds to death alone, and nobody finds his body until three weeks later when his family has scoured the Earth and his distress signal rings, rings, but nobody sees it. His predictions about his family come true.

But that isn’t quite relevant, because Tim isn’t aware of such a thing. 

Instead, Tim closes his eyes and falls and jerks up on his bed, clutching his chest as years of memories flood his brain, too much for a mere eleven year old. It feels like his head has been cracked open and molten lava had been poured through, scorching his veins and circulation. It feels like agony of the highest level and Tim is faintly aware of the darkness creeping in, his mind too overwhelmed and overstimulated from years of memories flooding into his brain.

And so for the second time in a few minutes and a lifetime, Tim welcomes unconsciousness with open arms.

The next few hours are spent in pure agony, his body being too weak to move and his limbs too short for him to coordinate. He’s pretty sure that there’s a pool of dried blood underneath him from a nosebleed, but he’s too tired to turn around, so he just uncomfortably shifts away from it. Not for the first time, he thanks his lucky stars that his parents are neglectful, because he doesn’t even know how he would explain all of this. 

Two days later, he musters the strength to stumble out of bed, gulp down the bitter, carbon dioxide-filled water next to him and get to the kitchen. It’s April 1st, twelve years ago, Tim is eleven years old, and his family doesn’t know him yet.

Half of the terrible things that have happened to Dick haven’t happened yet. Jason hasn’t died yet. Duke is still a kid and his parents are healthy. Babs hasn’t been put into a wheelchair by the Joker.

Steph is still living with her father. Damian and Cass are being trained as assassins.

Mrs. Mac is due to come in a few hours. Tim looks at the blood-crusted covers of his bed and his crumpled clothes. 

Oh, shoot. 

So instead of researching or training, Tim spends the next hour trying to get the bedsheets off with his tiny, noodle arms, half stumbling on his feet because he’s way too damn short, and making his way to the bathroom so he can take a shower and get some of the blood off so it doesn’t stain too badly. 

It’s probably a lost cause. Not that his parents will notice or care about a missing bedsheet, but it feels wasteful to just throw it away to hide evidence of his unintentional time travel.

Two and a half hours later, Tim stumbles out of the laundry room, his bedsheets and pillow finally in the washer. He collapses on the nearest chair and scans the room for his father’s computer. 

He lets out a shaky breath. His family is generally unscarred. Jason is Robin again. Jason. The boy who Tim had held with a certain degree of, well, disdain. Thinking about it kind of makes him want to punch is past self in the face, or cringe in the way that you can only do when you think of something embarrassing you used to do. Like victim-blaming your older brother for getting beat to death while trying to find his mother. 

It wasn’t the only way he looked at Jason, but he had always thought of him as too reckless. Maybe he really did deserve the beating. Well, not that he believed that young teenagers should be beat up by young adults in Robin cosplay, but at least Tim wasn’t exactly traumatized by the experience. Better him than some other poor civilian kid Bruce could’ve adopted.

And Tim did get his revenge. By getting Jason on his private parts. But whatever. Revenge was revenge, and Tim was better than the whole crime lord setup his older brother had. In practice, anyways. 

Chewing on the ballpoint pen, he writes down the first thing on his list (in code, of course) since coming back in time.

prevent jason’s death 

Well. Now that he had a comprehensive list, Tim was down and ready to plan. 

—

A hour later, Mrs. Mac appears, none the wiser to what happened to him. Tim greets her as she walks in, and she smiles and greets him back, putting lunch in the fridge. She notices nothing wrong about how he stays sitting on the chair in the living room, and Tim says nothing about it. When she leaves, he pulls the piece of paper out of his book and the pen from his hair, scratching down some extra points.

Hmm. Maybe the Court of Owls should go early. Or perhaps that would create too much change?

Dick would have a better time in the future if they were gone, though. Tim frowns, dragging his pen back and forth in a short line on the table. 

He still needed to factor in the fact that he was an unknown to the family. The thing is, Tim loves their dysfunctional, broken family and he knows Bruce and Dick loved him back. But to be honest, it would be easier to change events if he wasn’t being scrutinized by Bruce every day. And it wasn’t like Tim had any shortage of money, with his parents still alive and his family fortune enough to cover whole lifetimes, so he wasn’t worried about his own safety.

It would be nice to go to college too. Maybe Stanford. He was smart enough to make it, and the location was close to the vigiliante community that if he so wanted to, he could probably join and watch his family from the outskirts. Last time around, Tim just couldn’t leave Gotham. Being a vigiliante was his life— he couldn’t even justify it as a temporary thing anymore. Their family had gone through so much tragedy and Gotham was still filled with crime and Tim had an obligation to keep her safe. It just… he couldn’t escape his mantle because he loved it, and Tim had a difficult time letting things go once he loved them. 

But if Tim could change things from the start, he didn’t need to be pulled back into the life. (He couldn’t have it, even if he loved it, because it was never his in the first place.) He could start anew, be a vigiliante when he was in college and far away from the family he hopefully would’ve fixed by then.

Well then. First things first, he needed to remove a factor from Jason’s death so he wouldn’t die in the first place.

—

Mrs. Mac comes by and cooks him lunch, and they eat in silence. Typically, Tim would fill the silence with chattering, glad to have someone to talk to in the empty manor.  But Tim’s mind is whirring, drawing up and discarding plans. By the time Mrs. Mac stands up and tells him she’s going to leave now, Tim has thought of three contingencies and twelve more future events he needs to address.

He mhms when Mrs. Mac prompts him to, and eventually she leaves out the front door, leaving him alone with his thoughts. It’s spring break and Tim doesn’t actually have anything to do because he’s in middle school now, so he mulls over the Jason problem for a few more hours.

It comes to him when he’s microwaving the leftovers from lunch, and Tim is pretty sure he’s a genius, or something. Sheila Haywood worked at a refugee camp in Ethiopia handling medical supplies, but she was embezzling funds from the organization she was working for. It wouldn’t be difficult for Tim to trace it and report her. By the time Jason began tracking her down, she would most likely be in prison, just for a few years and everything would hopefully blow over and the Joker wouldn’t blackmail her because she had no use to him in prison. 

It was cold, perhaps. But her life wouldn’t be over with a few years in prison, and Jason would be alive. Nothing more than they deserved.

Jason, alive. Then Damian, Cass, and Steph. He would see to his family, whole and happy. Then perhaps, in the future, when he was older and safely out of Bruce’s adoption zone, Tim could perhaps work with them. Laugh about how he never expected the Wayne family to be vigilantes, just to throw them off his trail. 

Tim allows himself this one selfish thought, because he has nothing else but the shattered remains of a future that will never come to be, and a family he left behind but still exists.

a/n:

i wrote this in two hours under an inspired haze of time travel and tim, two of my favorite things

tim is a super unreliable narrator if you haven't already noticed lmao

also if i get any characterization wrong feel free to leave some discourse or ping me on the head

but like please be gentle cause y'know constructive crit, not bashing

thanks for reading! :D

[grand-line-shenanigans]

Yippee!!

[unnamed-proxy]

“Ways to keep your partner safe, a guide for the romantically inept”

“”We were gonna practice, he was teaching me ya know– showing me everything he knew about the instrument.”

He shook his head.

“I arrived late. Was caught up with something at the house– I should’ve left sooner—I should have known –”

His eyes squeezed shut painfully– something biting at the edges of his face.

He let out a shaky breath.

“Torn up he was. Could barely even recognize him and that thing–”

His hands clenched painfully.

Dragged him under– took us weeks to even find his body.”

I felt a chasm open in the bottom of my stomach, my eyes went wide and my skin felt cold.

“They closed up the whole beach after that, said cause it was a crime scene, but it’s been months now. They know the truth we all know the truth.”

Monty’s glare darkened. A bottomless panic started to seep into the peripherals of my vision.

“That fucking fish killed him.””

————

“Settling against him, a warmth blossomed between our bodies that was both familiar and comforting. His large hands wrapped around me, holding me close like a lifeline. I lightly traced the veins in his arms as I heard the soft breathing against my neck.

Something lingered though, just in the very back of my mind.

Just a seedling of a thought.

I tried not to think too much about how his arms wrapped around me, trapping me against the covers.

How it felt so similar to beastly waves, holding onto me and pulling me under.

No— I wasn’t thinking that.

I was cuddling with my boyfriend- like we always do. Something I never had a problem with before.

I loved Sun and nothing was going to change that.

…

…nothing…”

“Under The Surface” Chapter 12 by @ohno-the-sun

[lulublack90]

Prompt 20 - Hurt/No Comfort

@wolfstarmicrofic July 20, word count 796

Part three of werewolf Sirius

Previous part First part

CW - Blood, torture, attack, cuts, bites

The wolves were all pretty subdued after the eventful night. Most were dozing and the rest were either eating or relaxing around the camp. Sirius was sitting beside Remus, tucking into a big bowl of that mystery stew. Remus was lazily running his fingers up and down his back. 

“Tell us how you got captured then,” Marcus suddenly said. “Remus won’t tell us your story, but now you’re here, and he isn’t being such a stroppy git, can we hear what happened?” Sirius turned to Remus.

“It’s up to you, sweetheart,” Remus told him gently. Sirius opened up his mind, deciding it would be easier to show the gathered wolves what happened than try to retell it. He closed his eyes and remembered that rainy night when he and Remus were supposed to be on an easy-guarding mission.

“Why does it always rain when it’s us?” Sirius grumbled as he shook his long hair. "It's always perfect weather when Potter's about," Remus sighed at him and produced two umbrellas from inside his robe. Sirius took it gratefully. But in the split second, the umbrella was blocking his view, as he opened it, they were ambushed. 

“Hello, cousin,” Bellatrix cackled as they were stunned. 

They awoke in a dungeon. 

“Remus?” Sirius croaked, “Remus?” A groan from the other corner let him know where his boyfriend was. He crawled over to him and checked he was alright. He had a swollen cheek, but that seemed to be about it. They held each other in the dark. 

Days passed and no one came. They were both getting nervous as the full moon was coming and Sirius had discovered they’d been given magic suppressants in the water that was sent to their cell every day. They stopped drinking, hoping the potion would pass through their systems before the moon rose. 

Sirius tried again and again to transform into Padfoot but nothing happened. Remus began to ache and stayed as far away from Sirius as the tiny space allowed. 

When Remus dropped to the floor and began to scream, Sirius banged on the door and shouted for help, but no one came. He tried to change into Padfoot right up until Remus stopped writhing around on the floor. He backed into the opposite corner and waited for the inevitable. 

The gigantic wolf shook out its fur and sniffed the air. Moony prowled forward, his teeth glistening in the small amount of light that made its way into the dungeon. The wolf didn’t even bother moving quickly, he taunted Sirius with how slowly he moved towards him. Moony shoved his massive nose into Sirius’s chest and sniffed. Sirius thought for a split second that maybe Moony recognised him and wouldn’t hurt him. But then the wolf lifted its enormous head, looked him straight in the eyes and bit down, hard. Sirius screamed, the pain was unbearable. 

He woke up alone, covered in his own blood. He pulled away his tattered shirt and assessed the damage beneath. Deep puncture wounds marred the skin around his shoulder. He knew what it meant, but he didn’t care, all he cared about was where Remus was.

Finally, after another week in the dungeons, Bellatrix appeared. 

“Bella, please, where’s Remus?” He begged her to tell him, but she just smiled her insane grin and cast the cruciatus curse on him over and over, leaving him once he passed out. She came down on the morning of the full moon and tortured him. His body was already in pain. She just laughed at him when he pleaded with her not to, not today. He didn’t last long, which must have pissed her off as she cast a slicing charm on him as well, and he woke to dozens of thin, itchy cuts all over his body. 

The moon rose and his first transformation started. It was hard. It hurt more than the bite had and way more than anything Bellatrix could ever do to him. His bones broke, his tendons snapped, and his blood felt like it was boiling inside his veins. He threw his head back and screamed until his voice gave out. He didn’t remember much after that, just a few snippets of pain and fear. 

The transformation back to his human form was just as painful. He was exhausted by the end of it. He curled up into a ball and wept. 

He ended the story there, putting his walls back up and walked away from the camp, needing a moment to collect himself. It was even harder reliving those hard months below Lestrange castle. Tears dripped down his face and onto the dusty ground below. He didn’t want to be here any more, but he felt that leaving wasn’t an option for him either. 

Next part

[bluemoon1331]

Lore and talks

[boxofbonesfic]

 

Title: Blood and Sand (2 of 2)

Pairing: Werewolf!Moon Knight x Reader

Wordcount: 8,594

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

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

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

💀

“Oh thank fucking Christ.” 

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

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

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

“I will eat his fucking heart.”

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

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

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

“And we ate.” 

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

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

—

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

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

Like tonight. 

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

He tastes like copper.  

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

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

Pricks. 

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

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

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

And the other one, the one that knows you. 

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

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

“Marc—!”

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

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

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

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

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

He laughs.

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

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

What you’ve become.

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

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

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

“Fuuuck.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

KHONSU.

Why do you know his name? 

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

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

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

“No.” 

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

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

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

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

“The fuck is going on down there?!”

“You hear that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Mikhail needs medical attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like he knows he may never get another chance. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

“King of crossroads

Travelers and Thieves

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

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

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

As you read, he eats. 

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

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

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

UNWORTHY.

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

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

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

You cannot let that happen. 

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

“What the fuck are you doing—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR. 

DEVOUR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

COME. 

DEVOUR.

COME.

DEVOUR.

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

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

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

It makes no difference. 

“YOU WILL BURN.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free.

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

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

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

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

You hate this part—you know it hurts. 

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

“Hello, Love.” 

—

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

They deserved it. Vile murderers, usurpers—

Their deaths were too merciful. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNWORTHY. USURPERS. KILL THEM ALL.

“They deserved it.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’re you doing, Love?” 

What am I doing?

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

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

“What?” 

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

“I want to pay them back.” 

fin

Hello friends! I no longer maintain a taglist, so please follow @box-of-bones-library​ for updates and new work, thank you!

Likes and comments are amazing, but reblogs are golden! Please consider sharing my work so that others can see it too!

[h-didanart]

I finally got around to this

over on AO3 there’s this fic, yeah? And it’s very cool and compelling and I felt the need to make art for it, so—

@m0th-h (I spelled that right, right??) here it is!

I don’t know if it’ll work but I’ll try to make a cut on the post right around here, below is how the art progressed

sketch-

color and some shadow-

Lighting-

Special effects-

Hope ya like it! (Sorry if it’s not exactly as you envisioned, I suck at texture)

[kaaaaaaarf]

taken by the blood moon (a murder husbands b-side) - read on ao3

series: Love, Blood, and Wham: The Life and Death(s) of Remus J. Lupin

Wolfstar. 1.4k words. Murder Husbands b-side. Accidental Cult Leader Remus.

You might be wondering how Remus finds himself in this place of honour, surrounded by people who worship him like a God. Well, it’s kind of a funny story.

Welcome to yet another Murder Husbands installment!! This time Remus finds himself the unwitting leader of a Cult. All hail Dear Leader.

Please read the tags!!

This was written for the lovely @imsiriuslyreading on the belated occasion of her birthday. She is one of the very brightest lights of my life and Murder Husbands' biggest fan. Love you, mean it!

start from the beginning: The Killing Time (unwillingly mine)