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imawreck · 21 hours ago

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His

Pairing: Winter Soldier x Reader

Summary: You and Bucky broke up a few months ago against your wishes, and you’d been trying to move on. When Bucky sees you flirting with another member of the team, he leaves for the next mission to avoid getting in your way. Unfortunately, the mission goes bad, and Bucky isn’t himself when he comes back. He also has a lot to say…

Author’s Note: I realize that in most of my fics Thor is the other romantic interest/situationship, but you CANT tell me that man wouldn’t flirt up a storm with a beautiful woman any chance he got. Also, this is my first smutty fic so feedback and comments would be much appreciated! This is on the more explicit side, so please read with caution.

Warnings: Cursing, mentions self loathing/guilt (it’s Bucky, kinda normal), choking kink, Possessive!Winter Soldier, flashbacks, hair pulling, fingering, metal arm kink, dominant!winter soldier, probably some more but those are the big ones.

Word Count: 4,850

Breakups are ugly most of the time, and almost always one sided.

You and Bucky had been apart for at least three months. You’d stopped counting, wanting to forget it and focus on anything else. It was easier that way, to ignore the heartbreak and clutter up your life with other things to do.

Unfortunately, you still lived in the same tower on the same floor, right across from one another. He was constantly around, and no mattered how hard you tried, you just couldn’t avoid him.

It was hell.

And it was only hell because Bucky hardly gave you a good reason for the break up. Sure, you had your arguments. Mostly about his past and how much better he thought you deserved, to which you’d list all the reasons he was wrong. In reality, those weren’t really arguments. It was just Bucky having a low point, which you were more than willing to help him work through. Outside of those moments, you had felt that your relationship with Bucky was near perfect.

So when he had come back from a mission and broke up with you, his only reason being ‘I can’t be with you,’ it’d been a slap to the face. Like someone had shoved a knife in your heart and twisted.

The worst part was that he wouldn’t even allow you the chance to talk to him afterwards. Every time you were in the same room together alone, he’d find every reason not to speak with you.

So, you’d taken the hint and were now trying to figure out a way to move on.

That was made a little easier when a certain God of Thunder made his interest known to you. Thor was sweet, charming, and a little goofy. Not to mention handsome, with his blonde hair and sky blue eyes.

He’d made an effort to woo you not long after you’d parted from Bucky, and you’d informed him that the breakup was hard for you and that you couldn’t really do something new right now. Thor had been surprisingly understanding, and even took to just being friends quite well. Granted, he was still flirty, but he knew where you both stood and was always happy to lend an ear when you needed one.

He turned out to be just the friend you needed.

From the outside looking in, none of the others thought it was ‘just friends,’ especially when Thor would openly show his interest in you. Especially to a certain Super Soldier.

Bucky was painfully aware of what was going on between you and Thor even though he desperately tried not to be.

His super hearing picked up on the soft laughter you and the god would share, on the hushed whispers you’d exchange late over a mug of coffee when you thought everyone was asleep. His every fiber was attuned to you, and he couldn’t help but fixate on your presence.

You were like gravity to him, and he always found himself near you when he knew he should be as far as humanly possible. He saw the little looks you shared when Thor would compliment you, noticed your shy smile when the god would enter the room. He could tell that Thor was winning you over slowly but surely.

He couldn’t fucking stand it.

So it wasn’t a big surprise when he shipped off on the next mission possible.

You worried, your heart still set on loving him, but you tried to pay it little mind. And after a few days, it actually helped. You felt better, found yourself smiling more. You were beginning to move forward.

That was, until the jet was reported missing. Then Bucky was all anyone could talk about in the tower.

Thor tried his best to keep you in the dark about most of what was going on, and it wasn’t hard seeing as you were just a rather good strategist and not a serious Avenger. You were only really included in skimming over preplanned attacks and making sure they hadn’t missed anything critical.

But word still spread, and worry was ever present.

Needless to say, it was very strange when Mr. Stark called you into a private meeting with himself and two other of the elite team.

“Y/N,” He spoke softly in the kind of tone that lets you know that whatever he says next is going to ruin your whole week. “There’s a situation with Barnes.”

You frowned, eyebrows scrunching at him from where you sat at the rather empty end of the long black table. “I’m confused. Bucky and I broke up months ago. Why are you talking to me about it?”

Steve, who you’d befriended while dating his best pal, looked at you with poorly concealed pity from his seat next to Stark. “Because we know he still means a lot to you and that you’re our best hope in this situation.”

That didn’t make you feel better about whatever was going on at all. “What do you mean ‘this situation?’” You eyed them both, before dragging your eyes over to Doctor Banner who hadn’t done much more than stare at you with a concerned expression bordering on panic.

Stark pressed his fingers to his forehead, “Barnes got triggered on his mission and has infiltrated the tower. We have reason to believe he’s after you.”

You gaped at him. That didn’t make any sense. You weren’t important, at least not as important as one of The Avengers. “Me? Why me?”

“We’ve silently shut the building down and we’re working on evacuating the floors without anyone freaking out.” Tony went on, ignoring your questions, “He doesn’t know that we’re aware he’s here, and we’re trying to keep it that way.” Tony motioned towards a monitor, and the image of Bucky popped up on the screen.

Only he was in your room, and he was dragging his fingers over the picture of the two of you that was perched on the nightstand. They way his fingers smoothed over the glass, the slight pinch in his brows as if calculating instead of recalling. It was like he’d never seen it before in his life. Like he had no connection to the image of himself.

It was a picture he had taken, his arm extended and a smile on his face with your lips pressed to his cheek. You had meant to take it down and stuff it in the box under your bed with all the other memories you had hid from sight, but it was just too painful. You needed something to hold onto.

You watched through the screen as he moved around your room, taking note of certain things and taking careful precautions to ensure that anything he moved was set right back in place. It was eerie to watch a man who was once so comfortable in your space tread with so much hesitance. Like it was the first time he’d been in the space all over again.

“Y/N.” It was Steve’s gentle timbre that brought your attention away from the screen this time. He tried to smile, though it was clearly forced. “We need you to lure him down towards the lower levels. We have to get him to a room where we can better contain him. If he finds out we know he’s back and not… him, then he could snap.”

“You want to use me as bait? For the Winter Soldier?” You stared at them both with wide eyes, panic blooming in your chest. “This is insane!”

Steve sighed, “Y/N… Bucky told me about the incident that happened in the beginning of your relationship.”

Your attention zeroed in on the blonde’s words, your breath hitching.

“He told me what could’ve happened… and what didn’t.”

You walked down the corridor of the Stark tower office floor heading back towards your desk from a late night research meeting with a few of your coworkers. You had decided to stay later than the others so that you could collect and organize the information you needed for the meeting with Mr. Stark the following morning. It was very late, and you were tired, the heels you wore had begun to irritate the soles of your feet hours before.

You clutched the files you collected in your arms, heels clicking on the glossy floors and echoing into the dimly lit corridor. So dim that you didn't see the silhouette of the man standing just feet from you until it was too late.

You only saw a flash of silver before the door beside you was torn open and you were roughly shoved inside. Cleaning supplies clattered onto the floor, spilling liquids over your feet as you cried out. A hand clamped over your mouth, and your head hit the wall with a thunk.

Stormy blue eyes stared at you, cold and unfeeling. Eyes you had seen just days before smiling at you and filled with life.

Your lips moved to say his name against the cool metal of his hand, but his grip on your face was nearly bruising. You could only stare back in fear and attempt to press your body further from him.

He didn't speak, only stared at you and kicked the door to the closet shut.

Fear was a living thing in your stomach, writhing as his eyes snaked down to your red heels and back up again. His head tilted to the side, as if he was trying to remember something. But his eyes remained cold and unrelentingly empty. His flesh hand came up to press a finger threateningly to his lips.

‘Quiet.’

You weren't stupid enough to scream, not with the way he was looking at you, with how close he was. When he removed his hand, you did exactly as he wanted. Silence hung in the small closet, suffocating you. Would he kill you? What did he want? Why hadn't he killed you already?

The cool metal of his palm slipped further down, wrapping around your throat and pressing against your thundering pulse. Your head pounded along with it, and a foggy feeling settled over your mind.

But your lungs still filled with air, and you remained aware. The pressure of his hand was ever present, but it was light enough not to cause real damage... Almost like he didn't want to hurt you.

His tongue darted out to lick his lips, the movement catching your eyes. His body leaned forward, his nose pressing into your neck and his warm breath hitting your skin. Goosebumps rose in its wake, and that lick of fear heightened again. He was acting so strangely, and the longer it went on the more unsettling it was.

When he pulled away, there was a heat in his eyes that wasn’t there before. A hunger, and… and recognition.

“Hello, Beloved.”

“We know that he didn’t hurt you, and that he displayed… certain feelings towards you.” Steve’s voice brought you out of the memory, dragging you back to the reality at hand.

The one where he wants you to put yourself smack dab in the path of the Winter Soldier.

“You’re serious about this?” You blink up at him, trying to gauge if he was joking or not. Level headed as Steve was, you trusted him with your life. But this? This was terrifying and completely unexpected. Ridiculously dangerous.

“It’s the only nonviolent way we can think of. And we’re almost certain there’s no high risk for you.” Steve tried to give you a reassuring smile, tried to hide the hint of unease that shone in his tense shoulders.

“You’ve all lost your mind.” You laugh, sighing and raising your chin. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Apparently, so had you.

You stared at the metal doors of the elevator, your heart pounding with each toll of the floors passing. This was probably—no, was— the riskiest thing you’d ever done in your life. You trusted Steve and Mr. Stark, but your brain was trained to find the flaws in plans like this. And so many things could go wrong.

“It’s okay, Y/N.” Steve said calmly into your ear, startling you. You’d forgotten they’d given you the earpiece. “I’ll be here the entire time. I’ll guide you through the compound and make sure you stay out of danger.”

You nodded, even though you weren’t sure if they could see you.

“Bucky is leaving your room. We’re going to drop you off in the commons area of your floor. All you have to do is make some noise and then head for the stairwell. Just listen to me, and I’ll get you through this.” Steve sounded so confident in your ear, but it did little to soothe the nerves.

The elevator leveled out, and the doors quietly opened. The large living room opened up before you, unnervingly bright and welcoming despite the danger you knew lurked just down the hall. You stepped out onto the carpet, walking towards the kitchen. Your palms sweat, heart pounding, as you made your way up to the cabinets.

You just had to make some noise. Easy, right?

But your body wouldn’t move.

“Y/N.” Steve’s voice called in your ear again, gently coaxing you from where he watched the cameras. “Make some noise, and then head for the stairs.”

You swallowed, nodding again, and reached with shaky hands towards the cabinet. You grabbed a bowl, and hesitantly set it down on the granite counter. The echoing pok of the ceramic felt too loud in your ears, like a gunshot.

“Good, now move quickly. He’s just down the hall headed your way.”

The words sent a chill down your spine… and something else followed. Something you’d never felt before.

You headed towards the stairs, but your feet felt like lead weights. Like you couldn’t move fast enough even though you knew you were going as fast as you could.

But you could hear the faintest scuff of boots coming behind you and the sound sent your heart into a frenzy.

You raced down the stairs, tripping a few times before righting yourself and continuing your decent down towards the lower levels. Your floor was four levels up from ground level, which meant you had six floors in total to descend before you could get to the containment floor.

Six flights of stairs being chased by The Winter Soldier. A superhuman man who was definitely faster than you, and probably wanted to do something terrible to you. Like a wolf hunting a sheep.

Oh God.

The thought only served to spur the panic rising in you. You kicked up your speed when the door slammed behind you, footsteps pounding after you as the dark silhouette of Bucky Barnes rounded the stairs two flights above.

He took the stairs four at a time, his long legs swallowing up the distance between you. The panic clawed its way up your throat in a strangled cry, and the sound just seemed to quicken his pace.

“I’m not fast enough!” You tried to keep your voice even, tried to keep it quiet in the echoing stairwell so that the soldier behind you would hear.

“You’re almost there, Y/N. Just keep up the pace. Two flights left and—“ but he didn’t get to finish his sentence.

You watched in shocked horror as Bucky’s figure leapt over the railing and plummeted towards the ground. He dropped several flights before his arm snapped out and wrapped around the railing. The sound of metal hitting metal rang out around you as the railing dipped under the crushing pressure.

He hauled himself back onto the stairs just before you. Those cold eyes found yours, dark hair framing sharp features, painting him into something primal. Something wild.

That feeling pounded through you again, skittering along your spine and raising the hairs on the back of your neck. You still couldn’t place it, not with him stepping towards you with a look that promised violence.

You heard Steve’s voice ordering something over the earpiece, but it was distant. It became clearer a moment later. “We’ve got a team heading in. Just… just hang in there.”

You swallowed, but your throat had gone dry in the presence of the assassin before you. His eyes held you in place as his towering form finally stopped a stair below you, leveling with you face to face. So close you could count the stitches in the Kevlar of his suit.

You felt your body shaking, heard your heart thundering in your ears as your chest rose and fell with each short breath you managed to drag into your lungs.

And he watched every move you made.

His head titled to the side exactly like it’d done the first time you’d been trapped with him. His gaze never left you, eyes wandering over your face and heaving chest before that faint look of recognition settled into those hollow eyes.

And then that heat you’d seen before consumed them.

He stepped forward, and you answered with a step back. For each one he took, you pedaled backwards until your body was plastered against the wall. When you tried to flee back up the stairs, his metal hand planted itself against the wall inches from your head.

You were utterly trapped.

Rough Russian left his lips in the softest whisper. The sound was the same as you’d heart him say before, though you didn’t understand it.

Not until now, as the earpiece Steve had given you translated his words as he spoke them.

“Hello again, Beloved.”

Those blue eyes bored into yours, as his other hand came up to brush your cheek with a gentleness you didn’t think he was capable of.

“He’s kept me from you for so long.” Bucky’s body leaned forward, caging you against the wall. His metal hand remained pressed against the wall beside you, and the other dragged across the skin of your neck and shoulder in an almost reverent manner.

Bucky’s— no, this wasn’t Bucky. This was the part of Bucky he kept farthest from you. This was a man known for cruel, unimaginable violence. An assassin known by reputation around the world by both hero and criminal alike and feared by all. This was the Winter Soldier.

Winters lips brushed your jaw, stubble tickling the column of your throat as his voice rumbled against your skin. “Kept you to himself. Never let me touch you. Worried I’d damage you, Beloved. Couldn’t see you needed me.”

His teeth nipped at your skin, and a shiver rolled down your spine in answer. That feeling tugged at your mind again, spurred by his words. But still, you couldn’t place it. Not with your mind consumed by his statements and barely contained yearning.

When his head lifted to find your eyes again, the fingers of his right hand tangled themselves in your hair and pulled hard enough to have your scalp stinging. His next words were guttural and biting, “And then he let you go.”

Winters grip loosened a bit, but his hold on your hair remained. “He pushed you away, and then that god tries to take you from me?” His eyes held you, demanding your utter attention as his head shook slowly, “You don’t belong to him.”

Tugging your lip between your teeth, you clenched your eyes shut. God, you wished Bucky would say that to you. Having Winter here saying these words with Bucky’s voice, Bucky’s face. Touching you with familiar hands…

Heat had begun to pool low in your belly.

The words were spoken in English. “Open your eyes.”

There was no room for objection in his voice, so you did as he said. With his jaw was set in an angry line, and those blue eyes boring into your soul, he leaned in closer. “He thinks that being with you is too dangerous, that you aren’t safe with… with us.”

“What?” Your heart hammered in your chest at his words. It was the first real reason as to why Bucky had broken up with you.

Those silvery blue eyes zeroed on your lips as he spoke again. “He thinks we can’t protect you, that I’ll hurt you. That somehow being further from you keeps you safe from what comes with being what we are.” His metal hand left the wall in favor of brushing over your lower lip and trailing the cool tips of his fingers down to the dip of your breasts and back up to the column of your throat. “I’d never hurt you, not the way he has. Not if you didn’t want it.”

“W-what do you mean?” You just knew he was picking up on how your heart beat harder as his fingers trailed over your skin. Or the way you kept shifting on your feet to stave off the heat thrumming in your veins with an all too familiar want blooming and begging for his hands to explore more.

The faintest hint of a smile graced his face as he gave your hair another gentle tug, then loosened his grip once more. “You like this. I’ve seen how you react with him. How you quietly treasure the marks he leaves on your skin even when he feels nothing but guilt.” That metal hand slipped over your throat again and pressed on your neck exactly as he’d done the first time you’d seen Winter. Your head spun at the pressure, but you could breathe easily under the cool press of his palm as he leaned in, lips brushing your ear as he whispered. “I see how badly you wish he’d touch you with this hand,” he squeezed your neck and loosened it quickly, “How badly you want those marks. How badly you need me.”

You had no words. Nothing to say as he wrung out the truth you’d thought was hidden from him— from Bucky.

Bucky was notorious for avoiding any situation that would make him use the metal arm. He would much rather let it hang there, or act as if he didn’t have it at all. That included when the two of you would get intimate. He never dared to bring it anywhere near you no matter how many times you’d reminded him it was fine, that you weren’t afraid of it. He outright refused to allow it to touch your delicate skin, to let such a catalyst for agony so close to something as precious as you.

Winter knew that you’d secretly craved to feel the cold metal in contrast to his warm skin when he held you. He knew that you would always find it more satisfying when Bucky would lose himself and get rough with you when things got heated. How his flesh hand would leave bruises on your thighs or hips to keep you steady as he thrust himself deeper.

Just the thought had you aching, and here was Bucky’s darker half offering you everything you’d ever wanted.

You were losing your fucking mind.

“You’re wrong,” you whispered, but the words were flimsy and meaningless. He knew the truth, but that didn’t mean you had to say it aloud.

His metal fingers dug into your jaw, his grip near bruising as he tilted your head up to level your eyes with his. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Dollface.” His lips were a hairs-width away, his warm breath fanning over your face.

The scent of him was intoxicating, muddling your mind even further with heady leather and metal invading your nose. The hint of that aftershave you’d missed so much since Bucky broke your heart.

Winter was tearing you apart at the seams.

“Please,” you whispered. Please what? You didn’t know. You could hardly think straight. That feeling was so strong, thrumming along with your pulse and the ache for something. Anything.

“Tell me I’m right.” He mumbled against your skin. Soft lips, a vast contrast to his rough demeanor, to the calloused hand that remained tangled in your hair, trailed down your cheek. “Tell me that you want me. Not the pathetic excuse for a god, or him. That you want me.”

His metal hand released your face, drifting over your neck and dragging over the left side of your chest. He circled once, thumbing over your nipple with a knowing look filled with every sinful promise known to man.

And then he went lower and lower…

His fingers caught the waistband of your leggings, the chill of his fingers raised goosebumps across your stomach, only serving to worsen that burning need.

“Doll,” a command and a question wrapped in one word.

All you had to do was admit your darkest most guarded secret. Confess, and he would give you what you wanted most. What Bucky was too afraid to do.

You opened your mouth, the words tumbling out as he gave your hair another tug.

“I want you.”

That smirk grew just a fraction more, his fingers slipping past your waistband and toying with the hem of your panties.

Fuck, did you wish you’d gone commando today.

“Who am I?” He asked, teeth nipping down your neck hard enough to know they’d leave marks. “I want you to say it, Y/N.”

Those fingers slipped further, rolling over your aching clit in a teasing stroke before he pulled them away again.

If he wasn’t a literal assassin, you’d consider strangling him.

“For fucks sake,” you gripped his arm, your voice unfamiliar in your own ears, ragged and broken. “Winter, please.”

He didn’t waste time, deft, cool fingers dipping into your core with confidence. Soothing that aching heat.

Fuck.

His thumb circled slow as he pumped his fingers, his mouth leaving wet kisses along your jaw up to your lips where he paused long enough to catch a glimpse of your face. You knew you looked like an utter mess, but those blue eyes showed nothing but twisted delight. He leaned forward and tugged your bottom lip between his teeth, bitting hard enough to make you groan.

Winter’s answering grunt of approval urged you further towards the edge of oblivion those perfect metal fingers were working you towards.

God you were so close. Each movement, every touch and bruise he left on your skin pushing you closer and closer. Just a bit more, a fraction more and you’d—

His fingers wrenched away, gone in an instant.

Your eyes, closed from the pleasure just moments ago, snapped open just before the doors to the stairway above and below you burst open. Floods of agents filed through the doors, and a gun fired.

The sharp sound echoed in the confined space making you flinch. Winters back pressed you against the wall, a solid shield of muscle keeping you out of harms way.

Then the weight was too heavy. His body crushing you as he slumped toward the floor. You screamed, immediately thinking the worse as your eyes searched his form in a panic.

But you found no blood, thank God.

“He’s fine, Y/N.”

Steve’s hand on your shoulder had you flinching back, head snapping to his suit clad form. “The gun—“

“It’s just a tranq. I promise, Bucky will be fine.” His face was the picture of practiced reassurance.

A horde of agents rushed forward and cuffed Winters hands and dragged his unconscious body out of the stairwell and further towards the confinement room. Steve remained with you, his eyes flicking to your neck a few times and checking you over to make sure no serious damage had been done.

When you’d gotten yourself back to your room away from the prying eyes and the relentless questions, the reality of what had happened slammed into you.

You just let the Winter Soldier finger you in a fucking stairwell.

And you liked it.

Plunging your fingers into your hair, you took a shaky breath. What the fuck were you thinking? Had you lost your damn mind? Bucky broke up with you three months ago! You were done; over, moving on. He could remember this, for Christ sake! How would you explain it?

Panic writhed in your stomach, but so did the faint ache of need that reminded you of what had just happened mere minutes ago.

The feeling of his metal hand on your skin, the feeling of those fingers working you perfectly and the pressure of his bruising grip.

And that feeling that you couldn’t place.

But now you had a word for it.

From the thrum of your heart as he chased you down the stairs, the promise of violence and sinful pleasure in his eyes. The roughness of his actions…

It was the thrill.

You liked the chase. You liked how rough he was. The delicious blend of panic and pleasure.

And he’d been interrupted before you got the release you’d craved. That you needed.

Frustration boiled to the forefront of your mind, a dozen different strategies with it.

He’d made you confess your darkest secret only to leave you high and dry.

And damn him if he wasn’t going to finish what he started.

#winter soldier #drama #👀#bucky barnes #marvel #mcu #x reader #angst #smut

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zara-renata · 9 hours ago

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And everything that is now already existed then | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: Sylus shows you his favorite parts of his house, you are haunted by a strange feeling of familiarity, you spend some time with the twins and Noah, you learn about the bet they have going, no this is not a wattpad bet story that will be turned into a multi-part tv series even though i love that trope so much, the self control i exerted should be acknowledged if not praised. This part has less humor than other parts, I've been in a contemplative mood recently, sorry. Part 17 of the Sylus series.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person POV, some Sylus POV. They/them pronouns are used to refer to reader as a placeholder for your preferred pronouns. The slowest of slow burns friends-to-lovers. This story contains: angst, fluff, banter, poetry, questions of morality, video game violence, discussions of real life violence, profanity, alcohol mention, self-harm mention, mc with self-esteem and guilt issues.

The water is warm. The man underneath you is warm. Your heart, you realize, is also warm. Quiet. Nothing hurts. You marvel at the feeling. How long can you get away with this? Plastered against Sylus’s big body, his rough hands just resting on your back. You feel guilty for keeping him from doing something else. For not being at work. For doing absolutely nothing useful to anyone. For feeling so good.

Sylus holds you, seemingly content to just sit here with you as the water laps against the sides of the pool.

“Don’t you have business to attend to?” you reluctantly ask, because you’re incapable of just trusting that good things can last. That the fulfillment of your deepest desires won’t be snatched away when you least expect it, so you push, push, push, seeking the weakness that will ultimately crack and cause the moment, finally filled, to break.

Sylus holds you a little tighter. “No.”

You wait, but he doesn’t elaborate. You should just accept it. Just enjoy this moment. All you have in this life is each moment—that’s all there is. Why can’t you just experience each one, savor it, suck it dry, until the next? Why must you always waste the pleasure of each moment by being in such a rush to get to the inevitable end?

But you can’t just accept it. You don’t know how. Your whole life has taught you that the moment you trust the permanence is the moment that the moment shatters. Might as well ruin it first, instead of fearing the end. And who are you to complain? What have you done to deserve it in the first place?

“Business slow in the Onychinus economy?” you ask.

“Tch,” he responds, seemingly indignant at the mere suggestion that his business isn’t printing him money even as he canoodles in a hot tub with you. “Business is booming, darling. The human capacity for cruelty is an endlessly growing market.”

You press your cheek harder against the sweaty skin just under his collarbone. You don’t want to think about what he offers people to enable that endless cruelty right now.

“Then how do you have the luxury of lazing about with me?”

“I’ve tasked Aidan with handling business that requires executive decisions for the foreseeable future. As much as it annoys me, I will likely have to answer calls like this morning, but I’ve informed him that I will not be leaving the base unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

You lift your head, curious. He looks down at you, relaxed, eyes glowing in the low light from the pool.

“Why?”

One corner of his beautiful mouth lifts. “Guess.”

You stare at him. He’s taking time off, not pursuing new deals, not focusing on growing his wealth… for you? Ridiculous.

“What will you do while you’re not doing business?” you ask, not able to bring yourself to guess out loud that he took time off for you, to spend time with you while you’re staying with him.

“What do you want to do?” He runs his fingers along your temple, brushes a lock of hair behind your ear, traces the shell of it with a fingertip.

“That’s not an answer,” you say, softly.

“Yes, it is.”

You can’t believe it. The man who is always on the go, from one deal to the next, disappearing for weeks at a time, doing who knows what, who knows where—the man who probably gets bored out of his mind while instigating a riot—says that he just wants to do whatever you want to do. You, whose idea of excitement is a new pair of sleep pants and a night off to watch let’s plays of horror games that you don’t have the time and energy to play yourself anymore.

“You can’t mean that.” You frown at him.

“Try me,” he challenges.

You try to think of something that he’d hate just to prove your point that he doesn't actually mean it when he says he’ll do whatever you want.

“Oh, kitten’s plotting,” he snickers after seeing your expression.

“I want to watch every Justin Bieber documentary ever produced,” you say defiantly. You really don’t. But you’re sure he’ll balk at this outrageous suggestion.

He shrugs a little. “Okay. We can see if they’re on demand in the theater room. If not, I’m sure we can pirate them.”

You narrow your eyes. He can’t mean it. Fuck, if he’s going to call your bluff, you’re going to have to actually sit through who knows how many hours of Justin Bieber: Our World. You barely suppress a shudder.

“Actually, I want to fly to a warm seaside resort and swim with dolphins,” you try, the picture of casual entitlement. You do not want to do this. You’re fucking tired. The last thing you want to do is get on an airplane.

“Dolphins can be as vicious as humans, but if you really want that, we can pack some things now and be on our way by dinner,” he says calmly. As if the suggestion isn’t utterly outrageous.

Is he being as petty as you, intent on not admitting that he didn’t actually mean it when he said he would do whatever you want, or does he actually want to do whatever the fuck you want? You can’t read him at all right now.

You’re desperate and stubborn. “Actually, I think the amusement park in Linkon City is having a furry event all week. I’d like to dress up as our respective fursonas and ride the roller coasters all day.”

Sylus doesn’t even blink. “Do you have a fursuit already, or do we need one tailored before we can go?”

You laugh in disbelief and rest your forehead on his shoulder. “What about you? Do you have a fursuit already?”

“No, I don’t have a fursuit, because I’m not a fucking furry,” he says drily. “But I do think I’d make a very majestic caracal cat. Which goes nicely with your kitten fursona.”

You blink. “That's quite self-aware of you." And then you scowl. "My fursona wouldn’t be as lame as a kitten.”

“Oh? What animal do you think accurately portrays your personality?”

You lift your head and think. You’ve never really thought about it. Something small and mean, probably. “A mongoose.”

He tilts his head, considering. “That actually fits you quite well. Good at hunting snakes, and very, very cute.”

You can feel yourself blushing. “Yeah, well. I’m not a furry, so it doesn’t matter even if it doesn’t fit,” you mumble a little.

“And yet you want to go to the furry event at the amusement park,” he lifts an eyebrow.

You stare at him, mulishly. You’re not going to admit that you’re trying to poke holes in his patience because you can’t trust nice things.

“But I don’t think that’s what you actually want to do,” he continues, with a gentleness that hurts your heart. He urges you to wrap your legs around his waist. “When I said you could test me, this is not exactly what I had in mind,” he teases. “How about you test me by telling me what you actually want to do, and then you’ll see that I mean what I say when I refrain from complaining about being bored while we do them?”

You wrap your arms around his neck as he stands gracefully, the water sliding down both your bodies. “I don’t want you to just not complain about being bored,” you argue. “I don’t want you to be bored at all. You don’t have to entertain me while I’m here. You can do whatever you really want to do.” You mean this. It’s enough, just being in the same house as him right now. Knowing that in the evening he’ll end up in the same bed as you. You don’t want him to tire of you too quickly by insisting that he spend every moment with you.

“Then I repeat—what do you want to do?”

Okay. Okay, he asked for it.

“Show me your favorite things to do at home, when you’re not being a warlord.”

He looks surprised. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I’m really tired. I never get a chance to just relax. I don’t want to go anywhere, or do anything exciting.” You bite your lip, unwilling to admit that you’re desperate to learn more about him and that worried he’s going to think you’re boring.

He leans forward and catches the side of your lip not caught in your own teeth with his. With your lip between his sharp teeth, he pulls back, gently, until you release it from your own. He pauses, inhales, and then lets go, licking your bitten lip with a quick, soothing flick of his tongue.

“That’s my spot,” he murmurs, pulling back.

Your brain is offline. You have no idea what you were just talking about, or what just happened. All you can feel is the slick of his saliva on the plush of your lip.

Fuck.

You want to fuck him so badly.

You search his face. Can he tell? Does he feel the same way? He touches you like this, and then does nothing. What does he want?

If he can tell what’s going on in your head, he doesn’t comment on it. “Then we can stay home. I’ll show you what I like to do when I’m tired and don’t want to do anything exciting.” His faint smile is tinged with self satisfaction.

“Okay,” you choke out. You will not slide down his body, push him onto the soft moss, and jump on him.

“But first, I will feed you.” The tendrils of his evol bring the fluffy towels to his waiting hand, and he wraps one around you, all while you cling to his torso. He just drapes the other around his shoulders, over your arms still wrapped around his neck. His evol then ferries the two cocktails that remained untouched for the whole time you were in the hot tub, following you back through the pool room and into the chill hallway as Sylus carries you to the kitchen. Between the heat of Sylus’s body and the towels blanketing you, you’re still warm. You watch the drinks following you over his shoulder, and then glance at him.

At your look, he says, “What? It would be a shame to let perfectly good drinks go to waste.”

“What time is it? Don’t you think it’s a bit early to start drinking?”

He shrugs. “It’s probably past midnight, sweetheart. That’s when one normally drinks alcoholic beverages, isn’t it?”

You sigh. “So it’s basically noon in your day-night cycle.”

“Time is a construct, and inherently meaningless,” he says serenely.

After this insufferable response, you give up trying to save his liver for the moment.

____________________

Later, after Sylus serves you a meal packed with protein that pairs nicely with the cocktails as the fire crackles pleasantly and the clouds, reflecting the N109 Zone’s bright lights even at night, sweep across the sky outside his kitchen windows, after you’ve showered and put on warm, comfortable clothes, you find him in the sitting area of his bedroom, reading a book, the Beatles playing on his record player. You recognize the song— The long and winding road.

You stop, suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of sorrow. He looks up from his book and watches you curiously.

You left me standing here, a long long time ago

You feel like you’re forgetting something very, very important. Like your dream last night, but not about your family. About the man watching you inquisitively, his long, graceful fingers holding the book gently, the outline of his aquiline nose limned in the soft lighting of his bedroom.

Don’t leave me waiting here, lead me to your door

You suddenly can’t bear to be separated from him for one more second. You pad to him on your freshly bandaged feet, knock the book out of his hand, clamber into his lap, and hug him.

His arms come around you as if he doesn’t mind that you’ve just bulldozed your way onto his lap. After a few minutes, the song ends, and a new, more upbeat one begins.

You feel like you can breathe again.

You sit up, looking down into his face. You want to kiss him so badly. You’re afraid that he’ll gently push you away, as he pushed your hand away from the tie of his sleep pants that you were fiddling with recently. With such kindness, but a loud, resounding rejection of what he perceived to be you offering your body to him.

He’ll bite your lip, but you’re so scared that he doesn’t want to kiss you. Sometimes it seems like he wants you, you, not just a body, not just anyone praising him or challenging him, but you. Do you really still not know? My beloved is perfect to me.

But what if you’re wrong? What have you done to earn this incredible man's devotion?

“Will you tell me what you’re thinking right now, without the guessing game?” he asks softly.

You shake your head. “No. And I don’t want to play the guessing game right now.” You can’t bear to think about what you may be forgetting as you look into his blood-bright eyes. You can’t bear to reveal how badly you want to kiss him, only to be rebuffed.

“Not even a hint?” He nudges your nose with his. “Otherwise I’ll spend every free moment sitting around reading, listening to classic rock music.”

You look at him in confusion. “Why?”

“It seemed to work in luring a kitten into my lap this time. Maybe it works every time.”

Your heart is doing something funny. It doesn’t hurt. It feels… it feels so fucking warm. Like in the hot tub. What is happening to you?

“The music made me sad,” you offer this truth, as a reward for his sweet response.

“Not a fan of the Beatles?” He fiddles with the hem of your shirt, his knuckles brushing against your skin underneath.

“I do like their music. My gran used to listen to them a lot.”

“Is that what made you sad?”

You give him a look. “I said I didn’t want to play the guessing game.”

“I’m just asking questions,” he protests, the picture of innocence. “Is it a crime to want to get to know you?”

You gaze at him. Weren’t you just thinking about how you’re desperate to know everything about him? “Not one I’d arrest you for,” you say, looking down, smiling a little.

He laughs softly. “Lucky me. It would be hard to uphold my end of our deal and show you the music room, the library, and my favorite part of the greenhouse from behind bars.”

“That sounds like a busy itinerary,” you say, lifting a finger, tracing his clavicle revealed by his soft v-neck sweater.

His knuckles sweep over your skin just above the band of your soft pants.

“We have time—we don’t have to do everything today. Which one do you want to see first?”

You don’t care. Your heart is being weird and Sylus is touching you, and you’re touching Sylus. You could just sit here, forever, and enjoy whatever this… feeling is. But you’re afraid you’ll ruin it. Like you always do. If you take too much, he will actually get bored. You should pick one.

“Library,” you say firmly.

“As you wish,” he says, standing, holding you all the while. You can’t bring yourself to protest. You can walk on your own feet. Your feet already feel a little better after just a day. But he’s warm. And he doesn’t seem to mind at all. You drape yourself over him, and let him carry you through the dark halls to his library.

He sets you down outside one of the ubiquitous black doors, and then opens it for you.

His library, like the greenhouse, the pool, the room like a mountain hot spring, is lovely in a way that the rest of his house simply isn’t. Soaring ceilings, heavy built-in wooden bookcases lining the walls, a huge fireplace, electric as opposed to the wood-fireplace from the kitchen, at one end of the room. A wrought iron spiraling staircase leads up beyond the heavy wooden rafter beams to a space you can’t see. Deep red, plush rugs in antique designs hush your footsteps. Plush, deep seated chairs and loveseats, side tables with Tiffany lamps gently illuminate the space. One wall of his preferred floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the N109 Zone night, the red moon bright in the sky as the clouds scuttle past.

It’s like a library from an old, prestigious university. The kind of university you always wished you could have gone to, if you lived in another world. If this world didn’t need people prepared to kill and die for existential threats to humanity. Where you could study something functionally useless, but enriching to the human experience. Like French literature or poetry. The room smells of wood oil, old paper.

You turn in a circle and find Sylus leaning against a bookcase, watching you take in the room. “This is one of your favorite spots in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s quiet. The twins aren’t big readers, so they don’t come in here. It’s a good place to think, and concentrate.”

“Have you read every book in here, like you’ve seen every film in your collection?”

He straightens from the bookcase and walks to you. As he comes to a stop in front of you, he reaches for your face, holds your cheeks gently in his hands. “No. This room is more about the future. Books I’d like to read when life is a little less busy. I’ve read some, but not as many as I would like.”

“Do you think that someday your life will be less busy?”

“If I have my way, yes.”

“And you’ll spend your days quietly reading in the solitude of your lovely library?”

“Not in solitude. But yes. You think it’s lovely?”

You look at him strangely. Didn't he just say he enjoys it because it's quiet and no one bothers him here? “Of course I do. It’s like someone designed it just for me.”

He looks down into your face, thumbs brushing across your cheekbones.

“Like I said. This room is about the future.”

You tilt your head at his non-sequitur. What does your loving the library have to do with his quieter future?

It almost sounds like…

The moment is full. You refuse to shatter it by considering such outrageous thoughts. You will enjoy this moment for what it is. A peek into the mind of this enigmatic man. The opportunity to explore a beautiful, private space in his home.

“Read to me,” he orders, striding to one of the soft couches and plopping down.

You snort. “What do you want me to read you, your spoiled highness?”

“Anything you want. Look around, pick something that catches your interest.” He lets his head drop onto the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded as they follow you walking to one of the bookcases, as you let your fingertips run along the spines of book after book. You see a lot of titles you don’t recognize. You see a lot that you do—classics as well as newer publications. You and Xavier spend enough time in the bookstore that you know a lot of titles by sight, even if these days you rarely have the time to read beyond the manga you share with your partner.

Your eyes catch on a familiar title.

“Oh,” you breathe.

“Find something?” Sylus asks languidly.

“One of my favorite poets. Gran had a copy of this.” You pluck the book from the shelf and walk back over to where Sylus is sprawled on the couch. The moonlight through the windows makes his eyes look even brighter than usual, glowing in the soft light.

“You’re a fan of poetry?” he asks, eyebrows lifting.

“Don’t act so surprised. I’m not entirely uncultured.”

“Your manga collection could have fooled me,” he teases.

“Manga is art. You’re a pretentious fool if you can’t recognize that.”

“No need to get your knives out, kitten,” he smiles, one sharp tooth peeking from behind his full lip. “I have a collection of manga here as well.”

“You do?”

He just steadily stares at you.

“Where?”

He closes his eyes. “Guess you’ll have to stay long enough to explore and find it.”

You stand over him, drinking in the sight of him. Surrounded by the scent of books, polished wood, the moon’s red light rendering him slightly otherworldly.

You want to stay long enough to find out. It’s only been two days, and you want to live in this moment forever. You're so greedy. You're so unworthy.

“Still want me to read to you?”

Instead of answering, the tendrils of his evol wind up from your ankles to your waist, lift you, deposit you on the seat next to him. He scoots down, places his head in your lap.

“You could have just said yes,” you say drily. “No need to be dramatic.”

“I don’t hear any reading. Chop chop.”

Oh hell no. You scowl down at him, but his eyes are closed. “Lap service costs extra.”

“Good thing I’m filthy rich.”

You scoff. “I don’t want your money.”

He opens his eyes. “I suspected as much. It makes taming you all the more difficult.”

You look at him curiously. “Is that what you’re doing? All of your generosity, in order to acquire a tame hunter?”

“What use is a tame hunter?” He dismisses your suggestion. “Your imagination is distressingly limited.”

“Once again, I disappoint,” you murmur. He clearly isn’t in the mood to answer your questions.

He tsks and closes his eyes again, wiggles a little to get more comfortable in your lap. “Make up for it by reading your favorite poetry to me.”

You want to lean down and kiss the smug look off of his face. You don’t want him to turn away if you do.

You begin to read.

“Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.”

He interrupts you. “I see why you like Zagajewski. Someone else who shares your taste in middling wine.”

“No comments until the end, thank you,” you jostle his head by bouncing your thigh a few times.

He scowls, places one big hand on your thigh and presses down. “Stingy. This should be interactive storytelling.”

You ignore the howling need in you to grab his hand, to guide it further up your leg. You continue to read.

“The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You suddenly think of the N109 Zone and all of its misery. Paying the price of some shitty corporation’s greed. But you keep reading.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.”

You pause, thinking about Sylus’s wealth, the wealth of people like him, and everyone else. The yachts, versus the ships that will sink.

“That’s not the end. Why have you stopped?” Sylus's voice jerks you out of your thoughts.

“You know this poem?”

“I own the book, don’t I?”

“You said you hadn’t read everything in here.”

“Point,” he concedes. “But yes, I know this poem. I’m also an admirer of the poet.”

You think about him calling you kindred spirits, when you first met. How angry that idea made you. Now, you want to lean down and kiss him. You shake your head a little. You keep reading.

“You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.”

Sylus interrupts you again. “I always liked the imagery of the moments spent together, the simplicity of the white room, the curtain fluttering. What more can one desire, when at their love’s side?”

You don't think you've ever heard him say something so romantic. But why would you have? You're not in a romantic relationship with him. Your heart doesn't seem to understand that fact—something inside you thrills that his idea of romance mirrors yours so closely. But his focus on the gentle moment, instead of the rest of the poem, strikes you as strange. “That’s what you see? Not the lovers enjoying simplicity, safety, while the refugees are going nowhere, and the executioners are singing joyfully?”

“The point of the poem is that you must wrest joy from an imperfect world where you can. You’re not helping the condemned by moping about their fate.”

“Is that the point? Perhaps the point is that all you can do is try to praise the mutilated world, but it’s fruitless. If that were the point, he would have entitled it 'Praise the mutilated world,' not 'Try to praise the mutilated world.' ‘Trying’ isn’t succeeding—try all you want, but it’s impossible to praise the world as it is. Better to use your yacht to save those drowning in the salty oblivion.”

“Idealist,” Sylus scoffs, as if the label is a profanity instead of a compliment.

You jostle his head again. “Cynic,” you retort.

“You’re not done,” he sniffs, closing his eyes again.

You resist the urge to buck your hips in order to dump him on the floor. You read again.

“Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.”

You finish, filled with a strange feeling. You’ve loved this poem ever since the first time you read it with the sunshine gushing into your gran’s living room on a slow summer day. As you grew, you loved it for different reasons, for its ambiguity, its hope and its resignation, its acknowledgment of the horrors of life and its simple pleasures. It always felt familiar to you, but the specific imagery reading it this time around is familiar in a way that feels concrete.

You think about the gray feather, the light that strays and vanishes and returns. You think about the feeling while listening to the Beatles, that you’re forgetting something important. You think about Sylus’s casual dismissal of the suffering of others.

Calling suffering fate seems like a convenient excuse to you. Why bother trying to make the world better, if fate deems that it should be miserable?

You think about sipping the rosé, biting the strawberry Sylus offered you. Your curtains fluttering in the breeze in your room, when Sylus has come to your place at night. These things you have enjoyed, as people suffer beyond the safety of your apartment and Sylus’s fortress walls.

“Stop torturing yourself, darling,” he says through your racing thoughts. He turns his head, presses his lips against your thigh, inhales deeply. It’s not a kiss, but you feel the press of his mouth through the fabric of your pants as if it were. You resist the urge to spread your thighs further.

“Should I read another?” you ask quietly. You don’t want to think about these things. You want to live in the moment. What kind of person does that make you? The desire to ignore the cost of this pleasure, your enjoyment of Sylus's home, proves that you don’t deserve it.

“Of course,” he says, but his phone vibrates in his pocket. He grunts unhappily as he reluctantly sits up, sliding the phone from his pocket. “Keep exploring,” he says, heading to the door. “I’ll try to make this quick.”

So you do. Wandering amongst the books, finding other titles that are your favorites, but so many that you’ve never read, never heard of. Many of them are not in your native language. You wonder how many languages Sylus speaks.

After a surprisingly short amount of time, he returns. "Read more to me," he orders, sprawling on the couch once more.

You look back at him, admiring the wrought-iron staircase spiraling up, the moon through the windows, his long, strong body casually stretched along the couch.

“Can we light the fire?”

“Of course. Fire," he says, and the fireplace flares to life at his command. You wonder if such a system is in place in each room. You wander back to the couch, and he pulls you down. You read him the rest of the poems from this collection, arguing here and there, learning his favorite parts, both matching and diverging from your own. Until your stomach growls, causing him to nuzzle it, insist on taking you to the kitchen and feeding you another meal. After you're once again full, he offers to show you the conservatory.

“Okay,” you say, relaxed, satisfied. He wraps his arms around you, lifts. You let him, wrapping your legs around his waist. You think about a gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns. What are you forgetting?

He takes you to the music room. It’s behind another black door. You would never be able to guess, walking through his solemn hallways, each expansive room unfolding behind each uniform door.

As you walk into the beautiful space, you’re struck with the realization that Sylus’s home is strange in many ways, and not just because it serves as both his home and his fortress, an armory and an indoor playground. The halls are winding and despite the height of the ceilings on each floor, they’re oppressive. There is no open floor plan for the house itself. Each room’s door can be closed, barricaded, turning the room within into a bunker. But behind each door, each room fans out, soaring windows, high ceilings, glass giving way to a savage view of the harsh landscape in a way that renders even the ugliness of the N109 Zone beautiful in a stark, barren-planet kind of way. You suspect that the glass is bullet-proof. You wonder what kind of impacts it can withstand beyond firearms. Could it survive a thrown grenade? A direct strike from a drone? Would anyone dare actually wage a full-on assault on the leader of Onychinus’s home?

“Not even the greenhouse rendered you speechless, kitten. Does that mean you like it, or hate it?”

You blink. You had been so busy wondering about the strategic choices of Sylus’s architectural design that you hadn’t even begun admiring the metal support beams, curling like vines in a distinct art nouveau style between multiple panes of glass, each meeting at the pinnacle of a glass ceiling. Two of the larger glass panes are not the standard window glass, but are stained glass, continuing the art nouveau theme, depicting colorful curls of plants, flowers, as well as animals—beasts from mythology, dragons, phoenixes, winged chimeras. Luscious potted plants scattered along the white marble floor. A white grand piano sitting in the center of the circular space. Instruments of all kinds, from all parts of the world, hung or resting on more organically wrought metal display mounts along two-thirds of the glass walls. A seating area, filled with comfortable, low furniture, carved blond wood in flowing, plant-like designs, sits between the piano and the view of the landscape through the clear glass, framed by the murals of stained glass.

It’s breathtaking. But you’ve had your breath taken by the greenhouse, the pool, the room with the hot tub, the library. Each in a distinctly different style from the rooms of the house that see daily use by their owner: Sylus’s bedroom. The kitchen. The hallways. The imposing dining room and its equally imposing banquet table. The cave-like theater room. Each dark—black marble, maroon accents, deeply masculine, modern, abstract art. But the rooms that have taken your breath instead of making you feel oppressed are so startlingly different from Sylus’s often-used spaces.

You can’t accept the moment. You can’t stand not knowing, even as you are afraid to know. You have to ask. “I don’t understand,” you say, turning to him.

He glances around the room, and then looks back at you. “It’s a home conservatory, sweetheart. Not a trick question.”

You ignore him. Your curiosity will eat you alive if you don’t ask him. You want to know. You don’t want to know. “Why does it feel like two different people designed your house?”

His eyebrows lift in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Half of your house is edgy, big-dick rich vampire man-cave, and half is this,” you sweep an arm to indicate the delicate yet sturdy steel beams, organically curving into the height of the room, the chairs carved like palms, stained glass, the lush vegetation.

“Can one person not appreciate more than one style of home decor?” he asks, walking over to you, winding an arm around your waist.

You stare at him. Nothing Sylus does is by accident. You know this much by now. You know a lot about him by now. You don’t know enough about him by now.

“The parts of the house you spend the most time in reflect your style. But the other parts… the parts that wait for an owner that rarely comes. Did you choose the design yourself? Or did you let your architect run wild?”

His smile is faint as he gazes down at you. “How very observant of you, darling. But I designed every room in this house. The architect modified the plans where necessary to ensure the structural integrity was sound, but I chose the decor.”

You wait. It sounded like he ended that sentence with a ‘but.’

“You’re right. I didn’t have just my preferences in mind as I was planning each room.”

You want to know. You don’t want to know. What if you’re wrong? The very idea is insane. Presumptuous. How could he possibly know? You only met him a few months ago. This base isn’t newly built. You have no idea how long I’ve already waited, his voice whispers through your mind.

“Whose preferences did you have in mind?” you ask, your heart doing that thing again. That weird thing that doesn’t hurt but scares you with how good it feels. Don’t leave me waiting here, lead me to your door.

His smile widens, just a little. “Do you really not know?”

You can’t process this. How could he have known?

It’s like these oases in his dark fortress of a home were designed with your deepest heart’s desires in mind.

You want to kiss him. You want to resonate with him again. You want to drop to your knees in front of him.

The enormity of your feelings is terrifying.

What if you’re wrong?

How much worse will it be, if you let yourself believe, and he turns you away. What if he designed all of this for someone else. Because how could he have known, before you met just a few months ago—how could he have known the contours of your tastes, the things that make you most comfortable, the yearning of your heart in your small apartment, of what you’d give yourself if you could ever afford to make your home exactly how you would want? A refuge from the harsh world. Space to breathe.

Your feelings are choking you. You step away from his embrace, turn. You have time. He said he’ll wait. You focus on this room.

It’s beautiful. Because of course it is. You don’t recognize even half of these instruments.

You turn back to him. He has moved to the piano, straddling the white bench, legs spread, just watching you.

“Do you know how to play all of these?”

He shakes his head. “No. Most of these are collector’s items, antiques. But I do know how to play the piano.”

You stand, resisting the constant pull towards him. You want to go to him, run your hands through his hair, tug his head back, expose his throat, bite.

“Only the piano?” You satisfy your need to move by walking over to the sitting area, forcing yourself to sit away from him. You need to control yourself. You plop down on one of the beautiful chairs, carved like a ginkgo leaf.

He turns, sitting properly on the bench in order to face you, and opens the cover over the piano keys. He leisurely presses down on one key, and the note resounds through the lovely room.

“I can also play the organ,” he murmurs, before beginning to play in earnest.

You don’t recognize the piece. You know you’ve never heard it before. But the longer he plays, the more you’re overcome with the sense that you know it. The blood under your skin, your lungs, your bones—you feel pulled to him, to his long fingers sweeping over the keys, unseen from your vantage point in the room. You know what’s coming, the crescendos and the pauses. It’s beautiful. It hurts. Your thoughts drift to the poem. Its strawberries, its rosé wine. Its familiarity. Return in thought to the concert where the music flared. You want to ask Sylus if he owns a yacht. You’re convinced that there will be a park, and acorns, and you will pick them up and offer them to him on a sunny summer morning after a long, long night. It has already happened. It will happen in the future.

You can’t resist the pull any longer. You stand and walk over to him, stand next to him at the bench. His hands hypnotize you. Big. Rough. Delicately pressing the keys—sure, confident, flowing. Like his evol. Like him.

“Sit,” he orders, and you obey, sliding in next to him. You try to give him space, but he takes one hand, still playing with the other, and pulls you by the waist until you’re shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.

You watch his hands, lost in the moment, lost in the feeling of recognition, of … something. That warm feeling in your heart, threaded with the pain of having lost something that you can’t remember.

Slowly, the piece comes to an end. His hands become still on the keys.

“What song was that?” you ask.

He flicks his eyes to yours.

“It doesn’t have a name.”

“Who composed it?” You hope that perhaps you can track it down later and listen to it again when Sylus isn’t around.

“Me,” he says, turning his head to look at you.

Wait, what?

“It’s already shocking enough that you play, but when do you have the time to compose?”

He lifts one of your hands and threads his fingers with yours. “Why so shocked that I have hobbies, like anyone else?”

“I just figured you’re always too busy with murder, mayhem, and munitions to have hobbies like a normal person,” you squeeze his hand as it swallows yours.

“I don’t have a lot of free time, but when I do, I like to spend some of it practicing and composing. Sometimes when I’m bored during business meetings I compose a little in my head and then write it out when I get home.”

At your incredulous look, he flicks your forehead gently with his free hand. “What would you have guessed that I spend my free time doing if it occurred to you that I do not, in fact, work in every waking moment?”

You consider it. “I would have assumed you spend all your free time hanging out in your shady nightclubs.”

He frowns at you. “I own classy nightclubs because they make me money and provide convenient venues for business deals now that I no longer host such deals in my own home. I do not spend any more time in them than necessary.”

“Is that what you meant when you said that Amnesia isn’t really your vibe?”

“You remember,” he says, sounding pleasantly surprised.

“Even though it feels like weeks ago, you did just tell me that like, two nights ago,” you flick his forehead in revenge.

“Fair point,” he concedes. “All right, then, yes. That’s what I meant.”

“So what is your vibe?”

“Curious, kitten?”

“Yes.” That warm feeling you have is overriding your fears of admitting this to him. You want to know him. You want to know everything about him.

“It’s easier to show you my vibe,” he shrugs. “We’ll make a date of it.”

He dropped the “fake” part again.

His phone begins to vibrate in his jeans pocket again.

He frowns in irritation. You stand, forcing yourself to move away from him.

“I’ll entertain myself,” you smile at his questioning look. He holds onto your hand as you move away, until your arm and his are stretched between you, and then he lets go.

You’re thankful for the interruption. Too much unadulterated time being the subject of Sylus’s entire focus makes you think insane things. Like that he designed parts of his house with you in mind. That you know music that you’ve never heard before. That you’re forgetting something important about him, even though you only met him recently. That a poem you read in your youth is a roadmap of things that have already happened between you and the man pacing behind the door, and what will happen before the light strays, vanishes… returns again.

You step into the hallway and wander back toward the kitchen. After a few minutes, you hear the flap of Mephisto’s wings. He’s keeping you company again. You keep walking.

You’re distracted halfway to the kitchen, however, when you hear voices coming from the theater room. It sounds like the twins, and someone else whose voice is familiar, but you can’t pinpoint it. You knock.

“No need to knock,” one of the twins yells.

You open the door and peek into the room. It’s dark, with all the lights dimmed.

On the large screen where you almost watched a movie with Sylus the other night, a video game is playing.

Luke sits on one of the loveseats, holding a game controller, while Kieran is squished onto the same small loveseat with him, their two big bodies barely fitting, hiding his face in Luke’s shoulder.

Noah is sprawled out on another loveseat, perfectly at ease. She gives you a lazy wave.

Luke pauses the game and looks over his shoulder at you.

“Boss busy?” he asks as Kieran lifts his head, a look of relief on his face at the interruption.

“Business call,” you say, nodding. You stare at the screen. It looks like…

“Are you playing the Silent Hill 2 remake?” you squeal.

“Yeah! Since boss is on a little holiday, he gave us the time off as well. Figured we’d finally play it.”

“Are you a fan of the original?” Kieran asks.

You nod. “Huge fan. I was so excited when they announced the remake, but I’ve been too busy with work to play it.”

“Wanna join? Kieran is too scared to look half the time. We can take turns, if you want,” Luke offers, sounding pleased to have another person to share the game with.

You seriously consider his offer, but you’re still so tired. You don’t really want to learn the controls mid-way through a playthrough. Weren’t you just thinking about watching let’s plays of horror games you haven’t had a chance to play yet? You can watch Luke play without having to do a thing.

“I’m good, but do you mind if I stay and just watch until Sylus is done?”

“Is that even a question? Get in here.”

Luke unpauses the game, and the familiar sounds of the world of Silent Hill, with amazing, updated graphics fills your vision. You slink inside the room and sit on another love seat, preferring to give Noah her space since she’s sprawled out like she already owns the place.

You watch as Kieran hides his face in Luke's shoulder again as a lying figure jerkily lumbers towards James Sunderland.

Apparently Noah notices Kieran’s fear as well.

“Aren’t you one of the feared Raptors of Onychinus? Like, you’re famous in the Zone. How can the same person who is known for intentionally leaving mutilated corpses in public as warnings to your boss’s enemies be afraid of video game monsters?”

You turn and stare at the twins, a little horrified. Not entirely surprised, because you know what kind of man Sylus is. You know what his organization stands for. But mutilated dead bodies? Where normal people just trying to get through their shitty workday, where kids can see them?

“That’s fucked up,” you say out loud.

“Hey, you’re a fucking cop. We know what cops are capable of,” Kieran says softly, with a flatness in his tone you’ve never heard before. Noah looks between you and Kieran like she wishes she has popcorn. “Don’t act like what you sometimes do is any better than our calling card.” Luke kills a monster shaped like two shapely pairs of legs attached at the waist with a metal pipe, and it dies loudly. He stomps on it for good measure. “At least we’re honest about it, and don’t hide behind a shield of so-called legitimacy. People know what they’re getting when they deal with us.”

You look at Kieran thoughtfully. It’s difficult to admit, but he has a point. You know that there are corrupt hunters. The so-called Tenebrae. You also recognize that dark part of yourself, when you’re faced with someone who you know has done terrible things, and the itch to pull the trigger before you can bring them in. You know that innocent people suffer at the hands of criminals and law enforcement alike.

Kieran stares steadily back at you, his normally cheerful face serious. “How did you come to work for Sylus?” you ask.

Luke pauses the game. “We don’t talk about that,” he says in the same flat tone that his brother just spoke in.

“Oh?” you say, because you don’t want to continue to pry, and you don’t know what else to say.

“Boss says it doesn’t matter where we come from. Only where we’re going. So there’s no use talking about the past if we don’t want to.”

“And you don’t want to?” Noah asks, the look of entertainment morphing into something else on her face.

The twins shake their heads in unison.

You think she’s going to say something snarky, but she just nods. “Then you shouldn’t. No one is entitled to your story.”

“That’s what boss says. I see why he hired you now,” Kieran says, smiling at her, the odd stillness broken.

“He hired me because I’m fucking awesome,” Noah sniffs, flicking her braids behind her shoulder. They’re down now, spilling over her back.

You tilt your head. “Are you a new hire?” For some reason you thought that Noah had been Sylus’s driver for a long time.

“Did he not tell you?” she asks, looking at you strangely.

“Tell me what?”

“I’m not gonna do his work for him,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she smiles at you, and it’s unnerving instead of soothing. “Anyway, yeah I’m a new hire. You’re gonna be seeing a lot of me in the future.”

Although Kieran seems to have reached some sort of approval of Noah, Luke still shudders and starts the game again.

You let it go. You’ll ask Sylus about Noah’s weird comment later. Instead of dwelling on it, you sink into admiring the awesome graphics, the atmosphere, your childhood nostalgia rendered in state of the art graphics

When the sirens go off as James is about to enter the Other World, you have a sudden flashback to playing the original Silent Hill 2 with Caleb. You were also too afraid, like Kieran, to play yourself, so you just clutched Caleb’s arm as he held the controller, and you delighted in the safety of vicarious thrills, of Caleb’s reassuring, solid presence at your side as you experienced the story. You suddenly miss him so, so much. The feeling of loss is overwhelming.

The sudden punch of grief leaves you breathless. Everyone else is so focused on the screen, they don’t notice your gasp. You want to watch. You’ve been wanting to experience the remake ever since the developers announced it, over a year ago. You want to experience it with who you are tentatively thinking of as your new friends. But you need a second to ground yourself before you can bring yourself to keep watching.

Your force your voice through your throat. “I’m going to grab a snack. Do you guys want anything from the kitchen?”

“Popcorn!” Noah calls.

“We’re good,” Luke answers, because apparently Kieran is almost catatonic with terror.

“All right, be right back.” You take your time getting to the kitchen, Mephisto following you out the theater room door. You rifle through the fridge, shove some snacks into your mouth. You’re shocked to find microwave popcorn in one of the cupboards. Sylus strikes you as the kind of snob who insists on popping loose kernels on the stove, or over the fire in the fireplace. Nothing so pedestrian as store-bought and in the microwave. You snicker, that feeling of sorrow fading as you engage in everyday tasks, with company to look forward to. You’re not alone right now. You’re excited to see more of what the devs retained from the original game and what they added or changed in the remake. You head back to the theater room, but accidentally drop the bag of popcorn before you can open the door. As you pick it up, you can hear Noah.

“You know you don’t actually have to kill every monster you encounter, right?” She asks in barely disguised disdain.

“You know that you don’t actually have to offer your opinion when no one asked, right?” Luke snarks.

“Oooh, someone’s grumpy because he isn’t going to have an advantage in the bet like he thought,” Noah says through a snicker.

“What advantage? We agreed not to interfere. Boss is gonna have it in the bag even before the two weeks are up even without our help,” Luke responds.

“If he doesn’t fumble it by being too passive,” Kieran adds, thoughtfully.

“What ‘help?’ I bet your help would result in more delay than progress,” Noah taunts. “I probably don’t even have to do anything to counter your nonsense. You’ll do all my work for me.”

“Hey, flooding the guest floor was a good idea,” Luke protests.

This is just met with a cackle.

You stand, frozen. You didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But what is their boss going to have in the bag without their help? What bet?

Something inside of you already knows. Hadn’t you thought earlier that the twins probably made a bet out of your obvious, pathetic crush?

But they said it was about their boss achieving something. Not about your feelings.

You don’t want to know.

You try desperately to cling to that warm feeling you’ve had since the pool.

Boss is gonna have it in the bag.

You spin on your heel, intending to return to the kitchen without them knowing you heard anything, just to buy yourself time to process. But of course, you promptly knock over another ugly sculpture. It shatters on the floor.

You stand there in your bandaged feet, holding the popcorn, staring down at the mess you just made.

The door swings open and Kieran, Luke, and Noah jostle each other to see what just happened in the hallway.

“Sorry,” you say. What the fuck else can you say?

“What happened?” Kieran asks.

“Just me being clumsy,” you say, trying to smile.

Luke squints at you. “Oh shit.” He turns to Kieran. “They’re making that horrible face again.”

Kieran stares at you.

Noah flicks her braids and tilts her head, examining you like an art critic trying to find meaning in a child’s finger painting. “What does that face mean?”

“It means they heard what we were discussing,” Kieran says grimly.

Luke glares at Noah. “What are you even doing here? Now the bet is fucked and boss is gonna be mad because his hunter’s making that expression again. Look at them. We’ve hurt their feelings!” He gestures at you.

She glares back. “Boss told me to report here for duty every day to remain on standby in case the hunter wants to go anywhere. What are you doing here?” she sneers.

“We live here,” he answers, looking confused that that’s even a question.

You take a step back, away from the sharp shards of the broken sculpture. Maybe they’ll be too busy arguing to notice.

That good feeling is gone.

You think about every move Sylus has made since the auction. All of his attention, his gentleness, his kindness, his dogged reappearance at your home, his arranging for you to have sick leave.

Would Sylus do all that for a bet?

Is he that bored? Is he that good of an actor?

How on earth would you even know? You don’t know shit about him. You’ve known him for a few months. In that time, you’ve seen him a handful of times. What the fuck are you doing?

You think about that feeling you had while listening to the Beatles, while listening to Sylus play the piano, of forgetting something really important. You want to throw up.

Yeah, you’re forgetting something all right.

You can’t stand the feeling inside you right now. It’s too big. It’s eclipsing everything you’ve felt up until this point.

You think about what it will take to get out of here.

You think about picking up one of the sculpture’s shards and digging it into your thigh, anything to override this feeling inside you now.

You think about the resonance with Sylus when you woke up. Could he fake that?

His evol is unearthing a person’s deepest desires. But is it more than that? Could he make you feel adored without using his aether core? Did he promise not to use his evol on you because the terms of the bet forbade interference? Your fears send you spiraling.

“Oh no. No, no, no, no,” Luke says, peering at your face again. He takes a step forward, reaching out to you like someone trying to calm a wild animal, his house shoe crunching on the broken bits of sculpture.

You take a step back.

Noah just looks between the twins and you, confused.

“I’m just going for a walk,” you lie. You take another step back, turn, and start to walk down the hallway that will eventually lead to the lift. The lift that goes to the underground garage.

As you round the corner, Luke says,“Get—”

“On it,” Kieran says, with his phone to his ear.

Noah looks thoughtfully down the now empty hallway. “The hunter’s fucked up, huh?”

Luke shrugs. “Aren’t we all?”

Noah frowns at him. “Speak for yourself. You don’t know shit about me.”

“I know that boss hired you after looking into your soul. Which means you’re fucked up too. He isn’t interested in wholesome things or people—too boring.”

“And you?”

“You said it yourself. I really enjoy carving people up.” He shrugs. “Soothes something from our shitty childhood.”

Noah considers him. “Your brother seems to be okay with me now. Are you going to have a problem with me?”

Kieran grins at her. “What makes you think I have a problem with you?”

“You were mean when I suggested you try to stealth around the monsters. And don’t think I didn’t see your reaction when I said I’d be around more often. And acting like the hunter being upset is solely my fault, when we all made the stupid bet.” She counts each piece of evidence on her pretty fingers.

“Who the fuck likes backseat gamers?” He pouts a little. “And I didn’t like being hit on within an hour of meeting you. I don’t like people like that.”

Noah scowls back at him. “You don’t like people like what? ”

“I mean, I don’t like, like people. I get the creeps when people hit on me.”

Her lovely eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Oh.”

“But boss likes you, so I like you. We’re cool, so long as you don’t hit on me again.”

Noah nods.“I was just giving you two shit since you hauled me in front of your scary fucking boss. But I promised boss I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Then we’re cool. And if you don’t like how I play Silent Hill, then you can play if you want.” He opens the door again, gesturing for her to go in ahead.

“Nah man, I like being in the peanut gallery.”

“Does that mean you’re not gonna shut up?”

“You know it.” Noah gives him a big, feral grin.

Luke grins back at her, equally frightening. “Then I’ll be sure to kill every single monster we come across, no matter how much ammo it wastes.” The door swings shut on Kieran standing in the hallway, looking thoughtfully down at the phone in his hand.

_____________________

Sylus hums the melody of the music he played for you as he ends the call with Aidan. Luckily the issue this time could be settled by answering Aidan’s questions, and he can still look forward to a mostly uninterrupted day with you. He wonders where you’ll like to go next. Back to the library? To the greenhouse?

He’s in a great mood, despite the interruption. Every conversation with you convinces him that you’re closer and closer to accepting the truth. That you’re his, and he’s yours. He wants to drag you back to the library, listen to you read to him, argue about poetry—the way your eyes flash when you’re making a counterargument, the sneer in your retorts to his needling you—he wants to kiss you. He wants to kiss you so much it hurts.

His phone vibrates in his pocket again. He clenches his jaw, pauses. He wants to throw the damn thing against the wall and just continue looking for you, business be damned. But he also doesn’t want to leave Aidan in an awkward position. He fishes the phone out of his pocket and accepts the call.

“Boss, your hunter is making a strategic retreat again,” Kieran says breathlessly.

Sylus jerks to a stop.

“Repeat that?” he demands.

“They overheard us talking about the wager,” Kieran explains, sounding pained.

It takes Sylus a second to remember what he’s talking about. “The bet about how long it will take for kitten to realize that I want to date them?”

“Yeah.”

Sylus thinks. Why would you be spooked by a stupid bet between his henchmen and your driver?

“But they—well, they overheard us talking about it, and they don’t know what the wager is actually about. I am afraid that they might have misunderstood something,” Kieran says carefully, like he’s waiting for Sylus’s wrath.

Sylus immediately realizes what probably just happened.

“I left kitten alone for less than twenty minutes,” he sighs. Just his fucking luck. It’s like the universe or some cruel god wants to create obstacles in his path to winning your precious heart.

“Your bet is over,” he barks.

“Understood.”

Sylus ends the call and pulls up Mephisto’s app. You’re walking quickly, with purpose. He squints, trying to figure out which part of the house you’re in. It looks like you’re trying to get to the lift that leads to the underground garage. Sylus dissipates into red and black mist.

_______________

As you walk, you make your way to the garage, not even sure what your plan is. You have that hollow, manic feeling filling you—the feeling that always fills you when you’re hurt like this, when you just need to get out, to outrun your own body and the feelings it contains. This time though, through the noise in your head, you remember your promises to Sylus. About not hurting yourself, but going to him. If you have doubts about his intentions, to go to him. To ask him when you have questions, instead of making assumptions.

But how can you? What’s the point of honoring promises made to a man who thinks your feelings are fair game for a bet?

You need to think. You don’t want to think. You’re hurting so, so much. You need time. Your body feels like you’re out of time. You miss Caleb. You miss your grandmother.

It takes all of your self control to stop moving. You hear Mephisto’s wings flapping behind you. You close your eyes. You resist the urge to punch yourself, barely. If you’re just a bet to him, you should punch him instead. You open your eyes and realize you stopped next to a door with an electronic lock blinking on the handle. You turn and look at it fully, and you hear the lock click.

It recognized your face. Just as Kieran and Luke told you all the locks in this house would. Why would Sylus bother programming your face into his home if you’re just a bet?

You watch your hand reach out, grasp the handle. You pull, and the door opens easily. You slip inside and let it close before Mephisto can follow.

The lights flicker on.

You gasp.

It’s like standing inside an upscale jewelry store, built inside a bank vault. Except instead of sparsely filled display cases, designed to emphasize and showcase a select number of precious jewels, each glass case is stuffed with the things. Diamonds. Rubies. Emeralds. A mind-blowing variety of beautiful stones that you don’t even know the names for. Loose stones, as well as jewelry—necklaces, rings, earrings. Where most of Sylus’s house is the picture of meticulous order, this vault looks like a dragon’s hoard of priceless treasures, casually piled high without much thought.

Why would Sylus trust you with access to such wealth, if you were just a bet?

But more importantly, how much death must Sylus Qin sell, to afford such a vault?

How many lives in exchange for each gem?

You turn in a circle as you slowly process the fact that you’re standing in the middle of a sea of blood diamonds.

What are you doing?

What the actual fuck are you doing?

You were just marveling at the luxury of the rooms he designed, filled with the thrilling possibility that he had built them for you. You had thought about the cost of the heating in the hot tub, the pool. And yet you were willing to overlook such expenses. Why? Because at least the pool, the lovely architecture are useful? Because they provide some value to the human experience, even if only a select few will ever get to experience them at Sylus’s house?

But what value do diamonds have? Shiny clumps of compressed carbon. You can’t burn them for warmth. You can’t eat them. Okay, so maybe they’re used in some industrial processes, but for fuck’s sake, artificially created diamonds could serve that purpose. And you’re absolutely sure that the diamonds Sylus has hoarded in this vault are real, products of millions of years of pressure, and not made in some lab.

You sink to the black marble floor. It’s cold. You draw up your knees and hug them.

There’s too much happening in your brain right now. Your grief. Your uncertainty about Sylus’s intentions—the question of who his beloved is. The bet.

The realization that you’re falling in love with a man whose life’s work is bringing misery to others.

You hate yourself. Here you are, thrown into a tailspin from the idea that Sylus may have spent all this time on you because of a bet with his minions, when you should be in a tailspin about the fact that it’s probably already too late for you to stop falling for a man who not only praises the mutilated world, but is one of the people shoving the knife in deeper.

There is so much you don’t know about him. But what you do know is that Sylus is too busy pouring salt into the wound of the world to dedicate so much time and resources to something as frivolous as a wager about how long it will take for him to get you in the bag. It’s pure, self-pitying hubris to assume otherwise.

You’re focusing on the wrong things, again. You’re forgetting what’s important, again.

What do you want? What can you live with? Why do you feel a connection with this complicated, cruel, ruthless man, as if you’ve known him for more than a few months? What kind of person are you, if despite sitting in a sea of diamonds paid for in other peoples' blood, you still want this merchant of death to come find you, to hold you in his arms, tell you that he wasn't placing bets on how long it would take to have you in the bag?

You begin to rock, somehow resisting all of your terrible urges: to hurt yourself, to run, to set this awful room on fire. You rock, and you hurt, and you wait for the terrible man you’re falling in love with to find you, as he always does.

______________

Sylus finds Mephisto pacing on the floor in front of his gem vault. He caws in distress when he sees his owner re-materialize in the hallway. Sylus finds the fact that you’re in the gem vault, and not currently trying to procure a getaway car, to be a source of hope—a strange feeling for him. What use does he have for hope? He has plans. Plans with contingencies, alternatives, backups. They either succeed because he planned well enough, or they fail because he did not plan well enough.

Hope has no place in his world.

People suffer and die. Deals are made and broken. Fate is cruel, inflexible. He knows this all too well, no matter how much he’s struggling against fate this time around.

Hope has no place in his world.

But.

You could have kept running. You could be in any one of his vehicles right now, trying to break land speed records to get the fuck away from him, convinced that he was involved in a bet about the biggest gamble of his life.

But you’re not. You’re in his gem vault, for some reason. You strange, unpredictable, delightful creature.

He finds himself hoping that this misunderstanding hasn’t just caused you to retreat beyond his reach again.

Your fingers in the dip of his clavicle.

The yearning look on your face, that he doesn’t think you even knew you had, when he bit your lip—the closest he’ll allow himself to a kiss until he’s one hundred percent sure you’ll welcome him while awake.

He opens the door.

He pauses, struck with the strange sensation of viewing his greatest treasure surrounded by so much of his material treasure. You belong here. The value of all of these precious stones nothing in comparison to you, shining like a beacon to him at the end of a long and winding road from the marble floor, dimming everything else in this room by comparison.

His house shoes whisper along the cold marble floor where you’re sitting, curled in on yourself.

He has watched you take down wanderers the size of an elephant. All that strength, contained in your huddled body. You look so small to him. He wants to protect you from all the horrors of the world. But of course, he’s the biggest horror of all. Is it any wonder that he keeps hurting you instead?

A better man might keep his distance in an effort to protect you. Like your partner. A better man might know when to quit. Like your dandy artist friend. A better man might be content with loving you from afar. Like your fucking doctor.

But Sylus is a terrible man, because he’s not going to stop trying to get it right, even as he hurts you in the process, until you order him to stop and mean it.

You don’t look up at the sound of his footsteps, but you also don’t retreat as he approaches.

He sits on the floor next to you, wraps an arm around your shivering shoulders. He pulls you into his arms, feels the rush of hope when you let him.

He cradles your head in his palm.

“The twins bet on everything. Which snail is the fastest on a leaf. Whether it will rain or snow tomorrow. How long it will take someone to bleed out. Whether the traffic light will change in five versus ten seconds,” he says softly into your hair.

“About how long it will take to get your pathetic hunter in the bag?” Your voice is small, just as your body feels in his arms.

“About how long it will take for my beloved to realize how I feel about them,” he sighs.

You stiffen, and he feels a moment of paralyzing fear, before you melt into him. He breathes again.

“What did you bet?” you ask, and Sylus feels the sorrow in your voice like a gunshot in his chest.

You ran, but you stopped. You assumed, but you’re asking questions now. You’re allowing him to touch you, to hold you. The hope in him surges again.

“I didn’t place a bet in this particular wager,” he manages through the unfamiliar feelings. “But if I had, the gamble would be my whole heart.”

“Does a man who has a dragon’s hoard of wealth, bought with the blood of the guilty and the innocent alike, have a heart?” you ask, finally looking up, your eyes hollow in a way that he doesn’t like.

Sylus is a terrible man. He has never lied to himself about this, or to you. He showed you the worst of himself, the day you met. He has to hope that the fact you’re still here, still asking him questions, means that he hasn’t lost you yet. An unpleasant feeling of doubt slithers through him. Is it the bet upsetting you, or something else?

“Even dragons have hearts, darling.”

You close your eyes. He wants you to open them again. He wants you to look at him. He never wants you to look away from him. Even if you’re looking at him with doubt, or hate, so long as you’re looking at him, that means you’re not leaving him.

“What do you want?” he asks.

You open your eyes again. He is terribly tempted to use his aether core on you, because for once, he can’t read how you’re feeling.

“You offered me time.”

He leans forward, rests his forehead against yours. “And I will give you time.”

“I want to see your favorite part of the greenhouse.”

“And I will show you my favorite part of the greenhouse,” he whispers, breathing, breathing. He can’t tell how you’re feeling, but you smell like home, a door at the end of a long road. The hope grows.

“I want to see Luke and Kieran and Noah play the remake of Silent Hill 2.”

The hope shifts, dissipates. There is no need for hope, once it is fulfilled. You want to stay, for now. He can work with that. Whatever damage learning about the bet caused, he can work with your willingness to stay. If that look in your eyes isn’t about the bet, he has more time to dismantle your walls, to pull it out of you. Just two nights ago, you were running barefoot through the dark. Tonight, you stopped yourself and waited for him to find you. “You’re in luck. They’re still playing.”

You watch him, as if you’re weighing something behind your hollow eyes. “Will you watch with me?”

Of course, he thinks. Of course. You could ask for so much more, and the answer would be the same. “Do you want me to watch with you?”

“I want you to want to watch with me.”

He smiles, his mouth a breath away from yours. You smell like popcorn. He wants to throw a piece in the air, catch it in his mouth, feed it to you. “Again, you bring me luck. We have a win-win deal.”

He stands. Carries you out of his gem vault.

“Why do you have so many jewels?” you ask, quietly.

“In case the authorities freeze my accounts, physical currency will be useful. A sort of insurance.”

You gaze at his face, and he wonders what you see when you look at him. “You’ll escape with a truck full of precious stones?”

“Something like that,” he says.

“No other reason?”

He tells the truth. “I’ve always been fond of shiny things.”

“Do you have a favorite stone?”

He laughs softly. “Whatever stone you’re wearing.”

Instead of looking at him with suspicion, a helpless look crosses your face. Like you’re in pain from his admission. He doesn’t like it. But then you lean forward, press your face into his neck. He tells himself that he has time. He’ll figure out what’s bothering you, and he’ll fix it.

Outside the theater room, he pauses. Looks down at the pieces of shattered sculpture. "If you didn't like it, darling, you could have just said so."

You just mumble that you're sorry.

"We've talked about your apologies," he says, frowning down at you in his arms.

You huff. "Fine. I'm not sorry. That sculpture was edgy and ugly. You should replace it with something beautiful."

"Deal. But only if you come with me to choose something," he says.

"Deal," you say softly, and he still can't tell what's going through your head.

When you enter the theater room, Luke pauses the game. “We’re really sorry for hurting your feelings and shit. The bet was about boss’s rizz, not about you. Please don’t leave.”

Kieran nods in approval, as if he had helped Luke compose this little speech.

Noah just looks at you, face unreadable, as you rest your head on Sylus’s shoulder.

“I had planned to give you a lot of shit. But I think I would’ve lost anyway,” she says, not looking apologetic at all. “It’s only been two days and you’re practically merging into one person.”

Sylus carries you to a loveseat next to the twins, with Noah on their other side.

“Thanks,” you say. “No worries.”

Everyone is awkwardly silent for a moment after your brief response. You seem to notice, and smile a little. “Can we hang out while you play?”

“Fuck yeah,” Luke says, and Kieran groans as the game is unpaused.

After a while, you, Luke, and Noah start discussing the difference between the remake and the original. What everyone likes, what they don’t. Sylus leans back, draws you onto his chest. His relief remains intense as you let him. The discussion moves on to which Silent Hill games are the best in the franchise, which are the worst. Luke and Noah have a good-natured clash about Silent Hill 4: the Room, with only a few insults flung at each other. You and Kieran share your admiration for Bloober Team's Layers of Fear, which Kieran liked because he didn't think it was scary, and which Luke hated, because he thought it was boring. Sylus doesn't give a shit about video games, and certainly not horror games. Life itself is already horrific enough, he doesn't have the patience for manufactured terror. He just listens, feeling your heartbeat against his chest, breathing in your comforting scent.

A feeling of wholeness settles in him, as unfamiliar as hope. As unfamiliar as the happiness from your movie night, just last night. You, Luke, and Noah have moved on to animatedly arguing about some character’s outfit changes between the original and the remake.

He feels like he’s been standing, left behind in the dark for so long, and he’s finally being allowed home. Whatever is bothering you, he’ll fix it. He’ll destroy the world if he has to, to preserve the scene in front of him, so that he can offer you this, so that he can experience this with you, again, and again, and again. His gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

End notes: I had planned shenanigans for the twins and Noah to increase their odds in winning the bet, but this story is already out of control with how long it is, and some of the things I thought of were really manipulative and fucked up even if I personally thought they were hilarious, but my brain is craving a softer vibe for this story I guess (lmao if this can be considered soft), so I hope this isn't too much of a let down for the resolution of the bet subplot. I've given up hinting at what's coming next because it turns out I'm very bad at guessing what's next.

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #sylus x reader #sylus x mc #my fanfic #hope it's enjoyable despite the somber tone

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eregyrn-falls · 2 days ago

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^^^^^^ !!!!!

There's so much I'd like to add but it would be carrying coals to Newcastle. Great post! (And a lot of great tag-rants in the notes, too.)

I did want to add one thought to this set of tags from @achromaticegoist, about the punch in particular.

It took me a long while to realize it, but not only is the punch reflective of a whole lot of things about Ford's state of mind on his arrival back through the portral... but, it also serves as some really interesting closure (and I'm not even sure the writers realized it).

In the episode, it's told out of order, so we see the punch FIRST. But later in the ep, when we see the fight that led to Ford going through the portal in the first place, what happens is that he and scan are scuffling, and there's that moment when Ford pushes Stan off with his foot and inadvertantly presses Stan against the glowing (apparently red-hot) symbol on the side of the control panel.

Stan screams in pain, of course. And immediately, Ford is suddenly worried, and contrite. He says, "Stanley! Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! Are you alr-"

And Stan punches him in the face.

That punch is what sends Ford stumbling out into the portal room and falling against the activation lever; and landing inside the danger zone. Ford does get up, but before he gets a chance to say anything else, Stan shoves the journal into his chest, Ford begins to float, and the disaster unfolds from there.

We don't spend enough time thinking that, basically, from Ford's point of view (if he replayed those last moments over and over in his head, as he probably did), the last things that Stan did to him was: punch him in the face, and then shoving him into the portal. The latter was accidental (though disastrous); but the first kind of wasn't. Ford stopped fighting, switching to concern and apology. While Stan lashing out due to the pain is understandable, Stan's punch is what prevents the fight from being over.

Ford coming out of the portal 30 years later and immediately punching Stan in the face kind of creates a book-end with that earlier punch from Stan, doesn't it? Ford getting to hit back the way he didn't (wouldn't?) 30 years ago. (He stands up, but he just stands there angrily staring at and listening to Stan as he approaches. He doesn't try to leap at Stan again or try to wrestle him for the book, etc. Was Ford, effectively, done fighting the moment Stan got seriously hurt?)

As I said, I'm not sure the writers were thinking about that consciously. I don't remember hearing them comment about it (i.e. that Ford's punch was a mirror of the punch that Stan gave him 30 years prior). But I do like to look at what's written and think about it in terms of, these scenes are deliberately written, the way it goes and the details included are chosen, often at the end of a long process of collaboration. I think that what's chosen for the final version is always very interesting.

And I just don't often see people discuss that moment where Ford stops fighting, and immediately becomes worried and apologetic. Not least because, like... up to that point in the series, we haven't seen Stan be apologetic very often. A few times, yes! And it's always notable when he does it. It clashes with the exterior he presents to the world; the man for whom saying "Please" gives him physical pain, etc. Some of which is meant for laughs, too! And some of which is just the product of being hardened by experience and so on.

It tells us something, I think, that Stan truly getting hurt, and screaming in pain, is enough to end Ford's desire to fight. That even after 10+ years of estrangement, he's that ready to be concerned for Stan; and that he's that ready with an apology. Later reads of Ford (post-portal) will portray him as the man who won't say "thank you", and I have other thoughts and feelings about that. But getting back to this, it's the show's choice to have Ford stop their fight and make a slight turn towards a sort of reconciliation. When they could have easily just had him and Stan keep fighting and struggling and the portal turn on because of that. It's such an interesting writing decision; and I just don't hear people dig into what it means for the characters very often.

What's your stance on Ford as a person? Honestly, I believe that for thr majority of canon he is a bad person. But I believe he grew. Still not great though XD

(Love him anyways obvs)

I disagree entirely! I think he's equally as good a person as any of the other main cast.*

*Except Mabel, who, as we all know, is always right about everything.**

(**This is a lighthearted joke. For the love of god, I don't want Mabel discourse in my inbox.)

His biggest sins in the show:

After telling his brother that he was thinking about changing their shared life plans, and then discovering that his brother had gone to the high school that night for no good reason and gone to the science fair for no good reason and messed around near Ford's science project for no good reason and broke it and didn't tell Ford about it... Ford believed Stan did it intentionally and held a grudge for it. You know what, it WOULD be pretty damn hard to believe it was an accident.

Hilariously ill-equipped to cope with Fiddleford's mental health. A guy who responds to "I have anxiety" with "have you tried yoga, it helps me" isn't a bad person, he's clueless. "Character cheerfully enacts a bad idea while a loved one in the background goes NO PLEASE DON'T DO THAT" describes half the episodes of Gravity Falls.

Was successfully manipulated by a professional manipulator into believing his best friend wished him ill. Man, what a terrible person Ford is for being manipulated by a manipulator and saying cruel things to somebody he'd been genuinely convinced was trying to harm him.

??? Didn't say thanks to a guy he was still mad at after the guy fixed a problem he himself had caused. This is a solitary example of stubborn bad etiquette, jesus christ. There's half a dozen different reasons why it makes perfect sense Ford wasn't in the right mindset to feel grateful, this is not something worth indicting his entire character over.

He had high ambitions, which everyone seems to lambast him for, but high ambitions that wouldn't have required doing anybody harm! (Until the professional manipulator started manipulating him into harming the people around him, but we are going to demonstrate some reading comprehension and not blame Ford's underlying morality as a person for things he never would've done if not for Bill's bullying, con artistry, and outright lies.) Like, what is it that he wanted to do with his life? Use his talents to get rich and famous? Shit, that's exactly what Stan wanted to do with his life. It's what Dipper fantasizes about doing with his life. Even Mabel, who thinks about her long-term future the least, dreams big with her art & performances and is already making big money off cheap-ass commissions. What terrible people they all are, for—let me check my notes here—uhhh... unrealistically fantasizing about achieving success in life by doing the things they're good at.

When their dad accuses Stan of lying as a child, Ford puts his entire summer on the line to defend Stan even though he knows Stan is a habitual liar and has no reason to believe Stan is telling the truth this time.

When his new college roommate he barely even knows gets laughed at for proposing an outlandish scientific theory, his first emotion is outrage at this injustice and he drops everything to convince his already-despondent roommate that he was right and help him prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

When he moves to a new town, he tries again and again to befriend his new neighbors, and fails not because he's rude or a jerk, but because he's awkward as hell, tells terrible jokes, and sucks at identifying phoenixes.

When Fiddleford gets hurt around him, he cares about it, feels guilty about putting him in that position, doesn't want it to happen again, and tries his best to help even though he's bad at helping.

When he gets kidnapped by a weird holiday folklore creature, he concludes without even thinking about it that he's now in charge of protecting and rescuing the kidnapped kids. Yeah, then he immediately starts hollering at the folklore creature for trying to impose his religious beliefs on Ford and the kids—but like, Ford was right tho, he just had bad timing.

When he discovers that the Northwest family committed atrocities against their poorer neighbors a century ago, his first instinct is to march up to their house, find the first Northwest he can locate, and give them a piece of his mind for it. Like, this won't even FIX anything. He's just THAT OUTRAGED over the injustice.

When he sees what he thinks is a fortune telling fraud conning the people, he attempts to debunk her because he's mad to see someone cheating other people with lies—and when he can't debunk her, he just leaves her alone rather than harass her about it. Typically, if assholes think somebody's doing something wrong but don't have any proof of it and fail to get proof when they look, they decide they're right anyway and keep giving that person shit. Ford doesn't give her shit. That's the opposite of an asshole move.

When he discovers his Portal To Knowledge (And Fame & Fortune) is actually a Portal To Doom (But Still Possibly Fame & Fortune, Maybe Even Godly Power), he isn't tempted for a second to keep working on it anyway. There is no moment where Bill manages to tempt him. No matter what Bill offers, no matter how long Bill offers, never, at ANY point, does Ford have a SECOND of "but what if I did make a deal with the devil?" the way so many heroes in similar situations often do.

You ever notice that? So often moral moments in the show are presented as choices the characters make. Will or won't Dipper give Bill a "puppet" in exchange for knowledge. Will or won't Stan fight a pterodactyl to protect Mabel's pig. Will or won't Mabel hand Bipper the journal. Ford is never given a "will or won't he" moment over Bill's threats, offers of friendship, or offers of infinite power—he steamrolls straight past them without a second of consideration—because, to him, the selfish, cowardly, easy choice ISN'T EVEN AN OPTION. He doesn't even SEE it as making a choice because the possibility of doing the wrong thing is invisible. A character who wavers first before turning Bill down would look more noble for "overcoming" temptation—it's harder to notice just how much stronger Ford's moral compass must be to not even feel temptation in the first place.

Greed and pride never tempt him to join Bill's side. Exhaustion, despair, and fear never tempt him to give up. He bears up under weeks, possibly months of extreme sleep deprivation, physical torture, psychological torture, emotional torture, threats of death, threats of brainwashing, threats to his family. He doesn't hold up so that he can pat himself on the back for being a hero—if that was all it was he would've gone "screw it, this isn't worth it and nobody would know I'm the one who gave up" a week in—he does it because he simply knows it must be done and because he's so isolated (half because of Bill's influence!) that he believes he's the one who must do it, all alone.

Thinking he has to do it by himself isn't egotism or pride; it's helplessness. He thinks no one else stands a chance. He thinks he's alone.

And, when he discovers his Portal To Knowledge is a Portal To Doom, he immediately feels guilty. No trying to deny the situation to protect his ego. No shuffling the blame off to someone else. No "maybe the apocalypse could have a silver lining!" No locking the door and trying to ignore the problem. He blames himself for being fooled—he IMMEDIATELY takes full responsibility for his actions—and he CONTINUES to take responsibility FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS.

He takes more responsibility than is even warranted—he treats himself like he's an idiot for believing in an APPARENT GOD who's been practicing manipulating humans for thousands of years and who had never given Ford reason to believe the portal was anything but what Bill said it was. He beats himself up to no end every single time his past with Bill comes up. He even keeps beating himself up thirty years later when he's shoving warning notes to future readers in Bill's evil unkillable book!

When he falls into the multiverse, he dedicates his entire life NOT to finding a way to rescue himself, but to finding a way to permanently stop the CHAOS GOD who's still at the threshold of destroying Ford's world and countless others. He makes himself a hated criminal in the process, just to stop Bill. He's ready to spend the rest of his life trying to protect a world he doesn't think he'll ever see again. He does it because, as he sees it, somebody has to stand in between the children and the obnoxious folklore cryptid menacing them, and he's the only adult in this damn cave with the skills and knowledge for the job.

When he gets home, he doesn't tell his family about Bill and his quest because he's afraid that doing so will get them involved and endanger them too—and because he's too deeply ashamed of himself and his mistakes to stand the thought of his family knowing about the horrible things he's done (AGAIN, WHILE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE GOD OF MANIPULATION).

He loves his great-niece and great-nephew the second he lays eyes on them; he nevertheless tries to steer away from them to keep them safe from Bill; and yet he caves to the very first temptation to emotionally bond with his great-nephew he gets, because in spite of his noble "keep them safe" intentions, he wants so so badly to be close to his family.

As pissed as he still is at Stan and even though neither of them can look at each other without hissing like cats, he still makes an attempt to start bridging their divide by inviting him to play DD&MD.

When the apocalypse happens, he immediately puts his life on the line to try to kill Bill.

And when he's captured, isn't fazed for a second by Bill's offers or threats... until his family is threatened. The exact thing he'd been trying to avoid & prevent from the very start.

And when he's reunited with Fiddleford, his immediate reaction is to point out that Fiddleford's well within his rights to hate him—which isn't a new revelation, it's not like Ford had to do any soul-searching to reach this conclusion, he'd concluded that 30 years ago the instant he realized Bill had played him and that he'd been lied to about Fiddleford.

And then he tries to kill Bill again.

And then he's ready to sacrifice his own life to kill Bill—and the only reason he doesn't is because he has a metal plate preventing him from making the sacrifice... but, Stan doesn't have a plate. If Ford hadn't had the metal plate, he would have gladly done the exact same thing Stan did—and he would have thought it was right for him and only him to make that sacrifice, because it's VERY clear he feels (and has felt from the start) that this is all his fault and he's obligated to fix it.

Over and over and over, these are Ford's two defining character traits: getting so pissed off at injustice that his common sense shuts off and he goes into terminator mode until he's righted this wrong as best he can, even when he can't actually do anything about it; and feeling like he's Atlas, weighed down with the full responsibility of fixing everything he's done wrong and made to believe that, for everyone else's sake, he has to do it all alone. Even when doing so puts himself in harm's way, even when he has to put his entire life on hold for it, even if it might cost him his life. Scrape off his awkward social skills, his loneliness, his nerdiness, his endless curiosity, his zealous love of the strange, his starry ambitions, his yearning for recognition and success—scrape his personality down to the bone and that's what you're left with. A man who believes in defending the exploited so strongly that it makes him a little stupid.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you probably don't think Stan's fundamentally a bad person, and that you probably think that isn't even worth questioning. Stan's made a whole career out of swindling people, conning them out of as much money as he possibly can, stealing, lying, committing a long list of goofily-named crimes, and attempting douchy pick-up artistry on women; and to cap it all off, he held the safety of the entire universe hostage to demand a goddamn "thank you." Don't send me any "But he had reasons—" "But it was only to—" I don't need it, I don't want the essay, I'm not arguing that Stan's a bad guy, it's fine.

But. You can look at Stan's moments of cruelty and unkindness, his uncharitable thoughts, his character flaws, and think, "that doesn't define him. He's more than his cruelest moments and worst mistakes. He's imperfect, but he cares so much and his heart's in the right place, and beneath all the flaws his core is good."

And if you can't do the same for Ford, it's not because he's a worse person. It's because we got two seasons with Stan and five and a half episodes with Ford—and while we saw Stan yearning to fish with the kids or encouraging Mabel to whoop Pacifica's butt at minigolf or crying over a black and white period drama or punching zombies to save his family, we only saw Ford at the worst moments in his life and under the stress of a prolonged apocalyptic crisis—and, it so happens, all the moments he was pissed at the guy we spent two seasons learning to love.

Ford's got moments of cruelty and unkindness, uncharitable thoughts, and character flaws. But, at his core, he's a good person, and he always has been, and he still is.

#gravity falls #stanford pines #stanley pines #meta #i've been around for so many years arguing in Ford's defense #so in this latest outbreak of discourse i've just been... so tired #it often feels not worth it to try to argue when you've made the same arguments so many times over the years #but there's always a new person popping up to disparage Ford who hasn't ever seen those arguments #you get tired of whack-a-mole after a while #but bravo to the folks still willing to tackle it!#long post

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rey-jake-therapist · 2 days ago

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As I rewatched episode 8 the other day and the scene where Estrid tells Isildur that her bethroded started building a house for them, that until then she believed his kindness was love and that she felt sick when she realized that the man she loves now is standing before her, I couldn't help but think of Galadriel, Sauron and Celeborn. And I think it was wanted, because Estrid and Isildur's romance totally mirrors Galadriel and Sauron's.

We know how Galadriel felt about Halbrand/Sauron, and it's not platonic friendship. Even before we knew that Halbrand was Sauron, Morfydd Clark said that this man had changed her forever; that's just not something one says about a friend, at least not when referring to a scene that has very heavy romantic connotations (the Haladriel scene in the woods). Galadriel is just as much in love with Saurbrand as Estrid is with Isildur.

The one time that Galadriel mentions Celeborn, she describes their meeting as happening in a time of innocence ("We met in a glade of flowers. I was dancing and he saw me there.", "war was so far away then "). Celeborn was most probably Galadriel's first lover, and she was his. What she felt for him was certainly different than what she would later feel for Saurbrand. Don't get me wrong : I'm not saying at all that Galadriel didn't love Celeborn (I don't want this post to feed a ship war, to be clear), only that this love was certainly different, like.. Purer ? Because she was pure herself then, and so was Celeborn. When she meets Saurbrand, she has lost her innocence a long time ago and is not the same she-Elf who fell in love with Celeborn in a glade of flowers. This she-Elf would have probably not fallen for Halbrand, wouldn't even have considered him as more than a low-man who didn't deserve her attention.

Hearing Estrid say she felt sick when Hagen asked the gods to bless their love, made me wonder how Galadriel will feel when she and Celeborn build Lothlorien together, or how Sauron will feel when he builds his fortress of Barad-Dur, where he will find himself all alone.

I also wonder if Estrid will become Isildur's wife in the future (it's possible since said wife is left nameless in LOTR), or if he meets someone else while she stays with Hagen, both being haunted all their lives with what could have been...

#haladriel #saurondriel #galadriel #sauron #sauron x galadriel #galadriel x halbrand #trop #estrid x isildur #isildur #estrid #Trop meta #Celeborn

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courtingchaos · 3 days ago

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“My dad was a happy drunk.” The crackle of his inhale is right in your ear. “At least when he was still doing it regularly.” He holds the cigarette over for you to take. “I don’t know what he’s like now…like that.” He peters off for a moment, shimmying his shoulders across the old hardwood so one touches one of yours.

Laying oposite each other, heads in the crooks of each others necks, he glances over to see you staring holes through the ceiling.

“He never treated me like shit, not like that, like other kids. I can be grateful for that.” He takes the cigarette back from you when you hold it over his face. “It was after my mom died. It’s like he realized suddenly I could talk back and he forgot to treat me like a kid.” It’s his turn to stare at the ceiling while the ember dances around his words. “I was very suddenly his best friend. Always called me ‘pal’ but now? When he was home? It was like I was on the barstool next to him.” He’s not gonna cry about this. “I hated that shit.”

Another hand off, only this time he digs out his own smoke so you two can be in a haze together.

“So by the time I got to middle school, I didn’t have a dad, I had some guy who sometimes lived in the house with me.”

“Wait, you were living alone?”

He turns his head when you break your hours long silence, nodding as best he can while laying on the floor.

“Yeah. I didn’t move in with Wayne until ‘85.”

You stare at him for moment before turning back to face the ceiling.

“Anyways, it was a Fourth of July thing with some of his buddies. Someone forgot they were holding a bottle rocket and not a Roman candle and at the end of it all I had about half a head of singed hair.” He can remember the smell. Almost sour as the burnt strands crumbled on his shoulder and his dad has started laughing. Talking about near misses and being lucky but he hadn’t felt lucky. “Whole drive home he was trying to crack jokes and I wasn’t having it.” He takes a deep breath that makes the ember glow brightly. “I started crying and he told me to man up. I think he was sobering up, probably shook him to see me covered in soot.

“When we got home he took me into the bathroom and just shaved it all off. Didn’t put a fucking guard on it or anything. I don’t think I’d ever had hair that short, not since I was like…little.” He turns to stare at you then, eyes tracing the shell of your ear where your hair wisps around it in short curls. “He told me it was fine and that it looked better than before. Said the long hair made me look like a queer.”

That earns him a huff from you. One last puff of smoke into the ceiling before you stub out the butt into the ashtray near your elbow.

“I say all of that to tell you my opinion doesn’t matter. The people at work or the grocery store, it literally doesn’t matter.”

You spent the past two days crying about it but it seems your either over it or past the worst of it.

“If it upsets you, it upsets you and nothing I say is gonna make it better. I’m not gonna change your mind.” He holds his hand out across his chest and waits for you to grab it. “I’m sorry it didn’t come out the way you wanted, I know this keeps happening.”

“I didn’t think my hair meant so much to me.” You aren’t crying but the emotion weighs down your words, this he knows after years of practice.

“It’s okay that it did.”

“Feels stupid to cry over a bad haircut.”

He hums and shakes his head and doesn’t tell you it’s not stupid, you already know that. Simple things mean a lot, he knows that fickle game of attachment. He also knows that while his opinion does matter to you on some infinitesimal level, he doesn’t need to constantly remind you that it’s okay. He didn’t start a relationship with you over your hair. It’s just hair is something he’ll be able to say a few days from now when you finally start styling it and talking about a new product you bought. It’s a waiting game that he doesn’t mind waiting through, not with you. However he will remind you of one thing.

“Regardless, you’re still the prettiest girl I know.”

You laugh, something real but quiet, the first one in a few days. “Shut up.”

#My Work #My Fic #Eddie Munson Fic

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be-my-sunrise · 1 day ago

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1:40am || oh sion

pairings: idol bf!sion x fem!reader

genre: smut, fluff if you squint. minors pls dni

word count: 1,023

warnings: suggestive content, they're just kissing and groping each other lmao

a/n: ik i said i only write for dreamies, but i just physically CANNOT get this gorgeous man out of my head so i had to write something for him lmao. anyways i hope you enjoy!! thank you queen @jenoslutie for beta reading<3

tags: @wispyxjae i hope you like it teehee :3

It has been quite some time since you last saw Sion. He has been very busy with his schedule and album preparations, and he finally gets a day off today, so he invited you over to his dorm to hang out.

After lunch, you and Sion decided to watch a movie that he had been wanting to watch. At least that's what you were doing.

Both of you start making out passionately before you even know it. You should have known though, because Sion couldn't keep his hands to himself since you arrived. The two of you pull away after a while to catch your breath.

“I missed you so much,” you whisper.

“Me too, baby.”

Sion presses his lips against your jaw, leaving a trail of kisses down to your neck. You tilt your head to one side as he continues to pepper kisses.

“I miss having your body on mine and the way you feel around me.” He mumbles against your neck. “Fuck. I miss the way you taste.”

Sion slips one hand under your shirt, gently caressing your waist. A moan escapes your lips as he sucks on your sweet spot.

“I need you, baby. Right now.”

“No, we can't do this now. What if your friends come back early?” You let out a heavy sigh and pull yourself away from him.

“Come onnn~” Sion pouts, looking at you with pleading eyes. “We’re finally alone, and they won't be back any time soon.”

“I don't–” Sion cuts you off with a peck on your lips. “But, I–” He pecks you again.

“Please, baby.” Sion places his hand on your jaw and swipes his thumb on your bottom lip.

You lean into his touch and you can’t help but stare at his plump lips. Truth be told, you want the same thing as him. You were hesitant because you don't want his friends to walk in on you and Sion. Not again.

But, your body craves him. His touch. You need him. You lean forward and lock lips with him.

“Wait,” he mumbles against your lips and pulls away.

“This means yes, right?” He asks, making you giggle at the way his face lights up.

“Yes, baby,” you pause to climb onto his lap and put your arms around his neck. “Let’s make this quick, shall we?”

You let out a satisfied hum as your lips meet his once again. As the kiss gets more heated, you start grinding on his hardening cock, making him moan. Sion places his hands on your hips to guide your movements. You drag your hands down his chest and abs, feeling his toned muscles.

You tug on Sion’s shirt, signaling him to take it off. He understands the message and he quickly takes his shirt off in one swift motion, not wanting to part lips with yours too long. You squeal as Sion suddenly lifts you up to lay you down on the couch. He hovers over your body, resting one arm next to your head to support his own weight.

Your fingers find their way to his dark locks, pulling on the strands as he trails kisses down your jaw to your neck. A gasp escapes your lips as he bites the skin, leaving red marks all over your neck and shoulder.

Sion slips one hand under your shirt and makes its way towards your chest. He grips the soft flesh before pulling down the fabric covering your tits. You let out a loud moan as he continues sucking on your sweet spot while also playing with your nipple, rolling the sensitive bud using his thumb and index finger.

Just when you’re about to get to the good part, you hear feet shuffling at the front door. Sion’s head shot up upon hearing the familiar voices. The panic settles in when the two of you lock eyes, realizing who’s at the other side of the door right now.

Both of you scramble to sit up and fix your appearances. Sion puts his shirt back on and helps you cover the hickeys he left on your neck with your hair. You put a small pillow over his lap to cover his prominent boner just as the front door swings open.

“We’re home!”

You and Sion pretend to be watching the still-playing movie as Riku and Yushi walk into the living room.

“H-hey, guys! Back so soon?” Sion asks.

Riku sighs, “yeah, we’re a bit tired, so we decided to just get home.”

There’s a moment of silence and you silently hope that they won’t notice anything. Yushi clears his throat, breaking the awkward silence.

“Well, uhh, we’ll be in our rooms if you need anything.” He says as he walks towards his room with Riku following him closely behind.

You let out a relieved sigh when Riku and Yushi are out of sight. You share a look with Sion and burst into giggles.

“By the way,” your laughter stops when you hear Riku's voice. You turn to him, who's looking at you and Sion with a knowing look, waiting for him to finish his sentence.

“You know your shirt is inside out, right?”

Riku then walks away with a smirk on his face. Your eyes shoot to Sion's shirt and face-palm yourself out of embarrassment. Sion laughs out loud, throwing his head back against the back-rest.

Sion leans closer, speaking in a hushed tone. “Should we continue this in my room?”

“Hmm… Maybe. Only if you can keep quiet.”

“I think that's gonna be hard for you, baby.”

Sion looks at you with a smug expression. You raise your eyebrows, taking his words as a challenge.

“Okay, we're doing this now. Let's go.”

You get off the couch, pulling Sion along with you to go to his room. Yushi got out of his own room just in time to see you slamming the door to Sion's room close and lock it. He turns to Riku, who's standing in the kitchen. Riku sighs and walks towards him, patting him on the shoulder.

“Come on, let's just go to the dorm upstairs and play games with Jaehee.”

#be-my-sunrise #thea's writings #thea's fics #sion x reader #oh sion x reader #sion smut #oh sion smut #nct smut #nct imagines #nct wish smut #nct wish imagines

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igglemouse · 2 days ago

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Monday feels like the perfect day to make pancakes, banana pancakes, to be more specific! Then again, isn't every day perfect for pancakes? There's something about them, maybe it's the scent of them that fills the kitchen with a warmth only associated with morning, maybe its how soft they are and how, coupled with syrup, they just melt and fit perfectly on your tongue and aaaahhh...This new house with its spacious kitchen has brought a spark back into my cooking!

As usual, Pascal makes it over to the table for breakfast, a tradition at this point, but today there is something different. It's his clothing, he's all dressed up, buttoned up, crisp pants, no sweat. Did he miss his morning workout? Is he sick? Injured? I won't press, maybe he's finally realized he pushes himself too hard, no, I have something else on my mind.

"I was thinking about our last convo," I start hesitantly, ignoring the temptation of my pancakes for a moment. "It might be a sooner rather than later kind of thing." I'm surprised to say it because the thought of having another baby feels overwhelming. I mean, my Watcher, it's a lot to go though. Does it get better the second time? Am I really ready to submit my body through that again?

"Oh, Frida," he says just before taking another bite of his pancake. "I see that look in your eyes," he teases.

"What?!"

"That look!" he teases again, a grin growing on his face. "All you have to do is ask!" Oh, that's what he means. I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks already.

"Pascal, I'm serious!" I shoot back because I am! This is a serious subject! "I just mean...if Flora is to have a little brother or sister, shouldn't they be close in age?" That's better for them, right? Allows them to bond a little better, I would think but I think by now Pascal is thinking more about the practice of making babies than the end result of it.

"Mmmhmm, they should..." See?

"Look! Ugh, nevermind!" I huff, giving up and waving away the now corrupted conversation we were having. "Do you even like your pancakes? You've barely touched them," I add, trying my best to steer it away from him and his morning wood.

"Oh, yeah," ugh, that grin is back on his face, I can't help but giggle. "No condoms moving forward then, right?"

"Pascal!" I blurt out with my fork clanking against the plate.

Alright alright, I wouldn't admit it at the table but I'll admit it to you now. I'd like another. Maybe just one more! My little Flora can't be an only child, she seems to enjoy attention a little too much but isn't that just all babies? They need so much love! Still, two feels right.

But for now, the rain is going to keep me inside which gives me a perfect chance at just sitting down and working on my socials. This is what I do now. Promote my social media, push my videos, and just try to grow my audience little by little. My first video does alright, nothing amazing or viral but a solid debut. It gives me enough hope to continue and to maybe think that there might be a future here for me with this. At least I won't have to worry about some old man trying to ruin my business.

And yes, I do spend some time working out because, I can't help but worry about my weight. I know I shouldn't, it's completely normal to add weight after creating a complete human being, but the thoughts creep into my head anyway. I just worry about Pascal out there playing a road game in some faraway city and at some night club before a pair of boobs gets put into his face and...yeah, let's end that thought right there. I want to look my best, not just for him, but for me too!

But maybe I've pushed myself too hard today because now I've broken out in a rash! Red little splotches all over my arms and legs and just everywhere! Not a good look. I don't imagine this is attractive but thankfully there's medicine for it.

By the way, I called Anthony. Or at least I tried. I'm not sure why but I felt like he should at least know. He'll never meet her, that I'm sure of, but I don't know, I feel like my grandparents, my mama, you know, people I've never known, would tell me that I should. It's fair for him to know. Just to know. It feels like if I don't tell him it'll be something I'll feel slightly guilty about for the rest of my life. If what Candela said is true, he saved my life, whether he meant to or not, so he should know that I'm doing well.

But the joke was on me, he wasn't available. A guard or someone, don't know, answers instead and asked if I wanted to pass along a message and in that moment I froze. I told him never mind and he told me times in which Anthony had phone privileges if I wanted to call back. I don't think I will now. The moment has passed. Maybe its just fate that he'll know.

Back to happier things, like making dinner for my new familia or at least trying to. Pascal made it a little harder because he walks right into my kitchen in nothing but his swim trunks which is incredibly distracting. I pause mid chop just to stare, wondering what he was up to and then figuring this is probably the continuation of our conversation from this morning. He's trying to tempt me! I can't help but chuckle because its both cute and endearing.

"Mi querido, what are you wearing?" I challenge, rising an eyebrow as he turns to face me which only makes it worse because I've always been a fan of his body and suddenly I'm reminded why I did fall for him. His goofy charm and his smile!

"My swimwear!" he announces with pride. "We do have a little pool and I wanted to check it out!"

"Must you walk around in it?"

"I think you should walk around in yours a little more!" He fires back with the cheesiest wink I've ever seen in my life, it brings a reluctant smile to my own face.

"I-I don't know! I'm still a little hefty, I might not even fit my old stuff. Maybe a one piece or something like-"

"I'd love you all in one piece!"

Ah well...well, we will eat dinner first and maybe we'll see about that later.

But unfortunately, after our dinner, little Flora had her own demands which naturally comes before my own desires. So, instead of spending some intimate time with Pascal I was called to feed her and change her diaper and just play with her and let her know that she is loved! Just the things a mama must do!

But while Frida was attending to the needs of little Florencia, Pascal was attending to his. Every day his Social Bunny account would light up with interest, messages from a variety of different women, all thirsty for his attention. They knew he wasn't single and knew he was a father, but for some, that made him all the more enticing.

Usually, Pascal ignored them, thinking of them more as annoyances and distractions, but one in particular stood out to him. Sofia Prats, a model and aspiring actress located in Del Sol Valley. She was a striking beauty with dark hair that seemed to contrast perfectly with pearlescent skin and a full smile that sat perfectly before observant eyes. She carried herself with a bold kind of confidence, a woman who was used to getting her way. She had sent him a few messages, wondering if they could meet. Pascal didn't answer, not yet at least, but he did spend some time scrolling through her Simstagram feed and enjoying her pictures...

Frida Varela - Next Episode 9.3

#The Sims #The Sims 4 #ts4 #Sims #Sims 4 #sims legacy #my sims #generation 1 #soot #sims of our time #frida varela #pascal alcocer #anthony varela #sofia prats #florencia alcocer

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ckret2 · 2 hours ago

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Above: Bill showing off the messed up things he can make the Nightmare Realm do.

Below: Bill literally an hour later.

Here, have a fic. In which the gods try to figure out what to do about the new omnicidal chaos god who would rather destroy reality than politely exit Dimension Zero so they can arrest him for burning down multiple dimensions.

This is part 7 of a ???9-ish??? part plot about the Axolotl meeting this friendly harmless innocent little triangle in the wake of the Euclidean Massacre and then getting repeatedly slapped in the face with all the atrocities Bill's committed. If you want to read and/or look at the pretty art on the other parts, here's one, two, three, four, five, and six.

####

There was fresh fear amongst the many gods crowded around the site where Dimension 2 Delta had once stood.

The perimeter around Dimension Zero's turbulent border had pulled back dramatically, leaving a barren no man's land between the police cordon and the triangle's territory.

The fires in the 1D and 2D universes, for a moment so close to doused, had returned with a vengeance—and by the sound of some chatter amongst the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force agents, they suspected it was a literal vengeance. The storm cloud heading the ATTF operations had needed to personally visit the burning dimensions again—see which previously contained fires had reignited or jumped their firelines, and see which new fires had broken out so that it could redistribute the available firefighting forces appropriately.

The Time Giant had gone along to inspect the damage and figure out which dimensions could be repaired—provided they ever stopped the fires—and which would ultimately needed to be rebuilt.

And anyone who wasn't actively engaged in trying to control the fires was still trying to process the newest crisis: the leader of the mortals who'd fallen into Dimension Zero wasn't a fellow mortal victim, but an out-of-control new god with the power to move and burn entire universes who didn't seem to understand that he was about to destroy all of reality, himself included.

VENDOR had finally run out of excuses to avoid the media, and was now reluctantly holding an impromptu press conference with the reporters on the scene—and THEY looked so miserable the Axolotl nearly felt bad for THEM. He overheard THEM blurt out, probably far louder than intended, "I will not be remembered as the god who was in charge of the emergency response efforts that got the entire multiverse destroyed!" and he wondered whether VENDOR remembered either that THEY weren't in charge or that, if the multiverse were destroyed, THEY wouldn't be remembered at all. No one would be.

From the conversations he overheard, the Axolotl got the impression that no one, even the most senior ATTF agents on the scene, had ever dealt with a threat to the multiverse this dire. No one knew what to do about the triangle—least of all the Axolotl, who was only here because everybody still hadn't realized that he wasn't supposed to be.

So while everyone else was arguing, privately panicking, or actually doing something useful, he was floating at the cordon holding people away from Dimension Zero.

####

There were a few stars and rocky bodies on the wrong side of the cordon. The triangle's sun—the star that had once shone down on his 2D world before it burned down (before he burned it down)—was still out there. Once again, it was falling toward Dimension Zero.

He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then swooped under the cordon, scooped up the sun, and carried it back to the safe zone. He opened a portal to his tank, slid the star inside, then shook out his forefeet and inspected the burns on the soft skin. He'd been playing with a lot of fire today.

"Axolotl!"

The Axolotl looked up. He wasn't surprised by the familiar sight of his Oracle's soul emerging from the aether—she'd already come by once to but he was frustrated by it. One more person he had to protect in this mess.

"Something happened—"

"I know." He quickly curled around her, doing his best to shield her from the other gods in case any of the nearby arguments escalated—or the triangle decided to lash out at the third dimension again. "You shouldn't be here now. It isn't safe."

Of course, she ignored him. She wouldn't be the kind of person he picked as one of his Oracles if she weren't the kind of person who ignored gods' warnings. "Our seers heard the whole sky scream in pain, and then saw a vast eye—"

"Over there." He lifted his tail out of the way just enough to let her see the border of Dimension Zero.

No matter where you looked at Dimension Zero, that golden fleck of light seemed to twinkle in the center of your field of vision. The Oracle squinted. "The little flat yellow creature?"

"He was bigger earlier."

"What happened?"

"A showdown with the cops."

The Oracle paused as she tried to reconcile that with the seers' apocalyptic vision. "Who won?"

"He did."

"Good." And she wouldn't have been the kind of person the Axolotl picked for his Oracles if she didn't say that, either.

On most days, he'd agree with her. But after seeing what the triangle could do—knowing what he would do... The cops weren't the answer, but he had to be stopped somehow.

(He could feel the triangle's eye on them. Was he listening to them now?)

"He's shaped like a triangle. Is he connected to the blind seer's final vision?"

The seer who'd seen the sky burn and collapse into a blinding triangular light. "He is. He's the last survivor of the first dimension to burn. His people called him the Magister Mentium; he was a seer to his people, too."It tore the Axolotl's heart to say more than that—but he wouldn't mislead his Oracle. "Somehow, he started the fire."

Before the Oracle could ask him how, a faint voice yelled, "Hey!"

They turned toward Dimension Zero. The triangle was on the border, looking straight at them. He shouted again, "Hey! You with the pink freak!"

"What?"

"How many fingers do you have!"

She gave her four arms a puzzled look. "Twenty!"

"Wow!" The triangle sounded genuinely impressed. "What do you use 'em all for?!"

"Normal finger things?" She asked, "Why's your hat so skinny?"

"What hat?"

She paused. "Never mind!" She turned back to the Axolotl and whispered, "Is the hat part of his body?"

"I don't think so. He didn't have it the last time I saw him."

She kept trying to look at the triangle until the Axolotl curled around her to stop her staring. "That's the seer who's destroying universes?"

He wanted to make excuses for the triangle. He wanted to defend him. "Yes."

She was silent a moment before asking the question she'd really come for: "Is my world in danger?"

"Not yet. Not directly. But... if he isn't stopped, it eventually will be," the Axolotl said. "He's fallen into the center of the multiverse and is trying to build a kingdom there. If he fails, it will collapse and kill him; but if he succeeds, it will destabilize and kill all of reality."

"Wh—?!" She gave him a look of disbelief. "But—that doesn't make any sense! He loses either way!"

"I know."

"So why is he endangering everyone for nothing?!"

"I don't know."

"I'm going to find out."

"Wait—!"

The Oracle's astral projection could be very slippery when she wanted; she was already past the Axolotl and flying toward Dimension Zero. "Hey! Magister Mentium! I want a word with you!"

"Don't cross the border between dimensions!" The Axolotl clutched the police tape in both forefeet as he watched.

After five minutes of shouting and death threats, the Oracle flew back to the Axolotl.

"I think he's stupid," she said.

He smiled sadly. "I fear it's something much worse than that."

He had the skin-crawling feeling that the triangle was staring at him. He forced himself not to turn and find out for sure.

####

The Time Giant was the first to return from the frontlines of the fire. She joined the Axolotl next to the police tape, muttered something about needing to pick up some "stuff" from "a couple centuries ago," snapped out a length of time tape, and returned three seconds later in a different shirt with sleeves rolled up and carrying a folding table, a bundle of blueprints, and an energy drink. She unfolded the table in the void, spread out her blueprints on it, chugged her drink, hunched over the table, and ignored the rest of the universe.

The Oracle gazed up at the Time Giant and instantly fell in love. The Axolotl politely pretended he didn't notice.

VENDOR was the second to float over—slumped forward, lights dim, looking like THEY were returning from a war zone rather than a press conference. Heaving a weary sigh, THEY positioned THEMSELF next to the cordon with the Axolotl and Time Giant; which was the point at which the Axolotl realized he'd accidentally formed a club of people who didn't want to be in charge of this mess but were. "Any change?"

The Time Giant grunted distractedly. The Axolotl said, "No." The Oracle said, "I accidentally taught the triangle an obscene gesture."

VENDOR turned toward Dimension Zero.

The triangle sprouted two extra arms and gleefully pantomimed something filthy.

VENDOR turned away from Dimension Zero and sighed even more heavily.

When the storm cloud drifted over, VENDOR said, "Go away unless you have good news." The arrogance had drained out of THEIR voice; what little pomposity THEY had left was a thin mask over exhausted fear. (The Axolotl could sympathize; he felt the same dread weighing low in the pit of his stomach.)

Before the storm cloud had left to check on the other dimensions, it had still been hailing in fear; by now, it had whipped itself up into a furious blizzard. It had to stay back from the group to keep from freezing them too, and even at that frost still crept across VENDOR's glass and the Axolotl had to shield the Oracle from the cold. "Well," it said stiffly, trying to rein in its rage and sounding even colder as a consequence.. "Almost all the new fires have already been contained. I'll say one thing for that—" It paused as it mentally glided over what was no doubt a long and creative list of insults, "—guy; at least he's making an effort to be more careful of where he kicks the neighboring dimensions so the damage doesn't spread as fast." It sighed a chilly, angry gust of wind. "Unfortunately, he's gotten more aggressive about kidnapping mortals from other dimensions. He's narrowed his focus, but he's kicking ten times harder."

"That wasn't very good good news," VENDOR whined.

"Sorry. Fresh out," the cloud said. "Fact is, if we don't stop him, we're toast."

Nobody was surprised by that. VENDOR asked, "How much time do we have?" THEY turned to the Time Giant.

While VENDOR had gotten pathetic and the cloud was seething with barely-restrained rage, the Time Giant had only grown more stoic. Her face was set in a stony mask; her jaw was tight enough that she could bite an airplane clean in half. Since she'd come back, she hadn't glanced up from the stack of blueprints she'd retrieved.

It took her a moment to realize the question was directed toward her. She jerked her head up as if ready to snap at whoever had interrupted her; but caught herself as she processed the question. "Uhh, pffff..." She squinted toward the horizon of time, face scrunched up to expose her teeth. "If we get the fires put out? Few years. Couple decades at the outside. Reckon it's more than enough time to jury rig something that'll keep reality propped up while we get in a construction crew to set up a new Big Bang, no problem."

The Axolotl whispered reassuringly to the Oracle, "A couple of decades to us is over a thousand of your people's generations."

"A couple of decades," VENDOR muttered, voice rough, a few stray moons rattling around behind THEIR product dispenser door. "This multiverse was built to last an eternity. To think it could be destabilized enough to collapse within a couple of decades, all because of one..." THEY fell silent. They could all feel the steady staring eye watching them from deep within Dimension Zero.

The cloud said, "And if he doesn't let us stop all the fires?"

She pursed her lips, brows knit tightly. "If the fires keep spreading and that triangle keeps destabilizing things, the whole thing could collapse in a week tops."

"That's still a few years for your people," the Axolotl told the Oracle optimistically.

She swatted his paw. "Aren't you powerful enough to, just—stop him? You're gods." They must have seemed undefeatable to her—living beings the size of mountains and vast world-moving machines and forces of nature. That was how the gods always looked to mortals.

But unfortunately, when you got right down to it, they weren't much more than weirdly big people.

VENDOR muttered, "Well, I don't have the authority to call in the kind of reinforcements that can take that thing down." (More cautious now that THEY realized this wasn't a threat THEY could effortlessly crush in THEIR gears, weren't THEY.)

The cloud said, "The Apocalyptic Threat Task Force can make that a call that in any situation that poses a credible threat to multiversal safety and security, but..." It asked the Axolotl and Time Giant, "Just how strong do you think he is?"

"Could be omnipotent," the Time Giant said. "Wouldn't be surprised."

The Axolotl reluctantly nodded in agreement. "He doesn't understand what he's doing yet, but he's already manipulating the fabric of reality with his bare hands."

VENDOR made a tiny noise like a malfunctioning motor at that.

Grimly, the cloud said, "I could put in a call to HQ. We have a few higher dimensional types on call. Creator gods and the like. They're probably the only ones who'd stand a chance against an omnipotent god that can make a whole universe do a barrel roll. But if we aren't sure we could win the fight, and fast..."

The assembled group of gods cast a nervous look at the gaping hole into Dimension Zero.

The triangle, smaller than one of the Axolotl's fingertips, stared back from the border. He solemnly spread his arms wide. "You wanna go? Come at me."

They did not want to go. They turned away.

"Bad idea," the Time Giant said. "If the laws of physics are unstable, even the strongest god wouldn't have an advantage. It'd be like putting the fastest sprinter in the multiverse on a racetrack without gravity. And since he's the one running the physics, he could practically hand himself a win."

"And on top of that, any fight down there risks knocking the multiverse down," the cloud said. "It's too dangerous. We can't risk attacking him."

"We'll just have to hope he doesn't attack us first," VENDOR muttered.

The Axolotl's stomach flipped. He knew something they didn't. "Actually, I... don't think he can."

All attention was on him. VENDOR said, "Please tell me you have some actual good news."

"I don't know." He wasn't sure whether it would make any difference. All he knew was that he felt like he was betraying the triangle. He lowered his voice to what for him passed as a whisper. "But, I think... I think his power is limited to the borders of his realm." As he said it, he knew he was telling the truth. Some beings got like that when they were old enough; they could just feel when something was right. "He can't impact anything that isn't touching his dimension. He's essentially harmless to the rest of the multiverse. The only real threat is... well." He gestured helplessly at the frothing chaos. "The fact that the dimension is like that."

Voice hushed, the cloud said slowly, "Hold on. So... he's trapped in the crawlspace beneath reality."

"No—he's trapped in the 'dream realm' he's built inside the crawlspace. He can drag the realm out with him, but... we saw what happens when he does that." They'd all heard how existence had howled in pain. They'd seen how even the triangle had been scared enough to stop.

"So we have no hope of fighting him in his bunker—but if we drag him across the threshold... the fight's over." THEY turned to the two cops THEY'd been leading around all day.

The crab and burning wheels tried very had to look like they hadn't noticed the conversation at all.

VENDOR and the cloud exchanged a frustrated glance. Sarcastically, the cloud muttered, "Yeah. Easy."

The Axolotl said, "I'm not even sure we can drag him out of his bunker. I don't know if he won't leave, or physically can't leave—just that his power stops at his borders."

VENDOR sighed, "So we're back where we started."

The Time Giant smacked her mess of blueprints, making the other gods start. "No we aren't! If his influence can't spread outside his dimension, then I've got a fix." She held up a thick binder. "It's a fiddly chrono-construction technique to shore up brittle dimensions. It can work as a stopgap measure to stop him from destabilizing any more dimensions." She looked at VENDOR. "It'll make a lot of extra work for the urban planning committee."

VENDOR's lights flickered off. The Axolotl could see the numbers on THEIR digital display as THEY slowly counted to ten. Then THEY turned their lights back on and said, with an air of forced calm, "All right. I don't think there is any getting out of this without extra work. Tell me the idea."

"Right now, all our dimensions are connected adjacent to each other—corner to corner and edge to edge. It's simple that way. But, if we restructure the dimensions parallel to each other, we can use the pressure of the outside dimensions to press in on the crawlspace and keep its contents in place. It's gonna be a mess. Forget about the Dimension 1, Dimension 2, Dimension 3 system we have right now; by the end of this we're gonna have Dimension 143 and Dimension M and Dimension 6.5 and Dimension -17 and imaginary number dimensions and quadratic dimensions..." She shrugged helplessly. "But if we can't get this bozo out, it might be our only option."

"Parallel universes? It sounds ridiculous." VENDOR let out a low moan of pain, "We'll have to restructure the whole multiverse."

"Yup. Probably."

"Everything's so nice and tidy now. A perfectly arranged planned community. Nice, straight, gridlike dimensions..."

"Parallel dimensions do have some potential benefits over adjacent dimensions," the Time Giant offered comfortingly. "Easier interdimensional travel—"

VENDOR grumbled, "Oh, I know, I know, Municipalitron's been pushing to experiment with parallel dimensions for the past two hundred billion years. He won't shut up about how it would benefit mass transit."

The cloud said, "All I care about is the multiverse surviving long enough to worry about mass transit."

The time giant said, "The biggest downside is that once we've completely closed up the crawlspace, when that dimension he's set up inevitably collapses, there's no easy way to get back all that energy and dark matter. If we ever decide to rip open a rift big enough to drain it out, it could take trillions of years if we don't want the flood to destroy the receiving universe. We might never clear out the rubble. But on the other hand, if it's sealed up well enough, it won't matter if the ruins are left to rot."

"What about the hostages?" the Axolotl asked. "Won't that trap everyone inside?"

"We'll have to leave manhole covers and maintenance shafts, obviously. Until the fabric of reality's finished unraveling, we'll have a chance to get them out," the Time Giant said. "Even that 'Magister' can leave if he decides to surrender himself. Assuming he's willing to leave his construction project behind."

If he could leave it.

VENDOR let a heavy whoosh out THEIR vents. "Balls. Very well, submit your proposal to the committee. I'll vouch for it. But I won't like it." THEY muttered, "Municipalitron's never going to let me live this down."

The storm aimed its sunbeam at the Time Giant. "Can't start construction as long as he's still starting fires and picking fights, though—can we? Unless you can build new dimensions on top of an active inferno?"

"N—Hold on." She squinted toward the future to check. "Nope. Though once I get down a fireproof foundation, we won't need to worry about it anymore. Got a trick called timeline splitting: you reformat a dimension so that the timelines fork infinitely, any time a choice is made. If he tries to burn 'em, they split: one timeline he burned and one he didn't. He'll just add more timelines and thicken the foundation every time he tries to attack the neighbors."

Horrified, VENDOR said, "I've been trying to pass an ordinance to ban timeline splitting for an eon."

"Has it passed yet?" the storm asked.

"No!"

"Great. Then that's our plan," the storm said. "We just need somebody to talk him down long enough to put out the fires and get the fireproof foundation in place." Its sunbeam turned toward the Time Giant. "Maybe if someone explains the stakes to him—?"

She shook her head, expression flat. "I'm a civil engineer, not a hostage negotiator. If he didn't get it the first time I laid it out to him, he ain't gonna get it the second time."

VENDOR asked the cloud, "Isn't the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force trained in talking down apocalyptic threats?"

"Yes, but no," the storm cloud said.

"What does that mean! Just... go up to that thing"—THEY tilted toward Dimension Zero—"and keep him calm."

"Are you kidding? I'm not suicidal!"

"This is your job, you're an apoc cop!"

"Apoc agent!" It raised its voice, "And talking down threats is not my speciality! I was sent because we thought this was a structural issue, not an actively malevolent entity!"

"Hey!" the triangle shouted. "Who are you calling malevolent?! Hey! Hey! Look me in the eye and say that again, I'll kick your base! I'm the most benevolent entity you've ever met!"

They wordlessly avoided eye contact with the triangle, scooted another solar system farther away from Dimension Zero, and lowered their voices again.

The storm cloud asked VENDOR, "Shouldn't this be your department? We're dealing with the possible genesis of a new god, and his first act was destroying a dimension and destabilizing reality. Sounds like politics to me."

Delicately, the Axolotl said, "I don't think THEY're the best choice."

"I'm certainly not. I handle the urban planning committee's budgeting," VENDOR said. "I deal with accountants, not terrorists! The only reason I'm here is to provide planets for those flat refugees, and I am sick of being at every humanitarian crisis in the multiverse just because I vend planets—"

The Axolotl had taken all of VENDOR that he could. He rounded on THEM, snarling, "Why are you even in politics, if it's not to help mortals? Is that not why you accepted the title of 'god'?" He flared his gills and his eyes glowed in rage. "Because it's why I did! I wish there was more I could do to help! And you, you can do more than anyone, and you're complaining about it?!"

VENDOR jerked back from the Axolotl. For a moment, the whole group was stunned silent. The Axolotl's eyes stopped glowing. He had to fight the urge to shrink back self-consciously from their staring. His Oracle patted his side comfortingly.

And then VENDOR's lights brightened. "You know how to talk to mortals like that. This triangle is just like the omnicidal monsters you represent every day." THEIR camera whirred as THEY sized him up. "If you want to help more, then why don't you?"

Ah. The Axolotl paused to swallow his anger.

He glanced down at his Oracle, who had been hiding in his shadow as she took notes and attempted to surreptitiously ogle the Time Giant. He said, "I think..."

She nodded. "I'll wake up." And then she faded out as her spirit sank back down to a lower plane.

The Axolotl tried to avoid looking at VENDOR—how could someone without a face look so smug?—and focused on the Time Giant. "What do you need me to get him to do?"

####

Biologically there was really no such thing as a god, in the same way that botanically there is really no such thing as a vegetable. Tomatoes are fruits; spinach is a leaf; carrots are roots; broccoli is an unfinished flower. The word "vegetable" just indicates the cultural role a plant performs in the kitchen.

The word "god" indicated the cultural role an entity performed in cosmology: a god was anything that people considered powerful enough to be worth worshiping.

A trillion trillion priests and philosophers and theologians and politicians had attempted to pin down a firm definition—but any definition was only ever valid to the worshipers who agreed it was right. The simple truth was that a being who had created a universe could be called a god, and a particularly impressive tree could be called a god, and a con artist who used clever stage magic to convince people he could teleport and raise the dead could be called a god, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to prove than any one of them "really" was or wasn't a god, no trait that universally separated the false gods from the true. If other gods thought you were a god, or if enough mortals worshiped you that the other gods had to bow to public pressure, that meant you were a god.

Different beings honored with the title "god" handled it in different ways. Some, unsurprisingly, developed a god complex. Some picked up debilitating scrupulosity in an effort to be perfect enough to be worthy of their people's worship, and their people developed scrupulosity in an effort to live up to their god's perfect example, and so it went in a vicious cycle until somebody finally got therapy. Some printed their titles on the party invitation flyers they tossed out on busy streets. For the Axolotl's part, he thought it was a useful designation to help with networking, but mostly it was a pain that meant he was put up on a pedestal for doing his job.

The Axolotl was a god of justice. Not the god of justice, but one. He held dominion over an abstract concept; over millions and billions of years, his words and decisions slowly, inexorably altered the idea of "justice" on a multiversal scale. Mercy, retribution, punishment, rehabilitation, equity, equality, fairness, and righteousness were like multicolored clays he could twist, squish, sculpt, and blend in his wet little salamandrine grip, permanently altering what those ideas meant to the mortals they affected.

Which was to say: he was a lawyer.

He was also known as a god of rebirth. Which was to say: he specialized in afterlife law. Before going into law he'd only been a psychopomp, but after having to escort too many despairing souls to afterlives he felt were too severe for their sins, he'd decided he wanted a say in where he took his souls. For a while, he helped clients get their charges reduced so they were eligible for a higher-tier reincarnation, or got their purgatorial sentences reduced. Though for a long time he'd steered away from damnation cases. He didn't always win—and those ones were too depressing to lose.

And then he'd thought he should be doing more. It wasn't enough for him to help his clients get the best option available under the system to which they were subjected; he wanted to change the system. He'd started pursuing bigger cases.

Now, he had a reputation.

For the past few centuries, he'd been working on a damnation case. He was defending a supervillain who'd developed a weapon that could slice open the fabric of spacetime so severely it could rip clean into another dimension—a mortal who'd committed an interdimensional crime against reality. The villain had died in the jurisdiction of an afterlife that had legalized eternal damnation.

Case law had long established that, unless other arrangements had been made premortem, the dead were to be sent to—in order—the afterlife of their birth, their death, or their choice, provided that the afterlife in question accepted them; and that they would be judged and sentenced by that afterlife's laws.

But if this villain had been extradited to his home world, the heaviest sentence he could have faced was a thousand years purgatory with an option for early reincarnation for good behavior after a hundred years.

So the jurisdiction he'd died in had summoned up some bureaucratic red tape to dismiss his native afterlife's extradition request, and he'd been sentenced where he'd died. Crimes against reality were often handled differently from regular sins; and the gods of vengeance in the domain where he'd died would love to see the courts declare that the gods who'd brought down a criminal against reality could call dibs on punishing him, rather than hand him back to his motherland. They hoped they would get away with it just for lack of anyone protesting the move. After all, everyone involved would much prefer that a mortal wicked enough to damage spacetime and obliterate multiple populated planets receive eternal punishment.

Everyone involved except the Axolotl.

Taking this case hadn't made him many friends. He didn't care; he had his principles. Let an interplanetary supervillain be dragged away to a foreign afterlife just so that he can be forced into damnation, and next it'll be a planetary dictator; let a dictator be dragged away, and next it'll be a murderer; and next it'll be a burglar; and next it'll be a jaywalker that a psychopomp has a personal grudge against. If the Axolotl could establish that even the most undeserving mortal imaginable still deserved the right to be sentenced in his home afterlife, then he could ensure that everyone less evil received the same right.

If he had anything to say about it, in two or three trillion years he'd see eternal punishment outlawed completely; but untilthen, he was not going to sit idly by and let this flagrant abuse of interdimensional law become the new meaning of justice! He would get that supervillain out of eternal damnation, personally escort him to his native afterlife, and see him reincarnated on his own home world; and mark his words, he would rain so much bureaucratic hell on the judges and psychopomps that had let this abuse of justice take place—he would wreak such vengeance upon the vengeance gods who had tried to claim his client—that no god would dare keep a soul from its rightful afterlife ever again, or he wasn't the Axolotl!

All of which was to say:

Yes, unfortunately. This triangle was like the omnicidal monsters he represented every day.

And so he was appointed hostage negotiator.

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 7 of a probably-9-part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. I'll be posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl almost fucking die.

It's ALSO chapter 61 Part Seven of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. So if you wanna read more of me writing Bill, check it out. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a one-shot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: okay THIS is now probably the least cosmic-horrifying chapter of this arc. Which is a necessary interlude, because NEXT CHAPTER is the big climax woohoo!

Even if not much horrifying happens this chapter, I like the worldbuilding in it. The section on what being a god of justice means to the Axolotl was one of the first things I wrote for this arc.)

#(Dimension Zero doesn't actually look like in the art above btw.)#('Then why did you draw it like that?' because it was way easier than figuring out how to draw it accurately and i'm on a deadline.)#(the weirdmageddon imagery would make it instantly recognizable—)#(—and save me from figuring out how to draw a surface that simultaneously looks spherical while being too vast to see its curvature)#the axolotl #gravity falls axolotl #bill cipher #gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher #(this chapter is barely edited because i couldn't be assed lmao)

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