#can i survive with what i have in my heart? do i have to distort what i make in order to survive?

[seahdalune]

ahh, i got swept up in internet drama again. i promised myself not to get worked up against something unless i looked into things and know what i'm talking about.

the whole, Palworld thing is really weird to me... ok, Pokemon is an AAA company at this point so they do need a push from somewhere to maybe start doing better. ok, the main anti-Palworld argument of "Palworld steals assets and uses ai" is said to have no evidence to back it up. ok, the game... seems to actually have thought put into it, even if the game feels very.... um, call it uninspired, to me?

but like, man, it kinda sucks that that's the thing that gets attention?

i 'unno. i mean, the reputation of Palworld, and it still getting attention in spite - no, because of, actually - the controversy... well, is this what people want? do people want a game that challenges the monster-collecting formula that Pokemon took spotlight in for several years? or do people want Pokemon "clones"? is it worth it to build up a game from the ground up if that's what gets people's attention?

will it be worth it to make something with passion when all that seems to "work" these days are things that are made from.... i don't know, irony?

i saw a post, that said something like, "here are monster-collecting games that you can play instead of Palworld!", and i just think, "man, if people wanted to challenge Pokemon, why didn't they just go and play these instead of whining about Pokemon for the nth time?"

maybe the reason is, playing Yo-Kai Watch isn't funny as playing Pokemon with guns

i don't know how to word this man. i just feel sad right now, sorry.

[yeyinde]

touch starved reader with an oral fixation x kidnapper!Simon who’s all punishment and no physical affection? Please Simon just a little kiss? with tongues? :( (i just wanna make out with this man while my heart aches for him)

by Allah, you people are dogs. i will write the filth as usual.

DEAD DOVE, 18+ | dubcon. kidnapping. mean!Simon. dom!Simon. masking corporal punishment as affection. kissing. size kink, size difference. some thigh riding. degradation + humiliation (verbal). non-con pet play. marking (heavyyyyyy mentions of Simon biting you like a chew toy). choking. daddy kink (but in the awful, demeaning way). manipulation. forced affection. coersion. forced/manufactured dependency. brief mention of Simon stepping on your back to hold you down so he can whip you w a cat o nine tails. yanno. the usual Friday night.

idk. there's something so hot about you, completely naked, riding Simon's clothed thigh as he holds you up by your neck. tongue out, desperate for a kiss while he just mocks you the whole time.

It's survival. 

At first.  

A means of masking the innate horror of being stripped of your agency, your autonomy, by a man you barely even know. One you met once before (fate sealed), and now—outside of your apartment complex where he was idling by the foothold, smoking a cigarette as he leaned against the brick wall, head turned. Gaze narrowed as you approached. 

Waiting for someone, you assumed, thinking nothing else about the matter. 

Nothing else, except—

He looked familiar. You think you saw him before. He was staring at you. Hadn't stopped. Hasn't said a word, either. The silence was oppressive. Heavy. Your hands fumbled with the keys. Shaking. Trembling. 

He's pretty, you thought, suddenly. In the way car wrecks can sometimes be. Jarring and awful and hideous, but—

Mesmerising. 

Macabre. And that's what he is. Everything from the mask on his face (skulls, go figure), to the absurdity in his size, his width. The way space itself seemed to move around him, bending and distorting just to let him pass. His own gravitational pull. Magnetic. You feel it tugging on you as he pulls another lungful of smoke. Another. Another.  

(like an hourglass, a timebomb, almost. you wonder what will happen when it runs out—)

He gives you the creeps. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. A visceral sense of unease curdling in the pit of your belly as he keeps staring, staring. Eyes—crystalline under the broken headlamp, washout into crushed topaz—drilling into your back, sharp enough to flay skin. Everything inside of you says to run, but your key won't fit inside the lock. Won't—

Ever. 

And hindsight has always been a bitter thing, hasn't it? Cruel in her mockery. Had you known, then, that he wasn't a workman loitering by the complex, waiting for a friend; or a low-level drug dealer casting webs into the plum hewn aether, it might have saved you. Might have. 

Maybe. Because he was there, waiting for you, all along. 

Life has a funny way of paying back good deeds. All it took for your life to crumble down around you, rubble falling off of a shaking mountain, was kindness. Was seeing a large man in the pouring rain, already drenched. Black clothing sticking to the granite contours of his body, and offering sanctum in the shape of a rusting umbrella you found at a thrift store for three dollars. 

(“here,” you said, chipper. All smiles. “i live just down the street, and you look like you need it more than i do. do you want it?”

and he—

he simply stared. stared. his eyes liquid, molten, as they carelessly dropped, roaming down the length of your body at his own leisure. leering. assessing. it was odd. weird, but—

he huffed, then. seemingly satisfied by whatever you measured up to in his head. his neck lulled back, and he gazed at you from down the crooked length of his nose, tucked neatly away under the thick band of a facial mask. skulls. how could you be so stupid? 

slowly, like he was trying not to startle a mare, his gloved hand reached out, curling thick fingers around the hilt of it. he tugged once. in your stupor, you forgot to let go. embarrassment flooded in. he huffed again, quietly amused, as you untangled your numbed fingers from the umbrella. 

in your distraction, he moved closer. smelled of ash, of mildew. sweat and stale cigarettes. there was something predatory in the way he slipped through space. a preternatural quiet. an eerie stillness. 

you hadn't realised he was there, looming, until he rasped out, “more ‘n you could ever realise, pet.”

and you're sure why you do it. did it. but your hand slips into your shopping bag, eyes widen. heart thundering in your chest. 

“are you hungry? i, uh, i just bought some apples, um—”

his eyes are lavascapes. shackles. chains. “i could eat.”)

And now—

Forced to play this strange cat and mouse of his where he treats you like soot on the bottom of his shoe, and you pretend that it's affection. Love. How godless.  

Protection, he calls it. 

("mine," he whispers, orison soft, into your ear. "ain't go' nowhere else to go, do you, pet? world's big. would eat a small thing like you up. safer here. wit' me. only me.") 

You wonder what he'd do if you told him the biggest danger here was the madness nestled inside your head, the one that sometimes made you look at him like he was your salvation instead of the warden holding the end of your leash in a firm hand. Unyielding—like everything he does. Is. 

Withholding, too. Everything must be earned. Nothing given. Nothing handed out. And you know that this is a ploy, a tactic. Subterfuge meant to chisel into your sense of self, dehumanise you. Turn you into a simpering, obedient little doll for him to play with as he wishes. You know this, and yet—

It's survival, you promise yourself as he tugs on the hook latched to your collar, testing it for weakness. Survival, when his hands—bare, bare; warmed skin against skin, you could just weep—brush over your throat, nails skimming goosebumped flesh as he wedges one, then two inside, hirsute knuckles tickling your pulse. It tightens the collar to near choking. Intentional, you know. He likes it when you beg—for air, for food, water, him. 

Vile man. Awful. 

(You want to roll on your belly at his feet.)

This cold, cruel touch lights a fire under your skin. It's been months since he's last done so. Always wearing gloves when he has to. Using paddles, belts, when you misbehave. Never his bare hand. Not anymore. 

(“m’hand is for good girls,” he slurred, words merging, meshing together, painted with exertion. He wedged his boot against the small of your back, holding you down, and cracked the end of a cat over your bare ass, thighs. Unbothered by your howls, your screams, as the whip bit into your skin. You've never so much as been hit as a child for misbehaving, and now, as an adult, you have a madman standing over you, introducing you to something called a cat o’nine tails—a favourite in the army, lovie. “bad girls,” his boot pressed down harder, heel digging into your spine. “Bad girls get the whip—”)

Bad. Bad. Because you tried to run, to leave him. He dressed you up, called you Mrs Riley, and you—

Ducked out the back door when he turned away for a second. 

Stupid. It was poor timing. A test. He set you up, measuring your loyalty to him, your commitment, and you failed. Failed. 

(“this is what ‘appens when spoiled little cunts get their way too much. they act out, don't they? bitin’ the ‘and that feeds. you'll learn soon enough, though—”)

Ghost—sir, sir (master, maker, god; you'll call him anything he wants if he touches you again)—pulls his fingers away, depriving you of his touch once more. And it's all so stupid. So fundamentally wrong, deplorable, but you follow. Needy. Whining for it in the back of your throat. 

It's been months. Months without touch. Without sensation outside of leather lashing across your thighs, your ass; harsh, gloved fingers digging into your jaw, braced against the back of your head, as you swallow down his cock in an effort to prove to him you've been good. So good. Can be good. His good girl. 

You need to touch him. Need his touch. Ache for it, for something outside of this nook he placed you inside of, denied the privilege of living upstairs with him after you tried to escape. 

You want to. Badly. Your fingers twitch. Ghost sees it. Hums. 

“Need somethin', pet?” 

Your mouth is dry. You swallow. It burns. It hurts. “Yes—”

“Yes, what?”

“Sir—”

Behind the mask he's yet to take off for you fully, only ever hitching it under his chin to devour your cunt whenever you've been good, his jaw tightens, the fabric bunching up. 

You reel back from the look of sheer displeasure etching harsh lines into the hollow gaps of his eyes. Heart thundering. Stomach churning. 

“Mas—” he cuts you off with a soft sigh. Marked with his irritation. “D—dad—”

Dad. A new one. Daddy. He didn't seem like the sort to be into this type of play, not with his sardonic, deadpan eyes. His mockery. His dessicated humour, awful and biting. You'd have sooner expected him to laugh at you—in that slow, deep hum he gives; a little chuff, full of condescension and jeer—than to get off on it. On you, kneeling between his legs with your chin braced against his palm, mouth open, tongue out, as he fucks into the tight clench of his fist, groaning as you beg daddy to give you a taste. 

It's gross. Disgusting. 

It's not done for anything else other than to humiliate you. To crush you under the heel of his boot—little bug—so that you will always know where your place is in this scenario. His little wife. Mother, mum—

He pulls on the leash, jerking you forward. Purrs, “good girl,” and then steps back, moving away from you. Cruel. Dismissive. You hate him, hate him—

(Need him so deeply. With every fibre of your being—)

You watch him as he goes, mourning the loss of his presence already, as he paces around your space, your cage. Broad shoulders barely fitting inside. Head ducking to avoid hitting his crown on the popcorn ceiling. It's strange seeing him here like this. Prowling. He usually comes when he wants you, when he needs to enact more merciless punishment on you for whatever perceived evils you committed (not greeting him with a kiss when he walked in, not letting him suffocate himself in your cunt when he had you sit on his face, not making him cum all over your face quick enough when you knew he had other engagements to get to—), or when he ruts, heavily, between your thighs, cold and detached. Seeking pleasure from your icy flesh, and giving nothing in return but white hot agony. 

Him here, idling in your presence, is revolutionary. 

“S–sir—?”

He hums, quiet. Sits in the chair as you gather the fragments of yourself littered on the ground. His mood is malleable, it seems. 

You push, fingertips sinking into the putty of his agreeable temperament. “Can I—”

You waver when his sharp eyes raze over your bare body—clothes are for good girls, after all—pupils sloshing over the edges, bleeding into midnight blue. 

Your body is a battlefield. Every inch of skin branded with his mark—pretty, thrawn rings of teeth tattooed in silver, haloed in black and red, desecrate your flesh: neck, collarbones, breasts, belly, thighs (a particular favourite of his), ass, mons; all bitten through, chewed up. It weeps when you move, has blood trickling down your skin. The cracking scabs make him coo, poor thing, all bloody fer me? and he licks at them, sucks, until only a pinkish wound in the mimesis of canines remains. 

Uprooted, turned into something new—

His chest expands when he settles his gaze on the sliver of space between your spread thighs. Concealed in tenebrous, hidden from his leering, lecherous view. He cocks his head, considers something unknown to you. His thoughts, his mind, worlds away. Untouchable. 

(only to bad girls, he’d snarled out when you asked why—)

“Testin’ my patience still?” He doesn't rip his gaze away from your cunt, speaks to it sometimes more than he speaks to you. “Thought this alone time might’a cleared your ‘ead.”

You flush. Embarrassment roiling through you. His displeasure is a palpable thing. Heavy. You hate the weight of it. 

“I need—I need you.”

Another toneless hum. “‘Course you do. Ain't got anyone else.”

He's awful. Hideous. You want to rip his tongue out of his mouth. “I—I want you. Please.”

Ghost doesn't answer. You stopped expecting him to a long time ago, his moods odd measures of ebbs and flows; passive and mild, cracking terrible, awful jokes as he strokes your back, hands riveted to your skin, and then biting and caustic the next. Pushing and pushing until you lash out, snap, so he has a reason to push you down, punished and smothered under his bulk, as he ruts into you like a beast, a man starved. Tells you it's for your own good. That you need him. Would be lost without him. 

Bludgeoning a hole into you wide enough for him to crawl inside of. Poisoning you from the inside out with the same nocuous rot that flows in his veins. 

Maybe that's been his agenda all along. Maybe. To make you want him as badly as he wanted you. Desperate, obsessive. Going so far as to follow you home, lost little mutt waiting in the shadows outside of your door until you threw him another bone. And when that didn't work, when the food stopped being enough—

He took you. Held you captive in his house deep in the wilderness. A place so endlessly green that you sometimes stare out at it—unfathomable sea of phalthos and jasper—and feel dizzy. You'll get lost out there—

just like he says. 

As he turns your obsecration over in his head, you wait, supplicant to this man as you rest on your knees. Pretty pet with a golden collar adorned in gems. 

Fitting, you find. With his head cradled against his thick knuckles, you can't help but shiver at the way he looks shrouded in the gloaming embers of a fading twilight. Leonine. A king perfectly at ease in this thick, caliginous atmosphere.

His eyes burn, magmatic, in the low light. Vats of endless ink. Black holes that will swallow you whole if you get too close. But he's poised. Contemplative. Assessing. 

And then grips the end of the leash tight in his other hand. Tugs.  

You obey the wordless command, crawling on your hands and knees to where he's spread out on the recliner. Laxed, dripping with a careless indifference as you wander to him, resting your chin on the spread of his knee. 

Looking up, up, at him, waiting. Wanting. 

There's so much of him—a fact that has been the catalyst to your downfall the moment you saw him standing under the awning; this massive creature. Thighs wider than the width of your body. Burly forearms. Broad shoulders. He's big. Indomitable. Thick, endlessly so. But there's a give to his body. Valleys of softness hiding corded muscle. Firm, but—

Your fingers sink into the soft give of his belly when you reach out, bracing against stomach. Pulling yourself further into the bracket of his spread thighs, inching closer to him. 

He meets your reverent stare, eyes liquid along his lower lash line.

“Thought you were gonna keep me waitin’ all night,” he muses, giving another pull on the leash. It destabilises you. Your nose bumps into his sternum, and you moan at the sting. 

There's a dissonance in the back of your head. A hairline fracture in the line that keeps a degree of separation between pleasure and pain. They meet against the crack in the divide, merging into a abysmal polyphony conducted by his hand. 

He watches, amused, as you whimper, sniffing harshly against the burn. It's not bleeding, and not broken—small mercies, you suppose—and you let it simmer into a dull ache as you slowly clamber into his lap.

Ghost leans back as you settle, greedily taking in the sight of your thighs stretched wide over his leg, cunt pressed, tight, against the rough scrape of his jeans. The touch burns. He hasn't touched your pussy in weeks—

“C’mon,” he urges, hand spanning the width of your lower back. Coaxing. “Show me ‘ow good you can be.”

It's all the permission you need. Slowly, slowly, your hips start to gyrate, dragging your slit over the coarse material. The friction is agony. You need more—

He draws his other hand up, curls it around your neck, forcing your head back, back. You gasp, staring at him, dizzy, from down the slope of your nose. The clasp of the collar digs into your skin. It hurts. It's too much. 

you don't want him to stop. 

His hand is huge. It spans the entire length of your neck, thumb to your pulse, pinky grazing the hollow of your throat. It forces you to lift your chin higher just to let him fit.

He likes it, too, you know. His eyes darken as he takes in the sight of his bare hand, scarred and thick; dusted with a cropping of fine hairs along his scabbed knuckles, sitting against the whole of your throat. Swallowing you up. Can feel how much he enjoys the sheer depth between your sizes when his cock twitches, stiffening more

The look on his face is appraising, anatomising. There's a cold measure of distance in his gaze. A barren polynya. You want to cross it. Chart these untamed lands until they're deeply ingrained within your being. Cimmerian effigy burning to keep you warm. 

It's survival, you think, and arch into the palm of his hand. 

He holds you like a doll. One hand on your lower back, pressing your cunt to thigh. The other tightening around your throat. Bare skin against bare skin, and oh, you could just cry—

But this is not what you need. What you want. And he knows. He always does. Knows the inside of you like it's written down—inked on paper. Thumbs through the makeup of you, chapter by chapter, until no mystery remains. 

“Tell me what you need, pet. Beg for it.” 

“Let me—” his hands tighten, choking the air from your throat. Crushing your collar against your neck. “Lemme—kiss you, please, please—”

Tighter. Tighter. The world around you swims under a thin ocean. Phosphenes swim, untethered, in your periphery, ghosting along the curve of his shoulders. He might kill you yet. Keeping going, going, until those brittle, bird-like bones in your neck snap—

You'd let him, you think, muscles falling lax. Submissive. Just the way he says he likes even though you know he fucks you harder, touches you more, more, when you act out. Misbehave. 

“Kiss me?” He taunts, words abrasive. Strident. Scrubbing hard against your skin. “Ain't that jus’ the sweetest thing I ever ‘eard.” 

You burn, blister. “Please—”

“Reckon I ought to. Kissed your pretty cunt ‘fore I even kissed your lips, huh, pet?” 

Your chest folds over itself. Stomach knotting. Balling tight. Unease is a razor blade scraping your nerves. 

“Simon—”

“Ah, ah—” his hand tightens. Vicious. Chiding. “You ‘aven’t earned the privilege of sayin’ my name, ‘ave you? Cheeky thing. Might ‘ave to take a cane to you next.” 

“No, no, no—! I'm—”

“Sorry?” He mocks, cocking his head. Condescension drips from the corners of his eyes. 

“Please, sir—”

“Dad is gettin’ tired of this attitude of yours, pet—” his fingers dig into your skin, hard. Biting. A warning, you know. The blunt press of a blade to your jugular. But it thrums along the suture line to your desire, a wellspool of murk coiling low in your guts. You throb, cunt clenching down around nothing. Achingly empty. “Thought we got rid of it this time ‘round. Learned our lesson.”

The words are frank, prosaic. Had you any sense of self still malingering in the back of your head, you might have struck him for the blatant disrespect. But as you struggle to reach for it, pawing around in the vacuous abyss for any fragment of who you were before this, before him, you know—without any doubt—that none exists. Nothing. He’s too ingrained in your marrow, hewn into your skin. Copper sutures holding his filament within you. Cradled between your thighs, nestled in the rotting vacancy of your heart. 

He knows you. Every part—

“We did—we did, da—daddy, please—” 

It’s shallow. Muffled, like he’s trying to swallow it down, but you feel it rumble through his broad chest. A guttural sound. A groan. Drenched in pleasure, in want. So thick, you could almost taste it. 

He hides his need under a layer of derision. 

“Such a needy thing, ain't you? Desperate little slag like you wouldn't last out there, would you?” 

His hand digs into your hip, pushing you off of his thigh. Eyes skewering into the wet stain on his trousers. A huff spills out—the sound a near perfect mimicry of crushing charcoal in your hand. 

“No. You'd be eaten alive. Torn to pieces. World's too big for somethin' like you.”

Mindless, dazed, you nod. Arching into him. The leather leash snaps against your chest. “Yes, yes—”

His cock presses into your thigh, hard, fat. Your mouth waters. Drool dribbles down your chin. 

He smells of tinder when he leans in close, blood drenched words biting into your skin. “messy today, aren't you? Be lost without me. Tha’s why you wear a collar, isn't it?”

Pitifully, you nod. Eyes full of tears. Each word is a bludgeon into your resolve. Into your sense of self. 

But it earns you his affection, and his thumb presses into the corner of your mouth, unhinging your jaw until it falls open, lax. He holds you like that, mouth lax with his hand still around your neck. The other lifts away from your lips, goes to the thick band around the bridge of his nose, slips inside. 

There's no buildup to it. No lingering sense of anticipation. Practical, detached, he merely tugs it down, and lets it snap under his chin. 

Your breath is punched out of your lungs at the sight of him. Barefaced. Scarred. His nose is crooked; a jagged hook with scar tissue delineating the spots where it's been broken too many times. His lips are—

Full. 

Mangled. 

Scars run in thick slashes over them, denting the flesh in places. Burn marks line his pale flesh. Charcoal rubs into his eyes, highlighting the whites of his lashes against smeared soot. 

He's—

Pretty. 

Like a car crash. Calamity. The broken remains of a town after a hurricane, a tornado, ripped it apart. Ugly, brutal. His face looks like it's been mauled by a bear, a tiger. Scarred and hideous, and—

You shiver. His eyes drop, landing on your own lips. The soot on his brow flutters down, lands on his eyelashes when he lifts his brow up mockingly. Derision curdling an awful smirk on the corner of his mouth. Crooked. Like him. Like his teeth. His nose. His boxy jaw. His lips—

You kiss him. 

Can't help yourself, really. There's a pull. Gravitational. Magnetic. You need, need, to taste him. To quench this ache in your jaw that makes you want to wrap your tongue around something, play with it between your teeth. Soft and sweet—

Ghost's lips are plump beneath yours. The thick scar tissue is almost velveteen when it glides over your bottom lip. You moan into it, into the feeling; victory—however pyrrhic—swims like mercury in your veins. Finally. 

And he doesn't kiss you back. Doesn't make any effort to reciprocate at all, but he's not tense beneath you. Not stunned. Or reluctant. He’s pliant. Malleable. Agreeable, willing to let you devour his mouth, his taste, as much as you want. Doting. Letting you spoil yourself on him. With him.

Because you need him, don't you? 

Like the air you breathe. The food he gives you—apples, always, on rainy days; salmon and rice in a pretty bowl with your name etched into the porcelain—and the attention, the affection—

(suck my cock, pretty girl. don't make me put a gag on you—deeper, you can take it, can't you? take my fat cock all the way up inside your sweet little cunt—my pretty girl—)

—it’s all so divine. 

His hands on your body, your throat, spasm. Once. Just once. Against your leg, his cock twitches. Leaks prespend into the demin. You rut against his thigh, aching for it. Whimpering—

And then he's groaning into the kiss, snarling out your name until it wedges between your lungs, syphoned in from his scorching breath. Another brand in the shape of him. 

Ghost kisses the same way he eats—messy, sloppy; all teeth and tongue, and full pretty lips. Clumsy, like no one taught him how to properly hold his silverware and he's trying to mock what he saw on television. Brumish. A broken, contemptuous pastiche of sumptuosity. A starving dog, snarling around its plundered morsel. Protective. Possessive. 

It coils around you. Thick, smothering. 

He sucks your tongue into his mouth, catching it between his teeth. The sting brings tears to the corner of your eyes, and when you pry them open, you find him already staring at you (always, always, always—), lidded. Heavy pools of desire shaded in the brume of a winter dawn. A bonfire flickering in the distance of a whiteout. Sanctuary from the cold—

He seems to catch himself. Expression flickering. Warbling around the edges. It closes off in a blink. He pulls back. Locks into the ashlar veneer of this indifference he wears like a suit of armour. 

But you saw it. It was there. Within reach—

“Need me, don't you?” He drawls, timber a needlepoint between cruelty and desire. Sultry, low. Husky. He knows what it does to you. How he can unravel you at the seams with just his voice alone. “Need me so fuckin’ much, pet. Would be lost without me—”

“Please, Simon,” you whisper, feather-soft. Cunt throbbing, pulsing. Needy. “Please—”

The strident reprimand for using his name doesn't come. His hand tightens around your throat, unconscious. A paroxysm that has pleasure carving itself down your spine, electric. 

“Come get it, then,” he rasps, voice wrecked. Raw. Curling at the edges, thickening his accent until the words elide. 

Hand to your throat, he drags you close. Closer still. Keeps you sat pretty on his lap as he pulls you in for a bruising, hungry kiss. Tongue shoving between your teeth when you gasp.

His kisses are always hungry, but this is different. Greedy. He devours you whole. Eats you alive. His hand falls to your lower back, holding you tight to his chest.

You moan into it, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. Squeezing until your knuckles blanche, joints twinging in discomfort. 

After months of nothing, this alone is bliss. His taste soaking onto your tongue, drenching it in the bitter tang of sage, wheatgrass, and stale cigarettes. Intoxicating. It leaks into you, nocuous. Infects from the inside out. 

His plan coming to fruition, you think. What he sought out to do all along, ever since you wandered close to this untameable Tartarean guard, and offered yourself up to the jowls of a starving beast. 

He pulls away with a heavy breath, eyes charing around the edges; brittle briquette. 

“Gonna be a good girl from now on? Come upstairs, be a good mum for dad? Or am I gonna ‘ave to cane this—” his hand drops, grabbing a fistful of your ass in his hand, fingers digging into the skin between your cheeks. Possessive. It cracks like a whip down your nerves. “—tight lit’le arse?”

You shake your head instantly. Quickly. “I'll be good,” you whisper into his chin, tongue flicking out to lick across his scars. The dried sweat on his skin tastes briny. Reminds you of the ocean on a brumous November evening. The incipient yawn of a ravenous hurricane gathering its lot on the shore. 

Sirens blare in the distance. Fear curdles in your guts, sits heavy like a stone. An anchor. 

“So sweet f’me,” he mutters, words deepening as his head falls back, letting you pepper kisses across the underside of his jaw. Mouthing along the constellation of scars. His voice is rumble. It shivers across your lips, tongue. Shakes the marrow in your bones. “Better stay this way, pet.”

Into his pulse, you murmur, “I think you like it better when I’m bad.” 

You can feel the snarl brimming in the back of his throat. Your ass stings with the phantom burn of when he lashed out with the whip. It drags a whimper out from deep within your chest. 

His hand tightens around your neck. A warning. “Got some guests over f’dinner tonight. Would love to finally introduce them to my sweet little wife—” deft fingers slip across the dewy skin of your folds, knuckles grazing over your drenched hole. The touch makes you squirm. “But if you’re gonna be bad, then I’ll leave you locked up down ‘ere.”

“I’ll be good,” you swear, words a hushed breath over his jugular. His finger flattens, drawls soft, slow circles around your clit. “Ah, I’ll—I’ll be so, so good, Simon—”

“Good girls deserve rewards, don’t they?” His palm flexes possessively around your throat when you nip at old scar tissue. “Maybe I’ll let you sleep in our bed tonight instead of in your dog house. We can ‘ouse together. I’ll fuck you proper—” he roughly shoves two fingers into your hole, leering when you gasp, back arching in a bow. “Know this pretty pussy has been achin’ for me, ‘asn’t it? Gonna breed it full—”

There’s static in your head, ringing in your ear. The noise distorted, pulled underwater. You think you say something, plead—no, no, no, anything but that—but his hand tightens around your throat, fingers pushing up, up into you, notching against that spot inside that makes your head swim, your vision flicker. The abyssal chasm inside of you aches, rages; its waters swell, currents frothing, slamming against the ceiling of its iron prison, and—

Simon pulls away. Fingers stilling inside of you. No friction, no relief. Hypoxia renders the world silent. Muted. Held in stasis, stagnating at the edge of a gaping precipice he holds you over, secured by the fragile curve of your neck, fine bone china. 

Phosphenes swim by. The chossy wobbles.

This distance is agony. You need to be closer, closer, to crawl inside of him, to live in the brackets of his ribs, safe and protected from the world he warns you about. Stone cold. You mewl, whine—

“Gonna be my good little wife?”

Gasping with broken lungs, you nod. Nod, nod until you’re nauseous. Dizzy. Sick—

His spit cools on your lip. Your hackles raise, body shuddering in revulsion—some primal part rears, hisses it’s infectious. Wrong. Get rid of it—

“Not gonna run?”

Slowly, you lick your lips, catching his sickness on your tongue. Swallowing it down until it sinks like a stone to the bottom of your belly. Heavy, for such a small, damning thing. 

How absurd, you think. How absolutely mad. 

Then you whisper, paperthin, “kiss me again, please, Simon—”

And he moves. Liquid in the gloam. Made more for shadows, midnight, than for golden apricity, where the light is harsh on his face, unveiling ruins and ravines; monoliths meant to be paid tribute to in the dark. Your hands lift to his jaw when he moves in, catching your lips in a bruising, biting kiss. 

His touch is searing. Owning. He isn't laying claim: no, you're already his. 

It's possessive and angry. No finesse. All slate teeth and tender tongue. They slide together in a strange game; little fawn stupidly nipping at the tiger's heel. He lets you, groaning into your mouth when you arch back, hips pushing into his fingers, taking him deeper. A pale pantomime of what's to come when he lays you on his soft bed, sweet and divine, and buries himself deep. 

It should scare you. Ought to. And maybe it does. Survival, you think, but you still pull him closer. Deeper. Because it’s bliss, you find. The world around you falling dead. Silent. Pulled into a vacuum. Teetering on the edge of a black hole, event horizon. He drags you in. 

Simon hums, pulling you closer. Touching you—soft, sweet. Palms a gyve. Shackles, chains. His fingers lift from your neck, trailing down the slope of your throat until he reaches the golden loop of your collar's hook. His gaze glides, magmatic, down to where your leash dangles between your heaving breasts.

It's almost tender when he grabs it into his fist. When he pulls, pulls—

Your back arching. His fingers slipping deeper inside your cunt. Obedient little doll.

When he lifts his eyes, the look you find is hot enough to char bone. You taste blood in the back of your throat—

Into the seam of your mouth, he purrs, “good girl.”

—and you swallow it down with a moan. 

(after all, you know better than to run from starving dogs—)

[blamebrampton]

Books talk to each other. Mostly because practically every writer is also a voracious reader, but also because books arise out of times and places and we share a lot of our worlds these days. So it’s unsurprising that several novels I have hugely enjoyed over the past few years share the theme of the antiheroine who is past all giving of the fucks. Naomi Novik’s powerful dark sorceress kept on her own tight leash in the Scholomance books was a joy to follow; Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow slashed her way into my heart and now Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil has added to a list of beloved antiheroines that probably started for me with Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair.

Coincidentally, when considering how to describe Long Live Evil without significant spoilers, I realised that it shared several major themes with Vanity Fair. Young woman unfairly treated by fate decides to embrace her slut era to survive a war zone – both very accurate and wildly inaccurate for both. LLE opens with main character Rae in a hospital bed, teasing her sister about a book series they both adore. Rae is taking refuge in the story they have shared over years because it is one of the few things they have left: she is losing her fight against cancer and has been losing parts of her life, family and memory as that fight has progressed.

My personal hospital experiences have all been to do with major traumas rather than illness, which I vastly prefer because if you don’t die in the first couple of days, you usually start mending and you can immediately make plans to make the best of whatever you’ve broken. Rees Brennan, however, famously wrote a very funny, very horrible, ‘Kids, you won’t believe what shenanigans your girl’s been up to now, it’s only stage four Hodgkins lymphoma!’ post on her Tumblr or LJ (someone who has been hit in the head with taxis fewer times than me will doubtless factcheck that in the notes) about seven or eight years ago and then faced the very serious business of trying to live. The hospital scenes are painfully authentic, as are the stories of people who have left Rae as she slipped further out of everyday life.

For Rees Brennan, a loving family and peer group were there to hold her as close as they could. For Rae, only her beloved little sister, Alice, and Time of Iron, their favourite fantasy series, remain. They read the books together, remember adventures cosplaying and watching the musical, they wonder about the final instalment; for Rae it’s a joy she can still share (even if she doesn’t remember as much as she should), for Alice, it’s her two greatest loves. When a strange woman offers a door into the world of the book and a possible magical cure to Rae, she wants it as much as she disbelieves it.

Stepping into Eyam, the land of Time of Iron, Rae finds herself in the body of a villain doomed to die the next day. No worries! She’s thought and fought her way out of worse scraps than this in her past as a head cheerleader, let alone while battling cancer. She can use her knowledge of the plot to change things! If only she remembered more of the books…

Portal fantasies are common enough, but not all play by the same rules. This isn’t Narnia, where the magical world is more real than our own, for Rae, the world of the book is nothing more a tool to get her hands on the cure. She doesn’t need to care about any of these people, they’re not real. Most of them speak in a formal language that relies on the conventions of fantasy literature (there is an ongoing, warm-hearted skewering of all Game of Thrones-esque texts running through both the story and the in-text ‘quotes’ from Time of Iron) and half the characters are known more by their descriptions rather than their names. So she will play the Beauty Dipped in Blood, with her questionable morals, impractical clothes and centre-of-balance-distorting boobs for the weeks that will pass until the cure is available. Whoever she has to shuffle in the plot to secure a place beside that cure, she will shuffle. While she’s not out to kill anyone, it’s not as though they were ever really alive. Not like her. If she has to be the villain to survive, she will be an impeccable one. The people will cheer evil on!

Obviously, little goes to plan. Rae’s illness has taught her cruelty, but she hasn’t forgotten what it is to be kind. Even as she manipulates her role into ongoing main character, she realises that’s not how anyone gets a happy ending. That’s not how she can live with herself. As she comes to think of the other people in the story as real, they become more so, both in how we read them and in how they impact the story. Rae remembers what it is like to make friends, which she never meant to, but, oh, the luxury after years of watching people slip away!

As in previous novel In Other Lands, Rees Brennan has a long list of fantasy tropes to embrace and undermine, and her deft touch with humour is as evident as ever here, but her publishers call this her first adult novel and there is a shift in tone from her previous works. Anger is more real and lasting. Consequences are more significant. Understanding is reached for, even if it’s bitter. One of my favourite things is that she lets her female characters rage, but never judges those who can’t, whether because they’re too powerless or just too tired, and her male characters are allowed to be people if they choose to be — which all but the most vainglorious do.

I hadn’t paid much attention beyond checking the release date for the book, so didn’t realise it was the first in a series. For me, it worked perfectly as a standalone novel, even with the unended threads, which would have perfectly balanced Rae’s unfinished life. That said, I am very happy to know we will spend more time with these characters in the future. I want more. I do want to know if there is a hope for Rae, if this is the fever dream of a fading life, if this is the story Alice has told to ease her sister from the world or something else. There are a dozen characters I hope for, at least three happy endings that would bring joy. But don’t wait for the next books: sink your teeth into this one and believe what it says about the importance of listening to stories rather than just falling in love with characters. Though if you find yourself cheering on Rae, or her servant Emer, the elusive Eric, Horrible Hortensia or almost any of the others, I am the last person who will judge you.

[glamaphonic]

People asked for my post on The Scene in ‘Conquer’ in light of me mentioning it in the post about the trajectory of Rick’s feelings for Michonne, so here it is.

The first thing to understand contextually is that Rick went to Alexandria for Michonne. It was for everyone. But it was for Michonne. Because she told him to. Because she took his hand and asked him if he was ready to have a home, a life, again. And he wasn’t! But he did it anyway.

So he’s in there and the PTSD is popping—hypervigilance mixing in with legitimate security concerns bcs the Alexandrians transparently don’t know how to survive if anything ever actually attacks them. He plots and he schemes and he blows his top and Michonne confronts him and Carol covers and they all agree to a path forward.

BUT THEN, Rick tells Carol: “I don’t want to lie anymore.”

And you have to understand that what he mostly means here is: “I don’t want to lie to Michonne anymore.”

Rick has just felt the brunt of her disappointment in him, felt the weight of how betrayed she feels by him not being honest with her, and it rocks him. Because he already tried to make an excuse and she shot it down. (I couldn’t tell you because you wanted this place. We all needed this place.) Because he has these Big Feelings for her sitting in his chest and he hates how it feels not being in sync with her, not making decisions alongside her, and not, when needed, being led by her.

Later when he’s back at their home, she comes in and he’s very clearly been brooding over this for a while. He confesses immediately, unprompted. He holds the gun out to her, surrendering, looking for absolution. She doesn’t take it. He makes another excuse, looking for another way to explain himself, and she shoots it down again. (I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know what you would do. Anything I did or would’ve done would only have been for you.)

So, he finally confesses, for real. The actual truth. And this is a moment of such profound vulnerability for Rick. He gets up, he faces her, he moves close to her, looks into her eyes, and tells her in so many words that she has power over him; she has a pull on him that is so strong, it frightens him.

(Please don’t get me started on the contrast to the scene with Jessie preceding this where he goes to tell her he’s not sorry for what he did and he’s not sorry for what he’s going to do. THE BLOCKING OF THE SCENE ALONE. Infinite distance between them, him not even on camera, visible only through a distorted reflection surrounded by broken glass. PLEASE. Are you kidding me???!! That storyline overall was fumbled but there were a few moments where they did indeed pop off in terms of communicating what was actually going on.)

And Michonne, bless her heart, she completely misses this for reasons I've talked about. She ignores the actual confession that he’s making and just goes back into the argument about safety and when it’s okay to believe that you’re safe or could be. Because that’s what she’s been struggling with, trying to put down the sword and not being able to truly believe that she can or should no matter how much she wants to believe it.

So she reaffirms her loyalty to Rick, and an incredible thing happens there. When she tells him that she thinks he can find a way, he LOOKS AWAY, FRUSTRATED. Until she amends that they, together, can find a way. Then he’s back to soulful gazing into her eyes. Because Rick is just realizing here, in this moment and the moments preceding it, that he doesn’t want to be Michonne’s leader, he wants to be her partner. She tells him that she’s with him and AGAIN he offers her the gun. And again, she doesn’t take it.

To Michonne, this is a gesture of deepest trust. Despite him having lied to her, despite him being in crisis, she still believes that he’ll do the right thing in the end. She still has faith that he'll make the right choice.

To Rick, who has found himself operating on a completely different level in this conversation than she is, this is a rejection. He literally disarmed himself before her! He offered himself up to her! He told her about the power she has over him! He wanted her to take his hand and move forward with him again! But she walks away! Unwittingly leaving him there with his lil Mr. Darcy hand clenches!

So anyway god-tier scene. God-tier set up for the way their relationship would take shape once they were together. If you ever want a laugh, try to find some post-s5 interviews and watch people, esp Gimple, try to dodge around admitting how romantic that scene was lol. If you want an even bigger laugh, imagine Rick having actually leaned in and kissed her in that scene (the scene builds in such a way that it absolutely would’ve been a completely natural conclusion!!!) and how hilarious 6A would’ve been in light of it.

(Michonne would’ve FREAKED OUT and not wanted to talk about it because she’d be processing a massive amount of things all at once that she was NOT ready to process. Then they’d be dealing with the herd and Michonne would be trying to avoid Rick without seeming like she was trying to avoid him and they both especially wouldn’t want Carl to think anything was wrong. And Rick would be giving her space while trying and failing not to look like a kicked puppy whenever she was in proximity which would be all the time because of the whole living together and co-parenting two actual children and also an entire found family.)

[sugar-plum-writer]

A Heian Era Affair

Paring: GojoSatrou!ModernEra x FemReader!HeianEra! Tags: Fem!Reader; Gojo!imagines; slight!mention of violence; 18+ as more chapters come; slow burn [I want to have a good build up~ just like my Sukuna series fic~]; An ancient Japan romance through time with reader Text: Gojo ends up in the Heian Era through unknown reason (will be reveled later on) and meets reader and hence journey begins both of adventure and romance~ [If you all like it, please heart and reblog the post! to know you want to read more~ and follow for chapter updates! or leave a comment to tag you when I put out new chapters~ I will do my best to roll out UPDATES ASAP!]

CHAPTER - 1

The bamboo trees rustled as the cool wind blew, almost hauntingly as if carrying a message from another side of the world. Wiping your sweat with a ragged cloth, you stumbled and walked while carrying a bucket of water to your old wooden house.

It was hard to make a living, the minister of your area was evil, exploiting the people to death, and raising taxes beyond what people could pay. It was a nightmare- no worse at least you could wake up from nightmares but what about reality? can you wake up from it?

Sometimes you wanted to barge in and rip his head off. Too bad you could not, the guards were too strong, and with your strength you doubt you could ever survive.

Sighing, you returned to the river to fill your bucket again.

You had just bent over when a strong gust of wind started blowing out from nowhere, the trees shrieked as the water rippled- throwing you back 10 feet away with a slam- making you hit a tree. The sharp pain made your back go numb. As you tried to get up staggering- the wind kicked up a notch increasing it's speed and power like a cyclone. Your eyes widened in horror as you looked at what was happening- a big black hole appeared in the middle of the river; with water distorting around it and floating up defying gravity.

"What on-"

Before your brain could comprehend what just happened, a white-haired man flew out of the hole towards you, slamming into you-

Bang

Opening your eyes, you tried to get up, but- found the man on top of you, your legs intertwined together, he groaned as he tried to stand

"Ugh"

His voice was deep causing you to freeze a moment, but you came back to your senses and pushed him off

"Who are you!? You demon!" you screamed as you looked at him

"Me? Ah I am Gojo Satoru and no I am no demon, it's the first someone has called me a demon! sure I might be tall but it does not mean I am a demon haha~" he smiled as he looked at you helping you stand up

"What-!? but you j-"

"Do you know where this is? I am a bit in a hurry"

"This is Mizushima village…."

He paused

"What?…. since when did we have a Mizushima village in Japan? Isn't Mizushima an Island!? which prefecture even is this?"

"Prefecture? Our village is part of the Minamoto Clan on the West side"

He paused longer this time

"Minamoto Clan?…"

"Yeah"

"eh?" he froze as he cocked his head to the side

"For real?"

"Yeah"

"I….what-what era is this?" his voice trembled a bit

"This is the Heian Era…the year is 1185…" You looked at him as he stood grounded on the spot contemplating the meaning of his life

Now that you observed him, he was wearing weird clothing the fabric was also very different from what you had ever seen, it was so smooth and very different from cotton- almost otherworldly

"Is he a noble? from Heian-kyo?", you thought to yourself and backed away a bit

"I am…1000 years in the past oh shit"

"Shit? What does it mean? which part are you from? your Japanese is very weird" You looked at him even more confused, even his accent was weird and some words he used were different

"Ah…." he looked at you struggling to explain

"You see…I am from the future more than 1000 years from the future, I know it sounds absurd but..it is the truth" he looked at you seriously meaning every word he said

"Huh? What-what bullshit are you saying? Are you a psycho? possessed?" you looked at him bewildered

"What is bullshit?" he looked at you confused

"I-I am leaving; good day to you, to ask what bullshit means I- you should find a priest" Picking up your bucket you hurried away wondering why you always met weirdos

"Wait-!" he yelled but you turned deaf to his words and ran as fast as your feet allowed you to.

You ran as fast as you could but he appeared in front of you almost like magic

"Please listen to me! I am not lying!!" he grabbed you by the shoulders frantically

"I really am from the future!"

"You freak let go of me!! AHHHHH!" you punched him doing little to no damage and screaming

This continued for some time, you running and him teleporting wherever you were it went on for a few hours and soon both of you sat panting on the ground

"Man…you sure got some stamina.." he wiped the sweat off his forehead simultaneously removing the blindfold

You froze- his eyes- were breathtaking; looking into them your heart exploded like fireworks, so serene, it felt like you were looking at the sky itself. You had never seen such eyes ever

How can someone be this good-looking?

"What? too captive by my looks~ Ah I guess even in the Heian Era I am attractive~" he leaned in with a smirk causing you to look away blushing crimson

"Who would!? you demon! Get away!"

He pouted a bit disappointed

"H…How do I believe you are from the future? And your powers? What are you?"

"I am a sorcerer from the Gojo Clan and…as for how I am from the future…" he scratched his head

"Got it!"

He smirked and took out a weird looking box and opened it

"Here try some, I bet you have never eaten something like this! It is a cheesecake that too from a very famous shop"

With swift movement from his hands, he put the cake in your hands, its scent was sweet, it was jiggly- even a bit liquid-y making you wonder if it was poison

"You...you sure humans can eat this?" your hands trembled as you held the plate

"Yes, it is! here~" he took the fork in his hands and ate a small bite of the cake- grinning

"Ah it really is good~"

Seeing him eat it and look so elated you also wanted a bite- how bad could it be? with a gulp and sharp breath you took a bite- a bite so good it made your eyes light up-

The flavor was exploding in your mouth, it had a rich and creamy flavor with a slightly tangy and sweet taste. The texture was smooth and dense melting in your mouth it felt like heaven.

"It must be so expensive....even in death I doubt I could eat something like this.."

He paused for a moment but then a smile crept up his lips

"Eh it was nothing just enjoy~" he winked

"You should see your reaction~ now that's a nice expression! It makes me wonder what other reactions you can make if I gave you other things~" smirking he leaned in his breath inches away from yours

"So...Do you believe me now?"

"....Yeah" nodding you took another bite

"Yay! Thank you~ please look after me from now on~"

[Link to my master list~ enjoy!]

[nosferatvpussy]

distorted lullabies [chapter XXVI]

Word count: 7k

Warnings: the usual // +18

Pairing: Dracula x reader

AO3 link | masterlist

A/N: Hello, dears. Thank you for sticking with me, and also thank you for all the new readers leaving me the sweetest comments, you have definitely motivated me to finish this chapter.

I think we are possibly 5 chapters away to the ending? Let's see if can do one chapter a month. Better than 2 chapters a year T.T

___________________________________________________________

The thirst for blood left her pupils dilated. Deep, black pits that reflected Count Dracula’s own eyes. Tears sprang from her eyes but he cared little for them. Grin frozen on his lips, it was all he could not to laugh in satisfaction as Y/N leaned to the mirror and ran a forefinger on her own teeth.

“No. No, no, no. I’m human. I’m still human. I have a pulse.” She pressed two fingers to her neck, just below her jaw. “Don’t I? I c-can’t— can’t feel it.”

“Your heart is still beating, darling.” Loud and clear. A lovely rampant cadence to his ears. 

She shook her head, making more tears flow down her face, and turned around to face him once again. Careless, she wiped the saliva that glistened on her chin and clenched her jaw, which immediately elicited a sob from her. Her hands closed around his arms, nails scratching his blazer, as she pressed her face to his chest taking the deep breaths he told her to take.

“It’s getting worse,” she cried. He nodded, staring at his reflection over her head. He shushed her, ran his fingers down her hair, cradled her. The picture of comprehension as he anchored all her fear, but still he grinned. “Earlier today when I was taking a bath,” she swallowed and when she spoke again, her voice was a rasp through the new sharp teeth. “...I drank my own blood. Just a mouthful. I started bleeding when I went into the tub and couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to see if it would taste differently, like Johanna. It was just a little bit.”

Beneath the scent of fear clouding the air, the heady scent of her blood lingered, emanating from her stronger than ever as it seeped from the unhealed bites. 

“And did it taste like her?” He asked.

“It tasted–” she stopped, stiffening on his arms. “Tasted a bit like you. Sweet. It didn’t have the metallic taste of blood.” By her demeanour alone, he understood that she only now realised this. 

A chuckle escaped him, and she looked up at him, scowling.

“Y/N, this is more than I ever hoped for,” he said, still chuckling. She let go of him and he grabbed her face in his hands to make her stay. “You understand now that there is no reason to be afraid about what comes next, don’t you? You’re my perfect creation.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?”

“That these would grow?” He tapped a finger to her lip and he earned a slap on his hand. “No. This is new.”

“But how? You told me that in order to become a vampire you will need to–”

“Kill you, yes, but you are not yet a vampire, despite what may indicate.” He chuckled again. It wasn’t only that she was his image now, but that he knew for certain now that she was his forever. There was no doubt that she would survive this change, whether he gave her what she longed for or not. “Y/N, Y/N,” he repeated, delighting himself in hearing her name and knowing that he would say it for the next hundreds of years and those same eyes, intelligent and willful, would look at him. “Oh, you are perfect.” He lowered his lips to hers. She stood stock still as his tongue pushed against hers and wrapped around the sharp canine in her mouth.

“I don’t understand— how? Do I have these because I drank my own blood?” She asked, pulling away from him, and leaving the bathroom. He followed her in calm strides as she paced in light footfalls across his bedroom.

“Darling,” he sighed, and crossed his arms as he leaned on the door frame. “It’s easy to ignore everything. You’re clever, but you refuse to acknowledge all signs of change.”

She stopped pacing, stiff, and looked at him from behind her hair. “Signs of change?”

“Everytime I drink your blood I can tell that you feel it,” he said, staring back at her, waiting for some form of recognition. He threw his arms up. “Food doesn’t taste the same, and it’s been getting worse for the last few weeks. Your hearing is better, or do you think listening to Diana enter your house from two stories up is usual? Your phone ringing annoys you and hearing conversations metres away from you is completely normal, I imagine.” He chuckled as he finished listing all that he could remember as fast as he mind supplied it. Leaving his spot by the doorframe, Dracula stepped towards her. “Last night, I felt your hunger for Johanna as I drank your blood. You smelled her as well as I did, and you craved her.”

Her stare unfocused as he spoke.

“It’s your blood,” she murmured. “It did this to me.”

“Of course it’s my blood, Y/N.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her again, waiting for her to relent. She always did. “I fed you with it. I gave you what makes me myself because you begged me for it. Whenever you asked me, I gave it to you.” She sighed and lowered her head. “Do you remember that you begged me to try loving you? Or are you going to conveniently forget that now because you are discontent with what it brought you?”

“My memory is good enough,” she answered, then turned her cheek, putting her mouth away from his. “You saw it happen and you never told me.”

“You saw for yourself.”

“At the risk of biting Mallory!” She exclaimed, and covered her ears with her hands. “I wanted to. I thought about it.” Blinking tears away, she clenched her jaw, and whined.

“Don’t do that, it will hurt worse.”

“I couldn’t look at her,” she continued as if he hadn’t said a word. “I kept thinking how easily I could tear into her skin, like ripping paper.” Her shoulders drooped as her body swayed closer to his. “Will it always be like this?” 

“After centuries of experimenting, everything with you has been—”

“I’m not one of your fucking experiments!” She yelled, pushing at him. When he didn’t release his grasp, she delivered a blow that would have hit his face if he hadn’t dodged. “Let me go. I won’t stay near you a minute longer.” For a second, he was captivated by the sight of fangs glimpsing through her lips and didn’t take in her words, but then he let go.

“Leave, then,” he said, gesturing with his arm for the door. She glanced at it, frowning. He smiled. “Leave. Open that door, go down the steps if you want to. I have no problem with prying you away from someone’s neck.” 

“Take me home.”

“No.”

“Then you fucking leave!” She shouted, glaring at him. He didn’t move. Y/N stepped forward and pushed at his chest. Again, he didn’t move, nor did he budge. “Leave me here while you entertain guests and act the gentleman. Do it. I’ll stay like one of your fucking experiments! That’s what I fucking am to you.” She pushed, and pushed. He remained still, like a statue. “I hate you,” she declared. Behind her eyes, filled with tears and framed in a scowl, he saw her rage and her fear. In his ears, her heartbeat sang a hesitant melody. 

“No, you don’t,” he said. 

“I do.” She shook him by the lapels of his coat. “Right now, I do.” 

“You love me.” His hand found the nape of her neck and tilted her head up. 

“Fuck you,” she murmured, without any of her usual defiance. A halfhearted insult.

“Insolent.” 

He leaned down, crushing her lips to his, and for the first time, her teeth cut him. Low on his chest, he laughed as Y/N’s mouth became urgent and sliced his bottom lip again. He couldn’t remember something other than his own teeth piercing his skin, which had become nearly impenetrable over the years. 

When she pushed him again, her lips never leaving his, it was to steer him towards the bed. Dracula gave in to her whims to amuse himself, so he perched on the edge of the bed, with the full expectation that Y/N would realise what was happening and stop, but she climbed on top of him in a constricting embrace that could’ve squeezed air out of his lungs. Thirst made her demanding, and not a particle of her self control remained as it consumed her. Yet, it was not something that weighed especially on Dracula’s mind as her mouth veered to his neck. The brushes of lips, sloppy and wet with saliva, as teeth scraped below his ear completely stole any sense of responsibility to remind her about self control. 

His hands followed the curves of her legs to each side of him, fingers pressing to feel the delicious softness of her thighs. Almost as if teasing him, her hips brushed his as she moved on his lap. The scent of blood wafted off her, all honey to his senses. Her hair stroked his face as arms went about him. He pulled her closer until not an inch of air separated them. 

Y/N bit hard, and when the tougher skin on his neck didn’t break as easily as the skin of his lips, she bit even harder. Cold pinpricks slid from his neck to his spine, quickening to pleasure as her teeth sank deeper. Dracula pressed their bodies together and tried not to squeeze her, lest he break her.  In her need, she tried to lick the little blood that poured out while her teeth scraped shallow cuts. He groaned, shuddering as he tried to regain control.

Fingernails grazed his scalp as she took hold of his hair and pulled his head to the side. The raw desperation sent her heart hammering. It beat against his own rib cage. Finally, she let go of it all and gave into blind desire, as he always wished since he observed the beginnings of change. He wanted to taste her too, but mostly he needed to feel what she felt as she tried to consume him. Feeling her draw his blood out, thoughtlessly. He needed to know if beyond it all there was still her love, lying there in secrecy and reserved for everything that he was.

A rumbling growl sounded from the depths of his chest. His gums stung lightly as his teeth sharpened. As Y/N tried to bite him again to make more blood flow, Dracula shut his eyes. If he were to drink her now, it would only increase her hunger. The other — more likely — possibility was that he would lose himself along with her and kill her. He had made her a promise. He wouldn’t break it. 

Her hips came down his, and Dracula smiled. So often the thirst for blood blended into another kind of need. With her, they were one and the same. It was easy enough to redirect his blood lust. 

Quickly, Dracula grabbed both her hands, twisted them behind her back, and shoved her face first on the bed as he climbed on top of her. 

“No!” She protested, struggling madly to try and escape his grip. “I need more. Please. More!”

Holding both her wrists in one hand, he pushed her dress up with the other one. A black garter belt paired with stockings and sheer underwear met his gaze. Y/N’s struggle lessened to a disheartened wriggle as he made this discovery. He preferred her without any underwear, but lingerie like this was a strong contender to change his mind. The straps pressed down on each cheek and he trailed them with his fingers, then pulled them, causing them to snap against her skin and eliciting a yelp. That seemed to trigger something in her because she twisted her wrists inside his grip and pulled free — for a moment. Dracula captured her hands again and brought them behind her back as he pressed her down on the bed. 

“The more you struggle, the more I’m going to take my time with you.”

“Please,” she sobbed. “I need more blood. That wasn’t enough.”

“You bit me in the wrong place, dear,” he explained. He caressed the thin red welts the straps had left in her butt cheeks. “It’s easy to miss the jugular at first. Takes practice.” His hand closed on her ass, spreading her open before him. “Some veins are easier to find, for example, there’s one right here in the inner thigh —” he slipped his hand lower to trace the spot and Y/N raised her butt higher as his knuckles brushed the ever growing wetness of her underwear “ — that I particularly like.” 

“Show me where to bite and I will, just– please,” she panted. “Let me. Plea– oh!” A slap landed on her ass. 

“Beg all you want.” He chuckled, and slapped her again. Y/N squealed and kicked her feet. His hand stung from the slap. “I’m used to hearing it. Nothing you say will make me take pity on you.” Another slap brought a blush to her buttcheek. Y/N kicked her feet again as pain coursed her body. She had her face turned to the side as she glared at him out of the corner of her eye. His hand came down once again. Her body jumped involuntarily but he saw her biting her lip not to scream. “Aren’t you brave?” he taunted. “Shall I match the other side, then?”

Eyes shut, she nodded. He smiled as he backed up a little to grant better access to the task at hand. As he sat on her legs, his cock strained inside his trousers, pressing just between her thighs.

Dracula switched his grip on her wrists before continuing. With each spank her ass jiggled and grew redder, each a little harder than the one before until Y/N’s bravery waned to let small whimpers escape her lips. Pain should put her mind elsewhere and make her concentrate — or not. Either way, it was he who was enjoying this far more than she. When she finally relented and a throaty groan left her, he ceased his attack to caress the tender flesh. 

Blood pumped where welts appeared and it left her skin burning hot to his touch. Pain had left only sweet aching in her. Her lips were swollen from biting them, her eyelids fluttered, and all of her body was fragrant with this new heat. Warmth raised from her, enveloping Dracula in a feverish daze that made his teeth sharper. 

Control was never his strong suit. Redirecting his cravings was a simple matter, he reminded himself.

Y/N gasped as he suddenly ripped her underwear off. What remained of it was tossed aside as Dracula undid his belt and trousers, and barely pushing them away, he aligned his cock and entered her forcefully. So incredibly warm, and dripping wet. Beneath him, Y/N cried out a curse and moved her hips against his, an inviting roll for him to keep going. As he obliged and watched a delicate frown on her blushing face, he knew he must feel her body burn on his. Briefly stopping, he discarded his blazer and shirt. His fingers wrapped around the collar of her dress and ripped it down the middle. She helped him tug it completely off her to reveal arms covered with marks. Warmth raced along his chest when it came in contact with the glistening skin on her back. Lying atop her, he rocked against her to the rhythm of her heart. She panted to every thrust, barely making a sound with his weight pressing her down. Beneath him, she shuddered and sighed deeply as her lungs tried to accommodate the thrill of a nearing orgasm. Her body became even plumper with blood. Every nerve ending set alight, every vein dilating as if to feel pleasure in all cells of her body. A few more hard pushes, Dracula groaned low and finished, head swimming and lost as her heart beat madly on his eardrums. 

“You–” she began hoarsely, “you’re done?” Her shoulders pushed against his chest, struggling to move. “Get off me right now,” she demanded. “I’m not done.” He rolled off her, and smiled as she threw a leg over him and accommodated her hips on his. “Where do I bite?” The question was followed by her cunt rubbing on his cock. He shuddered.

Dracula made himself sit down, against all his will to simply lie down and let her question him again and again. Her legs to either side of him squeezed. Grabbing her hand, he touched the tip of her fingers to his neck below his jawline and close to his ear. 

“Here, always here. Shall I make it easier for you and cut?”

Her only answer was to lean closer and place her mouth where he showed her, and bite. Sharp teeth slid into him so easily that he gasped. Y/N moaned low in her chest as blood flooded her mouth. 

All the while she drank, her hips continued to roll over him, seeking to have him inside again until finally she got what she wanted. As she drank greedily – desperately – her hand reached and held onto his face when her cunt began squeezing his cock, tighter and tighter. He pushed his hips up, going as deep as their position allowed, causing them to moan in unison.

Pleasure won the battle against her thirst and her head fell back as her body took over instinctively to continue fucking him. Her face was a half mask of blood that dripped down to her breasts. His tongue licked it clean as her legs started shaking and her rib cage rattled with breaths too small to contain the power of an orgasm. 

The sight of her moving, breathless, bathed in his blood and the feel of her skin on his, wrapped around him, ignited his hunger once again. Dracula tried to push it aside but the ever growing pressure in his gums could only be bearable until a certain point, and he had never quite trained himself to sustain that bothersome pain. His solution was grabbing her legs and pushing her down to the bed, where he raised her hips off the mattress, and thrusted hard and fast. She gasped, and a breathy laugh left her mouth when he carried on.

_____________________________________________________________

Wiping his neck off blood stains with a damp towel, Dracula turned the faucets and left the bathtub to fill. His reflection drew his eyes to the adornment on his neck. Haphazard holes decorated it, as if framing the true pièce de résistance that  was the small arch of Y/N’s teeth indented on his skin and the deep double punctures. Her mark on him, at last. It saddened him that it would only last a few more minutes.

Count Dracula’s smile was still stamped to his face when he returned to the bedroom. 

Y/N, lying nude on the bed if not for the remains of her lingerie – garter belt and stockings and a half ruined bra –, had a finger in her mouth, poking her gums and rubbing her teeth as if expecting them to grow. He stopped by the bed, admiring her. Blotches of blood painted her cheeks in a way that made it seem that she had applied excessive amounts of makeup.

“They’re normal again,” she said, considering him briefly. “Where did they go? I mean– do I have new teeth growing somewhere?”

“I have a second set of teeth that I only use for special occasions.” She stared at him. “A joke.” She rolled her eyes but her lips curved a little. “You’ll learn to control it in the future, but yes, your teeth will grow when you need blood. They may come out on other occasions as well.”

“When I’m angry for instance?” She asked, rolling on her stomach and resting her chin on her hands. The sinuous shape of her back and round ass, bruised with the shape of his hand, drew his eyes.

“For instance,” he agreed. “Speaking of, are you still angry with me?”

“I haven’t decided yet. You did make a very compelling argument.”

“Hitting you and making you cum?”

“I’ll take it under consideration.” She chuckled. “But don’t hide things from me anymore.”

He threw himself on the bed next to her, and extended his arm as an invitation for her to cuddle up to him.

“You refused to see it yourself. Would you have accepted it as the truth if I brought to your attention what was happening?” He heard her take a breath, raising her head from his chest. “Rhetorical question. We’ll take a bath and never speak of it again.”

“Oh, we’ll speak of it again but not tonight. I’m feeling way too good to fight.” She squeezed her arms around him. “You have to return to the party, or people will think we came up here to fuck.”

“We did fuck.”

She blinked. It always surprised her when he cursed, he knew that.

“We don’t need to make it evident.”

“It’s my home. I can do what I want here.”

“Right. But I’m the one who has to work with those people, for at least one more month. It’s enough that they give me looks whenever you’re around but I can’t bear if I hear them whispering in the office that they could hear me scream from the floor below.” Dracula laughed. “I’m serious.”

“No one heard, Y/N.”

“I know. Get dressed and go downstairs. Tell people I’m recovering from a migraine, and wipe that devious grin from your face.” She started slipping away from him, and he locked his arm around her. “I need a bath.”

“Lie down for a minute.” Dracula shut his eyes. “At least let me enjoy this.”

At his side, he felt her body slowly relax. One of her legs hooked on his hip, her heel sliding down to find its place behind his knee where it so often rested. He inhaled deeply to fill his lungs with her, and found that something had changed in her scent. He couldn’t place it, but instinctively knew what it meant.

Grabbing her leg, he pulled her on top of him, slowly, as she quietly asked what he was doing. She asked again as he pushed her legs down, but understood that he simply wanted her to lie atop him when his arms wrapped around her. When he inhaled again, her body moved as if it was a ship rocking to a raging sea. The thought ignited memories of Agatha – his last great experiment – that had cost him one hundred years at the bottom of the sea. 

Four hundred years searching for the right method. Four hundred years of mistakes, and a hundred years lost, had finally brought him what he always wanted. 

“You aren’t usually this quiet,” she murmured, lips brushing his chest.

“I’m happy.”

“Oh.” Her heart skipped a beat. It surprised him, too. “Has it been a very long time since you felt that?”

“A very long time indeed.” One of his hands combed her hair. “Allow me to revel in it before I have to act the gentleman again.” 

_____________________________________________________

My feet touched the floor quietly as I slipped from Dracula’s embrace. Careful not to juggle the bed and wake him, I made my way out of the bedroom, leaving Dracula alone with his dreams. 

Wind howled and a window downstairs shook. Peering down the mezzanine to the lower floor, I saw the billowing curtains partially obscuring the open window. The source of the raucous that had woken me. A particularly strong wind shot the curtains up and aside, flashing light inside the room and making me squint to protect my eyes. Dirty glasses stained with amber and violet liquids decorated the surfaces all around the lofty, ample room. Crinkled napkins lay near almost all those glasses. Food crumbs decorated the floor as if it had snowed puff pastry. The long centre table was still pushed to the side as if the party would continue at some point. 

As I hurried to close the window, shutting my eyes against the light and the hairs on my legs standing up from the cold, my brain pulled the memory of waking up half drunk, half hungover in my university years, in the middle of the night at someone’s house party to grab water. I had quite literally stumbled over Mallory, sleeping in the middle of the kitchen, and woken her with a kick to the thigh, while I fell on top of her date, who conveniently cushioned my fall. Our drunken, happy laughs made half the house grumble and shout at us to shut up. 

Young and full of dumb decisions that we thought were actually brilliant. Our bellies hurt half the time we were together from all the laughs we had.

I couldn’t live without Mallory. I knew I would have to learn how, but until I was truly dead and gone, I refused to do so. We put our friendship aside because Mallory had given her career more importance once. To do the same to her after I had just gotten her back was not only unfair but also terrible. 

One day to live, one week or one month – it didn’t matter. I would not pass onto another life without at least apologising, and saying goodbye. 

My stomach grumbled at me as I snuck upstairs to retrieve my phone.

Dracula, my warlord, my centuries old vampire, death in a fancy blazer, lied in bed with his hair tousled, his sensuous lips that were so often curved in a devilish smile were now pressed to the pillow as he hugged it. 

Grinning, perhaps stupidly or lovingly – quite hard to tell those apart, frankly –, I opened the camera on my phone and snapped a photo of him asleep. The edges around him appeared blurred, as if he had moved. I tried again. I must have taken 10 photos of him with no different results. Finally, I had to content myself with those, even if I could not capture his tranquil and boyish expression.

On impulse, I flipped the camera to my face and watched as my grin faded right before I snapped a photo of myself. Clear, sharp edges highlighted the glowy, almost dreamlike complexion I had acquired over the past few days. I looked ethereally beautiful, yet still human. Soon enough, I would not have photos of myself. At least not visible ones. 

Worrying about that seemed like such a futile thing to do that I forced myself to put it out of my mind. For the time being, apologising to Mallory was more important than having another identity crisis. I was starting to lose count of those anyway.

Hi. Are you there?

To avoid pacing around the room while I waited for a text back, I went downstairs to the kitchen and busied myself with making tea. 

Mug in hand, I went back to the living room and sat at the armchair half hidden beneath the stairs. I had chosen that little place as mine in Dracula’s home. In a living room so spacious and open, having a tiny secluded spot gave me a sense of security. 

Still no reply.

Mal, I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to say that. It came out wrong. 

My breath left me when my screen lit up with the three tiny dots that indicated she was typing. They disappeared a moment later. I stared, almost praying for her to continue. 

I’m sorry about all the other days too. Can we talk?

A moment after I sent it, I considered it. I owed her some grovelling. 

Please? I am really really sorry. There is a lot of stuff going on. I don’t know how to explain but I’ll try. Please talk to me. 

The three dots appeared again.

Okay.

Eyes filled with tears, I typed back hurriedly.

V&A cafe tday? At 3? 

A broken response but I was afraid she would delete her text back. 

You’re paying.

When I laughed in relief, tears ran down my cheeks. I would pay for the entire menu and more if she demanded it of me. 

________________________________________________________

The glowing orb fluctuating above me pulled my attention in. I imagined myself as a moth drawn to its light, throwing myself against it, beating my fragile body to be imbued in that warmth. My eyes stung and watered. I would have to blink in a few seconds. Narrowing my eyes so tears spilled over delicately, I focused all my thought into the dispersion of light and its centre. The moment I noticed the outline of the chandelier, the spell would be gone.

“Hi.”

Blink. 

Tears poured to accumulate beneath my eyes, and once again I blinked to clear them away. 

The round centre chandelier materialised above me. It was like the Victorians had stolen the moon to illuminate the café in honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. It was a mere fantasy – the three moons hovering between columns of gold leaves and golden arches were far too modern for the minds of Victorian architects and only added much later. I was a frequent patron to know that. The room was a palace inspired by the Renaissance. A restaurant so far removed from English reality it was easy to imagine I was in Italy. 

The thought dispersed quickly as I took notice of Mallory sitting across from me. 

She had no makeup on today aside from blush and a rosé lipstick. The blonde eyebrows and blonde eyelashes gave her an unnerving look paired with her huge eyes. I could never look at Mallory long when she stared like that. She always looked a little sad. 

How long had she been sitting there before she said hi? I was almost sure I had seen her in my peripheral vision but had refused to acknowledge her. 

“You’re being creepy,” she said. 

Long enough to say that.

“Sorry,” I croaked, and cleared my throat. Unable to hold her gaze upon saying the fateful word I had come here to say, I looked down to fiddle with my sandwich. Chatter and the clinking of cutlery flooded my ears. “I just– got distracted, is all.”

Push it out. Focus.

I dropped my sandwich and hid my hands under the table as I dug my fingernails on my palms. Pain surged, and the maddening chatter echoing inside my head subsided. Perfect technique, I congratulated myself. 

Before I left, Count Dracula had warned that my senses would be even more acute after drinking incalculable amounts of his blood, and that I should try and focus on only one. The chandeliers at V&A Museum Café had been my saving grace after discovering the noise and smells made me dizzy. 

I adjusted myself on my seat, felt the stinging bruises on my buttcheeks, and bristled. Dracula had shown me, true to his sadistic side, that pain worked to bring me out of the blood haze, as I was beginning to call it. I was not about to walk around with a cat o’ nine tails to purge myself of those desires, so I had to make do with what I could, such as scratching my palms raw.

“You’re regretting coming here, aren’t you?” Mallory accused.

“I’m not.” Digging my nails deeper, I raised my eyes to hers. “I don’t know how to start,” I confessed, feeling my face get warm.

At that, Mallory leant back in her chair and her shoulders relaxed. She rubbed her brow, stared at my plate, and called for the waitress. I must have counted all of her eyelashes by the time the waitress was gone. Better than tearing my hands to the bone so that I could focus. 

“I’ll start,” Mal declared after a while longer. “I’ll speak and you’ll listen. You won’t like it but I need to get it out.”

“Can I interrupt as you go?”

“No.”

“Do you mind if I eat while you talk?”

“By all means. You can’t interrupt me with a full mouth.”

I snorted and gestured for her to start as I took a bite from the sandwich. Dry and tasteless, as expected, although it was my favourite food from the menu. 

Mallory inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and opened them again as she exhaled. 

“Actually, I don’t know how to start either.” Her voice broke at the last word. “You can’t fault me for trying to protect you, Y/N. That’s all I’ve been trying to do.” I raised my eyebrows at that and she frowned. “I’m not asking you to agree with me. I don’t care  if you do or don’t. But… I won’t do that anymore. I won’t try to protect you anymore because I realise you don’t want to be protected.” She stopped and leaned her elbows on the table. “You want to be with him, fine, be with him, but don’t isolate yourself. Don’t leave me out of it, please.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I just don’t get it. You changed, yeah, I know and accept that now, but yesterday– that hurt a lot.” Her voice broke as she spoke. My heart broke a little, too. “Fuck, I wasn’t supposed to cry. I wanted to be tough and give you a lecture about how terrible you’ve been and spill venom on you but I just don’t have the energy anymore, and frankly I don’t care about having the last word!”

“Mal, I am so so-”

“Shut up, I’m not done.” Closing her eyes, she amended, "Sorry, that was really rude.” Her gold rings flashed brightly at me when she covered her face with her hands. “I was trying to wave the white flag. Hell, I talked to Count Dracula for god’s sake, and you– you said… that.” Her lower lip trembled. “I felt so belittled, Maddy. So small and so insignificant to you. I had to leave the party so no one saw me burst into tears. I put in the effort to meet you halfway but it was useless. I just don’t know what I did to make you hate me to the point that you can’t stand the sight of me. I don’t.” Tears flowed down her face and she sobbed. Her shoulders shook with every breath as her small chest seemed to fold with the force of her sadness, making her hunch over as if she was humiliated all over again. 

I watched, trying to detach myself from the scene by clawing my palms again, but her misery drew me deeply to her. It was salty and somehow still sweet, as if her tears were on the tip of my tongue for me to taste. 

As I watched her, all I could focus on for a few moments was that, until I realised the proper response should be to empathise. Like I had flipped a switch, her sadness touched on my regret. I extended my hand to her and she took it. We held onto each other for a long time, until she nodded and looked at me again.

“You can talk now,” she said in a small voice.

“I don’t think saying sorry can fix how I made you feel,” I said. “But I can still say it, and I can promise you I’ll never do it again. These last couple of months have been a lot for me–” I closed my mouth. That was not how I was taught to apologise. None of it was an excuse. “What I did, how I treated you, that is not how anyone should treat their friends. You have no idea how happy I was when you offered me your glass yesterday. Honestly, it was enough for me to almost scream ‘yes’ at the top of my lungs but Hayes would’ve gotten the wrong idea.” A corner of her mouth turned up. “I need you to understand that I didn’t mean that. My mouth completely disconnected from my brain, which I’m sure you can empathise with.” The other corner of her mouth tilted up, too. Headed in the right direction. Perfect. “There was a lot going through my head last night-”

“Like being pressured into accepting a million-pounds-a-year offer?” Mallory asked, the smile that had started to grow was now gone.

“You have every right to be jealous-”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Mallory, come on.”

Her nostrils flared before letting go of my hands. She was opening her mouth, ready to lash at me, when the waitress came back with food, and Mallory’s politeness won against her anger.

“I am not jealous,” Mal said when the waitress left. “I’m not delusional like Evelyn. I know I can’t take that on yet, but I know you can. It’s not jealousy, Maddy. I’m angry that you’re throwing something so big away because of a man.”

When Mallory brushed her tears away, her knuckles left reddish marks on her cheeks with the brutality of her newly flared anger. The sickening taste of bitter oranges blossomed on the back of my throat. And so, I found out what anger smelled like. Hairs raised on my arms. 

I need to get this over with. Mallory had said it right – I was being creepy.

“Have you spoken with Diana about Dracula?” I asked, gathering every last thread of patience I had in me. Mallory nodded. Bitter oranges and a dying fire, to be precise. I shut my eyes and tried to remember the night when Dracula counted my vertebrae. Unu, dui…  “So I’m sure Di has told you that she would give up anything to have her husband back. She would’ve given up anything to not lose him in the first place. Do you see where I’m getting to?” Lips pressed to a thin line, Mal frowned but nodded again. “I know it may seem ridiculous to you, I’m not asking you to understand or support me, I’m just asking you to trust me that I know what I want, and I want him more than anything I’ve ever wanted. An entire lifetime couldn’t give me what he gives me.”

“And what is that?”

“Confidence. Passion. Grandiosity. Life itself. All endless.” 

“Not love?”

“In his own way.”

Mallory had the decency to pull on her courtroom face, as I must have done hundreds of times when she told me something I thought was ridiculous. It struck me just then that I had had a similar conversation with Renfield when he was in the psychiatric ward, and I sounded exactly like him. 

“The way you talk about him is so weird, Maddy, surely you see how it comes off? Like he’s– he’s… some kind of… entity. He’s something other, I think, I just know he is. I have dreams sometimes–” She straightened. I could almost see the cogs of her brain turning. Mallory’s lower lip trembled, neck growing stiff as if she had suffered an electric shock, her brows drew together in what I thought was terror. She was going to scream, I realised. Something must have triggered the buried memory of being forcibly bitten. 

“Mal,” I called, but she didn’t seem to hear me. “Mallory, you’re okay.” I grabbed both her hands, accidentally knocking over my tea on my plate. “Look into my eyes. You are with me and you are okay.” Mallory’s pulse hammered on my thumbs when I dug my fingers on her wrist. It reverberated up my arm straight into my chest. I pressed a nail on her wrist, an attempt to make her focus, I told myself, but truly I wanted nothing more than skin breaking and giving way to life’s blood, freeing that terror and anger all through a tiny cut, and making it mine.

“I’m with you,” she said, complacent, eyebrows relaxing and eyes swimming in light. 

Her heartbeat, pulsing against my thumb, sounded on my eardrums, vibrated down my jaw and, at last, synchronised my heart to hers. I inhaled deeply, and knew that I had Mallory within me. 

“You are,” I echoed. She leaned forward in a way that she bumped her small chest on the table. Baby blonde hair fell from behind her ears to frame her face, brushing her clavicles, and drawing my gaze to the scar that had made me say that I couldn’t look at her. And yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, nor my hands. Whatever I had done, it had given Mallory peace. The taste of bitter oranges died with the fire of her anger. Her pliant mind within mine was cotton candy, sweet and just as easy to pull apart. “Isn’t that so much better?” I nodded, and she nodded back. A distant part of me recognised what I was doing, but I could not make myself stop. Control over her mind, so easily taken without my need to try, filled me with power and want, similar to sinking my baby teeth in Dracula. “Mal, you’ll forgive me, won’t you? You have to, you have to.” She tilted her head, as if she was thinking about it. But I had her, I knew I did, and I needed to be forgiven. “Have to, please, please, please, you have to.”

“I have to forgive you,” she repeated, nodding, her voice weak-willed. 

“Yes, you do. I am so sorry. Forgive me for this too. I can’t stop.” My voice trembled. I needed to let her go. My hands didn’t respond to command, however. Her pulse still vibrated on my hands and my heart answered back. “You have to do it, Mal. I can’t let go, but I know you can. Slip between my fingers. Get up. Go home, and please forget about this.” Mallory blinked her pale eyelashes, her doe eyes shining at me. Deer at headlights, that’s what she was, and she had to run from me. “Look away,” I asked her. I did not have the power to do it myself, but I had it over her. She obeyed. Control slipped away as she slipped her hands from mine.

Mallory stood up so fast that her chair fell back. The sound cut through conversation and snapped inside my head like a bullet ricocheted inside it. A waiter materialised, asking if everything was okay, his gaze ping-ponging between a shocked Mallory, the table stained from the tea I had spilled, and myself, sitting there, fists closed to focus with the pain, and staring blankly at my friend. 

“Get me the check, please,” I bit out. The waiter left. 

Mallory shrugged her beige coat on and threw her tiny purse around her shoulder. 

“You did something to me,” she said. I looked at her, almost pleading for her not to leave, not to be angry anymore, to forgive me. “I felt you in here. I don’t know how you did it, and I know it has to do with that psycho you love, but I know I will never forgive you.” She raised her chin, staring down at me, below her. “I hope that hurts you as much as you hurt me.”

She gave me one last withering look, and marched out of the café, leaving me with the rest of my sandwich, the bright moon above my head, and the bewildering realisation that I had just hypnotised my best friend and tried to force her forgiveness.

How long had I blinded myself to what I could do?

________________________________________________________

@5thelement @jar-of-moondust @festering-queen @deborahlazaroff​ @mr-kisskiss-bangbang @girlonfireice @saint-hardy @xoxodracula @princessayveke @dreamer2381 @25ocurer @vampirescurse @blue-serendipity @iwasjustablur @sunscreenfeverdream @daydreaming136 @bittenlove @newyorkrican922 @feralstare @soph3228 @jmor25 @clussysposts @werwulfy @rainbowgoblinfan @soulofsalt @mistandmoss @lddracula @skelior @cesspitoflove @mymindpalaceismywonderland @candleslut @sweet-delila @jackbootedfucks​ @tilldeathripsusapart​ @recklessgiraffelife 

[childotkw]

Ahhh! I'm absolutely in love with your Lucemond fic snippets. The idea of Lucerys bonding with the Cannibal over their shared consumption of dragon flesh is just so *chef's kiss*. Also that line about Lucerys thinking about the way Arrax was still looking out for him even in death. My poor heart. I've seen a few people mention Lucerys surviving and bonding with him, but no one talked about how such a thing could come to pass when the dragon has a history of killing any who try to fly him.

A part of me can't help but think about the utterly dark and unhinged potential of their bond. Perhaps there is no real love and gentle affection between them, not like Lucerys' bond with Arrax, but they have a shared experience and an understanding of doing whatever it takes to survive. The Cannibal is always hungry for the flesh of his kin, and he can sense that same sort of hunger in his newly bonded. It resonates between them. It makes the ancient beast want to nuture that hunger, ensure that his feral little rider survives and grows stronger. The old dragon feeds Lucerys' need for revenge, and the human helps feed the beast's rage and cravings for battle and any spoils that he can claim. It creates a really beautiful and terrifying sort of symmetry.

And now for an utterly depraved idea...

Imagine the Cannibal swooping in and fighting an enemy dragon while Lucerys is involved in some skirmish on the ground and ripping off a chunk of flesh. The Blacks win the fight and the dragon lands and presents the lump to its rider like an offering.

Lucerys is quiet as he watches the great dragon lower its massive head and nudge the meat towards him. He can hear the whispers of onlookers calling his bonded a monster and how they should all fear for their lives. Through their bond he can feel Cannibal's quiet encouragement. Here. The flesh of your enemy. Eat. Be strong. With Cannibal's thoughts echoing in his head head, he opens his mouth and commands, "Dracarys."

The dragon's flames errupt forth, scorching the meat in a controlled burst of emerald fire. The gathered crowd watches on in shock and horror as the Prince draws out a knife and slices away a strip of seared meat. The Cannibal throws back his head with a proud roar as the boy accepts and his teeth sink into his gift.

(Tell me Aemond wouldn't go absolutely unhinged and feral over finding out Lucerys ended up eating Arrax in order to survive and may have just eaten a piece of one of the Green's dragons. It'd probably be worse if it was Vhagar that was injured too. Haha.)

I'm frothing at the mouth with this - it's like you're in my head.

When I thought up the whole symbolic cannibalism of Lucerys eating bits of Arrax to survive, I was so giddy. It happens rarely, but some of the things my brain comes up with honestly blow me away. I just immediately sat down and went yes YES this is what I need.

Poor boy is going to Go Through Some Things under my tender care. Just a dash more trauma and survivor guilt to make him extra spicy.

Lucerys will be walking a very fine line for most of this - and god am I excited to dive into his bond with Cannibal.

The unspoken understanding between them, that soul-deep connection, distorted reflections of each other…it'll be so good.

Lucerys' gradual shifts in personality, guided by Cannibal's own - it's like being caught in the tail of a comet. Cannibal is old, he has been around since the dawn of the Targaryen dynasty, and Lucerys is so young, too young to be able to keep himself grounded in the face of such a force of nature. Cannibal's hunger, that insatiable bloodlust - it'll start to bleed through, and Lucerys will be made into something new.

Especially in the beginning, when their bond is so fresh, Lucerys will feel the need to reinforce their connection. But once they've settled into their new dynamic, that will be when it becomes…routine for him. Normal. The disgust and shame mostly doused by the heady rush of power that comes from being a predator.

Once the war begins in earnest, and they are too valuable to leave wallowing on Dragonstone, Lucerys takes to eating his meals with Cannibal. He doesn't always partake in whatever prey Cannibal hauls in - sometimes it's enough for him to simply mime that act; but more often than not he'll return to camp with animal blood staining his mouth and hands.

The men are unnerved, Targaryens have always been…queer to outsiders, but who are they to question a dragon? Who are they to question Lucerys Velaryon, the rider of one of the largest dragons alive, and who is said to be unkillable?

No. They merely avert their eyes from the boy when he returns from visiting his beast, keeping their thoughts to themselves and praying that the day never comes when they are seen as prey.

(And as for Aemond? Well, when he hears the rumours surrounding Lucerys, when he hears how he drenches his pale skin in the blood of his kills, when he hears the way people speak of the boy with hushed fear instead of scorn…he can't help but laugh.

Because Lucerys had always been a violent, hungry little creature.

It's just now that everyone else sees the truth.)

[goblinsofdiscord]

The Horror of Heart Types 👹🫀 Enneagram Types 2, 3 & 4 (How to Type People)

by Larissa

I get asked a lot what Enneagram material I recommend, and my go-to is Riso & Hudson. I’ll be expressing previously understood and uncovered concepts as well as my own interpretations. My understanding pathway is informed by what I find profoundly irritating about the types via personal experience, so this won’t be a flattering, soft-focus Baby Blue production. More like a handheld camera with cubicle office lighting that makes everyone look like they’re decaying and septic.

We’re all doing our own Ego’s version of being terrible. Don’t worry, none will be left unscathed. If you’re a pain piggie, please enjoy torturing yourself in the name of enlightenment and self-growth.

MISINTERPRETING THE SELF-IMAGE 👀

Image Types or Heart Types (Enneagram 2, 3, 4) are “shame” types - or another way to look at it is a type that’s trying to avoid shame. Their unconscious goal is to circumvent feeling humiliation through their self-image, identity and sense of self. All attempts to drag their self-concept through mud, “misrepresent” it or distort it must be fended off (even if it’s true).

Image Types are trying to outrun the hounds of shame by fixating and doubling-down on their self-concept. Their existence hinges on being able to deflect shame hot potatoes and keep their fantastical self-symbol alive and protected. Hiding in the closet from the barking dogs that howl, “You’re not the way you think you are! Here’s how you actually are!” 

If you inadvertently trigger this wound, this fight or flight response, and unknowingly pass them a shame hot potato, you might find it spiked back into your face. Triggering this response can come about by doing or saying something that reveals to them they’re not in alignment with how they think they are. 

For a 2, that upset could be caused by you pointing out where their “help” had negative consequences; you don’t need their help with something they’re trying to insert themselves in, suggesting they have a self-motivated agenda, or by not appreciating the 50 cookies they brought to the party. Reductive, but also true. You made them feel unnecessary or seen as uncaring. 

For a 3, that can be treating their value (usually dictated by the instinct) as trivial or unimportant. 3’s can even be triggered by encountering someone who is “better” at whatever their ego resides in (being attractive, competent, skilled, talented, popular or prolific - something that’s instinctually “valuable” to them and usually others). 

For a 4, that could be something as simple as treating them as if they’re not a rarity, not catering to their preciousness, or forgetting to walk on eggshells in their presence. Or if you compare them to someone or their creations to something else. You might get a cutting look or a “How dare you?” if you request them to engage in lowly trash pursuits (4w3) or something that’s showy and fake (4w5). 4’s are the only ones allowed to have a rider of special exceptions everywhere they go (it’s implied, not necessarily dictated). To expect them to participate like a regular person is insulting. 

And it doesn’t matter if the 2 isn’t actually helpful or needed, the 3 isn’t actually valuable or impressive, or the 4 isn’t actually rare or deep. This is the lie they must believe about themselves in order to survive. 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s will do anything to keep the shame hot potato from staying in their lap. They must spike it away from themselves; eject it from their consciousness lest it wrap its roots around their heart and devour their most prized organ (and sense of identity). 

SHAME & “THAT’S NOT ME” 😳

All image types auto-reflexively “no” at “misinterpretations” of their self-image (how they see themselves). It’s a dagger straight into their sense of worth. It can inflict agony upon them to be confronted with information contrary to the fantasy they paint of themselves. How this “no” can manifest is quite literally (“No, (insert image correction)...”), doubling down on what they said, repeating the same thing in a different way, a hostile over-reaction, or getting irritated and ending the interaction. Everyone has a heart center, so we all do our heart center to a degree, but you’ll notice this kind of thing more with core Heart/Image Types.

This process is not about you, it’s about the Image Type and how they perceive themselves. And this mirage is created to avoid the pain of shame on the identity level. Shame can make you feel violated, disgusting, degraded and left in tatters on the floor. As if someone has pissed in your face. Which is why “hostility” is associated with the image center (although other types can be hostile), because this is the hill they’ll die on. It’s where their self-worth resides.

A 2 “no’s” at you “misunderstanding” their loving, positive and helpful good intentions - how could it be anything but that? I am but an angel of spiritual nutrition and delicious tiddy to all who are worthy. They’ll double-down on how charitable and big-hearted they are. To be seen as uncaring or self-serving would cause them tremendous shame. Therefore, they have no malintent, nothing they do ever has negative consequences, and you (dependent, family, lover, close friend) absolutely need them. And if they feel you don’t need them and they cannot create a situation in which you do need them, the relationship may experience a rough patch. Because not being needed or having their caring received as caring, is so painful to them on the identity level. They may continuously try to become necessary in your life, often like a broken record, offering you what they think you “need” via their dominant instinct (social, sexual or self-preservation aka money/food/useless shit). 

A 3 “no’s” at you “misunderstanding” their valuable, attractive and skilled - whether it’s actual skills (sp), popularity (so) or sex appeal/magnetism (sx) - self-image. This will be flavored by their wings. Maybe you misunderstood (or interrupted) their 3w2 story about a special connection they had with someone else (which insinuates their value), or how people threw them a party (which insinuates how desirable they are to others). Or, perhaps, you interrupted or misunderstood their existential 3w4 story about how the grind is wearing them down (which insinuates they suffer for their success) or how other people are getting in the way of their success (it’s never a 3’s fault - they’re perfect), or how all of these people find them so attractive that they’re constantly being hit on (insinuating their sexual market value). You’ll understand, they are more or better than others in some area their ego likes to hangout. Because to feel “less than” or a “loser” in this category stirs up a great deal of shame and horror. It makes them feel worthless, which causes them to go into the 3’s coping strategy of Image PR Mode - and if that means destroying you in the process, so be it. If you wound a 3’s self-image by not recognizing or appreciating their worth - or worse, you inadvertently outdo them, call out their competitive BS, or point out the holes in the mounting deceptions they’re weaving - they will set out to ruin your image and reputation behind the scenes to pass the Shame Hot Potato onto you. (Personal experience, verified.) They do this to regain their sense of self and fend off the hounds of shame at the door.

A 4 “no’s” at you “misunderstanding” their tragic, unfixable and precious separateness - you can’t and won’t be able to understand it or relate to it (by design). A 4 is the only one not wearing a mask (this is their Ego talking), and existing in a plane of personal and creative significance and meaning that is unknowable to others. They will auto-reflexively have a disgust response if you (a phony) attempt to insert, compare or attach your shallow experience to the melodramatic romance and artistic suffering of their experience. Or worse, you try to inflict your hideous “vision” or “aesthetic” onto them. Because you’re being fake and they aren’t. You can’t possibly relate to their experience, because that would mean they have something in common with an empty low-life like you. Not possible - their ego will not allow that narrative to invade the 4’s consciousness. And so it is you who are in the wrong for attempting such an act of profanity. They may even try to unconsciously “one-up” your sob story/special melodrama with the kind of shit that many people keep hidden or would view as a weakness or defect. There’s not room for more than one special exception, just so we’re clear.

More on 4 (because why not?)... 

For most people, relating is how they feel “safe” and connect with others. Relating and connecting puts the 4’s entire self-concept in danger. It’s ruining their fantasy (which is everything). If they “relate” to you, give you special attention, or invite you into their experience, they are making a sacrifice or they’ve taken a shine to you. This is a grand act of generosity, from their perspective. This is not autopilot. They do not feel obligated to do this. This is a conscious choice and it is your honor. They’ve carved out a little cushion for you, treasured guest. And because the “special exception” type has made a special exception for you, it can leave them feeling utterly violated and degraded if they made the wrong call (and the other person may have no idea what they even said or did to insult the 4 because their list of qualms are so specific to them). 

A 4 wishes to connect under the mask, into the depths and truth of someone (which is often disturbing to others, negative, horrible or tragic). If they’re making the great sacrifice of connecting with you, it’s because they deem you worthy of their highly limited and precious “other-oriented” resources. There’s something they find special about you (often conditionally) but it’s an act of charity on their part. When a 4 is being “kind” to someone, it’s because it’s reflecting back to them something meaningful about themselves or because they find something significant in their connection with that person. Maybe that person speaks to their heart, seems sincere enough to engage with, or is so fascinating, beautiful, or conversely strikingly hideous to the point of intrigue, that they capture the 4’s sense of romance or imagination. Or maybe they can just sense a creative pearl forming beneath the surface that a reactive-heart interrogation would bring to the surface. 

Having said that, good luck if you’re actually suffering and expect the 4 to hold space for more than an hour while you out-suffer their suffering. An unconscious horror will wash upon them as they become less and less the tragic star of their own film, and may have to quickly end communication, “one-up” you with their own tale of woe or some other tragic affair or spin a narrative of how you somehow cursed them or interrupted their creative process, or some such.

IMAGE ATTACK & IDENTITY NUDITY 🩸🗡️

When an Image Type’s image is “attacked” (whether it actually is or not), they feel naked and disgusting. As if the lights have all been turned on inside the house and they didn’t have time to get dressed and make themselves look good. And every wall is now a magnified reflective surface - a house of distorted mirrors, a carnival freakshow. You’ve seen something they don’t want you to see, because it’s something that even they cannot look at themselves. And now they’re staring at it and cannot look away. It’s something that makes them feel so profoundly inadequate that they had to create this heart-shaped fantasy in order to cope with it. For someone else, that “thing” may be totally “whatever” but this is the thing the Heart Type’s soul has chosen as its cross to bear. 

The 2 fears they’re unlovable and unworthy if they’re not loving and nurturing. They will be lost in the sea of others, with no one who cares about them and no connections to their own heart (because their heart’s survival requires the blood of others). They control the narrative of their heart by self-sacrificing, giving and loving. They turn themselves into a nest that holds you and cares for you and you cannot survive without.

The 3 fears they’re unlovable and unworthy if they’re not valuable, desirable, and impressive. They will be lost in the sea of others, and overlooked and forgotten. They control the narrative of their heart by comparing, competing and achieving. They turn themselves into a desirable “star”, a recognizable and impressive trophy. They often surround themselves with other trophies that make them look good by proxy (reflecting back their worth), or make them appear more impressive when sitting next to them on a shelf (because they’re a smaller/less impressive trophy but still acceptable to their image to associate with or gain a supply of validation from).

The 4 fears they’re unlovable and unworthy if they’re common, shallow and relatable. They’ll be lost in the sea of the faceless masses, with no creative significance or true meaning. They control the narrative of their heart by withdrawing, distancing and separating themselves. They turn themselves into a rare, precious, cryptic and one-of-a-kind symbol. This isn’t dissociating or ghosting to the 9’s who relate to this, this is melodramatic and active pain used to self-generate ink and paint. Their absence is noticed. That’s the point. 

This pain of abasement is so profound and bone-rattling, that the Image Type will do anything to avoid it - both consciously and unconsciously.

IMAGE TYPES & THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE “MIRROR” 🪩

Image types are “mirror” types insofar as it’s all about how they see themselves and how that is reflected back to them. I personally think all Image Types view other people as an appendage or reflection of themselves. 2’s to feel needed and loved, 3’s to feel valued and worthy, and 4’s to feel separate and creatively significant.

The Image Center is using you to bolster their self-concept.

2’s use you to feel loved, needed, and give themselves permission to have and do something they feel too ashamed to have/do directly. You’re needed for their Superego to justify the love they show themselves. They gave you their old sweaters - an act of self-sacrifice - and now they have permission to buy themself a new one. They put you first (their child, or loved one) and sacrificed their big dream, and so now they get to (shamelessly) live through your dream, knowing without them your dream would not have been possible.

3’s use you to elevate their self-image and sense of worth and value through comparison, competition, imitation and emulation. 3’s need you (whether you’re someone they admire, aspire to be like, someone they view as a rival or a rung on a ladder, or perhaps you’re someone they wish to acquire - like a trophy wife, or possess something they want) in order to feel self-worth. Once they have your validation or praise, they feel worthy. Once they have achieved something you could not achieve, they feel worthy. Once they’re seen as the exemplar, then they finally feel good enough. They need you, because without you they have no metric of their worth.

4’s use you to deepen their experience and understanding of themselves through whatever roiling emotions and tragic narratives they’re projecting onto you - disgust, unhinged passion, love of their life, despair, inutterable hatred, etc. Or perhaps you serve some utility in their self-excavation (a cameraman documenting the story of their life). Or perhaps being in your presence reinforces the narrative that they’re separate and “deep” because compared to you, shallow vulture, they can’t help but be. The juice you provide is specific to the narrative that the 4 has created about themselves that highlights how distanced they are from others. And when you fail to deliver on this highly implausible fantasy or you fail to see and adequately appreciate how special they are - OR heaven forbid, your needs become too front and center - they will paint you fuckin’ OUT of frame in the most melodramatic or insulting way possible (insofar as it feeds into their tragic narrative of suffering and separation). 4’s aren’t negatively identified with “separation” the way 9’s and 6’s are, they like it that way.

I want to reiterate that it’s not about you. It’s about them.

2 is pointing the mirror at you and seeing themself in the reflection. Your wins are their wins. Your achievements are thanks to their help. Your problems are their problems. According to the picture they paint, they even suffer more than you do when you’re in pain. They find self-worth and keep the hounds of shame at bay through how much you need them and are grateful for them. 

3 is having sex with you in a wall-sized (or ceiling, depending on your preference) mirror. They’re watching themselves fuck you, dominate you, seduce you, manipulate you, outdo you, destroy you, even BECOME YOU - believing you’ll never have better and they should charge you for the experience. And after they’re done, they may even rob your ass or steal your spouse just because they can. Of course, how a 3 seduces, fucks and destroys you will be largely dependent on other factors of their personality (an SP/SO 3 with a 9 gut will be much more subtle about the entire affair because they’re more prone to gaslighting themselves about their own intentions, whereas an SP/SX 3-8 won’t be as bothered to hide their bloodlust). They find self-worth in this pursuit, and keep the hounds of shame at bay through comparison and value.

4 is looking at themselves in the mirror, and that is absolutely fascinating enough as it is. If they allow you into the picture with them, it’s because you’re changing the way the light hits them in a way that deepens their understanding of themselves or whatever they’re fixated on (which is also a reflection of themselves). Or you’re adding to the tragic, symbol-laden narrative they’re writing about themselves on the mirror. And if you take up too much space in the mirror, try and block their view of themselves and their writings, try and impose your agenda or influence on this experience, or bring in some kind of element that is repulsive to the 4, they will unceremoniously push you away from the mirror, and seal up whatever sewer pipe you crawled out of, you hideous reptile. It’s ok though, because now you’ve become fuel for a self-indulgent song or romantically grotesque painting. *wilted rose emoji*

This is reductive, but it’s necessary to understand what the type is doing by default: 

For 2’s it’s all about your needs (to meet their needs).

For 3’s it’s all about their needs being met by temporarily adjusting themselves to your needs (and once their needs are met or they realize it’s a waste of time and energy, they will discontinue adapting).

For 4’s it’s all about their needs to meet their needs. They may get into codependent dynamics that support their effete lifestyle or creative opulence, but others are merely a life support system for them to actualize their artistic significance.

Can a 2 be openly selfish and stingy? Yes. Can a 3 authentically care about another person without an agenda? Yes. Can a 4 be kind and generous? Yes. 

It’s just not the default program, nor where their sense of self feels “safe.”

Every single Enneagram type is a user and abuser. And they’re doing it in service of the horrifying cosmic epoxy that is holding our Ego in place (which we need to survive). Think of these tactics as survival mechanisms. Even ones that you interpret as malicious, are being largely unconsciously enacted by the person with the sole purpose of survival and their continued existence. 

Because our Personality Type is the lie our Ego tells us to stay alive.

BEING THE “STAR” OF THE FILM & PUSHING OTHERS OUT OF FRAME 🎥🤩

When I started paying attention to how image types made me feel a few years ago, I noticed the unmistakable sensation of someone attempting to push me out of the frame of my own life’s film. Elbowing me out of the way (THE NERVE!) of MY personally created psychedelic New Beverly’s Worst Hits marathon, and insert themselves in it. Even if I didn’t invite them to the show.

“Look at me!” the desperate, wannabe screen stars scream as they try and edit over top of your film with theirs (2’s by intruding and “helping”, 3’s by outdoing and competing, and 4’s by being “difficult”). They desire to be the main character in all situations. You’re merely a bit player in their movie, an extension of themselves, or an object of frustration, affection or rivalry. 

A 2 pushes you out of the frame to be your needed, adored figure (or to talk about how they’re the lead in someone else’s film who needs them), and draw attention to how loving and needed they are. While this means 2’s can be the one who will nurse you back to health, make sure you’re well-fed and cared for it can also manifest in them essentially “owning” you and having a level of control over your life. Whether it’s because you actually do need them (ie: financially, or they’re a go-between for something you desire) or because they find a way to constantly meddle and intrude - they’re indispensable. They become the star through “self-sacrifice”, martyrdom, manipulation and even hoe behavior if they have SX (like pampering someone else’s husband or being overtly sexual and gooey). You will know the 2 has invaded your frame when you feel a dozen wet tentacles wrap themselves around your independence, privacy, relationships and agency.

A 3 often enters your film by impressing you with something (which can involve bringing someone else’s ‘movie’ with them to indirectly highlight how valuable they are, whether it’s because the relationship makes them look good or they look good by comparison) or telling you something you want to hear. And if they find your movie more desirable than their current one, and it seems doable to them, once they’ve gained your trust and are squarely positioned in your film, they’ll begin the process of trying to straight up push you out of your own movie and replace you as the leading lady. And if you won’t allow them to edit themselves into your film and become the star, they’ll splice elements of your movie (the aesthetic, film score, dialogue, costumes and other characters) into their movie. And maybe even key your screen or try and steal your audience on the way out. 

A 4 is in their own film. They aren’t trying to push you out of frame to accomplish anything other than keeping you out of theirs. They didn’t enter your film, you entered theirs. You taint it. Poison it. Make it ugly. They’re largely uninterested in whatever is playing in the other theater’s rooms (unless it speaks to them in a meaningful way). Perhaps you’re playing a catastrophically loud action film next door and their attention is unavoidably drawn to it. If they have to pause their film, they’ll be seeking to push your vulgar trash out of their screening room so they can resume filming. (This metaphor is getting messy, I know.) And they do this with brooding expressions of disgust, refusing to “participate,” dramatic or slyly cutting insults, or intentionally getting under your skin to invoke a negative reaction so they can see behind whatever false persona they think you’re presenting - real or imagined. They’re hoping by doing this it cuts the power to your projection room so you just go away, or as grounds to get a restraining order so you can never invade their sacred screening room again. And, if the 4 does invite you into their screening room to bear witness to their film, or even come in as a guest star or romantic interest, it comes with conditions and is revocable at any time. It will be on their terms, not yours. 

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ENVY & HEART TYPES 🧿😡🥀

So envy, just like jealousy, is just an average human emotion that anyone could feel throughout their life and that doesn’t necessarily indicate type. I know quite a few envious hater 6’s and low-key envious 9’s. The most classically envious type (in my opinion) is 3. However, I believe Envy goes hand in hand with Shame, therefore Image Types are all “Envy” types (despite it only being associated with Type 4).

The definition, according to dictionary.com: “To envy is to feel resentful and unhappy because someone else possesses, or has achieved, what one wishes oneself to possess, or to have achieved.”

All Image Types are Envy types because they’re all about their self-image, and if information to the contrary comes in that someone is like or more of that self-concept than themselves it might trigger the fuck out of them. If they see that person as threatening to their self-concept then envy can arise. Because Image Types want to avoid the shame of not being how they desire to see themselves at all costs, envy can be highly activating to them.

If you’ve ever been in a room with a pair of 2’s, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a nurturing and self-sacrificing competition. Who is the most caring and generous? It’s totally hilarious and revolting. The muffins flying, the offers of this favour and that favour, while also smiling and flattering each other. 2’s won’t identify with the emotion of “envy” (as a Superego Type), so they’ll seek to erase it through care and flattery because it goes strongly against their self-concept.

3’s envy and covet what you have, what you are, who you know, how you look, who you’re with, your success, etc, when it triggers their self-concept. What they envy are the things they think have “worth” or “value” where the Ego lives. If you have that in an area they do (or perceive as lack in themselves), then they will envy that. 3’s envy is in the conventional sense of the word. Higher health 3’s are more playful and light about this competitive aspect of themselves, but lower health 3’s can become quite calculated, sinister and underhanded when their “envy” is awoken. 3’s seek to do something about their envy as Assertive types. I think of low health 3’s as the Single White Female type, because once they get into envy mode they’re not just content to outdo you, they also want to replace and annihilate you.

4 envy is kind of pitiable, on some level. They envy people being able to just function and have some kind of normal life that feels unreachable to them because they’re simply so despairing and separate. Of course, they don’t actually want a regular life or to be functional like a regular person. As Withdrawn Types, they’re not going to do anything about this envy (except maybe just trashing the other person), because to do something about it would go against their self-concept. Their envy is like “Look at those mindless, plastic phonies going to their meaningless jobs.” They could easily do that too, but they don’t want to. Type 4’s envy is tainted by dysfunction, repulsion and hate. 

A 3 will seek to destroy their rival or best them, but a 4 will look at that person as a way to make excuses for why they can never truly exist in congruency with this world (which feeds their self-image) or further unconscious fuel for separation. “If only I had a director dad, then I’d get my movie made… Of course they have an album, they’re a sell-out pod person… Oh, if only I was a cum-guzzling fraud, then I too could get an art show.” The irony is - like I already said - they don’t even really want whatever it is they’re enviously whining about, because if they got it they’d find a way to ruin it themselves. 

3’s want success and will seek to maintain it. 4’s may entertain delusions of grandeur - being able to support themselves with their creations is ok (for a while), but “success” isn’t on the table. It may give them a temporary high before it quickly leaves them feeling disgusting. They’ll set fire to their entire life to just purge it from their psyche. It’s only by the grace of The Simulation that a bunch of notorious famous 4’s have maintained careers for as long as they have, despite being insufferable. And so, this envy is just a projection of self-hatred about their own self-indulgent uselessness more than anything else. Bitching and moaning is a recreational pleasure.

THE HEART CENTER COMES WITH STRINGS ATTACHED 🎻

2 is emotionally expanding outwards (service, care, you). 2 is emotionally self-indulgent outwards (masturbatorily overdoing their connections to others with intrusion, meddling, “helping”).

4 is emotionally expanding inwards (creation, reflection, me). 4 is emotionally self-indulgent inwards (masturbatorily overdoing their connection to self and their creations). 

3 is emotionally triangulating between themselves and others. 3 is emotionally self-indulgent with others' gaze directed at them (masturbatorily getting hits of validation from others to feed the self).

TYPE 2: STICKY, SWEET STRINGS THAT LURE YOU IN BUT ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO WASH OFF

2’s heart strings are active tentacles. 2’s identity is pulled inside. Their self-worth is other-generated and it travels past the outer barrier. Tentacles that reach outward to feed and nourish itself. 

Their focus is radiating out, pulling you inside of them, like Hansel & Gretel into the witch’s candy house, or a Kraken pulling you into its caring mouth. They want to fatten you up with love so you can’t leave. The more you depend on them, the more impossible it becomes to escape (sucks to be a 9 or 4 fixer). And when it’s time to collect, you’re going into the Ego’s oven to be baked to perfection and devoured. Your success will be because of them. Your new family home will be the one they move into or invite themselves to all the time. 

2’s imprint on you, they leave their stink on you, they meddle and insert themselves. They are a drug you need (and probably didn’t ask for) in order to survive. Like a drug dealer: “The first one is free.” The 2 also has an agenda, and with that agenda comes entitlement. How this entitlement fucks them over is that it literally drives people away, running, screaming, erecting hostile boundaries full of booby traps to keep the milky teets and caring, prying fingers from being thrust into their faces and orifices. 

2's put focus on you, so they don’t have to experience shame. By turning you into an appendage, or tasty baked morsel, your offering to the Shame Kraken keeps the fantasy of their kindness alive and keeps the roiling embarrassments at bay.

TYPE 3: THE HEART’S STRINGS ARE A GLISTENING RAZORSHARP TRAP

3’s heart strings create an invisible, glittering fishnet (that can become razor sharp with the flick of a wrist) and moves outwards and inwards. Their unconscious intention is to harvest trophies. While they're telling you what your own desperate little heart wants to hear, they're pulling everything they deem valuable of yours into their own image to enhance their self-worth. This might be your ideas, partner, friends, connections, energy/time/efforts, talents, knowledge or attention. 

As long as you allow this transaction to occur seamlessly, continue to feed the image beast with praise or whatever their Assertive heart desires, while never doing anything to make their position or self-image feel threatened, you’re safe. But this false image they created just for you is also a trap. The moment you renege on this dynamic, it's like that scene in CUBE where the net comes down and slices you into tiny pieces. The fishing net you didn’t notice closing around you, that was shoplifting all of your treasures, pulls taut and cuts through every muscle and bone. And you’re severed in pieces on the ocean floor, wondering what the fuck just happened. Left watching as the 3 floats away with bags of your shiniest “trophies” to applause from the other people they have tangled in their image net of horrors.

As controllers of this net and the flowing waters around it, 3’s control the gaze towards their positive attributes, valuable assets, skills and accomplishments. They became what is desirable, and therefore they feel entitled to acknowledgement, appreciation and rewards - even if those “rewards” are your personal effects. They turned their heart into a 24/7 marketing team and they require compensation for the hard work. They might tell themselves they’re just competing with themselves, but they also want admiration and validation. Without it they wither.

This is how 3’s lose themselves to the entitlement of their Attachment Heart. That quest for ultimate validation turns them into someone who is not even them, tangled up in their own razor-sharp fishing net full of trophies that are now sinking them, weighing them down. A phantom of a xerox of a replica spinning around in a pile of silt. And all of the praise, awards, and riches mean nothing. 

TYPE 4: THE HEART’S STRINGS ARE RUSTY STEEL THAT CUT YOUR FINGERS WHEN YOU TRY AND PLAY A SONG ON THEM

4’s heart strings are pointed inwards, the entrance is hidden, and the strings are taut and rusty like an old guitar’s. They’re soldered directly into the 4’s ribcage with viscera of past heartbreaks and slights interwoven. Their focus is on their own heart and find it difficult to put endless focus on others regardless of what they get in return - because nothing is more rewarding to a 4 than themselves and their private cave of reflective surfaces and tortured ghosts. 

A 4 may have a lover they’re consumed with, but it’s feeding their fantasies with a narrative of some kind of otherworldly romance, that only serves to intensify their active, self-focused melodrama. And this can create tangles in the strings the more another person is involved. If you receive an invitation to the outer cavity of the rose-shaped dungeon ribcage, you’ll never be truly comfortable or alone with your beloved. The rusty steel strings will be cutting into your skin. You’ll be walking around on eggshells and waking up alone in bed to late-night howls in the corridors. And when you investigate what‘s going on at such an ungodly hour, you’ll find your 4 naked and sweaty with a muse (an apparition from the past or future, a freakish fascination, or another person who they “need” for creative fuel). And they’ll throw a jar of paint water at your head for interrupting the love-making process. 

The deeper Type 4 goes into themselves (which is a life-long project), the more burrowed into their own prison they become until it collapses on them like a tomb. There is no exit. Visitors are invaders. 4’s heart is not just deep in the ribcage of self, it’s inside a vault with levels of passwords and symbols and booby traps. And if you try and put your hand in, the acid will get you. Do not confuse this with The Mask of 3 or 9. The 4 isn’t losing themselves to the hustle or connection, they’re not adapting to your face and secretly hiding another personality. They’ve simply crawled so deep inside their own ass that all they can smell is shit. You’ll smell it, too.

Unlike a 3 or a 9, 4’s are not really taking you into themselves. You may have an extended visitor pass, but it is just that - a visitor’s pass. And it’s entirely conditional upon your behavior enabling their MORE PRECIOUS THAN LYFE persona and self-centered activities. This isn’t to be confused with a 3 wanting to feel like the Star or VIP MVP Blah Blah Blah. If you take a broke and unknown 4, their life will probably be quite small and creating some kind of tortured artist existence in a leaky basement in some vacuous city they love to criticize, they drink to excess and eat their paint when they’re depressed, and make their girlfriend (or parents) pay for everything so they can finish some shitty life-altering, deep painting that once they’ve finished it they fucking hate - and they hate you too, dear loved one and supporter - to infinity and beyond. If you take a famous 4, their life may also be insular but they’re likely able to indulge many of the grand fantasies they have of their specialness, and will be able to bank roll ridiculous shit (like Prince and Paisley Park). 

A 4 keeps their strings tight so they can snatch their heart back at any moment. No one truly holds it but the 4. Not to be confused with a 3’s “heartlessness.” 4’s simply can’t allow their heart to stray too far from their own rib cage for too long, before it starts to hiss and ash like a vampire in the sun. And they return to their faithful muse who never abandons them - themselves.

IMAGE CRAFTING - WHO IS ACTUALLY DOING IT? 👁️👄👁️ IS IT FAKE NEWS?

While “Image Types” essentially put forth an “image,” the concept of “image crafting” is (in my opinion) primarily the realm of 3. I’m not sure who came up with this concept, but it seems ancient and deeply embedded in Enneagram discussions spanning many groups. Perhaps this is semantics, but I think this aspect of “image” causes confusion for people who are actually a 3, 6 or 9.

2’s and 4’s don’t curate or “craft” how you see them, they are just aggressively doing their type. And you may misinterpret this “image,” but they’re not going to adjust their image to get the desired effect. They are just going to double-down on what they’re already doing, like a wind-up toy with feet that can only point in one direction. 3’s will adjust to get the desired effect (which is having their value appreciated and worth validated) which involves crafting, curating, adjusting, recreating, reassembling.

Masking, shifting, curating and crafting is the realm of Attachment/Adaptation (3, 6, 9).

All Attachment Types - because they are Adapting - are “crafting” an “image” to a degree. The projected Self is influenced by its surroundings and somewhat (if not wholly) malleable. Even 6’s, who are reactive types and therefore all about “realness” and authenticity do this, too. Because 6’s are adapting in the head center and wanting to find common ground with their chosen group, be liked, accepted or counterphobically backed up by a posse or outlier group - which necessitates a level of self-abandonment. 

3’s are the ones actually “crafting an image” that they are “selling” you. They will fake it ‘til they make it (and this is something that has to be constantly maintained, updated, tweaked, renovated, split-tested and checked for outdated, out-of-fashion or undesirable aspects). 3’s craft their image to get their desired outcome, therefore their image is fluid and malleable (so long as it’s flattering to their Ego). 

2’s and 4’s do their own type to their own detriment. There isn’t crafting involved. Just the same unsightly flea market atrocity, year after year.

2’s embody the nurturer archetype and they cannot veer from their programming, even if it would be to their benefit. A 2w3 may be a social climber (like a 3w2) but they’ll be doing it by ingratiating themselves and making themselves necessary to someone they deem important. A 3w2 can paint themselves as “necessary” to get their foot in the door, but it’s a crafted image to get a desired effect and they will craft a new charming one, moment-to-moment where necessary to get what they want. Because ultimately the 3 wants to be the shiniest and most valuable (not the one doling out cupcakes and kisses).

4’s are their image. They are the (self-inflicted) suffering artist, the embodiment of creativity and depth (in their mind) and even when they’re “with” you, it’s still all about deepening their own experience of self. Not about convincing you they are a certain way or upholding some kind of “image.” The concept of image is actually fucking disgusting to 4’s, because it implies there is something false about them. They may “correct” you if you paint them with the brush of a vapid commoner, but they’re unlikely to elaborate either because you’re not worth the pearls, swine. They may bring their ratty sketchbook with them everywhere they go, but it's in service of them reinforcing their self-image to themselves. You don’t need to witness it (unless they want you to).

Follow if reading these unflattering depictions of the types interests you.

💐👹

[cat-of-starlight]

I DO have a long Project Moon Universe post/mini-essay(?) I wanna make (Well. focused on Limbus, but also the other games as well), but I want a few more Cantos to go by first for references to prove my point,,,,

Spark Notes draft below the cut if anyone's interested in the premise: "The City, and its relationship towards those who are too gentle for it's cruelty"

Ok great, for the people still here- The sad little essay I wanna eventually make-

I think it's. TRUELY heartbreaking how much kindness as a concept seems to be punished in the city, to the point where its often an active point that the truly kind (or at least notably non-violent) characters always seem to get the shortest straws.

I won't get into too many specifics till I make the Whole Real Post, but- It feels like a few things typically happen to "Kind" people in this city

They distort

They flat out die

They become an outcast

The city beats the kindness out of them by force until they are forced to conform to cruelty

And tbh? Not loving how the community collectively treats some of them.

I mean, one one hand, we have people like Yuri- People LOVE Yuri. She never did a single thing wrong, and we can all agree-

But those who distorted or conformed? Seem to be collectively treated worse, while other OBJECTIVELY worse characters get off scot free

(*Note: Final essay will include more examples, these are the main ones I have off the top of my head)

--

For an example- Think back to Runia- I CRIED through Philip's plotline. I could clearly see the story of a man who- maybe wasn't the most courageous- who TRIED to help how he could- Got pressured so hard that he snapped and distorted under the pressure, becoming something that was beyond his own feelings, letting his distortion bury his heart to not feel that pain again- I LOVED that storyline, and then I come online and see him mocked for being some useless dipshit coward- THAT'S JUST SOME GUY- It's not his fault for being caught up in horrors beyond human comprehension (*Note: I checked his wiki for details. that man was only 24. He is younger than me. This man is barely an adult, no WONDER tbh)

--

Or my most... controversial character opinion, considering how I feel about Dongrang. Let me start with a disclaimer- I didn't read the books, and my opinion of him has exactly NOTHING to do with whoever the real life counterpart apparently is- I'm EXCLUSIVELY talking about the FICTIONAL character.

Limbus went out of their way to show that he'd, at least at some point, been a guy who was SO KIND that he was actively wasting his own money to help people/animals, and his co-workers ACTIVELY berated him about it- He wanted his tech to be healing, just so he could save people-

And then, of course, like every kind deed in The City, it didn't go unpunished- And to survive, he adapted. I'm not saying his actions weren't wrong- they were. I am, however, saying that I don't necessarily BLAME him for snapping.

He never WANTED to become like the other cruel people in the city, and even the cutscene images of him complying with it show him in visibly agony over it, and one image even shows him in tears- He never WANTED to be another cog in that awful machine, but when faced with that or utter destruction, he made a choice to survive.

Hell, half of him distorting himself was due to how guilty he felt for doing all of that in the first place-

Meanwhile, online, 90% of posts about him are "teehee I hate this piece of shit-"

--

For both of these that HAVE committed questionable acts in some way, I'm not saying I condone the things that happened. Because I don't. But I CAN feel sympathy and pity for them over the things that happened to make them what they became.

I can only imagine what the city would be like if kind people like them and others had been ALLOWED to be kind, without being punished for it.

--

And with all of this, all these characters who DARED to be kind, who DARED to fight back, even for a little bit, before inevitably being either physically or emotionally destroyed by the sheer weight of how this city works at its core- ...Some of the TRUE villains are treated better by the fandom then they are.

Canto III? Kromer- People go nuts for her- Some people even ship her with Sinclair, despite it all. She gets so much fanart. She gets SO many people ogling "ooo evil lady pretty", only for her to commit atrocities with a smile, and without a single slimmer of remorse.

Canto IV? Alfonso. Batshit insane, evil as hell- at least half the reason that characters like Dongrang ended up as fucked up as they did. You'd think "Wow- this is the person that made the person we hate the way they are, lets hate her too!" right? WRONG. Again, she gets the "pretty evil woman" treatment and people brush off her atrocities to ogle her. She also gets love by at least part of the fanbase.

And to that, WHY? I don't get it, genuinely. - Their actions?: horrible, terrible, not redeemable in the SLIGHTEST - Appearances?: You know what, I'll be honest- I think ladies are pretty (I'm Demi, but I can 100% enjoy a view) but I think these are actually two of the least attractive women I've laid eyes on. (Not the point of the post, and that's just opinion, but anyway)

And I'm not sure what causes it, honestly.

There are moments where at its worst, it almost makes me feel like the distant cruelty of The City isn't so distant after all- Those who are mostly kind, but fell into despair and tragedy, and turned into something worse get overwhelming hate-

Those who are evil, yet a bit more charismatic in approach become beloved?

Overall- Its a strange, curious tragedy of The City that the kind are often scorned and punished, and the evil stay beloved and in power-

It's just odd to see the mirror of that in the fanbase's reactions.

---

ALRIGHT GANG- That concludes my EXTREMELY rough draft of my eventual thing about The City's weird relationship with people who try to be kind, and the overall mirrored reactions of the fans-

If something in here is just rambling, or doesn't make sense, sorry- again, rough draft, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway

--

EDIT: Ok before anyone notices them not being included, I purposefully left out main LCB sinners and ESPECIALLY Dante, because though I could write about them forever, I want a little more canon content to work with before rambling about them in this post- They are a GREAT midpoint as someone who can't remember the cruelty of The City, and is now clearly struggling with the urge to stay kind in the face of The Horrors™- Honestly they were my main inspiration for this, but I DO want more info before writing about them fully, thanks <3

[tgrailwar-zero]

I have no idea what you are doing Invader, but, I trust you. I hope you will accept our support though.

As you began feeding your own mana as well as joining with KUKULKAN, her light filling up the hospital room, you found your focus wavering.

You saw flashes of events.

RIDER opting to secede from the Red Faction in order to search for AVENGER- and ostensibly you. A discussion between two Emperors. SABER granting that request, fairly yet reluctantly. Being confronted by CASTER several days into the journey. The desperate trigger of a defensive Noble Phantasm. Agony. The severing of a contract. The double-sided sword of having incredible fortitude- excruciating pain yet survival nonetheless. A hooded figure carrying him to a hospital. Darkness. A gnawing feeling. His personal mana running out, his Spirit Core trying to eat him alive. His mana had run out a long time ago- he was holding on through sheer willpower. Brief relief. A figure in black medical clothing setting up a new mana supply- temporary, but effective. Days passed, in a nigh-comatose state. Unfit for an Emperor, for a Servant. Frustration. Shame. Anger. A swirl of emotions, as day after day he tried to struggle out of the hospital bed- only making it as far as the door before falling unconscious again and again.

And--

[ NEW CONTRACT ESTABLISHED. ]

A bond.

Despite skepticism, a sense of belief. Faith, perhaps.

The same heart that you witnessed back on the waterside.

[ SERVANT - RIDER. TRUE NAME... "Constantine XI Dragases Palaiologos" ]

RIDER--no, CONSTANTINE snapped awake.

"Saber! We need to-- the Red Faction--… I need to get back to Saber!"

KUKULKAN put a hand on his shoulder, gently stroking it to calm him down.

"Shh. You're here-- you're fine…"

"Sorry for worrying you..."

As he was being comforted, you felt a new tether. It seemed as if your contract was renewed, but… different.

After all, you could only supply the same amount of mana, and now it was being divided between KUKULKAN and CONSTANTINE, which meant that dealing with combat would be different. Sure, T-Summoning was an option but--

Before you had much time to think, you could sense a shift in the mana in the room. You quickly turned to face the DOCTOR, who was trembling, the air around him beginning to twist and distort.

"Doctor…?"

CONSTANTINE asked weakly, KUKULKAN stepped in front of him.

"This is what he meant. I didn't realize it'd impact him so quickly. Maybe it was a proximity thing...? Well, anyways- get ready, Masters!"

It seemed like the new aggression was a bit outside of KUKULKAN's expectations... however, that became secondary to survival as the DOCTOR let out a violent roar.

A harsh wave of mana rocketed out. There was barely any time to react as KUKULKAN and CONSTANTINE went flying.

You saw the DOCTOR step out of the broken wall that the two Interloper Servants had fumbled through, his form changed, a divine glow around him.

"My name is Asclepius, the God of Medicine. Foul harbingers bearing the chaos of Phobos and raze the Solar Cell of life the hands of Hades, I will hereby destroy you! Begone, Interlopers!"

[ Both KUKULKAN and CONSTANTINE avoided taking damage! ]

"Damn... did something go wrong with my technique...?"

KUKULKAN's- and your action were a success- and it gave her enough time to recover.

Both KUKULKAN and CONSTANTINE were flung into the main room of the laboratory, the two of them pushing themselves up to their feet and drawing their weapons- CONSTANTINE unsheathing his sword as KUKULKAN's fists sparked with mana.

With two Servants, your battle strategy has changed! You can only have enough mana to fully support one as a 'leader'- who takes point during battles. They perform actions as normal, dealing damage- but also taking the full brunt of damage (unless the enemy has a unique multi-hitting skill)! However, the other Servants in your party (up to 2 extras) act as 'auxiliary'! Auxiliary Servants can be triggered for T-Summons, and do a number of 'support skills' (generally at the cost of mana) to keep the battle in your favor! The amount of Servants you can contract can be as high as you want, but has to have a Leader and two Auxiliary Servants when traveling around. You can edit around your 'party layout' while resting. Either have a large group of allies, or a small, elite battle force- your choice!

Statistics (KUKULKAN) - LEADER:

Strength: C Endurance: C Agility: B Mana: EX Luck: A NP: B++ Current Health: 3/7 Current Mana: 11/13

Statistics (CONSTANTINE) - AUXILIARY:

Strength: C Endurance: A Agility: C Mana: D Luck: C NP: EX Current Health: 7/11 Current Mana: 0/5

[7-dreamers]

‘JUSTICE’ [VirtuouS] Lyric Translation

Oh my dear god 나를 데려가 Take me back 아름다웠던 시작점에 To the beautiful starting point

서툰 증오와 With unpracticed hatred 뒤틀림 속에 And the distortion Survive Survive oh

Guiding me up, Guiding me up 모든 빛이 잠들지 못하게 So that no light can sleep

큰 숨을 몰아 쉬고 Take a deep breath Final fight, Like final fight With us

Clean me up, Clean me up 얼룩이 날 삼키지 못하게 So that the blotch can’t swallow me 간절한 외침으로 Fight for justice, Rise up With an earnest shout Fight for justice, Rise up

We build the barrier Build the barrier Build the barrier Fight me

Yes, I’m a warrior Fight me

Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me alive

밀고 당겨 긴장해 Attention Push and pull, be on edge Attention 끌어 올려 Rising emotion Pull it up, Rising emotion 멈추지 않아 날 지킬 Sun wave It won’t stop, the Sun wave that will protect me Show me what I’m looking for

고통에 몸부림치지만 Even thrashing in pain 그럼에도 나를 믿어 I still trust myself 느껴져 My vital rhythm I can feel it my vital rhythm

용기를 가득 머금고 With a chestful of courage 내 갈 길을 활짝 열어 I’ll open my path forward wide My heart is beating like an eagle

We build the barrier Build the barrier Build the barrier Fight me

Yes, I’m a warrior Fight me

Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me alive

다 몰아붙여 가둬 Drive them all in and lock them in 더 이상의 죄는 없어 There is no more sin 반복될 순 없으니 We can’t have it repeat Woo- Woo-

Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me fight- Fight- Justice makes me alive

_______________

Lyrics by Ollounder, Door Composed by Ollounder, tankzzo

Translation by 7-Dreamers HojuneTL Please do not take translation without credit

[sharky-the-idiot]

EVERY LILARKY SHIP IN A NUTSHELL UNDER THE LENS OF ANON FANON:

Lilarky (Lilac x Sharky)- i love you more than words can say. you are my best friend and my fondest love, and i don't know what id do without you. you come second to nothing. i would die for you. (the shippers would die for you too). the heart of the fandom, everyone's favourite lovebirds. prime angsty au material

Popale (Poppy x Whale)- i hate the world and i hate my distorted reflection and i'd do anything to be rid of the weight of what i am not, and what i never will be. you are everything they're not and everything i adore, and we will be wed within the hour over a volcano while they scream

Toxic Flowers (Lilac x Poppy)- i hate you. now kiss me you bitch. *starts aggressively making out*

WhaleShark (Whale x Sharky)- and then they fucked even though neither of them want to fuck and actually they were in love the WHOLE time and-

Shanky (Sharky x Ink)- i've known you for years and i will know you until the end of our time. i am damaged and you are damaged but when we're together everything seems better. late night talks and friendly teasing, living for the other's affection and hyping each other up at all times

Ink-Stained Weeds (Ink x Craig)- the only correct ink ship. the only craig ship. they are silly and supportive and argue over cereal. the bickering husbands of all time

Jilac (J x Lilac)- these people are all idiots and it's up to us to stop 'em. hold my hand, we got this. (sorry everyone they are have a PLATONIC SISTERLY BOND in my heart)

Sunlilac (Ink x Lilac)- i'm here. i'm listening and i always will and i may not understand everything but i will support you for as long as it takes for you to love yourself as much as i love you. thank you for being my light

Mothbitten Suits (Moth x Lilac- look i love mothbitten lilacs but they both like suits and i thought it sounded fun)- will compliment and gush over each other until the end of time. flustered messes, brilliant smiles, lazy days and exchanging art. warmth.

Tatobee (Weltato x Red)- Mentor figures. they're older than everyone else and look out for the same weirdo teenager (affectionate) and write so beautifully that it makes people cry. talented, responsible, able to break hearts like its nothing

Carky Shutt (Captain Gutt x Sharky)- a pirate who's never found the treasure he so craves and a boy who doesn't feel special. protection and surprise encounters and a budding affection neither can deny. sneaking onto ships, trying to reform him. challenging him to a swordfight, asking him to join his crew. danger and excitement. what the other sees around the sirens. love so strong that it's gutting, that it hurts and kills and plunders and survives all the same. unpiecing your identity and having someone who'll listen and accept you. its okay to show weakness here. im not going to leave you. i promise.

Ocean Hugs (Olaf x Sharky)- i can't touch you and yet i want to, i crave your warmth and your love even if it kills me. you cover your pain with a smile but i see you and i understand. you dont have to hide around me

Sharning Spiky (Sharky x Burning Spice)- someone who's lost everything, and someone who wants to know more. a lack of judgement, a strange intrigue that neither can explain. a budding crush into something more, something fiery and destructive and passionate. can and will spoil each other to bits

Sugar Lover (Lilac x Eternal Sugar)- sapphics!! guiltily getting flustered, soft gasps you can't hide at the beauty of a god. you're nervous but not because you're scared, you want her to like you even as you know the consequences are damning. power imbalance and absolute awe. you've always enjoyed indulging, what's one more kiss?

Sharkverdrive (Sharky x 2-0-4 tack shooter)- are we all gonna ignore this? yes. yes we are

Sharky x Hollyberry- another one for the pile. doesn't have a ship name and probably doesn't need one. a gal who knows how to lighten up and party, a boy who's not used to getting out much. learning how to relax and have fun again. having someone to defend

Sharkzwalder (Sharky x Schwarzwalder)- t4t cuties who will shower each other in affection <3

Sharhim (Sharky x Yharim)- idk enough about this guy to sat anything. big menacing powerful figure & just a little guy. it would be hilarious

Jasky (Sharky x Jasper)- they keep their relationship quiet. it's all in "i love you texts", private moments and intimate looks no-one else understands. companionship, familiarity

Ink x ...any cookie- ink's into dilfs and pirates lmao. they should kiss

Ink x Twisted Alice Angel- nobody seems willing to acknowledge this one??? whenever it's brought up it's swept under the rug. sorry ink's wife, youre irrelevant in comparision to the Great CraigInk Debate of 2024

Sharkzarella (Sharky x Mozzarella)- they melt around each other. sooo many hugs. physical affection all the way. lilac is jealous :)

Ink x the Entire Bendy Cast- that is so many characters holy shit. he is just too lovable. this is what happens when you put a guy named ink into a game with ink in the title ig

Autumn Showers (Whale x Star x Lilac x Craig)- time travel buddies! they have seen horrors beyond comprehension. they have witnessed death and loss and a future they could not save. joined warmth, joined failure, joined happiness, joined hope. working together for the timeline that never was. relying on each other to fix reality. the family you never used to need

Oceans of Purple Ink (Sharky x Lilac x Ink)- why put Sharky with ONE of his love interests when you can have two?? everyone is happy! sharky is the silly one, lilac is the one who looks after them both, ink is the one who gets hugged 24/7. happy healthy loving relationship. then the angst fics drop.

Murder Smarties (Lilac x Whale)- will stab each other. scarily intelligent and scarily protective. bristling and insulting and sharp smiles full of loathing. will call each other mocking nicknames during confrontations. not at all healthy but pretty fun to think about

Poppy x Sharky- you are everything i despise about the one i love. you are not them and you never will be them and yet i see them in you. i hate you. i don't want you. you're all that's left

Jacman (J x Pacman)- toxic exes. they're on BAD terms but pacman wants to get back together. he keeps bringing her tiny orbs to eat no matter how many times she says they aren't even edible for her. the ghosts keep trying to get him to stop, he is not listening one bit

ShaShrek (Sharky x Shrek)- we had to involve shrek somehow laddies

i think that's all of them?? there's probably more though ngl. why are you so shippable

This was all so interesting and cute until fucking carky shutt showed up

[howlingday]

I am a man of my word.

Dark knight soul stone Au

The bridge between realms, how quickly it changed for people's hope to escape to a trap. Ruby, Yang, and Blake got launched off. Even Neo fell, and Jaune almost lost himself when he saw her first. However, it was the request of Penny that sent him over the edge. Cinder had ambushed them, and Weiss was holding her back but failing. He didn't want to, he swore, but her request....with a heavy heart fulfilled her last request and let out a blood curdling yell as dark energy explodes from him.

Hearing the yell Cinder would knock Weiss away and try to reach Penny's body only to be met by a slash of energy and a distorted voice: "We meet again, false maiden....and this time I promise you won't survive" said 'Jaune' (Fray) giving her a deep cold look that promised unending pain.

First / Previously

---------------------------------------------

The battle grew silent, if only for an instant, as a cry of anguish erupted in the center of the battlefield. Eyes fell to the young paladin holding a blade coated in blood over a very still Winter Maiden. Jaune had killed Penny, and it was in this act that he shut himself out. If it were anyone else, this would have been a resignation of his life that would only end in, well, his end.

"How sad." A dark voice said through the lips of a kind man. "Guess it was too much for him. But don't you worry, Cinder," red eyes burned with dark glee at the Fall Maiden, "I'll be more than happy to fill in." He broke into a sprint towards her, blade and shield at the ready. "And there's no way in hell I'm going to let Jaune stop me this time!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Winter was still reeling from her interaction with Penny in her mind before coming to. Thankfully, Cinder was just a woman show and she was already engaged with Jaune Arc, leader of the technically fugitive team. Still, there was something different about him, like the man fighting the enemy Maiden wasn't the same man she fought with before. Swooping in, she provided backup to the huntsman already involved. However, she was met with a sword clashing with hers.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Jaune asked with fury in his voice and indignation in his eyes. "This is MY fight! MINE! Stick to your damn job if you wanna keep your life!"

Rather than argue, Winter swallowed her pride and continued with the evacuation. Landing next to Weiss, who was kneeling next to Penny, she places a hand on her shoulder.

"She's gone, Weiss."

"I know." Weiss murmured. "And I shouldn't be distracted. Not when someone so dangerous in still active."

"It seems Cinder is distracted, however." Winter nodded. "But I don't think we can get to the relic without angering Jaune."

"I'm not worried about Cinder." Weiss stood, turning from Penny's lifeless form to the fight above them. "As of right now, she isn't the most dangerous opponent."

"No?" Winter followed Weiss' gaze to Jaune, whose sword had been shattered. However, this did nothing to deter the dark paladin. She gulped. "What should we do?"

Weiss gave a chuckle. "I never thought I'd hear you ask me that."

"I've never been in this scenario. Have you?"

"This will be the third time." Weiss admitted. "And I still don't know how to bring Jaune back."

At this, Jaune rocketed down to their level, knocking the two aside and causing Penny to roll off the edge. Smoke hissing from his body, but his aura still shimmering, he pushed himself to his knees with a feral growl. Cinder readied a huge fireball above and was ready to launch it.

"Even like this, you're still no match for me!" Suddenly the fireball died as her Grimm arm twitched violently. She let out a scream, unaware that Winter was now closing the distance. Jaune was about to join her when he felt something hold him down.

"Get the hell off of me!" He roared.

"Jaune, snap out of it! This isn't you!" Weiss pleaded.

"Of course not!" He tried to break free. "I'm not Jaune! I'm BETTER than Jaune! I'm the reason Jaune is still alive!"

"But you're not Jaune!" She argued. "And throwing yourself at Cinder isn't going to help you win this! You need to stop and think!"

"STOPPING AND THINKING GOT YOUR FRIENDS KILLED!" He finally broke free, horrible red eyes wide and directed on her prone form. "And I'M not going to stand around and get beaten by that-"

"LOOK OUT!"

In a blink, everything went white. In an instant, everything changed. Taking the full brunt of the attack to his side, Jaune fell unconscious on the floor and the last thing he saw was Weiss flying over the edge and a voice screaming her name.

And then everything fell to black.

[sapphic-woes]

When You Met Her pt. 7

A/N: I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me– anyways, enjoy my subpar return. MINORS DNI

Word Count: 1k. AO3 LINK

____________

"You're…marked." 

The statement is indigestible. It's a sharp bone stuck in the back of your throat. You fear you'll choke on it from pure shock. Based on the numbness prickling all over your body, perhaps you already have.

You somewhat welcome the thought. It offers a faux sense of peace.

You stare down at your hands. They're littered with tiny cuts and shine with ointment. Ashen knuckles grip your knees with a slight tremble. Your entire body is stiff. The silence is unnerving. 

Viktor is taking far too long to reply, and you can feel his eyes on you. He's waiting. He's watching. He's observing you. 

Unsurprisingly, his relentless gaze doesn't help ease your nauseousness.

You want an explanation. You don't want him to speak at all. Is it fear or hope? What was the name of this sensation? You hate that you don't know. 

Eventually, Viktor speaks. It's anticlimactic.

"Yes." It still feels like a bullet to the chest. Hurts like one too.

He's marked, rings on and on in your head. Was it really a lie? The mere prospect makes you breathless, reeling back involuntarily. An omega just like me. Marked.

Your heart is a hummingbird beating against your ribs. It takes an effort to calm it down. No matter what lay before you, you'd grown accustomed to reminding yourself of reality. 

It was always too early to entertain hope. It was always reckless to believe others. It was always dangerous to forget what you were…

…and it was never too late to expect yourself to suffer because of it.

"But you used to be a…" Slave felt like an insult to the clearly successful omega. How could you bring him down to your level? You didn't dare say the words, instead letting them linger on your lips like a dirty secret. However, Viktor scoffs with a shrug.

"A "bitch in heat" that "deserved" to be treated like property? I was. For a few years, actually. My alpha saved me."

What? Alpha's didn't save omegas. They only took from them. But then again, what about Sevika?

She had taken you away from that prison and seemed like a kind master. She wanted to be called by her name. She didn't yell at Viktor when he snapped at him. Sevika hadn't taken anything from you, at least not yet. Whenever her stormy eyes met yours…

It feels safe. Warm. Protecting…

You force yourself to focus back in on the conversation, cheeks warming up as you speak.

"C-can I, uh, ask about–is it a–are you…?" 

"Not bonded. This is a claim. But I'm showing you this precisely because it is a claim. That…tactic they used didn't work against my claim, so it doesn't stand a chance against a bond. You can still have a mate, y/n." 

"Oh. I see. I can…" you trail off, numb to the news. This should make you happy. It somewhat does. But it's a distorted feeling of happiness. It's plagued with fear. 

You're property. 

Panic festers in your heart. It reminds you of the consequences. 

A tool. A product. 

It was dangerous to forget. A single mistake could cost you your life.

You do what you're told. You take what's given to you. You don't complain.

It was easier to survive that way.

The giddiness shimmers down. Reality is a winter breeze freezing over your heart. 

It's tethering you to the anchor of your past. You let it.

Nothing changes with or without the ability to mate. Regardless, you don't have the right. You have to get permission. You doubt your new alpha will allow it.

What alpha would willingly let go of their omega?

You shut your eyes. It would be foolish to lose sight of your place and forget how little control you had over your own wellbeing.

"I can't…I'm not allowed." Viktor frowns, bushy eyebrows knit in confusion. You lick your lips, continuing with an anxious jitter.

"W-wouldn't Sevika be angry? She is the alpha that owns me…so I am hers." Immediately after speaking, it's sour. Viktor sucks in a sharp breath, and his voice is remarkably steady.

"Y/N. What does Sevika smell like to you?" The question throws you off. You wonder if the truth isn't something you should say aloud. However, you aren't too naive to lie. No matter how nice Viktor is, he's the one with access to authority in this situation.

Besides, he already knows something. It's evident enough in those amber eyes of his. He's asking for confirmation…and who would he inform, should you lie? 

Who would come to rip the truth from you instead?

The thought makes you shiver. Punishments from lying differed greatly from telling an awful truth. You'll gladly take the latter.

"L-like…spices and cinnamon." Viktor nods encouragingly.

"Good, thank you for telling me y/n. Now…what does her scent make you feel?" Huh? Did such information matter? Viktor's serious gaze says it does, and you swallow.

"...I…I feel nervous. It's warm?"  You mumble, and Viktor nods, smiling softly as he slowly speaks.

"Y/N, I'll be frank. With the environment you've been exposed to…it should be impossible for an alpha's scent not to instill you with fear. Unless…you are a bonded pair."

What? Your wide eyes make Viktor grimace.

"Why the hell am I the one doing this part…y/n, I started talking about bonds because it's clear you have one with Sevika. You've been scenting her because her smell calms you down, right? Such an immediate connection like that…that only happens with bonded pairs." 

You listen, but can't process the words. You, bonded? To Sevika? An alpha that seemed more dominant than any you'd met before? How was something like you supposed to be…meant for her?

"N-no, there must be a mistake. I can't–it's impossible. I'm not fit to be hers, o-or anyone's–!"

"I don't…need a "fit" omega." Her soft, low rumble of a voice makes you jump. Sevika leans against the doorway, arms crossed. Her unreadable, gray eyes fixate on you, and you swallow.

"...Just rest." A beat of silence follows before Viktor coughs, and Sevika's jaw sets.

"You…fuck. Make a list. For the house. After you're discharged, you'll be staying with me…" Sevika finally meets your bewildered stare once again, and an overwhelmingly…beautiful scent fills your nose.

"...and I know how important nesting is. I won't make you feel like a goddamn stranger in your own home." With the harsh words, Sevika leaves as quickly as she appeared. You're left to soak in her words, stomach flipping when you realize what she meant.

You were going to live with her.

[karrenseely]

Emotional Regulation

So I have CPTSD. Everything I've read mostly points to this being a lifelong condition (yay :P) that is incredibly difficult for all of us whom suffer from it. I know it has been for me. I honestly don't know if I'd have developed it if my parents had been loving, supportive, and understanding like they should have. Because, even if they had been, I would still have likely had many many years of gas lighting from society, them, and my extended family to be a gender other than what I was. And that takes its toll on anyone's psyche.

But who knows, maybe if they'd been really supportive, then I wouldn't have had years of thinking I was crazy or shameful, maybe I would have transitioned really young as soon as I could tell them they were wrong. Then all I'd have to deal with is some body dysphoria. But then even that can take its toll as well. So I really couldn't say if I was destined to have this incredibly difficult mental health condition or not.

Either way, I really wish I'd had the loving supportive family every child deserves. I really wish I didn't find my psyche shattering as I grew up, getting stuck repeatedly at every traumatic event that I can remember, and actively forgetting everything I couldn't along with most of my other memories. Such that now, my memories consist of shattered disorganized shards scattered over the floor, most of those shards long since missing. It's really difficult to live when all you really have is now.

People talk about their childhoods like there's this linear well established timeline in their memories. It was a long time before I realized this was the typical way people remember their past. That for most people, they can remember approximately when such a memory occurred, in sequence with another. Even now, this is so foreign to me. I remember things in disjointed pieces, any one memory is not connected to any other. And few, if any, are connected to a specific time that I can locate.

Then there is the ability to remember what you did yesterday, or last week, or even last month in day to day life. That it's hard to know what's happened and what's been done recently. This was particularly bad when I was dissociating all the time, fortunately, therapy has helped with that part, and I don't do it as much and I can remember more of my day to day life. But even now, there are still significant holes in my memories of adult life. And admittedly as I struggle through my current flare of CPTSD symptoms, I sometimes wish I could dissociate like I used to so that I don't have to feel all of this horrible stuff. It hurts like hell.

If someone created the universe, they must be one of the most sadistic assholes to have ever existed, making it so healing is so effing painful, much less making thinking feeling beings feed off of one another.

In this journey of trying to heal, I've encountered many people talking about how, when we were abused as children we didn't develop our emotional regulation skills like normal loved, unabused kids do. I always found these comments or suppositions confusing. In large part due to the fact that I don't really understand what emotional regulation means. As a child, trying to survive, the only thing that worked, that made things even remotely bearable was dampening down on emotions until I didn't feel hardly anything at all. I wasn't particularly good at this, I still had feelings but they were distorted hazy half hearted things that would escape out, usually as anger, irritability, sadness, often fear, sometimes even joy would get out. But none were fully formed, or fully embraced, because if I did, then the pain would be in full force, the shame, the horror I constantly felt at what I was going through. So I did my best to damp down my emotions to almost nothing, and dissociate as much as I could so that I didn't have to feel or atleast remember feeling all those horrible things I felt. And the plus side to dissociation is that you truly only live in the moment. You can forget so much that way. You can ride the bus to school, but not remember any of it, just one moment you're at home and the next, poof, you're at school, and the next, poof, it's time to go home again and get on the bus, and poof the next you're at home again... you get the idea.

Emotions when all of the above were unsuccessful and I felt them anyway, usually it was the really really bad ones. And they were felt at 120% full blast. It was either 10 mph, or 120 mph. No inbetween. But people who talk about the ability to regulate emotions describe it as having inbetweens. Not having to feel the full blast, but not suppressing it completely either.

For the longest time when I encountered that phrase around emotional regulation, my mind just skittered past it, as it didn't make any sense to me. But I found myself thinking about it a couple months ago. And some kind fellow people with CPTSD pointed me to links that helped to explain the concept... except, those links were mostly just confusing. And unfortunately, my brain interpreted them as, "you are deficient, you're inability to regulate is your fault." Which didn't help. I honestly don't know if those explanations actually implied that, but it's what it felt like. Maybe because I didn't understand what they were saying.

Then... recently I returned to work, full time. And an interesting, if sucky, thing happened. I was fine at work, I could joke, I could laugh and have fun with coworkers and feel empathy for my patients and basically function somewhat like a typical human being in what I imagine is a healthy fashion. But as soon as I left work and went home, I had no energy left to keep the intrusive memories and emotions in check. And I would immediately start to crash. Spiraling down the rabbit hole of all those horrible memories. Nothing had specifically triggered them, it's just I ran out of spoons and they took over. I'd used up all my spoons at work.

Obviously, I'd overestimated my ability to return to full time work, but also it felt like there was an insight here. And it came down to my emotional bandwidth. If I had enough emotional energy, enough spoons, then minor triggers that normally would have lead me back down that lovely negative spiral, wouldn't actually set me off, and I could continue to function. And this was the neat part, I could continue to function without having all my walls slam down and turn everything numb. But, if I run out of that energy, if I run out of those spoons, then any little thing can set me down that self destructive spiral.

And the more I've thought about this, the more I think this is what people mean when they talk about emotional regulation. That most people have a large fount of this emotional energy to buffer against the extremes. And thus can handle day to day joys, stresses and hurtful things without completely falling apart. If this is the case then I guess I've developed some emotional regulation after all, though it's limited.

But why is it so limited? Why didn't I have any before? And the more I look at it. I see it in terms of bandwidth, energy, and/or spoons. Before, when I was having to live in survival mode, all of my emotional energy was being used to just survive. I was constantly in fight or flight. There was no energy to spare for nuance. My bandwidth was incredibly limited because so much of it was taken up with just surviving from one day to the next, with constant vigilance. But when we are no longer in those situations, and just as importantly, when we are not constantly flashing back to those situations, we start to have that bandwidth become available for the nuance. We can start feeling things in between because we have the energy to do so. It's no longer entirely about survive or die.

And that's the worst part about flashbacks. Even though I'm no longer in that constant life or death situation, those flashbacks have me believing I am. And contrary to popular media's depiction of flashbacks, most of the time it's not getting stuck in a living visual memory of an event. No, the vast majority of those flashbacks are emotional flashbacks. Getting stuck in the feelings of the event, the feelings I couldn't suppress anymore, the constant feeling of being in danger, of having my life, my very existence threatened, which brings on the constant sense of danger, of fight or flight. Which means, no emotional energy for anything else, except the extremes. Everything in my life currently can be perfectly fine, safe, wonderful even. But if I'm stuck in an emotional flashback, none of the current circumstances matter, because I'm emotionally back in survival mode, feeling constantly threatened, trying to survive, trying to decide if I need to fight or run. And if I'm stuck there... then there isn't any emotional energy left for anything else.

The really effing sucky part, is that often I don't know I'm in an emotional flashback until after it's gone away, and I can see looking back that how I was feeling didn't fit at all with what was actually happening at the time. I reacted to an outside observer in a rather extreme, or worse in a completely irrational manner. But then when I'm in the middle of it, I guess it's understandable that I have a hard time recognizing it, as all my energy is directed towards surviving, towards keeping the pain and my fears at bay.

So maybe emotional regulation is just having enough emotional energy to filter the experiences you're having into a much more nuanced pattern, rather than having to sort things into binary extremes of bad, not bad. And if that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, I am healing, because I'm starting to free up some of my bandwidth to start sorting out the nuances... even if I can't quite identify what those nuances are yet.

[leighsartworks216]

Logical

Bones x GN!Reader (Can be read as platonic or the beginnings of a romance)

This was going to be part of a 5+1 series where MC hides the fact they are Vulcan from everyone during their transfer to the Enterprise. But I just didn’t have enough inspiration for 6 scenarios so instead here’s my fav scenario

This is also my first time writing for Bones so it may be a bit OOC (I also pictures AOS Bones for this but you can imagine TOS Bones if you want I just don’t know how well it would fit)

Warnings: swearing, mentions of injuries, but I don’t describe them in depth, angst + hurt/comfort with a happy ending

Word Count: 2276

Masterlist

Tag List Form (Updated)

Logical. You needed to stay logical. Panicking and becoming emotional would not help your situation. Logical.

The word kept echoing around your mind like a mantra. Despite your best efforts, however, your heart still skipped a beat, and fear flooded your veins when you looked at your arm. Trapped under top-grade metal shrapnel and torn wires. Crushed against the wall, pinning you like an ancient Earth insect in a display case.

Focus.

You turned away from your arm, though your eyes lingered until the last second. Instead, you looked at the entire reason you crawled into this claustrophobic nightmare in the first place.

The ship was under attack. It still shook and creaked with the blows to the outer hull. A grid array fell apart, rendering the transporter unstable and unusable. Which was an issue when your Captain was on the enemy ship, fighting for his life and trying desperately to beam back on board back to safety.

You volunteered before Scotty even finished explaining the situation. You crawled into the Jeffries tube. You got yourself stuck in this death trap when the ship shuttered and shook and the entrance to the tunnel collapsed. Most likely, you would never be able to use your arm again. The nerves were crushed. A horrible sensation of burning pain and intermittent numbness was all you felt.

You took deep, solid breaths. Logical. What did you need to do next to ensure your survival?

Your communicator. It was attached to the back waistband of your pants. You would have to sit up to reach it.

This is going to hurt.

With a deep breath, you leaned forward. A scream ripped its way from your lungs, echoing down the tube in a distorted cry. As soon as your hand grabbed your comm, you fell back against the wall.

Your chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. Tears pricked your eyes. Even as you shuttered with a painful sob, you flicked the communicator open against your leg. It beeped. A familiar sound to pull you from your mind for even a brief second.

“Come in, Scotty.” You took another breath. It was quiet. “Does anybody read me?”

Silence. Unsurprising, really. You were trapped in a tube. Everyone else was most likely fighting for their lives against alien aggressors. How selfish of you.

“Scotty here!”

Nobody was around to hear your sound of relief. “Scotty, I’m trapped in the Jeffries tube and-” The engineer heard the grunt of pain through his communicator. “I’m injured. I can’t get out. The entrance I went through is shut off but- but you can send someone in on the other side.”

“How bad is it?”

You risked another glance at your arm. “I’m pinned down. The outer hull collapsed inward and,” you sighed shakily, “I can’t reach the panel. We can’t beam Kirk back if I don’t-”

The ship shook violently. There was a scream. It took a minute to register that it was your voice. Your throat burned raw from the emotion. The ship was tilting. You kicked a foot against the opposite wall, dropping your comm to press your hand against the roof of the tunnel and keep yourself even. The sound of the device scraping against the floor barely registered as more than an afterthought.

The ship evened out. The shaking stopped. Your emotions were becoming difficult to contain.

Your name came from slightly down the hall where your comm had stopped sliding. “I’m sending Bones in! You alright in there?”

It was too far out of reach to grab. You took a deep breath. Being emotional would not help the situation. Already, you were aware of the warm, wet tears sticking to your cheeks. The distant sound of metal clanging mixed with Scotty calling your name.

Around the bend came the good doctor, struggling with a bag of medical supplies. You’d never seen his face fall so fast. You pointed toward your communicator, still sounding with Scotty’s terrified voice. He crawled to it.

“I have sight on them, Scotty.”

“Are they alright?!”

Bones looked you over, becoming pale as he spotted the metal trapping your arm. His eyes searched yours for an answer. A brief nod, and then your head fell back against the wall.

“They’re conscious.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Scotty bit back.

With a click, the line with the head engineer was disconnected.

Leonard dropped his bag to the floor and leaned over you, holding a handle on the ceiling of the tube to keep upright. “My god. What the hell were you thinking, crawling in here when the ship is being shot at?!”

Right. The transporter. It slipped your mind, overwhelmed by emotion.

You weakly pushed him away with your arm and pointed across from you at the other wall. “You need to open that panel.”

“Are you outta your mind?! Your arm is a flapjack and you wanna play mechanic?!”

“Bones!” you gasped, glaring at him. “If you don’t open that panel and do as I say, Kirk won’t be able to beam back over from that ship. Now, are you going to help or not?!”

His eyes searched your face, searching for a bluff or lie that did not exist. His jaw tensed. With a frustrated groan, he turned to the panel. “What do I need to do?”

“Pull the handle. It should open.”

He tugged on the handle, but the panel didn’t budge. “It’s not opening,” he grunted.

You sighed. Spots were blurring your vision. You were lightheaded. “Kick it.”

Maneuvering to sit next to you, he held the handles above him and swung his body into his movements. With a few kicks, the cover broke off, clattering to the floor. He lunged back to the panel. It was a mess of wires and circuits - above his pay grade.

“What now?”

Deep breaths. A wave of nausea overtook your senses. It hurt so fucking bad.

“Hey, stay with me!” He rummaged through his bag, pulling out his tricorder and a hypo. With one hand, he administered the shot into your neck. You barely felt it. With the other, he scanned your injuries. Internal bleeding, crushed nerves, broken bones - the list went on.

Bones tossed his tricorder aside with the hypo, grabbing your shoulder. “Dammit, stay with me.” Your eyes fluttered open. Half of his face was blocked by the spots in your vision. “What do I need to do next?”

You looked back at the panel. An array of blinking lights.

For the Captain.

The ship shook again, but you bit back the cry waiting to escape. “There’s 26 wires,” you muttered. “Three red. Where they connect to the board, is- is it glowing?”

He turned back to the wires. What you didn’t mention was they all overlaid each other. He groaned as he dug through and searched for the red wires. Then, he followed them down to the electronic board they connected to. “No.” He looked over his shoulder. You weren’t about to pass out, but you were slow to respond. “What does that mean?”

You wracked your brain. “Not glowing… There’s a short. You have to bypass it.” Forgetting about the pain, you tried sitting up only to be met with resistance. You winced and sat back. “Is everything else glowing?”

He dug through the wires to see the board again. “Yeah. All but the red.”

“Okay. Top wire - pull it out.”

His head whipped around to stare at you bewildered. “Are you nuts?!” It didn’t click with you why he was so surprised. “It’s bad enough you’re bleedin’ out and down an arm, but now you wanna barbeque me, too!”

“Bones, the power to the wires is shut off automatically as they’re removed. Once it’s pulled out, it’s powerless until Scotty clears the system.” You nodded back at the wires. “Top wire, 12th wire from the top, and 6th from the bottom.”

He grumbled something about not being an electrician as he turned back around and pulled out wires. As he did so, you continued to instruct him. “Pull out the red wires and replace them with the ones you just pulled out.”

“Any order?”

“Top to bottom.”

The ship jerked to the side, dragging you and Bones with the inertia. Your arm pulled at your socket. Bones’ face morphed into horror as you screamed bloody murder. He scrambled up as fast as possible. Desperate, he shoved the wires into the red sockets and lunged for your comm.

“Scotty, clear the system!”

“Aye, sir!”

Leonard, pulling himself by the ceiling handles, dragged himself over to cover you. One foot planted itself next to you against the wall, keeping you from sliding any further. He held you close, chest covering yours and head ducked next to your shoulder. The ship shook and rocked and shuddered and creaked.

And then it stilled.

He waited a second. And then he pulled away. Your eyes were closed. Instinctively, he pressed his fingers to your neck, feeling for a pulse… You were okay.

Thrown back into the situation, he scrambled to grab his comm and flip it open. “Scotty, is Kirk on board?”

There was a brief silence. “I’m on board, Bones,” Kirk panted from the other end. “Where’re you?”

The CMO sighed, falling against the wall next to you with a clang. Wires and motherboards blinked back at him. “In a tube.”

“... What?”

—

“... You never… Vulc…”

A familiar voice faded in and out. Trying to place who was speaking was akin to wading through a sea of tribbles. Everything was fuzzy and slow.

Your fingertips, calloused from working in engineering so long, brushed against soft fabric. You tried to reach out with your mind; try to figure out why you couldn’t feel anything with your other hand.

And then everything sunk in.

Bright light burned your retinas. You squinted through the radiant glow, trying to find landmarks to focus on. Adjusting, your eyes landed on Bones, standing right by your bed with a PADD in hand. His face, you had to remind yourself, was always a frown.

“What…?”

He set the PADD aside and settled down on the edge of your bed. He crossed his arms. “I said, you never told me you’re Vulcan.”

Oh. Right. Your hand instinctively reached up to rub the curl of your ear. It was hard to see now, but careful observation made it obvious. Your ears were cut at the tips. You frowned at the memory.

Slurring, you tried to explain. “Some assholes… On the Paragon. They-”

“I know.” He sighed. “Contacted the captain. He told me about the attack. And how you blackmailed him.”

The corner of your lips twitched upward into some loose form of a smile. Bones found it strange to see any kind of Vulcan showing emotion like that. Though, before he knew you were a ‘green-blooded hobgoblin’, you expressed more feeling than Mr. Spock.

“I didn’t really blackmail him.” He raised a questioning eyebrow. “All I did was ask to be transferred with forged documents that said I was human. In return, I wouldn’t report what happened to Starfleet.”

He scoffed. “Sounds like blackmail to me.”

You weakly huffed a laugh. Vaguely, you were aware that you were most definitely being drip-fed some pain killers. Your eyes traveled down. A bandaged shoulder was all you had left. Your face fell into a frown.

“There was too much damage to save it,” he said. “I’m sure someone ‘round here would be happy enough to whip you up a prosthetic, but…”

You nodded.

The hum and beeping of machines filled the silence. A full fledged hospital… It was only logical that the Enterprise would go into ‘dry dock’, so to speak. You couldn’t imagine how damaged she must be…

You looked back up at Bones. His eyes were glazed over, distant, and stuck to your bandaged shoulder. “How’s the rest of the crew?”

Snapped out of it, he sat up a bit straighter. “Heavy casualties, but Kirk is fine.”

“And Scotty?”

He nodded. “Bastard’s probably weeping over the Enterprise in some bar right now.”

A bittersweet smile slipped onto your features at the thought. You were more than happy he was alive, but you knew the ship meant a lot to him. She must have been pretty banged up if he was that upset over it… Then again, he was upset by any technical issues.

Exhaustion washed over you. Your eyes fluttered sleepily as you shifted in your bed to be more comfortable. Bones, noticing this, stood back up. He grabbed his PADD and, hesitantly, patted your good shoulder.

“Get some sleep. I’ll be ‘round to check on ya later.”

He lingered a little longer there. His mind brought him back to that Jeffries tube. To the desperate situation he found you in. To the shaking and jerking of the ship as he did what you said to fix the transporter. It took a few engineers with blow torches to cut you out of there. Jim had watched with awe and appreciation as your limp body was pulled out and carried to the MedBay. He couldn’t forget that sight.

With one last deep breath in of the antiseptic stench surrounding him, he began to leave. As he opened the door, however, your voice called out to him.

It wasn’t a cry for help, or a groan of pain. It was simply his name. He turned to see you smiling once more.

“Thank you.”

A weight he didn’t know he was carrying lifted off his chest. He could breathe again.

With a nod and a cocked grin, he left. And he carried with him the knowledge that you would be okay.