#crust ghoul | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

not-neverland06 · 7 months ago

Text

How About a Nuke?

Part VII / Part VIII / Part IX

Series Masterlist

The ghoul x fem!reader A/N: PLEASE READ, this will be one of my darker chapters. I’m really sick right now, I have a bad fever, and when I’m sick I tend to write darker things. I’m not sure why, just keep that in mind while you read. Summary: You wake up alone surrounded by people with strange smiles and empty gazes. You’ve been left behind and you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it out of the compound alive.

You shift on the thin fabric of the cot and rub at your eyes. They’re crusted over with evidence that you’ve been sleeping for a lot longer than you meant to. You shoot up in the bed, panic flaring in you, and look around the room. He isn’t here, neither is his bag. The chair he’d been sitting in is still at the side of your bed, but no other evidence of him having been here.

You throw your legs over the side of the cot and rip the IV out of your arm. You press your thumb down over the bubble of blood and walk towards the doorway of the room. The lights are out in the compound. You can tell from the window in the hall that it's night now, dim candles are lit along the hallway but there’s no other light.

“Cooper?” You whisper, afraid to wake whoever lives on this floor. You look down each end of the hallway but you don’t see his silhouette or hear his spurs coming towards you. You can feel yourself starting to freak out the longer you stand alone in the dark hallway.

With only a thin gown on and no weapons to protect yourself, you duck back in the room and lock the door. You’re sure there’s a reasonable explanation for where he is. He promised he would be here when you woke up. Maybe they’d just given him a different room.

Though, you’re still frightened, you let yourself fall back onto the cot. You’re still exhausted, despite how much sleep you’ve already gotten. This is the first time in a while that you’re clean, not sleeping under the stars, and you don’t have to worry about radroaches gnawing on you. You don’t have enough adrenaline to keep you upright and find yourself slipping back into a dreamless sleep.

The doorknob rattles and you jump out of bed. Without much thought you rip the door open, assuming Cooper would be on the other side. Instead a woman with bright red hair and an eerie smile looms over you. She’s startling tall, taller than anyone you’d encountered so far in the Wastelands.

You stumble back as she advances, two armed men flocking her. “Where’s Cooper?” You demand, eyes darting around to try and find something you can use against her. You’re woefully unarmed in the room. Besides throwing a chair at her you can’t find anything to defend yourself with.

“Who?” She asks, moving to take a seat in the chair he’d been occupying. You keep yourself backed in the corner of the room. Your eyes dart between her and her men but they seem completely at ease, the pistols on their hips going ignored.

You glare at her, “You know who. The man I came here with.”

“Oh,” she laughed, the sound made your hair stand on end. There was nothing outwardly wrong with this woman, nothing you could point out anyway. Maybe it was the unusual length of her smile, or the lack of anything real behind her eyes, but you felt deeply uncomfortable around her. “The ghoul,” the word rolled off her tongue with a clear distaste. She sighed and shook her head, standing back up.

She turned towards the door and looked back at you. “Join me.” It clearly wasn’t a question, not with the way her guards grabbed you by the arms and shoved you forward. You stumbled, bare feet tripping on the uneven tiled floors.

She made her way down the hall, not once looking back to make sure you followed. It was clearly assumed that you would just obey. Despite how much you didn’t want to, you figured you would have a better chance of living through the next hour if you didn’t test the men with guns.

You kept one arm around your abdomen, the raw wound aching. It wasn’t burning or itching like yesterday, but your skin was so sensitive it felt as though your stomach might fall through the stitches. “Lights,” she started, causing you to nearly jump out of your skin at the abrupt noise. Your eyes kept darting around the hallway, like someone was going to jump you any second.

“Running water,” she continued, “agriculture. We have a steady supply of Radaway, meds, food. We are very fortunate here at the compound.”

“I’m sure,” you muttered. You passed by a room and she came to a stop. You glanced through the window of the room, little kids surrounded by pregnant women stared up at a man teaching them something on a chalkboard. You moved a little closer and frowned when you saw the diagram of a man and woman’s anatomy on the board.

These kids were barely walking and they were already learning about the birds and bees?

You glanced up at the giant woman and shuddered, she had a predatory look on her face while she looked at the babies. What backwards hellhole did Cooper drag you into?

“We’re much luckier than other surface dwellers, our children no longer have to worry about fighting to survive.” A woman rolled past you in a rusted wheelchair, her belly practically bursting through her white gown, three men flocked her, their eyes straying towards you. You glanced from her and back to the window of the room.

Was every woman here pregnant?

Feeling like a rat trapped in a cage you looked up at the red haired woman with trepidation. “Where’s Cooper?”

She smiled, the corners of her lips stretching too far across her cheeks to look real. “You no longer need to concern yourself with him. Your keeper has given you to the compound.” She kept talking but you couldn’t hear anything past the high pitched ringing in your ears.

The room seemed to spin and you found yourself leaning on the wall for support.

Cooper left you.

A heavy hand landed on your shoulder and you flinched. You fought the burning feeling building behind your eyes and glared up at the woman. “We’ll finish the tour later. You seem to still be feeling unwell.” She looked to the men behind her and nodded, “Take her back.”

You didn’t get a chance to argue before they’d looped their arms through yours and were dragging you back down the hallway. They didn’t throw you in the room like you’d expected. If anything they seemed to be treating you gently.

They laid you in the cot, propping you against the pillows and leaving without another word. You sat there stunned for a long time. You stared up at the cracked ceiling, surprised you weren’t freaking out more. Maybe it was shock, or whatever drugs they’d given you were keeping you numb.

The most likely reason, though, was that deep down you’d never fully let yourself trust Cooper. That was what he had been drilling in your head this whole damn time. No one was to be trusted, not even him.

You couldn’t be mad at him because it was your own damn fault for getting stabbed. You should have just let it get him, would have saved you a whole heap of problems. You throw the blankets off and get up.

You’re not just gonna sit here and wallow the whole time. You got yourself stuck here, you’d get yourself out. You approach the door, fully expecting them to have locked you inside, but it pulls open without a problem. They must really not think you’re a threat. Not like you could blame them, you’d been half dead when you were dragged here.

You creep down the hallway, going the opposite way the woman had been leading you this time. You round the corner, slamming into a little girl and and a man. You jump back, heart in your throat, but they don’t do anything except give you a smile and continue on.

You suppose there’s nothing to suspect about you. You’re dressed like everyone here, in a gauzy white nightgown that goes to your ankles. You don’t have any weapons on you. If you act natural, you’re sure you can just blend in.

You pass by another windowed room and risk a peek. You immediately wish you hadn’t. The woman on the wheelchair from earlier is squatting on the floor, holding onto the arms of a man. Her face is red and her hair is plastered to her head. She lets out a loud groan and another man removes his arms from under her gown, something small and wrinkly in his hands.

He carries the baby to a table, weighing it, cleaning its face off and then hands it to her. You turn away, debating whether or not you should keep watching or just move on. This is incredibly intimate, a mother holding her newborn for the first time. But something about this whole place is off, there’s a deep feeling of instinctual fear in your gut that is leaving you on edge.

You can make out muffled conversation from the room and peer back in. She smiles at the man holding her and he nods. She leans down and presses a long kiss to her baby’s forehead. The man who’d been observing this whole ordeal with a blank face steps up. He presses a pillow to the side of her head and then a gun. You stumble away from the window just as he pulls the trigger.

The sound is muffled by the pillow, but the baby still cries as its mother goes limp. One of the men catches her body before she can fall, passing the baby off. One of them leaves with the kid, the other two collect her body and carry her out behind him. You make a run for it before they can spot you, the image of her blood spraying across the floor permanently burned into your brain.

You don’t even bother trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for what you just saw. There isn’t one, there’s nothing that could explain what you just witnessed away. And Cooper had given you to these people.

You could feel the rage building in you now.

He stared down at the fire, the only sounds were the distant noises of bugs and the crackling of the burning logs. He felt odd, unsure of how to put it. It was quiet, despite the noises of the forest, everything seemed still to him.

He glanced across the fire, expecting to see her there, surprised to find himself a little upset when she wasn’t. It’s not like he could be blamed for missing the company. Being on his own for over two hundred years was hard enough. Being on his own after having her around seemed worse somehow.

Loneliness was easier when you forgot what you were missing.

He shifted around but no matter how he moved he couldn’t get comfortable. The discomfort wasn’t something physical, it was a restless feeling brewing under his skin. Poking and prodding him until it couldn’t be ignored.

Leaving her had felt like a smart choice. It seemed like the right thing to do. The compound should be safe enough. Then again, all he really knew about it was that it was only slightly more civilized than the rest of the Wastelands.

He sighed and leaned back against the old wreckage he had propped himself against. He wouldn’t have shelter tonight, it was rare to find any that wasn't overrun by radroaches out in the sands anyway. With the light from the fire he couldn’t see much. But he could make out the old billboard across from him.

It was the one she’d always hated and he loved. She was in that skimpy astronaut suit riding a rocket with a Nuka-Cola in her hand. He’s constantly bombarded by his Vault Boy posters. Seeing her shouldn’t bother him. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s ever seen one of her ads out here, anyway.

But it hurts him in a way it hadn’t before. Now he knew that she’d never left him, that she’d been screwed by the same company that ruined his life. He sighed and ran a hand over his rough cheeks. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he shouldn’t be considering this.

He should just leave it be, leave her be. But he can’t. Once he’s got his teeth dug into something, it’s nearly impossible to let it go.

You should have been paying better attention to where you were running, but all you could see was that woman’s lifeless body clutching her crying baby to her chest. You stumbled through a door, racing down the stairs until you were sure you were at the bottom floor.

You burst through the door, wincing at the bright sunlight that shone down on you. You heard the sound of laughter and children’s voices as they screamed and ran past you. You jumped out of their way, watching as they chased each other.

You glanced around, confused and disoriented, trying to figure out where you were. It must’ve been the back of the compound, beyond the different crops and gardens you couldn’t see anything but a radiated ocean. It was the same odd blue the lake Cooper had taken you to had been.

Men in dirtied clothes were bent over different crops and vegetables, digging around in them and pulling out ripe foods. Some older children assisted them, holding tools of their own or carrying baskets of different crops. But you didn’t see any women among them.

“Lost?” You whirled around on the man behind you, he raised his hands up with a startled expression on his face. “Sorry, sorry, I thought you heard me walk up.”

“Who are you?”

He held out his hand, an odd smile on his face. Everyone here had the same smile, nearly genuine but lacking just enough life to be. You looked at his hand and then back at him, making no move to take it. He was undeterred and just reached forward, yanking your hand into his and crushing your palm in too firm a grip. “Ben, good to meet you, Sylvie told me to come find you.” He seems oddly familiar, but you can’t place why.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out Sylvie was the red head who’d been showing you around earlier. With one glance at the gun on his hip you figured this was another demand. You peered over your shoulder at the children again, surprised to find them already staring at you. The boys grinned but the girls didn’t even blink as Ben showed you back through the door.

You took in a shaking breath and ascended the stairs once more, feeling your freedom slipping further away from you. Ben kept a tight grip on your wrist the whole way up. ”I’m excited to get to know you.”

You shot him a distrusting look and tried, unsuccessfully, to once more get him to release you. “Why would we be doing that?”

He stopped and you were forced to follow. Your eyes bounced around the empty hallway, feeling incredibly on edge with the way he invaded your space. He had the eerie smile again, eyes roaming slowly up and down your form. “You are to be my breeding partner after all.”

What. The. Fuck.

“Ben!”

You didn’t think you’d be happy to see Sylvie again, but right now you were ridiculously grateful for her interference. He backs off and it’s only then you feel like you can breathe again. You rip your wrist out of his grasp, rubbing away the bruise that bloomed under his hand. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you when you walk away and it takes everything in you not to turn around for another glance at him.

Sylvie holds a door open for you at the end of the hall and you duck inside, trying to calm your racing heart after that interaction. “I apologize for Ben, he’s a bit overeager. He lost his partner this morning and I did promise him you,” she laughs and steps inside.

It’s only as she passes by you that the light goes on in your head. He’d been one of the men in the room with the mother. He’d been holding her.

Your fists dig into the white fabric of your gown and you have to swallow the bile building in your throat down. Your hands are shaking horribly and your eyes go fuzzy. Lack of any real food is starting to catch up with you as your adrenaline spikes and plummets again.

You’re not sure your heart can take much more of living in the Wastelands.

Sylvie sits down at a long table, plates piled with food enough for ten people before her. But there are only two chairs, one for her, and you assume the other is for you. “Please,” she motions to the chair across from her, “sit.” Her tone brokers no negotiation and you find yourself walking on shaking legs to the other chair.

You throw yourself down in it, staring blankly down at the plate. “What happened to his partner?” You whisper, unable to bring yourself to speak any louder.

“It is the cycle of life here at our compound.” You glance up at her in astonishment but she’s not paying attention, just digging into her food. “Our goal is to repopulate the earth. Bring back society as it should be.”

“And how should it be?” You interrupt, fully disgusted by the people surrounding you now. “Because what I saw was sickening. You slaughtered her like she was an animal.”

Sylvie’s fork slams against the table and you jump in surprise. “That’s what she was, is.” She sighs and shakes her head, “It’s hard for an outsider to understand.”

“Then explain,” you order, voice sharp. You’re not going to play games with this woman. You want answers and you want them now. But more importantly you want to know why he would leave you here. How could he?

“Our mission, requires sacrifice. When they are ready, the women here are assigned a breeding partner. They give birth until they can’t and then…” That sickening grin was back and you found yourself shrinking back into your chair. “They provide for us in other ways. Organ harvesting is a very lucrative trade, did you know?” You shake your head mutely. “It’s what provides us with the medicine that saved your life last night.”

“The men? Does anything happen to them?”

She shrugs, digging into her meal once more. “They can reproduce much longer than women can. And when they can’t we find use for them in the fields. When they die, their body is used keep our agriculture thriving.” The woman you watched die this morning couldn’t have been older than thirty.

And the man guarding Sylvie could have been the same age as your father.

Cooper had sold you to be bred and then harvested. Like you were cattle. You glanced up at the guards but they weren’t looking at you. Why would they? Women clearly weren’t more than animals here. You could never be a threat.

You slipped the knife off the table and into your sleeve. “And the women are okay with this?”

She looked at you like you were crazy for wondering such a thing. “Of course, they know they’re serving a higher purpose than themselves.” You scoffed in disbelief. Not only was this a human farm where you were harvested like a cow, you found yourself in the middle of some fucked up new world cult.

“Did-” your voice cracks and you find the words difficult to get out. “Did Cooper know about this?”

“He would have had to.” She puts her fork down and digs through her pockets. She throws the dog tags he’d been carrying around at you. You catch them, noticing the back of the chain looked oddly melted. “The bounty he brought me, it was one of our old trading partners. Occasionally, we do business with the Brotherhood. One of their squires, he took a liking to one of our girls. She was sickly, too sickly to bring any more children to term. The day she was meant to be harvested he took her and they ran.”

She sighed and shook her head, a dark expression coming over her face. “I don’t take kindly to thieves. I wanted the tags as proof of his death.”

You didn’t know who the Brotherhood was, but you figured it was just another cult you didn’t want to know about. You placed the tags back on the table and stared down at your plate. “Couldn’t they have just stolen the tags and lied?”

She laughed and shook her head. “When his knight branded him, there was an accident. You couldn’t get those tags without taking his head off first.”

“And the girl?”

She looked up at you, frowning, “What about her?”

“Is she dead?” You knew Cooper was a bad man, but the thought of him shooting some defenseless girl made you sick to your stomach. Who could blame her for wanting to get out of this place?

Sylvie shrugged, “I don’t know. I’m sure without her little savior she’ll die eventually. She wasn’t made for Wasteland life.” Sylvie wiped her mouth and stood up. She rounded the table, coming to stand behind you, her rough palm circled around your nape and you whimpered at the tight grip. “See, there are things a lot worse than death waiting for you out there, little lamb. So, I suggest you learn your place here and be grateful for the few good years you’ll have left.”

She releases you with a shove and your hand shoots out to brace yourself against the edge of the table. She stalks towards the door, “You’ll join Ben tomorrow night. You have one night to make your peace with your place here.” The door slams shut and you finally feel the tears come.

He hears the coughing before he sees the shack. The smell of a rotting corpse overwhelms him and he figures the girl never bothered to move the body. How she’s lasted this long with the smell and gasses, he has no idea. But she was sick to begin with, he’s sure she won’t be lasting much longer.

He throws the rickety wooden door open and steps over the bloated corpse of the squire he’d collected his bounty from. Sure enough, as he’d been expecting, the girl is curled up in the corner of the shed. She’s skin and bones at this point, her coughing causing her whole body to shake with painful tremors.

She peers out from between her arms and levels him with a glare. Her eyes are bloodshot, the whites of them now yellow. “You.”

He leans against the table in the middle of the room and nods, “Me.”

“What,” she coughs again and his face screws up at the blood that dribbles from her lips. “What do you want now? Here to finish the job?”

He shakes his head, pulling out a Stimpak and some ration bars. She eyes the supplies hungrily, a rabid desperation on her frail face. She reaches for them but he places them just out of her reach, a cruel look on his face. “Need some answers.”

“About what?”

“The place your little boyfriend stole you from. My friend’s there, I need to know why exactly you left.”

She laughs, the sound cruel and costing. She wipes more blood from her mouth, a vicious grin on her lips. “Sorry, but your friend is fucked.” She pauses and the shakes her head, “Or she’s getting fucked at least. Over. And over. And over again. They certainly don’t waste any time there.”

She reaches for a bar again but he glares and pulls them back. She sighs and slumps against the wall. “What,” he snaps, “are you talking about?”

“They harvest us. The chickens are treated better than we are. They used us to make their little soldiers, until we can’t push them out anymore. And then they harvest us for parts. My little brother was five when he was taken, he was sick like me. He just didn’t hide it as well. They make sure you’re useful to them, dead or alive.”

He doesn’t waste anymore time with her. He tosses the supplies at her and runs back out of the shed. Maybe, maybe, he’d had some suspicions about them being less than kind. But it was the Wastelands, no one here was truly good.

He never would have thought it was going to be this bad. He never would have left her there if he thought something like this would happen.

That’s what that woman had been talking about when she said compensation. He was fucking selling her, like a prize pig. He had wasted too much time traveling here for the confirmation. He should have just followed his gut instinct and gone back. But he was too fucking stubborn to let himself.

He didn’t want to think that he was panicking. He had at one point considered killing her himself. Hell, he’d shot the girl. Why would it bother him so much if someone else did it?

He’d lost too much. He wasn’t entirely sure he could lose her again.

Your palm is wrapped around the handle of the knife you’d taken when the door creaks open. You tense up but otherwise remain still. The sound of muddy boots squelches across the tiles. You stay hidden under the covers. The moonlight from the window is just bright enough to cast a shadow over whoever is sneaking into your room.

You smell him before you feel him. The smell of earth and vegetables suffocating you just as rough hands wrap around your arm. “Hey-”

You shoot up, uncurling like a viper and slamming your hand into his throat before he can even try to shout. Ben’s eyes flare wide, terror consuming them before you twist the knife and rip it out. Arterial blood sprays across your face and he slumps to the floor, limp.

You rush to close the door and turn back to him. He’s a big man, tall and buff with muscle, you strip off his work shirt and pants, figuring they’ll just have to work for now. You take his boots and stuff his socks into the tips so they’ll fit better. You grasp the pistol off his waist and tuck it into your belt.

You go through all the drawers and cabinets of the room. You take any supplies you can find and toss them in a pillow case before unlocking the door and slipping back into the hallway. You don’t hear the telltale sounds of guards patrolling and figure you should be able to slip out through the stairs.

You’re almost down the steps when you stop. Something in you won’t let you go any farther. Your mind jumps to Sylvie. How casually she’d discussed the slaughter of women over her lunch. How quick she was to turn you into cattle rather than view you as something human.

That familiar rage you used to feel builds up in you. Your entire adult life you’d fought to be viewed as a real person. As someone who deserved the same care and respect everyone else got. And she, a woman, was so quick to tear that away from you. To perpetuate further suffering as long as she got to profit off of it.

You back out of the stairwell and head down the hallway. You blindly walk the path you’d walked earlier to her quarters. You see that mother in your head, clutching her baby as she drew her last breath. And she’d known it was coming. Every girl here knew what was coming.

Little boys got to smile and laugh and play and the girls grew up knowing what their fate was going to be. And they were content with it.

Two guards are stationed outside of Sylvie’s door. You shoot them both. You know the sounds will alert others. You don’t have much time left. You burst through the door of her room. Her lamp is on and she’s already waiting for you. Her gun is on her lap, and she’s smiling at you as you walk in. “You can still turn around-”

“I know my place,” you interrupt and she frowns. “I’m not letting pricks like you, who think they get a gun and rule the world, make decisions for me anymore.” She reaches for the revolver on her lap but you’re pulling the trigger faster. The bullet tears through her throat and she lurches forward. Her hands claw desperately at her neck, blood pouring between her fingers.

You run forward, pulling the revolver from her lap and tuck it into the waistband of your pants. You make your way out the door and towards the stairs again. You can hear booted footsteps rushing towards you, nearly at the doorway just as you slam it closed.

You manage to fly down one flight of stairs before the door’s crashing open and slamming into the wall. Shouts echo through the stairwell. Orders to shoot you are issued but you’re barreling through the gate of the compound before they can grab you.

You look behind you, watching as all the guards search the grounds for you and you laugh. You nearly can’t believe it. That you made it out, that you finally stood up for yourself. For a moment in there you’d almost considered giving in and just letting it happen.

Living in the Wastelands was hard, giving in would be so easy. Letting someone just make the decisions for you would be easy. But the base instinct of survival is a tough opponent to beat. You couldn’t let yourself give up and give in to another person who thought humans were just another form of compensation.

You only have one last stop to make.

He’d had to camp for the night before he could make it back to the compound. He hadn’t wanted to stop but he figured they’d paid him so well that they weren’t planning on just getting rid of her the first night. He’d go by tomorrow and take her back. How well that went was up to them.

He stared into the fire and sighed. He felt like a fucking fool leaving her there. He should know better. But he’d been so desperate to just get rid of her it was easy to ignore all the signs telling him not to. He couldn’t handle her anymore. Couldn’t handle all the old emotions she drudged up around him.

He couldn’t be what she wanted, what she needed. Deep down, maybe, the old Cooper was still in there. But he wasn’t willing to bring him back. Not for her, not for anybody. That didn’t mean he was just going to let her die, though.

He was squatted by the dying fire, eating some jerky, when he heard someone approaching. He didn’t get a chance to turn around before a shot was going off and his hat was flying off his head. It lands in the sand behind him and he turns, almost surprised to find her.

She’s got a revolver in her hand, dried specks of blood on her cheeks. “You better pray you didn’t just put a hole in my hat, sweetheart.” She narrows her eyes at him and lowers the gun.

“You sold me.”

He stands up and raises his hands in a placating motion. She’s trigger happy, but he knows she isn’t gonna shoot him. If she was, she would have done it a long time ago. “In my defense, darling, I didn’t know they were a bunch of sickos.”

She scoffs, eyes wide with disbelief. “Really? So they didn’t pay you for me?”

He sucks on his teeth and frowns, “Well-”

“Just shut up!” She stares at him in astonishment, shaking her head and muttering something to herself. His eyes stay on the revolver in her hands as she waves it around wildly, trying to figure out the best way to get her to put it down.

“I was on my way back for you, darling.”

She whirls around, the gun up and pointing at him again. “Yeah, like I’ll believe anything you’ll say to me right now.” She backs away from him and her fists clench around something dangling from her left hand. He finally notices the tags she’s holding now. The same one’s he’d given Sylvie.

Just what the hell had she done to get out of there? He’s almost impressed by her sheer stubbornness to stay alive.

“The girl, the one who was with your bounty, what happened to her?”

He shook his head, “Nothing. I left her where she was.” Her thumbs pulls the hammer of the revolver back and he laughs. He can’t stop himself from antagonizing her, taking a sick sort of satisfaction from the fact that he could push her as much as he wanted and she still wouldn’t pull the trigger.

“She reminded me of you. Battered and bruised, used up and left behind. She couldn’t protect herself, couldn’t even drag her boyfriend’s corpse out of their little hut.”

Her eyes get glossy and he takes in the sight with a grin. She always had been pretty when she cried. “You are a bad person. And I knew that and still tried to find something good in you. But you are rotten to your core, there is nothing human left in you.”

His mouth settles into a firm line and he finds himself a little pissed off. “Now, darling-”

He doesn’t see it coming. Doesn’t even realize what’s happened until he’s flying back and hitting the ground. He doesn’t feel any pain, his adrenaline pumping so much all he can feel is the vibrations. The impact of the bullet carving it’s way through his chest as he lay there on the ground.

She walks over to him, eyes empty as she stands over him and watches the blood pool out. “We’re done, Cooper.”

She leaves him on the ground, not looking back as he presses his hand to his wound in shock. He didn’t think she had it in her.

#cooper howard x reader #the ghoul x reader #fallout x reader #fallout tv series #how about a nuke?#cooper howard #the ghoul

311 notes · View notes

thelampisaflashlight · 4 months ago

Text

Dew, in the kitchen: "So I was talking to my sister yesterday-" Swiss, shocked: "You have a sister?? Older or younger?" Dew, nodding: "Older. Anyway, I was talking to her about our brother-" Swiss: "You have two siblings? And you never told me??" Dew: "Actually, I have seven actually, there's eight of us total-" Swiss, spluttering: "S-Seven?! You have seven whole ass siblings and I didn't know this, how??" Dew, crossing his arms: "You never shut up long enough for me to tell you anything?" Swiss: "Ouch, damn, okay..." Dew: "Back on track; I was talking to my older sister about our brother, because he did a DNA test and found out he doesn't have the same dad as the final five..." Swiss, whispering: "The final five... Geezus Crust..." -pauses, realizing- "Wait a minute-" Aeon, from the couch, curious: "Did your mom name you Dewdrop, or did you get to choose one when you became a ghoul?" Dew: "I regret to inform the peanut gallery that it was my mother's third choice after Cider and Moss-" Swiss, on his knees: "Fucking CIDER-"

#lamp rambles #shitghosting #nameless ghouls #dewdrop ghoul #swiss ghoul #aeon ghoul #ghost band #the band ghost #ghost bc

242 notes · View notes

fr33time · 11 days ago

Text

Ghouls Favourite Desserts Pt. 2

Featuring: The Jabberwock and Sinostra boys!

Divider credits: @thecutestgrotto Genre: Headcanons

See: Pt. 1

Requesting rules here!

╔══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╗

☆Haru

Cheesecake - He prefers cranberry cheesecake the most. Haru absolutely has no time to cook for himself but rarely will he make a specific cheesecake recipe that he tried a while ago and really likes. The crust is beautiful and he loves how it melts in his mouth. If he leaves the kitchen for too long then some anomalies will sneak in and eat it because the aroma spreads throughout Jabberwock. In the end Haru doesn’t even get to enjoy his nice sweet treat.

☆Towa

Custard - Towa’s diet is very… unique to say the least. He likes soft and creamy foods, so if he had to pick anything then he would pick custard. It’s sweet and he prefers to put flowers in it, maybe it’s because he finds it delicious? He eats it when he’s outside of campus on a mission, Haru takes him to cafes sometimes to munch on sweets and Towa has figured out which places have the best desserts.

☆Ren

Brownie - He mainly makes brownies out of convenience. You can’t go wrong with sweet chocolate when he chills out, he buys the box of brownie mix from the general store and if he’s lucky there’s a box for caramel or frosted. He’s a bit of an odd ball where he’ll cut all of the crust off of the brownies. If Haru pisses him off enough then after he’s done in the kitchen, he leaves a mess to clean up… he’s petty like that.

☆Taiga

Donuts - Taiga doesn’t enjoy much desserts, he likes something simple like donuts that he can eat within a few bites. Desserts that you need to eat with utensils annoy him because he likes eating with his hands. 9 times out of 10 he will always eat the meat that is available to him, someone needs to be there to stop him from going to Jabberwock and eating the animals. He is not the person to go to for desserts, he barely eats them…

☆Romeo

Crème brûlée - Romeo wouldn’t dare to eat anything that’s below his standards. To him, Crème brûlée is classy and worthy of being eaten. He loves the crunchy sweetness and the process of eating the dessert itself. He can’t cook so he asks one of the workers at the casino to make it for him. He strictly wants it homemade instead of store bought since he likes it fresh.

☆Ritsu

Mochi - He hates messy foods so much, it makes him look untidy if there’s a slight stain on his clothes so he gets mochi as a sweet treat. But not only does he find it convenient, he enjoys the different flavours and the chewy outside. He likes ones filled with red bean paste but if he’s daring then he’ll buy the ice cream mochi. He absolutely knows where to get the best quality ones as well.

╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝

#tokyo debunker #tokyo debunker x reader #fluff #tokyo debunker headcanons #tkdb #headcanon #haru sagara #towa otonashi #ren shiranami #taiga hoshibami #romeo lucci #ritsu shinjo

50 notes · View notes

spraypaintstainonawhitewall · 1 month ago

Text

kidnapper over the phone: we have your kids

party, looking at the girl: shes right here?

kidnapper: then who just told us to get fucked, demanded to have sandwiches with the crust cut, told us they were worth more than what we were going to ask you for and made us increase the price and have been singing Never Gonna Give You Up for the past three hours?

Party: oh fuck you have ghoul and kobra

kidnapper: please come get them we cant take it anymore

#jet: eh they'll be fine hang up the phone #danger days #party poison #ttlotfk #incorrect killjoys #danger days incorrect quotes #fun ghoul #kobra kid #jet star #the girl

58 notes · View notes

bored-storyteller · 1 year ago

Text

Warning: gore, cannibalism (between ghouls)

Author's note: I realized that I was much braver with Uta at first. Let's try again.

Tokyo Ghoul, Uta x Human!Reader

What is mine

There is a smell of blood in the putrid air. Your blood.

The ghoul holds you in its arms like a sacrificial victim.

“That's mine.”

“I didn't know, sorry...I'm not the type to go around stealing other people's food, believe me.”

Looks nice, him. He has dyed blond and blue hair that escapes from his wildly done bun. His locks fall on a face that would look like an angel's, if it weren't for those veins that flow like streams from the black and red eyes of a demon. He doesn't have to shine with intelligence since he doesn't wear the mask, or maybe he trusts too much in his abilities, for someone so average.

Uta picks you up when the younger ghoul hands you over to him: you are cold, you are shaking, you are crying. He doesn't know if you're paralyzed with fear or blood loss from that wound on your shoulder.

Your blood tickles his sense of smell, and his palate. Your fingers grip his sweater, and he holds you just tighter. He doesn’t blame the other one, your perfume is intoxicating now that your flesh is uncovered.

He mustn't be happy to give up on you, he wouldn't if Uta weren't so much stronger than him.

The Mask Maker gently puts you on the ground, he feels your fear: you are afraid of everything now, even him.

That person tried to take you away from him, to keep you for himself. And that person expects him to get you now.

“Luckily I'm hungry.” He says as he looks into your eyes. If you can be more afraid than you already are, he doesn't know. But it doesn’t matter.

The ghoul with the beautiful face was going to say something, but it's hard to talk when your vocal cords are torn.

The carotid artery hangs from the bite mark like a slack string, part of it between Uta's teeth; a flick of the tongue and it disappears between the lips.

The eyes of the predator victim are wide open, incredulous. Gorgeous, perhaps.

How long can it take for that slit throat to heal? A lot of time. Too little.

Uta bites again, blood gushes, there is a muffled scream.

The taste of that meat has nothing to do with the smell you give off, but Uta is hungry.

He's hungry, and your broken skin makes him lose control.

Someone must be eaten by him.

That ghoul wanted to eat you.

He wanted him to eat you himself.

He was about to lose you, in a way or another.

His hands dig into his chest, the intricate black patterns on his fingers covered in ferrous red.

“What a greedy you are... you already ate, huh?”

The stomach of the other demon is full, Uta wonders who is in there: “It was he a boy? A girl? Young or old? An unfortunate student? All of them?”

Uta smiles. That won't be of any use now that it's out of the body, it's not right to waste it.

He won't even need his intestines, right?

And the heart? What does the unfortunate one do with his heart?

The bones crunch as they crack and open, like the crust that covers the filling.

Maybe it still moves, or maybe it doesn't, but it doesn't matter.

The teeth sink in like in an apple, they tear it, now there is no more life. But is the soul still there?

Uta is full, but still gobbles it up. He devours that body that is not meant to be eaten, that modifies his, that drives his mind crazy. Assuming Uta can go any crazier than that.

No, he can't freak out, there's you. But Uta is crazy to love you.

“Uta!”

Your voice sounds desperate. How long have you been calling him?

He looks at you with his delicate face smeared, the top of the other ghoul's skull hanging from his fingers gripping his blond hair.

Now he comes to you, he promises you. He just has to make sure you don't get eaten too.

“Is there still a soul in these eyes?” He asks the half head as he brings it up to his gaze. He can't even tell where the jaw and tongue have gone, but that's not a problem.

Those eyes that stare at him glassy and half open Uta hates them. He doesn't even bother to remove them from the eye socket; he rips the first one off with just his teeth and swallows it whole, then does the same with the other one. It's not difficult, and if inside there is the core of that stupid, then he lets it rot in his depths together with the remains of his body.

Now there is no more danger for you.

The head rolls away, no one will wonder what happened to someone like him. It's a ghoul who disappeared in the fourth ward, at the end.

Uta calls your name as he leans in front of you, sweet and gentle as ever.

He watches your hand press on the wound on your shoulder: "Let me see." He asks you softly.

You obey, but you still smell of terror. You've never seen him eat like this, not someone like him.

The fingers that used to butcher now fearfully touch the edge of your wound.

"It's not serious... you’ll be ok, everything is fine." He murmurs reassuringly, barely licking the blood that drips from you. It will be enough to remove that hateful taste from his tongue.

His hands take your face, holding it like never before. His thumbs wipe away your tears and massage your cheekbones as he contemplates you. The blood is now on you too.

He looks into your glassy eyes and something unknown stirs inside him.

He is losing you. It's the only thing he can think of. You seem so distant now.

How he can stop you, unarmed as he is. Not even the idea of consuming your body to hold you within him brings relief, and he doesn't know why you upset his functioning.

But Uta is bizarre, there is no situation in which he follows a rule of his.

You are so different from Renji to him, your delicacy makes you complicated and elusive. Your delicacy prevents him from breaking you.

He can't afford to lose you too, he understood it when his chest tightened on smelling your blood. You and Renji are the only things that still make him walk in this world, which still allow him to experience lively emotions. It's not the RC cells that risk driving him crazy, it's you.

“I love you.”

His whisper is so sweet you might think he's about to cry.

It seems strange to say, those are not words that are well suited to a language like his, especially in a world where secrets must be kept between the ribs. But that's the only thing worth letting you know right now. A ghoul love, a clown love, but it's love.

And he almost gasps when he sees your eyes light up with life again, as you look at him as if you were seeing him for the first time.

He doesn't expect to find your arms around him, nor to meet your lips.

You kiss him like it's not okay to do, like he hasn't just eaten someone. You don't seem to mind the blood smearing your face, the metallic taste on his tongue. You seem to ask him to swallow you, but there is no room for you.

The lovers: two crazy people kissing among the remains of a corpse.

It's a good stage for you two.

“He wanted to put you in his place…” He whispers as he holds you like he never held you.

“You wished too?”

Don't you already have your answer?

Your eyes travel from him to over his shoulder, but his hand covers them. He stares at the grimy tattoos on his knuckles for a split second, wondering how they got there.

It's to protect you, perhaps, or to protect him who is wrong and rotten even among monsters.

“Forget it.” He tells you.

You shake your head. He's covered you so much in ghoul blood that at first glance you wouldn't be able to tell who the perpetrator is between you two, but all those red marks on you are testament to his touch.

“I don’t want to do it. I don't want to lose anything about you” You tell him, and there's an adoration in your voice that he always pretended not to hear.

“No?”

“No. Will you take me home?”

He gives you a quick nod, and just watches you as you climb onto his back. Your grip around his neck is reassuring.

“You'll make it?” You ask, as if he's never brought you like this. He scoffs at you as he settles your legs on his hips.

He's so grateful to feel your weight on his back and not in his stomach.

“I feel heavy actually, you say it's your fault?”

You huff, and your heel taps playfully on his thigh. He pinches you lightly, affectionately.

You are alive, he wants you to be alive. There is no one in the world who could look at his melancholy and smile as you do, marveling at a monstrous beauty.

What criminals you and he are, walking off into the night, away from the eyes of the world, leaving behind the trail of sinful blood.

#tokyo ghoul #uta tokyo ghoul #uta x reader #uta x you #tokyo ghoul uta #uta x human reader #human reader #reader insert #cw gore #cw: gore #dead dove do not eat

462 notes · View notes

apoemaday · 6 months ago

Text

Red

by Ted Hughes

Red was your colour. If not red, then white. But red Was what you wrapped around you. Blood-red. Was it blood? Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead? Haematite to make immortal The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

When you had your way finally Our room was red. A judgement chamber. Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood Patterned with darkenings, congealments. The curtains -- ruby corduroy blood, Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor. The cushions the same. The same Raw carmine along the window-seat. A throbbing cell. Aztec altar -- temple.

Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.

And outside the window Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail As the skin on blood, Salvias, that your father named you after, Like blood lobbing from a gash, And roses, the heart's last gouts, Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.

Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood, A lavish burgundy. Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.

You revelled in red. I felt it raw -- like the crisp gauze edges Of a stiffening wound. I could touch The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.

Everything you painted you painted white Then splashed it with roses, defeated it, Leaned over it, dripping roses, Weeping roses, and more roses, Then sometimes, among them, a little blue bird.

Blue was better for you. Blue was wings. Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco Folded your pregnancy In crucible caresses. Blue was your kindly spirit -- not a ghoul But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.

In the pit of red You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.

But the jewel you lost was blue.

#poetry #ted hughes #red

145 notes · View notes

belle--ofthebrawl · 5 months ago

Note

I wish you would write a fic about just how much of a crush Aurora has on Mountain (bc I cannot stop thinking about the harvest blessing fic)

I don't know if this is what you wanted but it's what I wrote and we all have to deal with that now. (Bonus just for you: weird ghoul lore)

Aurora was born of gluttony. All tongue and teeth and wailing starvation, no matter how much she stuffed into her small body it was never enough. She remembers the clawing ache of hunger in her stomach more than anything else of her time in the pit. Her fellow hunters learned to leave when she was in the area very quickly; lest they be considered prey as well.

Aeon was the exception to this. He tried to steal her food, a downed behemoth who's killer she had killed and eaten in turn, stomach still hollow with the desire to feed. She’d been near mindless when she fought him and feeling the poke of his cock on her belly awakened her to an entirely new form of hunger.

This one at least, was easier to satiate.

“You're quintessence, like me.” He'd panted in the afterglow. “You're not going to survive on what everyone else does.”

She kissed him, and tasted his emotions on a tongue she felt no desire to chew on. When he slid his fingers inside her, curves them just right, she finally felt full when she whispered her name and he whispered it back in reverent awe.

Two mouths were surprisingly easier to feed than just her own, she was pleased to discover. And though a duo-pack was hardly a respectable number, she grew fiercely protective of Aeon, forever grateful for the way he took care of her appetite no matter how it reared its ugly head.

And walking through the portal with him, hand in hand to their new lives, was the closest thing to a blessing she would ever receive. This body could eat and be filled for much longer than her old one.

This was how she fell in love with Mountain. After an eternity of fending for herself, for Aeon when his head ached too much to hunt, there came this giant of a ghoul that radiated nothing but acceptance. His first action was to give her a soft blanket and lead her to a table where she sat down and was served food she couldn't have even dreamed of before. Bread that was soft with a crackling crust, a hearty golden soup he showed her to dip it in. Meat falling off the bone, she never thought cooked meat would taste better than raw. And he let her snap the bone to scrape out the marrow, even offering her a strange and soft paste to mix it in. He called it butter. He filled what was empty, asked her how she felt and when she fell asleep at the table after gorging herself, he had picked her up and carried her to a wide, square nest space and tucked her in. She fed on the kindness of the action unconsciously and woke with the knowledge he would provide for their odd little pack.

Love as a romantic act was unfamiliar to her. She loved Aeon, but it was a different feeling from what she felt towards Mountain. Aeon was practical and familiar; she knew him like the back of her hand. She wanted to prove herself to the large earth ghoul, prove that should he ever be incapacitated, she could care for him as well as he cared for everyone else.

Hunting on earth was different. She wasn't used to small prey. But she was a quick learner and soon presented the earth ghoul with a clutch of dead creatures with long ears and soft fur, plump and well fed on the lush vegetation of the surface, to see what he could do with them.

And he taught her how to cook. He let her have the second fattest “rabbit” for herself, to snack on as he readied his knives and pans and bottles. She learns about brining, and seasoning and cooking meat slowly so it was juicy and flavorful. Hell was so hot that corpses burned up quickly, devoid of the magic intrinsic to surviving the flames, so all meals had to be as quick as possible. This “slow-cooking” is maddening, but he opens a cupboard, unwraps something and gives her a large rectangle of foodstuff the color of rich, fertile earth. It smells bitter with an underlying sweetness and she nibbles the corner of it, savoring the way it melts and spreads over her taste buds. When she eats it, there are little crunchy bones mixed in and he laughs when she tells him this.

“Almonds.” He corrects. “Dark chocolate with almond toffee.”

Her purr when he ruffles her hair startles them both.

“Like hearing that.” He says. “Better sound than your stomach rumbling, huh?”

She decides she's going to give him a thousand chocolate bars in return if he keeps looking at her like that, with an emotion so fulfilling it keeps her satisfied for three days straight. Even when the rabbit stew is done, she doesn't take a huge portion for herself like she usually does. She lets others eat as much as she wants, pride welling up when Mountain tells them she caught the rabbits and they congratulate her with with wide smiles and warm eyes.

She kisses him after the clean up. With a full belly and full heart, she's still got a third appetite to calm. He understands without words. Takes her to his bedroom where he put her through an agonizingly slow warm up. Prepares her until she's tender and dripping, tests her with his fingers and fits himself in; they feast on each other until the sun sets through one window and rises again in the other.

She still bites him though. Sometimes she still doesn't understand which hunger drives her, but he's willing to help her navigate it. Sometimes this emotion is so much she feels it fill her stomach up completely, crawl up her throat and she waits to choke on it but she never does. And with his help too, she learns to say the words that help it stop hurting her in such a strange and wondrous way.

I love you.

#little on the saucy side in more ways than one #aurora ghoulette #mountain ghoul #aurora x mountain

66 notes · View notes

spooky-pomegranate · 5 months ago

Text

Eyes on Fire (pt 5)

*Enemies to Lovers inspired by the Year Zero music video*

Papa Emeritus II x Reader (18+) Word Count: 3.8k Read on AO3 Get caught up: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Next chapter: (Part 6)

Summary: You befriend a ghoul close to Papa Secondo and learn that appearances aren't always what they seem. Meanwhile, Secondo deals with new feelings that threaten to consume him.

(Dividers by @wrathofrats)

It’d been hours since you woke up in Secondo’s bedroom. He’d left you in a hurry not long after you’d risen, claiming he had “important duties to attend to,” but not before demanding you stay and rest for the remainder of the day.

You’d objected.

Even though you’d slept for ten hours you’d felt fine, albeit a bit disoriented and hungrier than a horse. The only thing you’d really wanted to do was scurry off to the ghoul dens and tell Mountain everything that had happened before crashing in his oversized bed.

But Secondo never offered you that choice.

“You will stay until I return sorrella,” he had said.

And to make sure you followed his orders, Secondo had called for Alpha to watch over you. You’d seen Alpha many times over the years but you had never actually talked to the quiet fire ghoul. He didn’t interact much with humans and the circle of ghouls he associated with was small. Omega. Crust. Occasionally Aero.

Primo summoned him years before you joined the church, but everyone knew where his loyalties truly lied. For as long as you could remember, Alpha had been Secondo’s right-hand ghoul. Day in and day out the two were an inseparable pair. There were of course rumors that the fire ghoul was Secondo’s secret lover but you never believed those whispers. It always seemed to you that Alpha followed Secondo around more like a loyal knight protecting his king rather than a groupie chasing after a Papa in shimmering robes. Duty and honor just felt more likely than love and lust.

But there was a plus side to being held hostage in Secondo’s chambers by the stoic fire ghoul. Before Secondo had left he’d given Alpha two commands. The first, annoyingly, was that under no conditions were you allowed to leave… but the second command was the one that had you smiling mischievously from ear to ear.

“While she’s here she wants for nothing,” Papa Secondo had said.

Wants for nothing…

There was no way, Secondo knew what he had done. It was like handing a kid the keys to the candy store. And ohhhhhh were you going to indulge, until your sweet tooth rotted. So far you’d tested the boundaries by ordering a ginormous breakfast. Eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, cinnamon rolls, hash-browns, bagels, salmon. Hell, you even ordered the expensive caviar the senior clergy had on hand for the more lavish parties. You’d ordered everything that the kitchen could make until it filled up almost the entirety of Secondo’s bedroom floor. The spread had been like a dream. Salty. Sweet. Savory.

With enough food to feed a small army, you’d stuffed yourself full and somehow managed to convince your captor to eat as well. Before long both you and Alpha were giggling and laughing as you passed platters of delicious food back and forth.

Surprisingly Alpha was more game to let loose than you’d expected. After breakfast, you’d asked him for half a dozen boquets of fresh flowers and he’d immediately called Primo’s greenhouse without complaint, even suggesting you up the number to a whole dozen.

You nearly died laughing when Mountain had answered on the other end.

“Twelve arrangements. To…to Papa Secondo’s chambers? Really? No. That’s no problem. And when do you need them? ‘As soon as we can.’ Okay. Yeah. No. No, we can do that. We’ll have them delivered in a few hours. Any preference in flower or color?”

Alpha had cocked an eyebrow at you then.

“Something pretty.”

“Something pretty,” he parroted with a smile into the phone.

At your request, Alpha also put in a call to have your record player delivered alongside a handful of your favorite albums and a set of large speakers. By lunchtime, almost every free surface of Papa’s chambers was covered in roses and lilies of varying colors and you were having a great time dancing with your new friend.

During a break in the music and as Alpha picked out a new record, you took some time to look around Papa’s space. His chambers had been… surprising. You expected Secondo to live in a cold and dark place. Something unwelcoming and offputting much like the man himself. But that wasn’t the case. Secondo’s space was beautiful.

Thick oriental carpets covered the cold stone floors and several warm-looking fur blankets laid on a leather couch by an onyx fireplace. Black candles outnumbered the few electric lamps scattered around, casting the room in a fiery glow. Every single piece of furniture looked comfortable and inviting like it was chosen for its purpose over its form. Soft lines, plush fabrics, and rich colors were everywhere.

There were also dozens of beautifully framed art pieces on the wall; sprawling watercolor landscapes of the Abbey’s grounds, a series of charcoal depictions of His fall from grace, and even a few portraits of his brothers from decades prior. Primo with more hair. Terzo with less wrinkles.

Everything about the space felt carefully curated and yet surprisingly lived-in. If it had been anyone else’s room you could have easily imagined yourself here at the end of a long day. Slipping your heels off to walk barefoot on the carpets, curling up on the couch with a glass of wine, letting the fireplace lull you to sleep. It all sounded nice until you remembered the man you’d have to share it with.

You turned away from an oil painting of the Abbey’s winter gardens and moved to the far left corner of Secondo’s room where a small mahogany desk sat. While everyone in the upper clergy had an office in the eastern wing, it was clear that Secondo liked to work from his room. And by the sheer volume of things on his desk, you guessed that work usually ran late into the night.

There were dozens of books scattered about. Some of them open to various pages. Others had hundreds of rainbowed colored plastic tabs sticking out of them. Under the piles of books, you noticed a stack of half-written sermons and lyrics. Immediately you recognized one song. Per Aspera Ad Inferi. It was the same Dew, Cumulus, and Aururoa had played for you in the dens.

As Alpha placed the needle on the next record, you shuffled through some more of Secondo’s unfinished lyrics, sliding pages under pages. Though each song was different, it was clear that Secondo was working on a cohesive work. Everything was heavy on religious themes and doctrines. Satan and his teachings were always at the forefront. There were no love songs. Nothing that spoke of joy or hope. Just dark, heavy verses focusing on reckoning and penance.

“Do you want to dance some more?” Alpha asked, crossing the room as a light jazz song played in the air. You nodded and met the fire ghoul in the middle of the room. Taking his clawed hand in yours the two of you began to sweep around the room in a playful airtight waltz.

“Alpha?” you asked, pressed against the ghoul.

“Yes, sorella.”

“Can I ask you about Papa?”

Alpha’s eyes quickly shot down to yours. “If you are going to ask if he and I-”

“No,” you interrupted. “That’s not. I wasn’t,” you stammered quickly. You didn’t want Alpha to think that you were a gossip. That wasn’t what you wanted to know. “Do you think if you made him angry enough that he’d actually send you back to…” You didn’t need to finish your question. Both you and Alpha knew there was only one place Secondo could return him to.

Alpha stopped dancing, clearly taken aback by the question. His hand froze against your back. “No.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Papa knows I am loyal to him.” Alpha's voice was firm, "He trusts me, perhaps more than he should. But I am bound to him, sorella, just as you are now bound here by his command."

“Why?”

Alpha turned away from you, a flicker of something unreadable crossed his face before it was gone. “Papa is misunderstood sorella. You might see anger and rage but there’s more there. There is always more.”

“But you’re sure? You’re sure he’d never do that to you?”

Alpha spun back around and looked down at you, cocking his head to the side, a reminder that sometimes ghouls were more animal-like than human. “Yes. I am sure. But why are you asking me this?”

“Well as lovely a dance partner as you are,” you smiled, “I think it’s time we let loose around here Alpha.” The fire ghoul's eyes twinkled impishly and you realized for as stoic as he’d appeared, Alpha was just as mischievous as you were. “Just two more questions. What's your favorite kind of alcohol? And can I borrow the phone?”

"I have a preference for absinthe," he replied, a sly grin stretching across his face. With a nod, he gestured towards the phone on the desk. You smiled back at your new friend and picked up the phone on Secondo’s bedside table.

“Good afternoon Cardinal Terzo. Yes. Yes, it’s me. I was wondering… do you have any absinthe?”

Secondo had a rough day.

He’d fired his assistant the moment she’d walked into his office and in her absence, his paperwork had piled high. He couldn’t blame the oblivious sorella for that though. She’d only been in his service for a month and had yet to figure out how he liked his coffee or how little he’d liked her idle chit-chat. Secondo knew even if he hadn’t fired her, she probably wouldn’t have helped make a dent in his work.

It was his own fault. He had been distracted.

All day he’d thought of you.

Again and again, he replayed the moment you’d woken up in his room. How small you looked in his massive bed, how terrified you’d been when you’d seen him watching over you, how you’d struggled to catch your breath before jumping out of his sheets. It was all he could think about.

Even after everything that happened Secondo still felt that the Old One had put you in his life for a reason. And while he was pretty sure it was because he needed to make you a better member of the church something was nagging at Secondo, pulling at the back of his mind, like a loose thread he couldn’t reach, that maybe… just maybe he was wrong about that.

But something was connecting you two.

Secondo could feel it. When he was with you he felt something dig in his chest. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It ached and burned and scratched at his insides but when he’d left you this morning… the burning fizzled away. The scratch, the ache all of it was gone. And for some strange reason, he missed it.

Was it another sign he wondered? To want to feel the pain? To need it? To be consumed by it? Sathanas how he wanted to feel it again. But was he supposed to want that? Was he turning into the masochist the siblings whispered he was for wanting that?

If only he could speak to the Dark Lord. If only he had some guidance he could know exactly what to do. If only…

No.

Secondo stopped himself.

As badly as he wanted to commune with the Dark Lord, wallowing in his self-pity wouldn’t solve his problem. He had to move forward. And he would.

He had a plan.

Secondo decided he would ask you to be his assistant again today. He wasn’t sure if you remembered the brief conversation he’d had with you about it before everything turned to shit last night. But he would ask you again. And he would phrase it as less of a choice. He needed you close. He may not be sure why yet. But he knew that he needed to feel that ache you caused.

Secondo sat at his desk, a glass of whiskey in hand, as he poured over the same text for what felt like hours until eventually the clock in the corner struck seven times. The day had come and gone. The pile on his desk remained and now it was time for dinner. Distracted by you, Secondo had skipped every meal and opted instead to snack on a handful of crisps and sweets he kept in his desk throughout the day. He wasn’t interested in going to the dining room now either. His Imperatrix could have the day off. He needed to get back to you. He needed to feel the ache.

But as Secondo stood to leave, he felt another kind of ache. His stomach growled, loud and long. He decided to make a quick pit stop at the kitchens before returning to his room. An hour later, balancing two dinner plates covered in silver cloches, Secondo carefully opened the door to his chambers.

He never expected what was waiting for him on the other side.

His room was full. Every square inch was covered in swaying warm bodies as up-tempo music pulsed from a pair of speakers by the door. Dozens of maskless ghouls danced and drank together out of red plastic cups. They smiled and laughed, singing along to the song blaring from the big black speakers. The smell of liquor and sweat mixed with something sweeter he couldn’t place.

And in the center of it all, was you.

You stood in the middle of his room, pressed tightly against Terzo. Secondo watched as his brother's hands roamed against the soft curve of your back and down your sides as he danced with you. The two of you moved lasciviously, chest to chest in tune with the pounding bass. Eyes locked on one another smiles beamed on both of your faces.

Secondo started to move forward but froze as Terzo dipped you low causing your hair, free from your usual veil, to cascade towards the ground like a waterfall. The crowd of ghouls around you whooped and hollered. Secondo heard Alpha let out a long wolf whistle from the other side of the room.

You laughed as Terzo set you back on your feet and whispered something briefly in your ear. Without missing a beat, you reached behind you, and grabbed a bottle of absinthe, taking a long swig before passing it to Terzo. A small river of the green spirit dribbled down the corner of your mouth, slicking your lips and landing on the white collar of your habit. Secondo’s jaw clenched as you laughed again, tossing your head back before wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.

But then it was your turn to freeze. Like a deer caught in headlights every muscle in your body tensed as your eyes met Secondo’s.

And he felt it again. The burn. The ache. The pain he’d daydreamed of. It all slammed into Secondo’s chest until he felt ready to implode like a dying star.

For what felt like an eternity neither of you moved. Like two statues forced to face one another by a curator's judicious hand, the party continued around you. Bodies swayed and drinks flowed. One song ended and another began. It wasn’t until Terzo stepped in front of you, blocking his brother’s view, that Secondo dropped the twin cloches onto his entry table with a loud bang and every set of eyes in the room snapped in his direction.

“Out!” Secondo roared over the loud music. “Everyone out now!”

Alpha appeared quickly, ripping the speakers' cord from the wall. The music stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry Papa,” the fire ghoul started, “You said that she shouldn’t want for-”

“Go,” Secondo interrupted, without taking his eyes off of you. “I will deal with you in the morning.”

“Yes, Papa,” Alpha answered, tucking his tail between his legs before scurrying out of the room. The other ghouls quickly followed, quietly piling into the hall until only you and Terzo remained. You stood awkwardly beside Terzo, absinthe bottle still in hand. Secondo slowly walked toward you.

“Mi scuso, fratello.” Terzo's hand dropped from your waist as he gave you a little smirk and continued speaking in his native tongue, “Non sapevo lei ti appartenesse.”

You didn’t understand what Terzo had said, but you knew it had made Secondo angry. His temples flared and he swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing heavy in his throat. Secondo stopped inches from Terzo, leaning over him until his younger brother had to crane his neck up to meet his glare.

“Le hai dato la chiave della sua stanza, idiota. Sai che è la mia Imperatrix,” Secondo said. His voice was even but you knew there was a controlled calmness that belied a storm raging beneath his surface.

You worried for Terzo.

You hadn’t meant to get anyone else in trouble with your little stunt. You’d only hoped to prove to Secondo that you weren’t something he could control while having a little fun at his expense. But of course, he would turn to rage. Secondo seemed to be the only person in this god-forsaken Abbey who hated fun.

But to your surprise, Cardinal Terzo seemed unafraid of his older brother’s anger. His smile widened and he laughed as he spoke, “Non è quello che intendevo, Secondo... conosco il titolo della sorella.”

“Parla chiaramente, fratello.”

“I am only saying,” Terzo began, glancing at you with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “that I know her title. She may be your Imperatrix, but she dances like a diavolessa.” You felt a blush rise to your cheeks. “Non sapevo lei l'avessi reclamata per te stesso. Troverò altre bellissime sorelle con cui giocare. Vedo che lei è tua adesso. Non sei mai stato bravo a condividere, vero Secondo? Mi scuso.” With a final wink in your direction, Terzo swept out of the room, leaving you alone with Secondo.

“Coglione,” Secondo muttered under his breath before reaching for the bottle of absinthe in your hand and gently, setting it aside.

You hadn’t realized how grounding the bottle had been until you were left swaying on your feet without it. You could feel your pulse beat through each of your fingers as blood rushed everywhere but your head. Shit. How much of that stuff had you drunk?

“You have overstepped, sorella.” Secondo hissed. “My generosity has been taken for granted.”

“Generosity?!” you screamed, your voice cracking with frustration. “You locked me in here like a prisoner! You sent a literal beast from hell to make sure I couldn’t escape! And you want to call it generosity?!”

“You have used my position for your amusement today. No?”

“So what?!” you argued. “What’s the point of having all this,” you challenged, waving your hands around his beautiful room filled with food, flowers, and booze, “if you don't even enjoy it? Why have nice things? Why have whatever you want at your beck and call if you don’t even enjoy it?”

“Ostentatiousness is an offering to Him,” he replied stiffly, his tone brooking no argument.

“But aren’t you supposed to enjoy overindulging? Fucking hell, do you ever enjoy anything?!”

Secondo remained quiet, turning away from you and staring into the fireplace. You could have let things go then, but the alcohol had loosened your tongue and you were tired of holding back. You were never any good at it anyway, especially around him.

Fuck it.

“You just want everyone around you to be as pissed off and miserable as you are. You know I’ve never even seen Alpha smile until today? God, you don’t even fuck like you enjoy it!”

Secondo spun around immediately. His eyes blazed with fury. “Sit down,” he growled.

You sat immediately. You didn’t know why but you did. Even Secondo looked surprised before he regained his composure and stepped closer to you on the couch. His legs pushed your knees apart until he was standing in between your thighs. You slid back against the couch. The cool leather pressed against your neck, and you looked up at Secondo. You could smell him. Cologne and incense swirled around you. He leaned down, placing his hands against the couch on either side of your head, boxing you in.

“Do you think Sister Luciana enjoyed it? When I fucked her and you watched, crouched from the doorway like a piccolo topo. Tell me sorella do you think she enjoyed it?”

A lump formed in your throat. All you could do was spit out a vowel. “I…”

One of Secondo’s hands moved from the back of the couch to cup your jaw. His gloved thumb brushed across the supple plains of your cheek and you held your breath.

“You don’t think I could make you scream if I touched you like that?” he whispered softly. “You don’t think I could make you cum until you’ve seen the stars above?”

Secondo tilted your jaw up with his index finger and cocked his head to the side, parting his painted lips. Your eyes roamed over his face. Taking in every line, every fleck of paint, every small scar that dotted his chiseled face. Hot and humid, you breathed each other's air. He leaned closer again and you closed your eyes, bracing for the feeling of his lips against your own, anticipating the taste of him on your tongue.

And you let yourself want.

You wanted it. You wanted to taste him. To have him. To feel him. Maybe you’d gone mad. But anger and lust had never felt more like two sides of the same coin than in that moment.

But then everything faded away.

The hand on your cheek vanished. The smell of spice and wood disappeared. The warm slide of his legs against your inner thighs turned cold and you opened your eyes. Secondo had pulled away, taking a step back and standing upright. His eyes softened slightly before he turned his back on you and steadied himself with a long drawn-out exhale.

“I will see you in my office at 6:00 am tomorrow, sorella.”

You left Secondo’s chambers quickly after that, mind racing. What the hell just happened? Was that just another kind of power play from Papa? Or was it something else? Something different? When you’d been dancing with Terzo he’d looked at you differently. There’d been something there. Something hidden behind his paints and chiseled scowl. But what was it? And why did you care?

Lost in a haze of intoxication and your muddled thoughts you stumbled your way through the dimly lit corridors of the Abbey, and back to your chambers. Maybe if you’d left Secondo's room earlier, or had a few less swigs of Terzo’s absinthe, you would have noticed the pair of eyes that followed you from Papa’s chambers to your door. But the night was late and the shadows were long. You would have to deal with your stalker in the daytime.

Next chapter: (Part 6) Go back: (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4)

(Read on AO3)

#papa emeritus secondo #secondo emeritus #secondo #ghost #ghost band #ghost the band #papa secondo #daddy secondo #papa emeritus ii #papa emeritus ii x reader #papa emeritus ii x female reader #eyes on fire #spooky writes

55 notes · View notes