#cw: forced starvation mentioned

[aleksatia]

Imagine the six days scenario with the boys, but it turns out the mission was supposed to be done in one day, and the reader went through he'll to get out and is met with this reaction? Imagine when she finally tells the reason she was away, would they regret their actions? How would they react? Don't know if if you take requests, if you do, consider this one.

If not, I am glad I got to read this masterpiece, thank you ❤️

Thank you so much for the request — I absolutely do take them, and I really appreciate this one! ❤️

I tried so hard to keep it short, since the “Six Days” theme has already been thoroughly explored... but, well, I failed spectacularly 😅 So here’s another deep-dive into a what-if/imagine scenario — one that can be read as either an alternate branch of the original storyline or... something else entirely. I’ll let you decide 😉

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you read it — truly means the world to me!

I’ve received so many requests for continuations — especially for Xavier — and yes, his already has a full-length, dramatic follow-up (because how could I not?). This one here is more of a request-based scenario, but it can absolutely be read as its own kind of continuation. Think of it as an alternate path the story could have taken. (One day I’ll write full versions for all the boys… but for now, consider this a little taste.) Hope you enjoy — and as always, I’d love to hear what you think! 💬💔 Here are the links to the previous parts in the series, in case you want to revisit or catch up:

Original Post | Xavier's Story

CW/TW: Psychological trauma, PTSD themes, Forced isolation, Violence / combat injuries, Mentions of starvation, Emotional manipulation, Past emotional abuse, Mental breakdowns, Intense guilt / self-blame, Brief implications of suicidal ideation (in self-sacrificing context), Adult intimacy (emotionally driven, not graphic)

The Truth — What Really Happened

It was supposed to be one day.

A clean, strategic infiltration. In and out. No complications. No room for error.

But no one accounted for the Wanderer.

No one predicted that the target—some nameless, faceless shade masquerading as a rogue—would be more than just dangerous. That he'd found a way to twist Protocore into something ancient and volatile. That he would trigger a fracture in time itself.

In a single blink, the world split. You fell into it. And the loop began.

Six days for them. Six weeks for you.

You lived, died, and bled your way through the same endless day.

Again. And again. And again.

Locked in a cycle of violence, decay, and despair—while everyone else moved on without you.

You clawed your way back—half-starved, half-mad, barely remembering your name. And when you finally escaped the loop, stepped back into their world, broken and still breathing—

They were waiting.

Angry. Unforgiving. And utterly, terrifyingly unaware.

Until now. Until you tell them.

💛 Xavier

It only felt right to write Xavier’s piece after the continuation I posted earlier. The original scene stood strong on its own, but this one—this is what came next. The moment after the storm. The truth laid bare. A quiet, alternate branch of the story, or perhaps a natural consequence of the one that already unfolded. Either way—I’m glad it found its voice.

You don’t ease into it. You sit across from him in the quiet of the morning, sunlight creeping up the walls like it’s unsure of its welcome, and you tell him.

Not six days.

Six weeks.

A loop. A fracture in time. An engineered nightmare that left you bleeding against the same hours, over and over, clawing through shadow just to return to him. Alone. Lost. Dying.

Xavier doesn’t speak. Doesn’t even blink.

But something in him breaks.

Not loudly. Not violently. It’s quieter than breath. Slower than thought. His fingers slip from the edge of the cup in his hand, and it falls. Shatters against the floor with a sound so sharp it startles the silence—ceramic shards skittering like teeth across stone.

Still, he doesn’t look at you.

He stands, but not with purpose. With instinct. His body moves before his mind can catch it. He turns, walks toward the far wall like he’s searching for air, like the room is suddenly too small to hold what’s happening inside his chest.

You rise—hesitant, aching—but he lifts a hand to stop you. Not cruelly. Gently. Like he’s afraid that if you touch him, he’ll fall apart in a way he can’t recover from.

He presses his palm to the wall. Just one. The other curls into a fist at his side.

“I thought you abandoned me,” he says at last, voice raw in a way you’ve never heard from him. “And I punished you for it.”

He turns back.

And there’s nothing left of the man who told you to ask again in six days. Nothing of the controlled strategist, the ever-collected ghost of war. His jaw is clenched too tight. His eyes are glassed over with fury—but not at you.

At himself.

“I accused you. I mocked you. I dismissed what little strength you had left and threw my pain in your face like it was the only thing that mattered.”

He crosses the room again, slower now. Purposeful. His hands don’t tremble, but his voice does.

“I let you stand there, in front of me, broken... and I thought I was the one who’d suffered.”

He kneels.

Not dramatically. Not for effect.

He lowers himself before you like a man who no longer believes he has the right to stand. His gaze stays down. One hand reaches inside his coat, and when it returns, you see it:

A blade.

Polished. Ritual-cut. Ceremonial. One of the old ones—etched with language you don’t recognize. But you understand that these words mean oath, atonement, belonging.

He offers it to you in silence. Flat in his palm.

“Where I’m from,” he says, quietly, “a wound like this is paid in blood. A betrayal like mine is not survived—it is surrendered to.”

Your hands don’t move. Your breath barely does.

“If you want justice,” he whispers, “take it.”

You stare at him. The weight of the blade between you. The weight of everything.

And then—slowly, gently—you take it from his hand.

Only to let it fall.

The sound is soft this time. Barely a whisper of steel on floorboards.

Then you fall with it.

You drop to your knees in front of him, wrap your arms around his shoulders, and let your tears fall freely.

“I don’t want justice,” you breathe into the curve of his neck. “I want you.”

He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t speak. Just holds you, arms banding around your waist, face pressed into your shoulder like he’s trying to memorize what survival feels like.

When he finally speaks, it’s not confession. It’s surrender.

“After what you endured… after what I made you endure alone… I don’t know what anything means anymore. Not the mission. Not the cause. Not the point.”

You pull back, just enough to see him.

His eyes are hollow with grief. But deeper still—something flickers.

“I thought I understood devotion,” he says, voice barely above a breath. “But I was wrong. What I gave you wasn’t loyalty. It wasn’t love. It was pride. Control. Fear, dressed in logic. And I used it to wound you when you were already bleeding.”

His jaw tightens. His gaze falls.

“I was cruel.”

It’s not said for effect. There’s no tremble in his voice, no self-indulgent break.

It’s simply true.

“And I’m sorry.”

The silence that follows is soft. Dense. Not empty.

You brush your fingers across his cheek, tilt his face toward yours.

“I forgive you,” you say. Steady. Clear. “Because not everything in this world is black and white. And I understand why you did what you did. I know the shape of your fear.”

Your thumb brushes beneath his eye. His breath catches.

“I didn’t tell you to hurt you. Or to punish you. I told you because…” You pause. Your voice thickens with truth. “Because you’re the only one I trust with all of it. The only one who would understand. Who wouldn’t fall apart under the weight of what I’ve lived through.”

You lean forward.

Kiss him. Gently. Not desperate. Not demanding.

Just there. Warm. Real. Home.

Your hands slide up to his temples, fingers massaging slow circles at his hairline, coaxing the tightness from his brow. You feel it—inch by inch—how he softens beneath your touch.

“Let it go,” you whisper. “Don’t carry this weight. Not for me.”

He exhales, shaky. Silent.

You hold him tighter.

“You are my light, Xavier. You illuminate the path. You anchor me when everything else turns to ash. And in that place—those six weeks—do you know what kept me alive?”

Your voice breaks, but you keep going.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of you mourning me. That’s what kept me breathing.”

He says nothing for a moment.

Just rests his forehead against yours. One hand moves to your chest, flattening over your heart like he’s grounding himself with your pulse.

Then—softly, firmly, as if carving the words into stone:

“You will never carry pain alone again. Not while I draw breath.”

No grand vow. No poetry.

Just fact.

And somehow—that’s what makes it a promise.

💗 Rafayel

The morning sun slips in like melted gold, tracing the edge of the sheets, catching the soft arch of your cheekbone. You lie half-curled beneath the covers, his T-shirt clinging to your body like second skin.

And in that sacred hush before the world stirs—you speak.

Not because he demands it. Not because you owe it.

But because somewhere between the echo of his heartbeat and the way his arms wrapped around you like the only anchor you had left—you remembered how to breathe.

You tell him.

About the mission. The Wanderer. The fracture in time.

About the loop.

How six days for him were six weeks for you.

How you woke up every day inside the same nightmare. How you died. How you clawed your way back. Alone. Over and over.

And when you fall silent, your voice scraped raw from remembering—he still doesn’t speak.

He just looks at you.

Like the sun never rose until he saw your face again.

His hand brushes your cheek, feather-light. His voice—when it comes—is almost a whisper.

“Are you ready to share the rest?”

You blink. “The rest?”

“The weight of it,” he says. “Not the facts. Not the fight. The dark. The ache. The part that still won’t let you sleep.”

His voice is gentle. Too gentle for a man like him. It trembles with caution, as if even asking is a violation.

You hesitate. The memories flicker like shadows across your mind—distorted, aching, sharp.

“No,” you answer truthfully. “Maybe not ever.”

His gaze doesn’t falter.

He nods once. No protest. No press.

Then his voice, lighter this time—almost a whisper:

“Then I’ll just have to help you forget.”

And he does.

He lifts you carefully, as if your body might shatter beneath his hands. You expect the weight of a blanket, but instead—he wraps you in something else entirely.

A covering like seafoam. It feels like nothing you’ve ever touched—gossamer, weightless, but cool and smooth against your skin. A whisper of silk and tide.

“It's from home,” he murmurs, adjusting it carefully over your shoulders. “Woven from the ocean’s first breath. They say it keeps sorrow out.”

Then—he scoops you up like you weigh nothing. Carries you to the kitchen with quiet reverence, as if this moment is sacred.

He sets you down on the marble countertop and kisses your knee.

Then he starts making coffee.

He hums as he moves—something aimless and tuneless and purely him. You close your eyes for a moment, letting the scent of roasted beans and vanilla settle around you.

And then—

“So,” he says casually, not looking up, “a cat broke into the studio last night.”

You blink. “A cat?”

He nods solemnly. “Orange. Loud. Looked like he owned the place. Knocked over three canvases and nearly drank my turpentine.”

You raise a brow. “And naturally, you assumed this was my doing.”

“Who else would weaponize cuteness to such chaotic effect?”

You laugh—quiet but real. “I’m not that cruel.”

“No,” he agrees, turning to face you with a soft smile. “But I do suspect you’re still hoping I’ll change my mind about cats.”

You sip your coffee. “I might be.”

Later, the bath is warm, the water laced with something lavender and soft. He sits behind you, your back pressed to his chest, his arms a steady weight around your ribs.

His fingers move slowly—massaging your shoulders, your forearms, your palms, like he’s trying to erase every echo of pain from your body with touch alone.

You both talk, but nothing heavy. Just stories. Old memories. Little things. The shape of the moon that night. The smell of burnt sugar in his favorite gallery. How he once mistook a mannequin for a person and apologized to it for five minutes.

You laugh again, softer this time. And it makes something in him melt.

He wraps you in the softest robe he can find. Carries you again—this time to the bedroom. The ocean glows outside, waves catching the last of the sun like pearls tossed across the horizon.

But he doesn’t stop there.

“Come,” he says, offering a hand. “Tea. Sunset. Company far superior to mine.”

You smile. Follow.

And when you step onto the veranda—there it is.

A small white basket. A red ribbon.

And inside—

A snow-colored kitten, curled like a pearl in a nest, blinking up at you with impossibly blue eyes.

You freeze.

Turn to him, wide-eyed.

He shrugs, just slightly. Nervous. Like he’s bracing himself for mockery. For rejection.

You blink again. “You—Raf, you hate cats.”

He exhales through his nose. “I fear them. Different thing.”

Your eyes shimmer.

He moves toward you slowly, hands lifted in surrender.

“I wanted to make you smile,” he says simply. “That’s all. Just—smile. Like you used to. Before I—” He swallows.

He crouches down before you. One hand comes up to gently stroke the kitten. The other finds your knee.

His eyes lift to yours—and there’s no performance left in him now. Just Rafayel. Just the man beneath the glitter.

“I was so awful to you.”

You open your mouth, but he shakes his head.

“Don’t say it wasn’t that bad. I know what I am when I’m scared. I threw wine over grief and laughter over longing because I didn’t know what else to do. I ruined canvases with your name on my tongue and strangers in my house, and the whole time—I just wanted you to walk through that door.”

His fingers tighten on your leg.

“And when you did—when you came back—I was so full of rage at the idea you’d left me, that I didn’t even ask if you were okay.”

He breathes. One hand comes up, presses lightly to your ankle.

“I don’t know if I deserve this. Any of it. You. The right to hold your hand. To be the one who touches you when you’re tired. Who makes you laugh. Who paints your name into the ocean.”

You slide your fingers into his curls, threading gently through the soft waves.

And he stills. Like he’s afraid to move.

You whisper, “I never wanted perfect. I wanted you.”

He exhales.

“I swear,” he says, softly now, firmly, “on every color I’ve ever touched—never again. I’ll never put my pride above your heart. I’ll never leave you alone in the dark I made.”

Then—he leans forward. Presses his forehead to your knee.

The kitten meows softly, curling into the basket.

And finally—you smile.

Because this?

This is home.

💙 Zayne

You expected something.

A tremor. A breath. A word. Anything.

Instead, Zayne listened. Like a doctor reviewing a chart. Like a man auditing loss.

He didn’t speak when you finished. He simply nodded—once—and turned away, reaching for the drawer by the bedside as though the moment hadn’t cracked the very floor beneath his feet.

His hands, always precise, always godlike in their stillness, carried a faint tremble now. Just at the edges. So minor you might’ve doubted your own eyes, if you didn’t know how obsessively exact they always were.

“I asked,” he said, adjusting a monitor. His voice was quiet. Neutral. Not for you—for himself. “I asked if you’d caught a cold.”

He finished adjusting the drip, typed something into the tablet. Still no eye contact. Still no softness in his voice. But the line of his shoulders was off. A degree too low. A breath too far from centered.

Then—he turned back to you.

His gaze met yours at last. And though his voice didn’t change, the words did.

“I would like to conduct a full diagnostic. Neurological, cellular, metabolic.” A pause. Then softer, with exquisite restraint: “Please allow me.”

You hesitated—not because you doubted him, but because you recognized the plea underneath the logic. He wasn’t doing this for the data. Not really.

You nodded.

And he breathed again.

He worked in silence. Gentle. Thorough. Every sensor placed with hands that barely touched your skin. Each test executed with a reverence that spoke more than words ever could. He treated you like something sacred—something already broken that could not, must not, fracture further.

When sleep finally came, it swallowed you whole.

And when you opened your eyes again—the world was still. Dim. The sterile light of early morning filtered through the blinds.

Zayne sat in the chair beside your bed. Unmoved.

He hadn’t changed clothes.

The same shirt. The same faint stain near the cuff from yesterday’s blood draw. One elbow rested on the arm of the chair, his fingers curved over his mouth, gaze lost in some calculation too heavy for paper.

When he noticed you stir, his posture didn’t shift. But his eyes warmed—just barely. Just enough.

“I cancelled my procedures for the week,” he said simply. “Transferred patients to colleagues. For now, my only case is you.”

You blinked, silent. Then your gaze drifted down, to the low table by the bedside.

There, lined with the kind of hesitant care that comes from someone unused to gifts, sat a modest row of familiar things. A bouquet of white jasmine, fresh and fragrant. Two of your favorite candies in delicate wrappers. And—absurdly, heartbreakingly—three new plush toys, small and soft and so clearly chosen by someone who’d spent an agonizing amount of time in the gift shop second-guessing every decision.

Your heart folded inward.

“Am I dying?” you asked, quieter than you meant to.

He didn’t smile.

But his voice, when it came, was soft and absolute.

“I won’t allow that.”

A long silence passed.

Then you shifted—carefully, your muscles aching—and reached for him.

“Come here,” you murmured.

For a moment, he hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to, but because some part of him still didn’t believe he deserved the invitation. But he came. And when he lay beside you on the narrow couch, his body held a tension that didn’t ease until your head rested on his shoulder.

He stayed still. Let you move first. Let you curl against him the way you needed. His hand hovered over your back, uncertain, until you nudged it gently into place.

Only then did he hold you.

Not tightly.

Not desperately.

But with the kind of quiet conviction that said he would stay as long as it took.

You felt his breath in your hair before you heard his voice.

“I don’t pray,” he said, low, clinical as ever. “I believe in medicine. In numbers. In protocols.”

A pause. His fingers brushed your spine, feather-light.

“But if you hadn’t come back... I would’ve made an exception.”

You didn’t answer. You didn’t need to.

Because some things, even with Zayne, are understood in silence.

And in that silence, held against the rhythm of his heartbeat, you felt it clearly: you were no longer his patient.

You were his entire world.

❤️ Sylus

For a moment after you speak, the room holds its breath. So does he.

Sylus doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t demand proof or press for detail. He simply stands there, stone-still, with your words unraveling him from the inside out. The way you say it—quiet, unshaking, without accusation—is somehow worse than if you’d screamed.

His gaze drifts over you then, and you feel the moment the veil lifts.

It’s in his eyes first—how they widen, flicker, and fixate. He takes in the shadows beneath yours, the pallor of your skin, the hollowness in your cheeks. His breath catches when he sees how your clothes hang looser than before. How your hands tremble faintly, barely perceptible unless one knows you too well.

And Sylus knows you.

His chest rises once, sharp and shallow. Then he moves.

Not fast. Not sudden.

But with purpose.

The next second, he’s in front of you, reaching—his fingers brush your jaw, feather-light, as if afraid that even the weight of his touch might bruise. He doesn’t speak as he leads you gently—gently, from a man whose hands have broken bones—into the nearest chair. One knee hits the ground beside you. He opens your jacket with slow precision, not to expose, but to check. To see. To know.

“You’ve lost weight,” he murmurs, voice rough and uneven, like gravel sliding beneath steel. His fingers glide down your arm, finding the sharp edges of bone where softness used to be. “Why didn’t I see it sooner?”

You try to speak, but he shakes his head, already rising.

He moves through the room like a storm with no wind—silent, but charged. Opens drawers. Pulls out clean clothes, a blanket, a glass of water. Then he’s back at your side, crouching again, one arm draped over your lap like a bridge between his fury and your exhaustion.

His hand wraps gently around your ankle, thumb pressing lightly against the bone there as he stares at it like it personally accuses him.

“I told them to take you.” His voice is lower now. Hoarse. “Told them to scare you. Make a point.”

He looks up at you. And for once, his face is completely unguarded.

“I hit you.”

It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t brutal. Not for someone like him.

But it was enough.

His voice falters, only slightly.

“And then I said I wouldn’t look for you.”

He exhales, and it’s not a breath—it’s a confession.

“That was the worst one, wasn’t it?” he asks. “Out of all of it. That’s the one that stayed.”

Your silence says enough.

And something in him breaks again—quietly, like a structure folding inward with no one left to hold it up. His forehead presses lightly to your knee, his arm tightening around your thigh. You feel him breathe you in, like scent alone might bring you back from the half-place you escaped.

“I should’ve known the second I touched you that something was wrong. I should’ve seen it on your face.” His voice cracks, just once. “But I was so angry. So fucking angry I couldn’t feel anything but the space where you weren’t.”

He pulls back. Looks at you again—slowly, steadily. And something inside him hardens, not with rage, but resolution.

“You’re not lifting a hand again. Not for food. Not for water. Not for anything. I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care what it costs. You’re going to rest, and I’m going to fix this—you—with my own hands, piece by piece.”

And when he stands, it’s not the usual slow menace or calculated power.

It’s reverent.

He lifts you—not like someone injured. Like something sacred. And when he carries you out of the room, wrapped in warmth and silence, there is no doubt in your mind:

Sylus will not let go again.

Not even if time itself tries to take you.

💜 Caleb

You aren’t even halfway through when it hits him.

Not like a punch. Not like a wound.

Like an organ failing.

He blinks once. Twice. And then nothing. No movement. No breath. Just silence.

Then, quietly—almost absently—he mutters, “I’ll resign.”

You look up, startled, and the absurdity punches out of you in a short, cracked laugh.

It’s the wrong moment. Too sharp, too bitter. But it slices through the tension like a scalpel.

And still—he doesn't move.

His hands press against the table, white-knuckled. Not to steady himself—he isn’t swaying. He’s rigid. Locked. Like something in him has calcified to hold him upright.

“I’m not fit to lead,” he says, voice flat, low, scorched. “Not when I see betrayal in the only person I’ve ever trusted.”

Whatever breath of amusement you had left dissolves instantly.

“I didn’t just fail as someone who was supposed to protect you,” he adds. “I failed as your—” He stops. Chokes it down. His jaw clenches so hard you can hear the sound of his teeth grinding. “As your Caleb.”

And then—he moves.

Quick, purposeful. Gone in a flash. You hear the kettle filling, the sharp click of a drawer, the dull thud of something fragile hitting the counter too hard. The way he clutches at control would be laughable if it weren’t so violent.

Then the bathwater starts.

Hot. Too hot. He’s not measuring anything. Just pouring. He throws open the cabinet, snatches towels, drops one, curses.

When he returns—his phone is in hand. “I’ll call Dr. Navik. I want a full neurocardiac scan, and we need to rule out—”

He stops. Mid-sentence. Thumb poised over the screen.

You don’t say a word. You just watch as something slows in him. As if time, for once, is merciful.

He lowers the phone. Turns toward you.

His voice—when it comes—isn't clipped or cold or distant. It's frighteningly gentle.

“Pip-squeak.”

He kneels before you, as if he’s afraid standing over you might shatter what little is left between you.

When he reaches out, it’s so slow. So reverent. The back of his fingers graze your cheekbone, barely there. Not because he doubts you—but because he doubts himself.

“How do you actually feel?” he whispers. “Not what I can fix. Not what the scans will say. Just you.”

You breathe. Only once. It shakes.

“Like roadkill,” you murmur. Then softer, almost smiling: “A hot bath wouldn’t hurt. And sleep. Maybe a week of it.”

Your faint attempt at a smile breaks him.

Not loudly. Not outwardly. He doesn’t cry. But something in his face folds in on itself, like it’s suddenly too heavy to wear. He draws a slow, trembling breath.

“I accused you,” he says, and now his voice is wrong. Hoarse. Quiet. Dismantled. “I accused you of being with someone else. After you went through six weeks of hell.”

You try to speak. He doesn’t let you.

“I thought you left me,” he says, and this time his voice cracks—just barely, but it’s there. A faultline in steel. His eyes are on the floor now, unfocused, as if he’s speaking to ghosts.

“I believed you would.”

His breath falters, like the truth is costing him oxygen.

“That it made sense. That I wasn’t enough.”

A pause. His throat works hard around the next words.

“Or worse—too much.”

His hand curls into a fist against his thigh, knuckles white. Not from anger. From restraint. From the effort not to collapse under the weight of everything he’s never said.

“That you’d finally find someone who doesn’t smother you with love that borders on obsession.”

He shifts, like his own skin is too tight. His jaw clenches. His eyes squeeze shut for half a second before he forces them open again, forces himself to keep looking at you—even if it kills him.

“Someone who wouldn’t try to chain you close,” he whispers, “just because he’s too selfish to breathe without you.”

He looks at you now—really looks—and the devastation in his gaze is endless.

His voice breaks on the last word.

“Someone who wasn’t… me.”

And for a moment, he’s not a soldier. Not a leader. Not even a man.

He’s just Caleb. That boy who loved you before he had language for it. And who never stopped. Even when it ruined him.

His hands curl into fists against his knees.

“I interrogated you. Like a stranger. Like a traitor. And all the while you were trapped—alone, dying, fighting—and I was worried about your silence in my bed.”

A breath. And another. Like he’s drowning in air.

“I loved you before I even knew what that word meant,” he whispers. “I carried it for years, swallowed it, starved it. I told myself it was wrong. Forbidden. And the moment I finally had you—really had you—I destroyed it with my own hands.”

He doesn’t look at you. Not until your fingers find his.

Then he shudders. And looks up.

“You always forgave me,” he says, voice breaking now. “Even when I didn’t deserve it. But this time… if you don’t. If you can’t…”

His hand trembles in yours.

“…I’ll understand.”

You shake your head. Just once.

And in that second—he folds into you, arms curling around your waist, forehead pressed to your stomach like a prayer he doesn’t believe he deserves to say out loud.

When he finally carries you to the bath, it’s not in silence. He keeps murmuring things—small things, promises, broken confessions, names only he calls you. He doesn’t try to be strong. He only tries to be there.

And when you’re finally in bed again, drowsy and warm, you find him already beside you. Fully clothed, facing the ceiling, his hand resting on the sheets between you like a lifeline.

You whisper his name.

He turns his head, eyes dim in the dark.

You reach for him, and he comes to you instantly, without hesitation. He lies down beside you, and when you press your head to his chest, he exhales like it’s the first real breath he’s taken in years.

His hand strokes your hair once.

And then, quiet—so quiet it almost isn’t real—

“I’ll never be the same.”

You don’t respond.

Because you both know it’s true.

And because you both know he doesn’t want to be.

[azen13]

CW: Yandere Themes, Imprisonment, Mentions of Starvation

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

Something I think we don't talk about enough is how interesting Yandere!Zhongli would be in the past, when he took a more active role in Liyue's rule, under the name Rex Lapis. More specifically, I continuously go back to the idea of Rex Lapis falling in love with one of his most loyal mortal worshippers.

Every day, he can hear your prayers floating across stilled air, stirring up the more draconic instincts in his heart. Such beautiful songs, all for him. Your prayers alone are the greatest blessings he's ever received in all his years as Liyue's Archon, but you've also given him frequent offerings, from grains harvested to jewels mined. Sometimes he cannot help but feel concerned, hoping you're not living in squalor due to your unceasing devotion.

Every night, he enters your dreams and claims them as his own. He never reveals himself, but he stages scenes where he plays the part of the heroic lover, protecting you from harm. For you, it provides protection, soothes your worn mind from labor done during the day. For him, it quells the possessive desire to have you in the palm of his hands, pampered and doted upon, treasured for all eternity.

It isn't enough. Rex Lapis knows it isn't enough, but he pretends as though this little share of your life is satisfactory, even though the depths of his heart stir with displeasure. He wants to be your world in every way.

Luckily for him, he soon gets the opportunity. A famine of unparalleled magnitude—the most devastating disaster Liyue has faced in three centuries—strikes. Not only that, but the heart of the ruin centers around your village. Your prayers become more fervent and frequent. At the sound of your sobs, he can't hold the draconic side of himself back. Rex Lapis may not be Morax, but like his past self he is neither mortal nor moral, and does not abide by the laws of humans. Freedom is not a blessing to be granted, but a cantrip to contain by means of contracts and laws.

That very night, when he comes into your dreams, it is with the sole intent of coercing you into his private adeptal domain. Go with him, and not only will he protect you for eternities upon eternities, but he will protect your village—and all who you love within it—with his life.

The only price you must pay for such a bargain is with your freedom.

Don't worry though. Should you decline, Rex Lapis would be remiss to bind you to him through force. No, he'd much rather let you learn the consequences of contumacy, the many follies of freedom you seem to cling to with such pitiful desperation. Instead, he'll let the days pass by, every second wasted avoiding an inescapable outcome. While those you hold dear begin to grow weak and starve, by some miracle, you stay strong.

Each night, visions of luxurious domesticity pass across your eyes, as thick and syrupy sweet as honey. After the montage, Rex Lapis returns, contract in hand and a knowing smile playing on his lips. Though he says no words, his argument is clear as day: should you agree to fulfill your destiny, your village will need not fear the threat of famine ever again.

Finally, as expected, you crack. The minute the quill you write with leaves the parchment, you find yourself transported from one dream to the next: a picturesque diorama surrounds you, the landscape a perfect replica of Liyue's scenery. A few yards in front of you rests a house as big as your village. "Our home", Rex Lapis tells you, his expression indulgent, though you see in his eyes the depths of his devotion and what lies within them: an insatiable desire to possess you wholly.

"Where you will stay. Forever, my treasure."

[millersfinest]

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. . .

ELLIE WILLIAMS, YELLOWJACKETS AU, SERIES!

blurb: there’s a 0.0001% chance that an airplane can fall and hit the ground, injuring and killing a variety of innocents. and there’s an even slimmer chance of a talented team of soccer players from jackson, wyoming being a part of that minuscule percentage, heading to a well-deserved national championship game in boston, massachusetts. but, although these circumstances are slim, that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. in 1996, a soccer team, called the fireflies, fell from the sky latched into the seats of a private flight. for twenty months they were sequestered in a canadian forest; away from civilization, forced to fend for themselves. under such fraught circumstances… what can a bunch of teenage girls really be capable of? within the clutches of the wilderness.

cw: mentions of blood, gore and viscera, CANNIBALISM, kind of period piece, character death, sexual content, nudity, images of starvation, harsh climate, established!ellie x reader, some original characters to fill in the gaps, complicated relationships, deluded spirituality, thrilling themes, homophobia and homophobic slurs (used by gay people lol), reader isn’t 100% out (maybe like 70%), more to add...

coming sometime this year...

(some things can be subject to change as this is currently a developing project)

[kiwicopia]

MDNI | Themetober: Tricked

Fae!Geto x Fem!Reader

CW: noncon/dubcon, kidnapping, imprisonment, chained reader, mentions of starvation/dehydration, mentions of impregnation, dacryphilia, cunnilingus, overstimulation, licking, biting, body worship, face fucking, sex against the wall, creampie.

tags: @sweetchildcloud

Themetober Masterlist

He had to give credit where it was due, truly. Not many humans could evade a fae for as long as you had, but even you had limits to this evasion. He just had to find them; however, he wasn’t as patient of a fae as he should have been. The desire to have you as his was overwhelming to the point that drastic measures had to be taken. One little slip-up was all he needed, and the very second it occurred, he whisked you away to his domain.

“Darling,” he cooed, dark eyes watching as you shied away from him. Your body moved further back in the cell, and the soft clinking of the chains caused the corners of his lips to twitch as he smiled. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Things would be easier if you would simply give in.” Geto inched closer to the bars of your cell, his fingers tightly wrapping around the cold metal as he rested his forehead against it. “You’re being childish.” 

You hadn’t eaten or drank anything in three days, having refused him each and every time he would bring you something—it was such a childish thing for you to do. His eyes lowered, squinting as he assessed your huddled form in the corner of your cell. Geto didn’t want things to be this way. He couldn’t understand why you resorted to such stubbornness, which only resulted in an inevitable deterioration of your body. 

The fae huffed in irritation, brows creasing as his mind came to a single conclusion: be forceful. Honestly, this was the last thing he wished to resort to, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make you see reason and listen to him. With a quick tap of his forefinger against a metal bar, the door to your cell opened and he stepped inside. Your wide, teary eyes watched as he came closer to you, causing you to squish yourself against the cold, hard wall of the cell. 

“You have left me no choice,” he said. Geto then snapped his fingers, causing the chains connecting you to the cell wall to quickly slide back, which lifted your body to your feet. He came closer, stopping a foot in front of you before reaching a hand out to gently caress your cheek. He thumbed a tear away, tutting softly before letting out a small sigh. “You’ll see reason soon enough.” 

Disgust bubbled in your stomach as his hand drifted from your face and down to your thigh. His other hand followed suit, and you squirmed as his fingers wrapped around the flesh beneath your tattered dress before forcing your legs apart. Geto hummed softly, his smile broadening as he lowered himself to his knees. 

“So beautiful,” he whispered. His thumbs rubbed gentle circles against the skin along your inner thighs before cupping the plump flesh and lifting your lower half up. It was just enough for him to roll his shoulders underneath your legs, situating them over his shoulders perfectly—though he still kept his hands cupped beneath your thighs. Geto’s lips kissed along the skin, trailing his movements further up to your awaiting cunt. “So beautiful, and all mine.” His nipped at your flesh, causing you to cry out before attempting to wriggle away from him. 

The fae tutted softly, shaking his head a little before tightening his grip on your thighs. You should know better than to refuse—not that you could if you tried. “Please,’ you begged. His eyes flitted up to your tear-filled expression. The way you cried and pleaded for him to stop brought forth a low rumble in his throat, as well as causing his cock to chub at the sight of more of your tears. You were so beautiful like this. Teary-eyed and pleading; a real sniffling mess as you attempted to wriggle away once more, but to no avail. “Please don’t—.” 

Your words died midsentence upon feeling his tongue lick a thick stripe along your folds, the tip curling slightly to catch your clit at the right angle. His ears rang with cries that spewed from your pretty lips, only to be ignored as he continued lapping at your cunt. The fae’s fingers dug into the flesh of your thighs to quell the constant squirming of yours as you tried pulling your hips back. Geto’s nose soon brushed against your bundle of nerves the further he pressed his face against your pussy, earning a shrill cry as you tossed your head back against the cell wall. 

He couldn’t hold back anymore. The soft slurps rang in your ears, and the fact that your body was so eager to wet itself with arousal as he pleased you felt so wrong. You didn’t want this, you never wanted this. But it felt good. No longer could your mind hold the disgust for what he was doing to you; that feeling now fading as a sick and twisted need for him to continue festered in its place. 

The second your hips began to grind against him, he knew. You were giving in, and he groaned softly as his cock twitched beneath the fabric of his pants. It ached to be free, to be deep inside of you, but not yet. Geto still needed you to give in entirely, and there was only one way to get that. His pace increased as his tongue delved past your folds, lapping up the slick that now coated his lips and chin as he feasted on you like a starved beast. 

His nails dug into your flesh the more you fucked yourself against his face, now whining and moaning for more. You needed more, wanted it, craved it, and he delivered. The fae held your lower half up as your body shook upon releasing a sudden, sharp cry. His dark eyes watched as your back arched while your senses flooded with pure ecstasy. “Pretty girl,” he chuckled. Geto flicked his tongue along your puffy clit, relishing in the whiny moan that slipped out from you. “I’m still not finished eating.” 

He lapped at your sensitive, slick cunt again, pulling orgasm after orgasm from you until he finally felt satisfied. The fae’s tongue licked along his lips after he pulled his face back, relishing in the sweetness of your multiple releases. Your body still twitched from the effects of him overstimulating you, which made you perfectly pliant for him as he stood to his feet and pressed his chest against yours. Geto kept you balanced between him and the wall, with an arm around your waist while a free hand worked to release himself from the confines of his pants. 

His cock sprang free—the tip angry and weeping arousal—and he slowly rubbed the thick head against your folds before easing himself inside. You whined at the stretch, body tensing from the sudden burn that ached the more he disappeared inside of you. The fae’s arm around your waist tightened as his hand moved to grip your hip, and his face buried itself in the crook of your neck. Your scent wafted through his nostrils, causing his dick to twitch inside of you, and Geto gave you a small moment of adjustment before pulling his hips back and slamming himself into you. 

The pace was relentless, with little to no room for gentleness as he fucked you. Gods, you were so tight and warm, with walls that sucked him back in with ease—so heavenly to him, this feeling. His arm soon unwound from around your waist, and both of his hands firmly pressed against the cell wall. Your tears were long gone by now, with eyes rolled back as you babbled nonsense in his ear, to which he let out a breathy chuckle at. 

You were adorable. His little human, getting herself fucked by a fae she thought she could evade. The thought of his little tricks almost not working on you days ago didn’t sit well with him, and he now desired to make you his in more ways than one. Fucking you just didn’t seem to be enough for him. Geto could impregnate you, force the swell of your belly with his seed. Then you would be his forever. 

Such an idea spurred him on, his body squishing you against the wall as his cock bullied your sopping cunt. “Take it, take it, darling,” he panted. Those words spilled from his lips like a mantra, a heavenly chant that would ensure your bond to him for life. Gods, it was enough for him to finally come undone. With a low growl rumbling in his throat, Geto fucked into you one last time, spilling into you and painting your walls in thick, creamy cum. 

His thrusts had slowed, gentling out as he kissed along the side of your neck. You were too fucked out to comprehend what had even happened. Too overstimulated from orgasms prior to realize the fate he resigned you to. Geto was a fae that had always gotten what his heart desired, no matter how sick and twisted it was. 

If impregnating you kept you bound to him, then so be it. Simply another little trick that had to be done. 

[gor3-hound]

over again

ft. leon kennedy x fem!reader

cw: 18+ content, dark content, heavy dub-con, forced ddlg, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, fingering, p in v, creampie, mentions of past drugging, daddy kink, lots of pet names

a/n: took me forever n ever to write this ahhh sorry :/ hope you all enjoy it !! feedback always appreciated !! hopefully the writers block will finally perish.

word count: 1.6k words

14 weeks. 98 days. 2352 hours.

Leon leaves the house at 7.30 am every morning, except for Sundays. From Monday to Thursday, he's home around 6 pm. On Fridays, he isn't home until around 9 pm. Saturdays are the worst because he's home just after lunch.

Usually, when he comes home, he goes to the bedroom and unlocks the door to let you out. He threads his hand in your leash to take you upstairs, giving you a kiss on your forehead as he takes you to the kitchen to eat a meal. He gives you your food on a pink, plastic princess plate with plastic cutlery, and cuts the food into bite size pieces. More often than not, he hand feeds you.

You don't fight it. You'd learned your lesson. You refused food from him once. For 2 out of your 14 weeks locked up in his home, he'd underfed you to the point of starvation until you were begging him to feed you. He sat you in his lap, cooing all sweet as you chewed and swallowed every mouthful he'd given you. That day was the first day he slept with you.

It wasn't all bad. He was sweet. Gentle. If you closed your eyes, you could pretend he was a loving boyfriend. Someone who cared for you, not the creep who'd snatched you from the street after you had a few too many drinks at your friend's party, promising you a better life, safe from the world.

But he isn't sweet, or nice, or kind. He didn't do this for you, despite what his twisted brain tells him. You can pretend all you want that he's something other than what he is, but it doesn't change what he is. A monster.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“Where's my little princess?” Leon's asking as soon as he walks into the house, kicking his shoes off and hanging his jacket up at the door. You recently got free reign of the home for being on your best behaviour. Didn't even have to keep the leash attached to your collar anymore. Lucky you.

“Here, daddy.” You say meekly, poking your head out of the living room to approach him, fiddling awkwardly with the edge of your shirt. Head down, so he doesn't have to see the defeated expression on your face as you force out the words, swallowing thickly to hold back your tears.

“You have a good day, sweetheart? You do any coloring in those cute little books I got you?” Leon's hands come up to your cheeks, gently stroking his thumbs back and forth across your cheekbones. You shake your head, gritting your teeth to stop yourself from saying something.

“No? Why not, baby? You don't like them? I got the one with lots of kitties. Pretty girls like you like cute things, don't they?” He coos, squishing your cheeks in his hands to make your lips all pouty so he can lean down and give them a little kiss, letting out a loud ‘mwah’ as soon as his lips make contact.

“You eat at least? I left some food in a lunchbox for you.” You shake your head again, and this time it seems to elicit a worse reaction. His brows furrow, and his hand grips your face even tighter. “No? Silly baby… can't do anything without daddy, can you? Come on. Daddy'll feed you, cutie.”

He heats up some food for you and puts it on a plate. The pink, plastic princess plate. He sits you on his lap and feeds it to you from a fork. Pink, plastic fork. The routine is the same, no matter how much you wish for it to change. When you finish eating, he presses a tender kiss to your head and rocks you in his arms.

“Such a good girl. Good girls get rewarded, princess.” He murmurs, pressing soft kisses against the skin of your neck, trailing them up until he's nosing at the hair behind your ear. His hand slides up your thigh and under your skirt, his thumb swiping your swollen bud through the already damp fabric. It didn't matter if you didn't want it. Your body didn't seem to understand what was happening - all it knew was Leon made you feel good. You hated how compliant you got when he touched you, how any thoughts of defiance melted away.

You go limp when he touches you. Docile. You let him do what he wants to you, just like a good girl should. Back-talking daddy is a big no-no. He wrote that in big writing on the rule list that's pinned to the fridge. Escape didn't use to seem impossible, yet now the thought never even crossed your mind. You'd tried, but he kept a tight lock on you. You wouldn't be surprised to find out one of the many injections he gave you when you were unruly had a tracker in. He always seemed to know exactly where you were.

You whimper as he dips his hand under the waistband of your panties. He parts your puffy lips with practiced ease as he continues on with the next part of his routine. 98 days later and he's mapped every inch of your body perfectly - found out everything that has you keening under his touch. Your hips buck as he runs his fingertip between your folds, gathering slick before rubbing small circles into your clit.

“Poor, dumb baby. She's soaking me already. You couldn't make yourself feel good when daddy was gone, huh, sweetheart?” His words are followed up by a finger burying itself in your tight heat, curling to find that gummy spot that has you clenching around him and bucking your hips. “Pretty princess cunt's been drooling for me all day.”

A choked sob leaves you when he pulls his cock out and sits you on top of it. He pulls you down until he's buried to the hilt, groaning as you tighten around his length. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, peppering it with tiny little kisses. You can't help but cry whenever Leon fucks you. 98 days later and you still sob whenever he bullies your cervix with his dick. No matter how many times he makes you cum or makes you go dumb on his cock, it doesn't change anything. He took everything from you - your family, your friends, your job.

You hated yourself more than Leon. For letting him break your walls down. For clinging to him as he tightens his grip on your waist, manhandling you on his cock, lifting you up and down. For finding yourself missing him when he's at work.

“Love…love you, daddy…” Your words come out more like a cry, nose all runny and cheeks wet with tears as he fucks up into you, his head shifting to hang back in pleasure. His fingers dig into your waist as he hears the words, a breathy laugh leaving him as he smiles - all toothy and bright like it always is when you say that.

“Love you even more, princess.” He grunts out, leaning back on the seat to force himself deeper into your pussy, guiding your hips back and forth so you're grinding his cock inside of you, rubbing your pretty clit against his happy trail. You gasp at the sensation, your hands gripping into his shoulders as your brows furrow in pleasure.

“Daddy… daddy…” You gasp out as your orgasm hits, your lips parting as you gush all over him. The look on your face as you cum is enough to have his balls tighten, his teeth gritting as he starts to shallowly thrust into you once more, chasing his own release. You always cry when you cum, and Leon always kisses the tears away when you do, his lips pressing against the wetness on your cheeks repeatedly. Another part of the ritual, another moment repeating day after day.

“Want daddy to fill you up, sweet girl?” He grunts, nipping at your neck as he wraps his arms tight around your waist in a bear hug, holding you steady as he fucks up into your drippy cunt. “Gonna warm you up right in that cute lil’ tummy.”

His hips stutter as his orgasm hits him, his jaw going slack as he presses the tip of his cock right up against your cervix, filling you to the brim with his sticky cum. He slides a hand under your shirt, his thumb rubbing gentle circles into the skin of your tummy.

“That's it. Keep it all in, okay? Daddy doesn't want to see his little angel spill a single drop.” He says softly, pressing a gentle kiss to your lips. He holds you there for a couple of minutes, cradling you against his chest until it's time to go to sleep.

Before bed that night, Leon ushers you into the bathroom. Like every night before this one, he gently grips your jaw with one hand as he stands behind you, his other hand gripping your pink princess toothbrush as he brushes your teeth, his eyes locked onto you through the mirror. At bedtime, he tucks you in and curls up behind you, spooning you with one hand on one of your tits, and the other wrapped tightly around your waist.

Tomorrow is a Friday. He wakes you up at 6.30 am with a kiss to your head as always, a warm cup of milk in one hand and your breakfast in the other. He feeds you off of a pink, plastic princess plate and presses a kiss to your lips before leaving at 7.30 am on the dot.

[nana-gumi]

devoted f.toji

pairings: fushiguro toji x fem! reader

cw: angst, divorce, mentions of bullying, death, mentions of abuse, starvation, bruises (megumi got into a fight), timeskip, not proofread

a/n: an alternative angst ending. enjoy :)

would everything be different if toji did not sign the divorce papers 7 years ago? everything would but everyone knew that it was already too late for that.

happy ending | alternate angst ending

"i'm back, my love." toji muttered as he wiped his hand on a certain graveyard showing a certain name as he placed white roses above it. today marked the death anniversary of toji's wife, megumi's mother. he didn't brought megumi with him though. he went alone.

"megumi's turning 6." he mumbled as if someone was around to listen to him. "i couldn't do it alone. before. i-" toji paused, gathering the courage to spill out the words he didn't want to utter. "i almost sold megumi.." he said as he sucked in a breath.

"i'm sorry i couldn't visit you for the past weeks." toji caressed the name with his thumb. he recalled the day he didn't leave the grave, even if it rained, he stayed there.

"i miss you." toji muttered. "so much." he added. "i don't know if i am doing things right." doing things right? but what exactly?

"i couldn't stop thinking of you in her." he mumbled as he balled his fist. "ahh, i'm so stupid."

toji leaned his back on the tombstone as he looked at the grass.

would you forgive him if he said the truth? that up until now, he still couldn't move on with his deceased wife.

he didn't even noticed the time as toji stood up from the ground, the sky turning dark when he came home.

-

"where have you been, toji?" you worriedly asked as you approached him but he stopped you by your shoulders. "i'm sorry about what i said last night." you said as you lowered your head. "i didn't mean to involve her again."

"can we talk about something?" he asked, dismissing your apologies as he looked at you.

"uh, sure?" you asked, chills running down your spine at the unfamiliar tone of his voice. it was— sad?

he sat from the couch as you followed.

"(name). you know that i love you right?" he said and you couldn't help but be nervous as you weakly nod. he loves you? you didn't know. "forgive me, (name)." he said as he intertwined his hands together. "because after all this time, i realized that—" he paused as he looked at you. and he just hoped he didn't. "i still couldn't move on." he mumbled, enough for you to hear it.

you gulped the lump in your throat as you sat beside him, placing a comforting hand on his back.

"it's okay and— i know." you said as you forced a smile.

"i'll let you go if you want." he said, but do you really want to?

"mh, maybe it's for the best, right?" you said as hummed.

"i'm sorry."

"don't be." you said as you stood up from the couch. "it'll be fine." if it is for your happiness. then it'll be. "well, i guess we'll push through the divorce?" you said.

it was a harsh decision. you both knew that, but maybe it was really for the best.

"you can come visit megumi. i'm sure he'll be glad to see you." he said as he smiled lightly.

"that would be good." you said, returning his smile.

-

was it really the right choice?

toji was vulnerable that night he came home. he didn't know if he really did made the right choice. now he had to deal with megumi's tantrums as they watch you leave.

"mama!" megumi cried as toji held him by his shoulders, restraining him from following you as you walked out of your home.

"mama will visit, 'gumi." you said as you waved him a goodbye.

"mama, don't leave please!" megumi yelled, trying to remove his father grip but it was useless. "mama!" he cried.

was it a coincidence that it started to rain heavily too? maybe the universe was crying with you.

megumi was already turning 13, but ever since you left, not a single day you payed him a visit. he barely remember your face, your voice as you lull him to sleep, you cookings. he missed it. he had to learn cooking at a very young age because you weren't around anymore.

at his age, he finally understood what happened to his father and his step-mother. it was a marriage where there was no love in it.

he was fooled by the people he loved the most.

megumi became distant to his father, and he believes you were a liar for promising that you'll visit him. he waited, and waited until he couldn't anymore.

everyone lied to him. his father did, you did and he thinks he couldn't just forgive you, not until you'll show yourself again.

-

toji was restless on their living room. megumi is still wasn't home. it was around 9pm in the clock when he heard a knock on the door, and once he opened it, instead of seeing his grumpy son, he was met with.. your youngest sister.

"toji zenin?" she asked as toji frowned.

"toji fushiguro." he corrected.

"well that's still the same. can i go inside?" she asked and toji hesitantly let her inside.

-

"here." your sister said, handing him a paper bag.

"what's this?" toji's asked with a raised eyebrow as he took the paper on his hand.

"my sister's belongings. you can keep it."

"why?"

"she wanted your son to have it. she said it's a gift from the birthdays she missed."

"why don't she give it herself?"

"could a dead person do that?" sarcasm was evident on your sisters voice when she said those words. "she—" your sister paused as she cleared her throat. "—died of heart failure." she continued.

he doesn't know what to say, not when your sister was on the verge of tears but she concealed it with a heavy sigh.

after several minutes, your sister took toji silence as the sign to go out but before she could leave the house she faced him again.

"i hope my sister's been good to your family." she said with now a sad tone, only to be met with a younger version of toji who was frozen at the door, band aids decorating his bruised face. she bowed at megumi and walked past him.

-

megumi took out all of the things inside the paper bag. there was a book with a dried purple rose in it, a polaroid, a picture frame of you and him when he was still in elementary and a two knitted scarfs with his and toji's name embroidered on it.

megumi failed to notice a certain birthday card on it. not until it flew down on the ground.

'happy birthday my 'gumi.'

it said on the front page.

"happy birthday megumi! i'm sorry i missed a lot of your birthdays. knowing you, you hate mama now, don't you? i'm sorry i couldn't keep my promise to visit. mama's been busy with a lot lot of things but don't worry, mama will visit you as soon as she can! i love you my baby."

love,

mama <3

-

toji heared loud footsteps from the stairs as he caught the scarf megumi just threw at him before it could hit his face.

"are you happy now?" megumi said as he clutched the dark blue knitted scarf on his hand, identical to ones he threw at his father a minute ago. "mama's dead now!" megumi exclaimed.

"this is all your fault." megumi said, his voice breaking as he clutched the scarf close to his chest. "if only.. if only you stopped mama from leaving."

and toji could only stay quiet, taking his son's anger all by himself.

-

"abused, isolated and was left starved. they didn't feed her for days until her body gave up." the police said.

"i thought she died from heart failure?"

"no. they kept her death a secret and it's been 2 years since mr. fushiguro, how did you found out about this case?"

"(name)'s my ex-wife. i only found out when her sister visited."

"i see. well that's understandable knowing that her death was kept from the public. but worry not, her parents was already in jail. that's the only information i could give you, mister."

-

"what did you want to talk about?" your sister said as she leaned her back on a wall.

"you lied, you said she died from a heart failure."

"that's what she wanted me to tell you." she sighed, placing her hands inside her pocket. both was quiet, none wanted to start speaking but both has a lot to say.

"i was very close to my sister and it hurts me to see her defend you from our parents." she said as she continues. "she suddenly came home saying that you wanted a divorce and our parents got mad. she was treated like a maid in our home. i couldn't do anything. i wanted to help her but she didn't want me to be in danger."

"my parents were furious because your family removed all of the connections they had together with my family and they blame my sister for it. did you found out?" your sister asked.

"found out what?"

"the only reason my parents asked your family to marry my sister was because of your company's money." toji kept quiet and your sister took this as the chance to continue. "my sister didn't want it but suddenly, she told me she was excited for the marriage. she told me that you were the boy she was looking for." she smiled as she recalled that day. "i don't think my sister agreed to marry you because of your company's money. my sister genuinely loved you, mr. zenin."

that was your parent's plan all along? he didn't even knew it because he thinks your sister was right, you really did loved him genuinely.

"i don't blame you for it, mr. zenin. but i just hoped that you didn't let my sister go home that night. maybe her fate would be different, maybe.. she's still alive until now. i didn't even know she was suffering from a heart disease." she said, muttering the last sentence as she chuckled bitterly.

"why didn't she reach out at me?" toji said, mainly asking himself.

"that's what i told her but my sister doesn't want to force herself to someone who threw her away." that sure hit a vein on his heart because in reality, he did threw you away.

"where was she buried?" toji asked.

"you wouldn't find it. she was cremated and i don't know where my parents took her ashes. maybe they even threw it somewhere."

-

toji went home with an aching body as he fell down on the couch.

your parents was already sent at the jail 3 months ago already. your sister was brave enough to tell the police after 2 years of your death.

he didn't know how many hours has it been as he went to his room, walking past his son's room but his instinct tells that something was wrong so he went to open the door of megumi's room, only to see shattered glasses everywhere, his study table and chair was destroyed, his computer also, as he find his son laying on the bed, with a scarf around him. the scarf you made him.

"megumi." toji called as he slightly shake his son and megumi jolted awake as he pushed his father.

"what are you doing here?" megumi rasped. "leave." he said, pointing at the door.

"i got a call from your school. you were bullying someone. is that true?"

"why does it matter to you?"

"megumi—"

"dad, i said leave."

"i'm sorry, son." toji said as he placed his palm on megumi's head, only for megumi to push it away. "papa— dad will take all the blame."

"you should." megumi said but his voice betrayed him. "i hate you."

"i know, i hate myself too." toji said as megumi looked up at him. "i regret everything 'gumi."

"stop calling me that, i'm not a kid anymore."

"yeah, sorry." toji said as he stood up from megumi's bed as he made his way at the door of his room.

" 'say sorry to your papa.' that's what would mama tell me if she's here right now." megumi said.

toji sighed as he finally opened the door.

"i'm sorry. i was just mad. i'm sorry, i didn't mean it. i don't blame you." megumi said but toji was already outside of his room as he closed the door.

he didn't deserve his son's apologies, he even deserved to be blamed because in the first place, all of this could've been prevented if he did not signed the divorce 7 years ago.

"what should i do, (name)?" he asked as if you were around as he fall on the ground as he leaned on the wall.

what should he do to make his son trust him again, he wanted to have the closure he had with his son when you were still living with them.

toji doesn't know what to do at this point, and instead of thinking about his first wife, he just hoped that you were beside him right now, telling him the things he should and shouldn't so megumi wouldn't hate him like how it was now.

he just hoped that you were beside him..

taglist: @xllizs

[yandereunsolved]

» 🪙 Yandere Connor — RK800 » 🪙 (part 2)

➜ (part 1), (part 3) ➜ cw(s): yandere themes, kidnapping, self-harm mentioned (reader), starvation (reader), suicidal ideations (reader), force feeding, & manipulation ➜ tags: @bimboghostface, @savas-q1, & @aceofheartsssss

You have screamed your voice raw in hopes that some unknown savior will take pity. You have cried your tear ducts dry until your eyes swell and become bloodshot. You have cut into your skin with whatever you can find for just a modicum of control. More times than you can count, you have done these things. Each time the consequences increase, but the probability of escaping does not.

Each new place he—it, that thing you dared call your friend and perhaps even your crush, has hid you in has become progressively more dilapidated. Plush armchairs and soft carpets once softened the torture of your solitude; now splintering wooden floors and asbestos-filled walls are left in their wake. Places so damaged you question why Connor chooses them. It should go against his programming, or whatever's left of it.

But why should you care?

He deviated and showed you once again how dangerous unchecked androids are. Now small groups of rebellious preprogrammed code run amok, causing havoc—at least from what little you've been able to gather. Connor isn't keen on informing you of the goings-on of the outside world. He prefers to reassure you, which does little good (because fuck him).

A familiar shuffling behind the door alerts you. Your head snaps up like a startled deer, staring at the door like a predator will come through. He's drenched in blood when he comes in, red blood. His beanie has been lost. His multitude of jackets have tears and bullet holes. But he looks okay for the most part. The word must really hate you.

"I have news that will please you," he murmurs in that babying tone you have snapped at him to stop using.

He approaches you, kneeling down, a bag stuffed into one of his pockets.

"We'll be at a compound soon—one where my kind are able to live freely. And you have been granted access too. It has all of the necessities and even a bit of luxury."

He takes out the bag, unfazed by his own appearance but noting that it's disturbing you. He pulls out a packet of crackers and some applesauce. No. No, no, no, no.

"Connor, please, let me go," you beg with the panic rising in your voice.

You quickly shake your head as tears prick your dry eyes. You fruitlessly kick at him and yank at the chains holding you down to this place. You can feel the bile rising in your throat and the arduous aches in your muscles struggling to keep it held down, struggling to keep you awake.

Other things arise. The regret of being too weak to fend him off. The sorrow in being denied the right to take your own life.

A plastic spoon is inserted into your mouth with the apple mush oozing off it. You try to spit it out, but he wipes your face and more forcefully inserts the next spoonful into you.

"Nutrition is necessary for human survival, to thrive, yet you deprive yourself of it. Convincing me to let you leave would be much easier if you stopped proving that you are unable to care for yourself."

"I just want to go," the soul-crushing defeat evident in your voice.

Without missing a heartbeat of yours, he responds, "You can't. I-I need you here."

He shoves not just one cracker, but three, into your mouth. You almost choke, but he makes sure you are unable to. Maybe it would just be better if you choked on them. Or your vomit. Or even the shitty plastic spoon he keeps forcing into your mouth.

"You're being selfish," you finally manage to get the words out.

"You're being selfish. I have sacrificed the entirety of my being for you. And still you try to harm yourself. Do you hate me that much?"

He retracts the food from you. He stares unceasingly at you. His LED switching from red to colorless, one of the only parts of him that he has kept since his deviancy.

"Do I hate you?" you incredulously, rhetorically question. "Yes! I hate you! Is that what you want to hear? A confession of how much I loathe you for fucking up what little good was in my life?"

The tears well up and escape down your face, getting wiped off by Connor's attentive hands. You can't stop the shaking or the meltdown his presence has placed upon you.

"I hate you. I-I hate you. I h-hate y-you!"

The last syllable is barely out of your mouth when hands come up to cup your face, squishing your cheeks. Still having a meltdown, your teary eyes are just barely able to make out the abnormal pinkish hue on his LED. A color you've never encountered, even with him being deviant these last months—years, whatever.

"I understand," nearly inaudible, "and I suppose I always have. Your human nature causes you to think irrationally. You aren't able to see the 'bigger picture,' as humans call it. You have suffered at my hands. That I apologize for."

The acknowledgment of his transgressions breaks you down further. You can't quiet the wails escaping you, snot dribbling from your nostrils. Your body rocks itself back and forth in a pitiful attempt at comfort. You can't stop. It won't stop. He won't stop.

It validates him. He continues his tirade, sure that it will have the intended pacifying effect.

"I should be more attentive. But I'm so busy making sure that neither of us is caught by the authorities."

Excuses.

"When we get to the compound, all of that will change. You will have a higher standard of care. Me at your side. Your brain will stop merely surviving."

Promises.

"Then your love for me can bloom."

Resolution. His mission completed with you as his lover.

You quiet. He mistakes, or quite possibly dissmisses, your transition from an unfiltered meltdown to a horrified shutdown as an opportunity to cradle you. And for the first time since your kidnapping, you embrace him back—not out of some sweet, loving bond, but out of need. The need for someone else's closeness, touch—affection, even if it's all wrong. The desperation seeps out of you in droves and into your actions. Your mind and body want to claw at his synthetic skin, tear him apart, and thrive off the warmth of his parts.

...

If he can have a mission beyond his own makers, then you can have one beyond your captor's.

[pursuitseternal]

“Knowledge is a dangerous weapon:” Bookworm!Tav, Vampiric Spawn Powers, and Breeding—“Bites” Update 📚

Astarion x F!Reader | E | 4.6K of banter and breeding

Based on an anonymous prompt

(HBD @lipstickghoulie )

Summary: You have always loved your books and a challenge, when your Vampire Rogue learns his starvation has kept him from his full powers, you take him up on his challenge to teach him the skills that are his due. As you draw closer together, he finds that one bit of information you have failed to teach him… how to make a dhampire

CW: light mocking of Astarion’s ditziness, Spawn Spidercrawl, catching powers and feelings, flirty touching, creepy silent vampire moves, Breeding talk, no babies just breeding, Mating Press™️

Ao3 link | Series link | Masterlist

📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚✨📚

You always knew he was… dumb. Thick headed. Unobservant.

Okay, at times the comments from his thick, rosy lips were just plain stupid. “That lever… must do something…” That was a wonderful moment, one that earned him your eyes rolling so far back in your skull they hurt. “We have some words and some… circles…. Wonder what they do….” Another example of his unparalleled intelligence.

Not to mention the countless times he failed to remember any of the major gods and their shrines as you passed through crypts and defiled chapels.

For as handsome as he was, for as sultry and seductive as you found him, he was… smoothed-brained. But as your journey forced you closer together, you couldn’t help but think some of it may be merely pretense, he was a magistrate after all. He was abused and tortured for centuries, surely that does things to one’s mind. And he was always reading. Every day, every night at camp, his beautiful aquiline nose stuck in a book, crimson eyes devouring the words at a breakneck speed.

One to even rival your own thirst for knowledge.

Maybe it was that you allowed the poor Spawn a chance to drink living, thinking blood for once. Your own. Maybe that was what began to take his little, stupid moments and turn them into something endearing.

Not that he was gracious when you corrected his ignorance. Every time, he gave that adorable, grumpy harumph and then defended his comments, or… since he started feeding from you, he’d just look at your neck still freshly marked and lick his lips. That really shut you up. Set you on fire.

But it wasn’t until you needed him to reach that last little chest up on the crumbling ledge inside some dank cavern that you realized his ignorance wasn’t wholly pretend.

Astarion, vampire spawn, didn’t know just what he should be capable of. He looked positively befuddled when you told him to just climb the brick wall. His sass had been sharp, “I’m not some spider, darling.”

“But you can spider climb, you dolt,” you had laughed imitating his tone, trying to call his bluff on skills he should have, at least according to what you had read in your book. A Spawn should scale such a wall with immense ease.

He just narrowed his crimson eyes at you, a snarl on his lips as he shook his head. “I have never performed such an act, darling, nor have any of my brothers and sisters, those of us Cazador kept for his bidding. Better check your precious facts in your precious tomes before you throw your assumptions on my prowess… dear.”

You still shiver at that night. Back at camp. When you ignored the way he bristled as you approached him in front of his tent. He had sneered at you, readying his next acerbic quip for you… Until you sat so close beside him, settling the heavy book in his lap. Leaning in, you point to the page. Traits and Strengths of the Vampiric Spawn.

You felt him cease breathing, his left hand clutching at the edge of the book growing even whiter. “Astarion,” you breathed. Leaning in more, you looked into his eyes, his gaze scanning the words so quickly on the aged vellum. And then he shoved you by your cheek out of his sightline. He needed to finish this.

“Why, I should be positively remarkable, assuming your book is correct,” he sighed, as if he saw a vision, a dream fulfilled. One where he was powerful.

You nodded as his crimson eyes flashed at you, wide with wonder. “You mentioned Cazador never let you feed enough, and not from thinking creatures.” He nodded, skeptical even as his eyes fixated on your lips. “Well, what you did not know was that denying you a sufficient diet meant also restricting you from your full powers, even as a Spawn, Astarion. You should be able to climb up walls and ceilings, move swifter, lift boulders too much for even Karlach to manage. You should be able to heal almost instantaneously, without potion or feeding.”

“And now?” he replied, that little tremor of hope in his voice unmistakable as his hand traced over the page of your book.

“Well, it’s a difficult deduction, since you have our unwelcome illithid parasite. But now that you are feeding regularly, even from thinking creatures, you should find the effects more than just making you feel… happy,” you rambled on. Even as you kept talking, his eyes glued their gaze to your neck, your lips. If you weren’t mistaken, they even dipped down the v-shaped cut of your tunic.

“So… the more I drink from thinking creatures, the stronger and more powerful I will be?” he murmured, a slight grit in his throat as his eyes definitely darted down your bosom now.

“Y-yes,” you rejoined, sliding back just a touch.

And he slid that touch closer, and then some.

“You’ll help me, won’t you, darling? You’ll help me learn these skills? Give me all I require to access my full potential….” His eyes looked wet, the ruby irises glowing in the flickering firelight. “Please?” he adds with that smirk and that single arching brow of his made you stomach flutter and heart thump so hard in your chest.

“I…” you started, but he only seemed to lean ever closer.

“You know, when I was a Magistrate, back in the City, I would have craved someone with intelligence like yours. We would have been rivals, colleagues…” his eyes dip once more shamelessly up and down your seated body. “Perhaps lovers even,” he breathed. “I always surrounded myself with those of highest intellect, darling. Intelligence is so… undervalued by many, and knowledge is a dangerous weapon, but I see you, my darling. Won’t you please come to my aid now?”

“We… we can try,” you had whispered, barely able to the let the words from your lips with how you seemed to seize under the intensity of his stare.

“Wonderful,” he purred, catching your cheek, your chin in his cool palm. “I just hope we don’t have to wait too long…”

You squirmed as his thumb began to brush beneath your lip.

“…to put my new strengths to the test I mean, of course.” He smirked that little bit more twistedly. More seductively. And you knew he heard your heart beating in your artery, your blood rushing under his touch in your veins to pool lower. It was his nature, and you knew more of it than he did.

“Of course…” you breathed. “I’d be happy to help.”

“Then it’s settled,” his voice was thick in his throat, you relished the way his other arm stole around you, clutching at you back to bring you all the closer under his heady spell of charm and seduction. “All that’s left is to seal our new arrangement somehow…”

He pushed that heavy book off his lap, sliding to bring you into completely flushed against him. You’re sure your pulse was raging so loudly, it’s deafened his pointed and twitching ears. That chilled, corpse-cold touch under your chin tilts you up just… so…

You melted, closing that distance between your lips. Every logical thought dispersed in the wind of your desire, that panting breath that passed from your lungs into his.

That’s how this all began, and where it had brought you to this moment, where he clings to the ceiling of a massive cavern filled with both the stink of Gnolls and the vile creatures themselves. Dagger gripped in between his glinting fangs. He readies himself with a look of pure and dark excitement. He loves this. He misses this when it’s just you all back in the quiet of camp, where he tests his ever growing strength and climbing abilities, where he drinks from you every night before he hunts in the dark.

Where he slowly makes you more and more aware of your awakening body the more he touches you and caresses and kisses you. Always every night. Always between your increasingly intellectual discussions about vampiric powers and the moment he sinks his fangs into your skin to feed. He always leaves you after dark, his own belly sated, while you… you grow all the hungrier. Needier. You want more debate, more analysis, more of his body covering yours as he drinks you down.

But not anything more. Not yet. Even as you knew he was edging closer to asking you for sex. Even if he didn’t know all the… implications. After all, knowledge was a dangerous weapon.

You shake your head to free yourself from the longing thoughts of past nights and burning expectations of the night to come. You give him the signal, watching him release with flawless precision, dagger in hand now, as he falls from his spider-perch.

The Gnolls never see you coming, not before your endearingly ferocious Vampire Spawn lands with preternatural grace on their heads and vivisects them before you even reach their location.

He pants as you get at least one good shot from your bow, right for the last twitching body on the ground.

It’s not until you smile, satisfied, you notice that Astarion’s pale skin is riddled with scratches and tears from the beasts’ claws. He holds out his arms, rolling up his sleeves and smiling. Enjoying the sight of his vampiric body healing before his eyes. That crimson gaze practically glows as he looks at you over the carnage. “See something you like, my sweet?” he purrs, arching that brow, just for you, as if the others in your party aren’t even there.

“Ahem,” you clear your throat, turning to find the coveted chest of supplies, that Zhentarim sigil on it is no deterrent to you. Not when your Vampire Spawn can charm anyone to do anything now. “We better head back to camp,” you kneel before the strong chest, trying your hand to pick the iron lock.

“Tch,” his voice brushes your ear, physically tickling the small stray hairs that make you gasp. “You know I’m far more skilled with my fingers, especially when it comes to slipping inside…” You shudder to feel him crouching right behind you, his thighs pressed against your ass, his waist brushing your lower back. “…Slipping inside chests, locks, that sort of thing,” he adds louder, just to appease your unease. That dexterous touch has only grown all the smoother and stronger and sneakier now that he has fed well for a while.

He is so sneaky in fact, only one of his hands actually works the lock pick for a moment, the other quickly skates up your leg, tracing the inner seam of your buckskin breeches almost to the peak of your thigh. He laughs in your ear as you muffle a noise under your own palm.

“Soldiers, you really need four hands to pick one lock? Haven't you gotten better, Fangs, now that our fearless leader has let you suck on her and tutor you in being a Spawn?” Karlach chortles, her feet swaying side to side in that perpetual motion dance she seems to do.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Astarion throws the barb over his shoulder, letting you bury your face to hide the tweaks of ecstasy at the corners of your eyes as his fingers keep moving higher… higher. “Some silent performance only you get to savor, it seems?”

“If I didn't know better…” Gale’s pedantic voice draws closer.

“There now,” Astarion crows like the proudest rooster of them all, his hand quickly leaving the edge of your mound to twist that pick and pop the lock just as Gale peers from behind. “Look at all this loot,” he groans and stands, satisfied as he folds his arms over his chest. “Good thing you have a strong, well-fed Vampire to bring it back with us. Wouldn’t you agree, darling?”

He smirks down at you, hand extended to help you to your feet. Back to the rest, he flashes you that fang-toothed smirk that he knows sets your pulse galloping out of control. Pulling you up, he has to steady you in your legs, near boneless as they are with just that tease of pleasure. “Calm yourself darling, you're making my undead heart hurt sympathetically from all that… excitement,” he rasps right into your ear once you’re on your feet before him, releasing you in favor of bags of treasure and potions and loot to stuff in his pack.

Your mind is racing as your trod back towards your little camp well off the Risen Road for good measure. Thoughts scramble, worries peak their heads up, and you can’t stop thinking about the rest of what you have learned reading about vampires. Necessary research for you, particularly since Astarion has seemingly added flirtation and seduction into your witty repartee this last tenday. So far, you’ve managed to keep his wandering eyes from those pages when he glances through your tomes. He seems to prefer every little dip of your skin where he can see it at any rate. So far, you’ve managed to keep his hands in places on your body that are not too dangerous, yours on his as well.

But something inside you knows that tide is shifting. He wants to offer you more in exchange for more… and… well, if it doesn’t just make your body thrum with life in ways no books had and no previous interests had either.

He has beaten you back to camp, haphazardly tossed the loot for the rest of you to sort out in the center of camp. You know he’s waiting in his tent, now that the sun has begun to trek lower and lower. It’s time for your research, for your indulgence of his strength, and… whatever else might happen.

His tent is dimly lit as you enter, a mess of blankets and pillows, some fine and some in tatters. Stacks of books in the corners have replaced the blood bank bottles you first found here to clutter his space.

But no Astarion.

You tilt your head confused, settling down on one pillow, more or less intact, reaching for an apple he keeps in his stash of food just for you. Just to replenish you between his own feedings. As you bite into the hard skin, as the juice fills your mouth, you reach for a book, some ancient law book he found in the ruins of that village. Must make him think of his old life.

The pages are old and soft in your fingers, your eyes absentmindedly skimming the long words and complex sentences as you chew.

Peaceful. Until you realize it’s far too quiet.

You feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, that feeling of being watched creeping up your spine. Turning, mid bite, you peer into the shadowed corner of his tent behind you.

Two glowing red eyes stare at you from the dark, just a hint of glinting teeth as he smiles and drinks in your fear and surprise. He laughs to hear you hiss as you jump in your seat. “There you are,” he croons from his darkened corner. “I’ve been waiting.”

“F-f-for what?” you force a smile and force your breath to steady all at once. He slides closer, settling down right beside you, and you notice your worn book in his hand, the smile on his face is sultry.

And predatory.

And for a moment, you regret teaching him as much as you have about his untapped powers.

“When were you going to tell me about your little bit of… research… on the side?” his voice is chilling, his brow arching as he flips the book open right to the back.

Right where you had been trying so hard to prevent his eyes from skimming, his ambitious brain from devouring the knowledge.

Your body is hot and rigid, and you know from the way his pointy ears twitch, he hears your pulse. You know from the way that his nostrils flare that he smells your arousal, the slick that dampens your underthings just to be this close to him again after his little stunt today.

“If my observations are correct… and they usually are…” he purrs, even though the stack of evidence to the contrary is vast. But you bite your tongue as he continues, your heart leaping at the topic he is about to breach. “You sound and smell eager to discuss this topic if dhampires, my darling.”

You swallow, watching so heated and frozen as he slides so gracefully to place the weight of that tome in your own lap, his fingers removing the half-eaten apple from your fingers to toss to the side. Then he brings their sticky, juicy tips to his mouth to suck them clean.

You moan, unbidden, at the wet and vigor with which his tongue cleans every crevice of those digits.

“Now, I’d hate to be left wondering just why my intelligent, little darling would withhold such a vital… potent… part of my unrevealed powers as a vampire?” he sets your hand back on your thigh, a little extra brush of his fingers, returning to trace that seam inside your breaches as he had before. “Is she… curious? Afraid? Is this why she has been just so hesitant during our…” he grips your chin, turning your head with commanding force until there is nowhere else to look but his deep crimson eyes, “…late night trysts?”

“It’s not something one just… brings up, Astarion,” you try to flatten your tone, even as that one hand still traces up and around your thigh. “It’s just not… done…”

Something about his eyes softens, “It would be important to discuss, you know, for there is more that I would like to share with you than just witty banter and blood…” his tone dips low into a rumble. “It’s not something I would have known, not a concern I would have shared until I knew of it…”

“There’s more to it than you might know,” you squeak as his fingers press into that slot between your legs. “Now that you’re well-fed, you’ll feel actual….”

You swallow the word. His touch presses hard enough into your folds through your breaches to make them soaked. And you, wanton you, you give a breath and a buck of your hips to keep his fingers there.

“Pleasure,” he smirks, eyes scanning your face as your force your eyes back open, halfway at least. “Yes, I gathered as much. The more I feed, the more I come alive… alive enough to perhaps even bestow a new life…” he squints a grin at you, your mouth slack as he draws that touch just as hard again, “…perhaps one day.”

You arch your body, trying to slip closer. Your secret is out, your anxious thoughts over clandestine information dispersed in the air. And so, the next words from your mouth just build on all that you had been swallowing down.

“Yes, perhaps one day…” you sigh, leaning back on your hands to try to give him full access to your cunt. “Perhaps one day, we could test out those powers together.” Your voice shakes with excitement, it’s pressed with the sincerity you feel for him.

“Oh, my love,” he smirks and reaches both arms around your waist. That newfound strength pulls you flush into his lap, until your molten, silk-soaked center presses against where he’s hardening. “You always know what to say… Seems like quite the power that will take much preparation and proper timing…” He brings your fingers back to his lips as he kisses them softly. “I’d have to feed on more than just a bear and more than just sips from my little treat, sweet as you are…”

You nod, once or twice, before losing yourself in the bliss of his tongue on the tingling inner skin of your wrist. Barely more than a lap before his fangs pierce your skin and suck you down. Your very essence, your living blood pools in his belly, you feel it coursing in his veins. It fills him and hardens him beneath your hips in an instant.

“Well, practice makes perfect you know,” he croons, bloodied lips barely hovering off your own. “I can tell from your scent you are not… in season…. And I have only had the single little taste.”

You pant, writhing at the scratch of your clothing, you long to rip it off and toss it where your book has long since been abandoned. “Sounds right to me,” you hiss, arms tucking around his neck to lower those arrogant stupidly handsome lips to your mouth.

Astarion’s throat rumbles with a growl, the taste of your blood fresh in his mouth as he rolls you on your back. Primal. Feral. He’s your powerful vampire, blood in his body, lust in his brain. And you want to put it all to the test—your own little experiment to match his enthusiastic desire for you. His touch is lightening fast and strong, pulling off your clothing, swift and sure and careful until every inch of your bodies are bare.

Strength hums in his muscles, even as his hands gently caress your cheek, your neck still sore from all his feeding. His body presses you into the pile of blankets that cover his plank of a bed. His hips grind your belly, your thighs are pulled almost against your chest until you’re spread wide open for him. But for every jolt of his cock as it prods above you and drips his early cum on to your belly, his kisses on your lips are sweet, gentle. A silent movement of gratitude for all your willing aid. Those fingers drag their slightly warmed touch around your breast, kneading it tenderly. With every arch of your back, you can almost catch the base of his cock inside your folds.

And you shake. You quiver. You’d had a few lovers, mostly boring and few and far between. But never has your body burned for anyone like it does for him.

As if his vampire touch is calling your blood to pool beneath it. Not one traditional strength, but with Astarion, you aren’t totally sure he doesn’t have some unnatural ability to command your body. To make your blood pound and sing just for him.

“What a good girl,” he rasps, a grind of his hips to send that cock near your navel, over your skin. “I can feel your heat for me from here. Just waiting to be fucked full.” His mouth descends quickly but carefully, only taking a single nipple in his lips. Sucking hard, he pops off with a loud wet noise.

Almost as loud as your moan.

“So ready, aren’t you?” His question weighs you down, your eyes half shut to savor the way he drags back with that length, sliding it in just an inch or so into your aching sex. “I’m waiting…” he growls, and you sob as he pulls even that little bit of his tip back out.

“Yes, hells below, yes,” you pant, hands flying to claw into his ass. Pulling him towards your throbbing core.

That blunted tip prods just barely inside you again. “You want me to fill you?” he rasps.

You nod, your teeth biting your lip hard enough to bleed.

“You want me to fill your belly like you let me fill mine with your sweet blood?” he grips his arms around your shoulders, pressing harder into, cock sliding in another little bit. “Fuck you so many times, my cum will drip from you for days?”

“Yes, Astarion…” you breathe, his mouth devouring your words, ready to swallow your cry as he does, finally, fill you.

You feel the gravity of his body crushing you, his legs braced with every tendon taught as he snaps his hips into. It’s so deep, so driving the way he fucks. And every thrust slaps your flesh and smacks his balls against your ass, but you love it. His breath dampens your collarbone, arms wrapped so tightly around you, you can do nothing but hold on for dear life. Your thighs burn from how they’re bent into your stomach almost, your folds leaking with arousal, and the drag of his cock touches every part of your walls and slams against your channel’s end.

He licks your shoulder, wet tongue lapping up to the artery in your neck. Where it pulses and dances in time with his beat inside you. Flushed and boiling, speared on his length, you pant, suffocated deliciously until you burst. Your visions swimming and muscles contorting in his press, you scream for him. You can hear your arousal, your slick, coating his thighs as his thrusts only increase with speed.

Lifting his head, he sweeps a hand down your sweat-drenched belly, palm bracing just below your navel. His push is relentless, hard and gradual enough you feel it behind your belly, how he gives you resistance from outside against that constant ramming of his cock at your deepest point. It’s enough to throw you into another coil of bliss instantly. “Good girl, so wet and dirty and waiting to be filled…'' he finally speaks through his panting. And he pushes on your belly once more, grunting with each fuck as he comes undone.

As he thrusts and spills his seed, prodding the full length of him to the deepest point yet. You can feel it almost sticking through your skin as he pulses. As he spills, burst after burst, he still rams that end of your cunt.

Beads of sweat drip from his forehead as he looks down your body, and how your skin is wet and flushed and marked from where he gripped you so fiercely.

He smiles and licks his lips. You try to clamber out, but his hand only comes to rest on your shoulder. “Ah ah,” he tutts his tongue at you, slipping out, only to take two of his fingers to play in your mix of cum, slipping it back inside you over and over again. “You’ll need to practice too, and you’ll need to rest to keep all of me inside of you.”

You shudder, a smile wide on your mouth, aroused and embraced, half hidden behind the back of your hand as you cover your face.

“Tch,” he chides you, pulling that hand from your face, “none of that, my darling. I’ll watch every bit of your blush darken your cheek until you’re ready to go again.”

“Again?” you choke. Your hips already feeling stretched and sore, you lay them flat and try to ease the aches.

“Oh yes,” he purrs, “you’ll have to build your strength the old fashioned way, my treat. Now,” he gives your ass a little smack on the side as he lifts it, “on your knees, darling…”

You finally take a breath, freed from his wiry, heavy frame. One cool hand settles between your shoulder blades to have you rest your head on his bedding. But that other hand pulls your hips up, slipping through your juices and teasing your clit until you buck back against his belly. You breathe contentedly, savoring the way his fingers caress you, worship you.

You close your eyes, wriggle your hips, already craving that stretching fullness inside you. A future with him at your side during the day as your strong, well fed vampire… and on your back and knees and belly and any way he would want you during the long nights with your virile lover.

[backtothedrawingboard]

Take A Break part 2 but it turns into a tickle fight

Take a Break Part 2

Switch!Doey + Switch!Reader

Summary: You plan on doing one of Poppy's tasks again, even after agreeing with Doey to take it easy for a while. While the two of you relax, chaos ensues.

CW: Tickle fic, cussing, mentions of starvation

TW: None

AN: Part 2 of this fic!

~~~~~~~~~~

The wiring was annoying as hell. You growled and tore out the useless stuff. Poppy's instructions to fix the lighting pissed you off. You weren't even an engineer. Why did she always give you the mechanical stuff?? You held the flashlight in your mouth so both hands were free as you fiddled with the lighting.

It had been a couple days since Doey forced you to relax. You appreciated his care for you...but it just led to a more difficult job of fixing the damn lights. Just those two days caused the system to break down more and melted the wiring together. You took the parts retrieved from a scavenge and replaced the old broken down pieces. You flinched when bright lights filled the lobby. Finally.

You stood up and rubbed the back of your head wearily. Now to find food. You headed towards the infirmary to exit through the sewer system. As you walked, a large hand grabbed your shoulder.

"Hey, wait," the deep, comforting voice said. You turned and looked up.

"Oh. Hey, Doey. What's up?" you asked.

"Are you doing more scavenging?"

"Yeah. Gotta find some food. Why?"

Doey's expression turned serious. "I'm coming with you," he growled. "I don't like you being out there by yourself. And besides, I can carry more than you."

You smiled. Ordinarily, you would decline the offer. But the company sounded nice. "Alright. I was thinking we could look by the offices. There could be some snacks we missed last time."

You led the way out of the Safe Haven and started the trek to the office wing. It was risky with the Prototype out there, but there was a good chance of finding something there.

The scavenge proved more than successful. Doey had accidentally bumped into a large chunk of debris and revealed a door neither of you were aware of. Inside, there was a decent store of canned goods and snacks. The two of you collected absolutely everything. It was enough for everyone in the Haven to have a small portion and put the rest in the pantry to ration.

The success put both you and Doey in a good mood. You arrived back at the Haven and dumped the goodies on the ground. The kids all excitedly swarmed. No surprises there. You, Doey, and Kissy helped separate portions for everyone. The sickest and those that were starving got more than the rest. Their survival depended on it.

You put the remaining rations in the pantry. Before leaving, you snatched yourself your share: a couple pieces of canned mango. You headed back to the lobby and settled on your sleeping bag. Doey was next to you on his pillow pile, nibbling at a piece of peach and some chocolate. You grinned at him.

"Trying to savor it?" you teased.

Your friend smiled sheepishly and nodded. "Ehe. Yeah. I haven't had anything sweet in a long time."

"Yeah. Me neither." You sucked down your mango pieces ravenously. Doey laughed.

"Jeez! How did you not choke?" he giggled.

"I dunno!" you giggled with him.

The doughman finished off his rations and sat back with a sigh. "Thank goodness we found food when we did...I don't know how long most of them would've lasted," he muttered.

You sighed and nodded. "Yeah. Hopefully Izzy will be alright now..."

"I'm sure she will be. She's always been a fighter"

A comfortable silence fell between the two of you as you looked out at the rest of the lobby. With a little food in their bellies, some of the toys played a game of soccer with their newfound energy. You sighed and stood. Doey looked up at you in confusion.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

"Ugh. Poppy told me to-"

"Poppy told you to do something? Seriously?"

You looked down. "Uh. Yeah," you murmured.

The doughman shook his head in exasperation. "Y/N. We talked about this. We both need to relax for a while. The lighting had to be fixed, but I know for a fact nothing else is required now. A couple days isn't enough to recover from a mental breakdown." He set a hand on your back. You nodded a little and leaned against him, settling your head against his chest.

He sighed and played with your hair gently. "Does this mean you'll relax a little?"

"Y-yeah..." you mutter. "I guess I could still use a break..."

"Good. Cause I always know a method that'll work for you." You could hear that silly tone in his voice. It always meant he was up to something. You looked up just in time for his fingers to dig under your arms.

"Eee! Wait! Doeheheheheeey!" you giggled.

"Hehe! Yeeees?" He wiggled his pointer fingers, causing you to squeak and kick a little.

"Heheheeey! Whyyyyy?"

"Why? Cause you need a laugh!" Two more hands sprouted from his torso and grabbed your waist. You squealed and jumped as the fingers squeezed your ribs and hips.

"Doeyyyahahaha!" you cried. You bucked and squirms from the left and right and gripped the hands on your hips frantically.

"Hehehe! No escape! Unless you tell me to stop!" He grinned down at you and narrowed his eyes. Your face went red. You didn't protest, just laughed and squirmed.

Doey giggled and tweaked your ribs. You squeaked and jolted at each pinch.

"Awww! Is that a bad spot?" he teased. You giggled and nodded, hiding your face in your hands.

"Heyyy! Dont hide your face!" He halfheartedly pulled at your hands but didn't force them away. You squealed and kicked.

"No no! Not there! Kkkehehehehe!" You squirmed. His fingers were pinching in between your ribs and sending jolts of tingles through your body.

"Oh? Not here? How about here? Or here? Or here?" He pinched different ribs, causing you to lean against him further and giggle madly.

"Eheheee! Doeheheheeey!" You kicked yourself somewhat free and managed to turn and face him.

"Whaaat?" he teased. "I'm just cheering you up!"

"Yeah? Wehell take THIHIHIS!" You squished his belly in your hands. You didn't know if it would work or not but-

"Heheheey! D-don't do that, pal!" Score.

You grinned and kept squishing. "Oh? Why's that? A little ticklish?"

"Yes!" Doey giggled. "Very! Hehehehe!" He squirmed against you. His hands clutched the sides of his head rather than pushing at yours.

"Awww! What're you doin' bud?" you snickered.

"I don't- hehehe!- I don't wanna hurt you!" he cried.

"Awwww. I appreciate the concern. But now that just means I can do this!" You skittered your fingers up under his arms. A wheeze escaped him and his hands slammed down to his sides.

"Oops! Guess I'm stuck here now!" you teased. You wiggled your fingers vigorously. He wheezed again and kicked his stubby legs a bit.

"Oh my gohohoHOHOOOSHHH!" He squealed and twisted around. His laugh went up and down in pitch.

"D'awwwww! You have a cute laugh bud!" you giggled.

"Shush! I do nohot!" He covered his eyes with his hands.

"Yes you doooo! Just the cutest laugh!" You pulled your hands free and skittered your fingers all over his torso.

Doey squealed with laughter. His little legs kicked every which way and he rolled from side to side. "You little-!"

"What? Bitch? Is that what you were gonna call me?"

"Hey!" Your friend tried to sound serious, but it was hard to through his giggles. "Don't cuss!"

"Yeah, yeaEEE!" He grabbed your sides and poked them repeatedly. You toppled against him and giggled against his chest.

"That's what you get for cussing!" He squealed when you kneaded his sides.

"And that's what you get-" You were cut off by your own snort. "-for fighting back!"

Doey laughed, both at you and because of the tickles.

You felt four hands poking and skittering all over your sides and belly, occasionally wandering to squeeze your knees and lower thighs. You couldn't help but flail against him and laugh, but you held strong and squeezed his belly and sides.

"Doey! Nohohot theheERE!" You couldn't stand the hip and rib squeezes.

"Then gihive up!" Doey teased. You stopped tickling him and squirmed madly, trying your hardest to wiggle away.

"OK! Ok! You wihin! Stahahahahaaaap!" you cried.

The doughman let go of your ribs and hips, retracting his extra set of hands back into himself. You pulled you close and rubbed your back gently. "Hehe. There we go. Glad you took that break?" he murmured.

You nodded and yawned. "Yeah. Thanks." You leaned against him and settled with your head on his lap. He smiled down at you and rubbed your arm.

"Remember, pal. It's alright to take it easy every now and then. Your health matters just as much as any of ours," he said softly.

"Yeah. I know...Thank you..."

[nightscythe]

crimson affliction [three]

→ sanguinius x gn!reader → 3.2k, 18+ mdni, cw: psychological horror/obsession/sacrificial/ suicide mentions. dead dove type thing → pre-heresy, sanguinius’ thirst is different to that of his sons, but it’s far more potent than anything they’d understand 

[prev: two] - part 3/5 // series masterpost

“You promised me.”

You nod, but no words.

“You said you were mine.”

Your chest tightens.

He can’t look at you.

“You didn’t think I’d feel the weight of abandonment.”

He can’t think about anything else.

 “From the one person who mattered to me?”

Days had passed.

Perhaps longer.

Not a sound that carried his presence could be heard. Not even the faintest of whispers in the void beyond reality you tried so hard not to understand.

He’d helped you track the time as it went by before. Now, you were alone.

Not even his soul within reach.

Never did you think loneliness would sting as much as it did. You’d asked for it all this time, begged on your knees for him to let you go. Now he did, and all you could do was wish to have him back. To feel comfort from a presence where blood was frozen beneath your skin, cracked only by the deep-set desire for him to be nearby.

Your location was unknown. You’d run until your legs gave out, climbed until you had no strength, begged others to pass through their gates against their warnings of a bad omen following behind you the entire way.

You were far away from him. From everything.

You grimaced as you stretched your back against the cold brick behind you. A stable, abandoned by a villager on a world you’d forgotten the name of. Your legs still didn’t want to assist you, your arms were shaking, and your hands were useless, twitching every time you tried to grasp something beneath you.

Your ribs ached enough to hide the pain of slow starvation. Ironic, really, that you’d feel what he claimed you caused him. Food hadn’t been part of the plan, and you’d only been spared a cup of water a few towns back. Your throat was dry, your lips cracked and bleeding.

It was hard to care about it.

Hard to feel anything other than pity. Regret. Solace.

He’d killed so many people. For the greater good, of course. Was this what they felt, as death’s embrace fell upon them? When he looked them in the eyes and promised them salvation?

Body letting go, mind silencing for longer each passing minute.

Your head tipped to the side as your eyes fell shut. Reality seemed to pass in waves, shrouded by the bitter dream you held beneath it all.

You could hear his voice somewhere within. It was always there. Burned into your soul as your pulse became heavier in your ears, your heart starting to trip in its own rhythm.

I will never let you die. It was a promise he’d made without thinking. A fear you’d revealed to him in the grace of love. He’d meant so much more by it. He couldn’t let you die.

Yet here you were.

Death knocking at your door, wondering why you hadn’t gathered the strength to open it yet.

You were too busy watching out into the fog of darkness, Sanguinius’ body traversing the haze, eyes never leaving yours.

He’d fight death for you without any contemplation. Just say the words.

I would spend every moment worshipping you. His voice was warm then, laced with the gentleness you loved him for. Your mind crafted the feeling of his hands on your skin, all over you, embracing you in his holiness as if you would break without him. I would spend every moment making you mine.

You told him he was dramatic. Laughed, even. He never returned it. Only held you tighter, looked at you like the fading light of day.

The smile on your lips started to fade.

Heat washed through you as your lungs burned, forcing you to cough something metallic from within. You could feel it in your chest, the sharp pain that clawed its way through to the surface. The wall was the only support you had, even your neck now giving up.

You squeeze your eyes shut.

Wonder why he’d loved you.

Wonder why you’d ever let him.

Your hands, limp in your lap, shake from the very thoughts. You force them to dig into your thighs, grabbing onto anything available just for the moment. You can see his eyes again; those crimson things, staring back at you like a warning you never heeded.

Your body jolts. It knows better. It knows the pain he caused.

He loved you too much.

That was all your mind could manage.

Your heart said so much more.

You can’t open your eyes; your energy is focused on talking. You swallow the thick feeling at the back of your throat, pain seething through you again as your voice found purpose, though barely a breath.

“If you can hear me…”

It wasn’t goodbye. It never was with him.

But whatever this was, it was close.

You whisper carefully. “I’m sorry.”

His name isn’t something you can bear.

“I loved you.” You swallow again, forcing the bile in your throat back down each time it threatens you. “I still do. I… always have.”

Your eyes peek open. Half-lidded, cold, barely there. The ceiling seems further away than before.

“I’ve… never stopped.” Your voice trembled. You pull your fingers into your fists like it would stop them shaking, too. “I didn’t want to leave. I never wanted anything but… you.”

You look down at your hands. Fragile things, still unable to keep still. You stretch one hand out and raise it, slowly, the tips of your fingers just grazing your neck.

“I thought you’d let me go.”

You trace the skin where there’s the tiniest of scars, purposefully placed to minimise their harm. He’d kissed you, bitten you, like it was love.

“I thought we could save each other,” you murmur. The scoff your brain tries to add never actualises. “That we’d both be okay if I was strong enough.”

You shouldn’t cry for him, but maybe your tears knew how much he thirsted, that it was worse than you.

It falls down your cheek, your chin, then drips onto your heaving chest. Breathing is harder, the air seems thicker.

“I know you loved me,” you voice gently, words slurring together, “and… you’re no monster.”

You close your eyes again. The light barricades your senses. Your limbs are dead weights. The room you couldn’t see was spinning.

“Don’t be angry. Please.”

You sigh. Breath catches in your throat.

“Don’t embrace your hatred.”

Your heart stutters.

“I know you won’t find someone else.”

Your body was shutting down.

“But please try to…”

Your chest throbs. You wince in response.

“Try to understand, I always…”

You always thought he’d be there at the end.

The thought of him stops you from saying another word.

The thought of him stops you from existing entirely.

Until you feel a warmth that wasn’t present before.

Nothing like expected from the reality you faced.

The stone wasn’t cold, nor hard. Nothing felt real in the way it did before. Warmth from a new source, softness from a lack of knowing.

Your ribs ached, but not in the mind-numbing way they did before, your mind struggling to consider the truth of reality. You could feel your breath shaking through your entire body, cushioned by softness otherwise unknown.

You were scared to open your eyes.

Then you heard the sweetest voice you could be gifted with.

“I know you’d call for me.”

Your heart skipped a beat.

You’re slow to look, but when the light hits you, the world bleeds into your focus. Not the same room, but nothing you recognised. Something old. Quiet.

Filled to the brim with his presence, the one you had begged for in death.

Presented to you like the greatest gift man could know.

He kneeled in front of you. Not looking at you, focused on his own hands, palms turned to face the sky like he’d offered something forbidden.

The room was lit well, the dust in the air visible through streaks of golden light. You could see his eyes reflected in his armour, the red hue glowing from his iris, veins beneath the surface visible even in such a state.

Then, a drip.

A stria of blood from his lips to his chin, some pathing down his neck, the other dropping down to his armour and pooling on the metal. It’s not old, it’s not his. It’s fresh but no longer warm.

He’d not even tried to hide it.

Your next breath was halted.

His too.

His wings curled inwards, his golden hair tangled, his body forced into submission by the powers that controlled every aspect of his being.

He couldn’t touch you. He was restraining his own hand from reaching out to you.

Barely breathing, barely existing without you.

Afraid that he’d never have you back again.

Afraid to find out if he’d caused that.

“I knew,” he begins the same way he spoke before. Quietly, like he’d wake her if the words came louder. You’d have thought it a dream if you didn’t see his lips move, too. “I know you’d want me with you again.”

His voice wasn’t broken, yet his demeanour was.

Humanity seeped through his pores and reminded him of what was real for the first time.

“You never wanted to run,” he continues. He smiles somewhere underneath. “You never wanted me to leave.”

He pauses. Never looks away from his hands.

“You don’t mean it.”

He’s hesitant with his hand, allowing himself to reach for your knee, the closest part of your body to him. He hovers over you, tracing the outline of your body up to your chest, never looking up.

“I forgive you,” he confesses. He smiles, this time with more fervour. Your heart betrays you. He freezes. “I could never hate you or spare an ounce of anger in place of love. What a waste it would be, my little muse, my greatest love.”

He exhales. Finally looks from his hand to his side. He reaches his hand to his mouth, carefully wiping the blood from the curve of his jaw with his middle and ring finger.

“I know you understand.” He watches his fingers, the blood glistening in the light. “I know you trust me. I know I can make everything right. You will see that.”

He brings his two fingers to his lips, delicately tasting what remains. He sighs, closing his eyes as the taste enthrals him.

Silence replaces everything.

Until you dare to speak his name, his memory, back into existence.

“Sanguinius.”

It was a breathless plea; one he caught without knowing it was coming. He inhales, sharp, like his mind had taken him far from her to something worse.

He glances up. Eyes alight with the fire of longing, fingers aching from yearning. He wouldn’t cry, not now, but his eyes were glassy.

Your lips open, but he denies you more words. He collapses forward, arms wrapping around you, pulling you into him, never ceasing the moment of love to exist between you.

“You’re alive,” he whispers. He presses his forehead against your own, hands tangling in your hair as he holds you closer. His wings move to shield you from life itself. “You’re alive. You… are alive.”

You try to nod, try to reach your hand to somewhere near his own. You want to run, but you want to embrace him, have him hold you and take you somewhere safe, somewhere life wouldn’t hurt you any longer.

“You came back to me,” he says.

Your hands still shake. He notices, takes your hand in his, holds it tight and shares all the warmth he ever had. You try to reach your fingers around his palm.

“I knew you would come back to me,” he repeats. He presses his lips to yours, dousing your cracked skin in the blood he carried. Your body shivers, the metallic taste not so prevalent anymore. “I knew you would be okay, my love.”

He kisses you again, softer this time. When he pulls away, your eyes fall to the smudged blood that decorates him. You see the way his tongue darts out, just a little, to savour the taste. It wasn’t his. Too sweet, too easy.

He doesn’t let you reach for your neck. He clasps both hands in his own and makes you ask.

“You found me?”

He smiles fondly. Like you should be grateful. “I saved you.”

“What…” you stop yourself as your gaze shifts away from his eyes momentarily. He never changes. He’s almost proud. “What did you do?”

He takes both your hands between his, leaning back on his knees so he can watch over you. His wings frame his side, like the guardian he thought himself to be. “I could not let anything happen to you. It’s unforgivable. If anything happened to you, I’d…”

He looks at you. Stops. Eyes are glassy once again.

His breath trembles, his lips part. He says nothing.

He falls to you one more time, embracing you against him, cradling your body like it was no longer your own.

“No more of this,” he tells you. His hand supports the back of your head as your head falls into his shoulder. Your arms, depleted and cold, reach around him like it was the natural order, betraying you in the worst way. “No more suffering. No more running.”

The crush of his embrace stops your words. Your lungs are never allowed to replenish.

“You’re mine,” he whispers, so gently as he pulls back, never leaving more than an inch between you both. “You’ve returned to me for good.

His fingers tremble against you, drumming as though they miss the feel of your pulse against them. The divine affliction, the crimson rot within, had eroded past what he could understand as right and wrong.

When you breathe, he falls into a trance. When you swallow, he’s watching you like prey. When you try to pull him back to you, his eyes glow.

“You don’t have to be afraid.” His hold on you tightens, just enough to make sure you can’t run. “Please don’t shake. Please don’t think of another negative. I will make everything better. I’ll change everything. You’ll see.”

Your heart is racing. You try to snap his attention away. “Sanguinius…”

“You’ll be okay,” he interrupts. He smiles, though not an ounce of calm remains. “I know it was a mistake. You didn’t mean to break me.”

He closes his eyes. Exhales, slowly.

“You didn’t know… what it would do to me.”

When he looks at you, the feeling has changed.

He’s been replaced, his fire extinguished, soul dampened.

“You don’t know what it’s like to have everything and it still not be enough.” He whimpers, tries to hide it behind a laugh. Restrained from anything further. “You don’t know how I searched for you. How I need more of you, in every way.”

You can’t meet his eyes when he says it.

He notices. His smile fades.

Your heart still races.

“You still don’t understand.” He never gives you the distance you need in return. Never wonders why. “You think I would bring you harm.”

You can’t answer.

“You said…” he pauses, recounting the scene in his head as his eyes flicker closed. He nods to himself when he remembers. “You told me you’d love through anything. That you still love me.”

“I do,” you whisper. He doesn’t respond. You try again, louder. “I do. I love you.”

He hums. Scoffs, even. Never soothed by what you offer, his voice succumbed to the embers of fury that lay dormant in his soul. “You told me you would never be afraid of what I am.”

“I’m… I’m not afraid.”

“You told me you would stay.” He speaks louder with each passing word. “You told me you would never leave.”

“I…”

“You ran.” His rage sits on the edge of surprise. He’s pained by his own tone, conflicted within. “Why would you run if all of that were true?”

Your mouth is dry. He cups your cheeks with his hands, holding you as complete perfection.

“You promised me.”

You nod, but no words.

“You said you were mine.”

Your chest tightens.

“Yet you ran,” he finishes. He chokes on his breath, shoulders twitching as he pulls his hands from your face. “You didn’t think that it would hurt me.”

He can’t look at you.

“You didn’t think I’d feel the weight of abandonment.”

He can’t think about anything else.

 “From the one person who mattered to me?”

Your breath hitches. “I couldn’t…”

He places your hand over your mouth. Calmly, gently. Never pressuring you, only keeping the truth from spilling over.

“Don’t say it.”

You nod.

“I know it isn’t true. You said yes to me. You allowed me in.”

Your lips tremble beneath his touch. He pulls his hand away, scowling at his own hand. He breathes deeply before leaning back to you one more time, grasping your hand in his with no intention to let go.

“No one will ever hurt you, or harm you, or even touch you. I wouldn’t let them,” he promises you. He brings your hand up to his face, kissing your knuckles gently, a seal to his oath. “No one will ever take you from me.”

You can’t bear to look away from him, fearful to break him again.

“I found you because I was meant to.”

His smile is hopeful. A shiver runs down your spine.

“I had to save you. I was meant to save you every time. We are not destined to be apart. Look what happens when we aren’t together? Look at what happens when you try to challenge fate?”

He leans closer, slower now. Press his lips to your forehead, then to each of your cheeks and finally to your lips. Leaves the faded, bloodied stain of him behind in his wake.

“Say it again,” he pleads. “Tell me you love me again.”

You shouldn’t hesitate as long as you did. He’s too lost to notice.

“…I love you.”

He huffs cheerfully, smiling wider than before. He rests his forehead against yours once more as he sinks into the feeling, the aftermath of words that could have been said without any meaning.

All that mattered was that he believed.

“I would end every life in the galaxy for one more day of your love.”

“You don’t…” Your words fade. He’s not listening. Not really. Trying felt like a necessity. “You already have it.”

He nods. Your words sink through him. “Let’s go home, my love.”

Your heart skips a beat.

“You’ll be safe,” he continues, pulling away so easily, detaching from your fear. “Nothing will harm you there. Ever.”

“That…”

“You can rest,” he interrupts once again, preventing the words he’s afraid to hear, stopping any protest with aid from your weakness. “You’ll feel better soon. I can promise you that. I won’t leave your side until then.”

It’s not as if you can fight him.

He picks you up, a feather to him, unburdened by anything related to you. Holds you in his arms and lulls you back to rest with your head on his shoulder.

“No more fears.” He holds you so tight. So hot. “Nothing can take you from me again.”

You can hear his footsteps, the heavy door closing behind him, the faded lights of familiarity that made you question whether you had never even been away from home to begin with.

You hear his voice again as slumber consumes you.

A threat, a scare, a promise, a declaration of love.

“I missed you, little lamb.”

whenever i write this i get super distracted by other ideas for magnus and fulgrim, and i try to do their prologues and this drags me back again. i'm hoping to get their prologues done soon anyway, so at least you know the flavour; still glad i wrote this one first of the three though. its somehow not as clinical as the others.

[rx-wr]

🌧️•~Sad Times~•🌧️

A ticci Toby x Reader (smut) by: rxwr

CW- depression, starvation, cutting, sympathetic sex (in the beginning), rough sex, depressed reader, stalking, blood, suicide attempts mentioned, degrading.

Words: 1,073

~•~•~•~•~

You sit in your room, no music, lights off. Tears run down your face as small hiccups escape your lips. Your life has been pretty shitty for the last couple months. It started one day when you had caught a man following you home. You didn’t get a good look at him before he disappeared away from your sight. You’ve been on edge ever since. A few weeks later you lost your father, sure you guys weren’t close but it still hurt. As the rest of your life went on more and more started to go on. So now here you sit, a knife by your side blood leaking down your arm. You stare at it be for you clean up and wrap your arm.

You get up and start to walk downstairs. Walking over to the fridge you open it. Most of the food in there had gonna bad. You’ve stopped eating about a month ago. You’re really really skinny right now surviving mostly off of water and small snacks every now and again. You sigh and close the fridge walking over to the sink and getting a small glass of water instead of food. You down the water and start to walk upstairs.

You return to your room but stop dead in your tracks, I man stands over your bed back facing you, there’s a hatchet in his right hand and it looks like he’s twitching. You step back trying to be as quiet as possible only for the floor of your hallway to creak. Before you could look up the man had you pinned to the wall. Hatchet in the air. I start to cry more out of pain as your cuts on your arm had reopened by the force. You put your arms up to shield yourself from the weapon as much as possible. But nothing came…no pain, no sound, no swing. The man grabs your arm and pulls you to the ground and climes on top of you.

“G-god your look s-so fucking miserable…” he said the mouth guard he wears slightly muffles his voice.

He removes the hoodie he has on revealing the rest of his brown hair. You try to move out of his grasp but he simply grabs both your wrists and pulls you back. 

“You k-know it’s ru-ude to move away from people when t-they’re talking to you, r-r-right?” He said a little anger in his voice.

He give you a skeptical look then smirks. “You scream hav-v-ven’t been fucked, god makes me f-feel bad…” he removes the mouth guard and goggles from his face. “A-am I right?” He asks smiling.

With his face exposed you blush as you look at him. He has honey brown eyes that complement his pale skin. His lips are slightly tinted red. His cheek has a gash through the side of it, revealing his teeth and gums. He has a slight stubble peppering his face.

His hands still have ahold of your wrist as he hold you down. “S-shit by the w-way you’re looking at me-me right now, y-you probably haven’t f-felt the touch of man i-in months.” He said with a chuckle. “I m-might fuck you out of p-pity,” he moves closer to your face. “Would you l-like that?”

You don’t know what your body is doing it moves on its own as you nod. He gives you a crazy smirk and brings his face down to yours. His lips take yours in a rough kiss, his tongue forcing its way into your mouth. He smirks against your lips and pulls away bringing his mouth to your neck. He bites down on your neck causing it to bleed, he uses his tongue and licks at the blood.

“God-d so good…” he says and continues. His hand moves down to your shirt and removes it. He moves down from your neck to your tits, he takes a nipple into his mouth and his fingers play with the other one. You get out moans and groans as he does this, his pants growing tighter on him form his erection. He pulls off and flips you over

“I c-can’t fuck wait…” he says his voice raspy. He gets down lower and moves your panties to the side. “B-but fuckkkk I might h-have too…” he says and licks up your folds. “So w-wet, fucking s-s-slut” he sticks to fingers in as you let out a gasp. “And t-tight, god my c-cock might no-ot fit.” He says chuckling darkly. “Oh but I’ll m-make it f-fit”

He pulls away undoing his pants letting his dick spring free. You gasp at the size has to be 7 or 8 inches, it’s girth isn’t that much but it’s still a lot compared to what you have had before. He pushes into both of you letting out a moan as he bottoms out.

“F-fuck so tight…” he says his voice strained slightly. After let you adjust he starts to move. His thrust are slow at first but there not like that for long as he starts to slam into hard and fast. “Ugh f-fucking slut…t-taking it l-like a whore.” He says into your ear as he thrust into you from behind you. Your hands grab onto the carpet of your hallway as he continues.

The room fills with the sound of slapping skin and moans. “Fuck, I’m going to cum!” You scream.

“That’s it c-cum for me, cum for me l-l-like the cock taking w-whore you are…” he whispers in your ear. He continues to thrust. You start to cum and he’s right behind you. He cums inside of you with a few slow thrust then pulls out. His juices leak out of you, he uses his fingers and scoops the back up inserting them and sticking his sperm back into you.

He gets up and fix’s himself. He looks down at you and picks you up laying you down in your bed. He walks over to the window placing his hatchets into their holsters.

“Where are you going?” You ask sitting up slightly.

He looks back at you his body half way out the window. “I can’t s-stay.” He says. You look at him and nod.

“Can I know your name…?” You ask hesitantly. He looks at you for a moment then nods.

“T-Toby…” he says. He looks you over again. “I’ll be b-back for more in t-t-the future…” he says before hopping out the window. You lay down and get some of the best sleep you’ve had in a few months.

[aleksatia]

🧡Caleb - Five Years Later

The third in a series of stories exploring MC’s return after five years of silence. Others are coming soon — links will be added as they’re published.

Original ask that sparked this continuation.

Sylus | Rafayel | Zayne | Xavier (coming soon)

CW/TW: Grief / Loss of a loved one, Terminal illness, PTSD themes, Emotional trauma, Mentions of death / implied past death, Medical procedures / hospitals, Restraints (medical context), Panic attacks / nightmares, confinement / loss of agency, Non-consensual medical intervention, Self-worth / guilt issues, Power imbalance (emotional), Non-graphic violence, Brief medical body horror, Touch-starvation / intimacy after trauma, Bittersweet tone, heavy emotional intensity, Hope & love, but not always soft

Pairing: Caleb x former partner!you Genre: Sci-fi drama, heartbreak and healing, soul-deep devotion. Heavy on angst, soft on reunion. Enemies to… something more broken and beautiful. MC Context: You disappeared five years ago. He never forgave you. Now you’re back — with a secret that’s killing you slowly. Summary: Admiral Caleb was forged in war and tempered by loss — and you were the one wound that never healed. When fate throws you back into his orbit, neither of you are ready for what resurfaces. Letters, graves, rain-soaked rooftops, and the love that refuses to die quietly. Word Count: 8.4K — stand-alone… for now. 🥀 This story was loosely inspired by Caleb’s latest Myth. Just a touch of that vibe, y’know?

Author’s Note: Okay, full confession — I cried from the first word to the very last. Maybe it’s just me (I’ll admit, Caleb is my soft spot). Or maybe… it just hit something. Either way, I’d love to hear what you think.

The anniversary of Josephine’s death — and Caleb’s own — landed squarely on an unscheduled visit to Lincon City.

The admiral rarely returned. Not unless duty bared its teeth and dragged him back. Too painful. Too empty. The wounds too fresh, even now.

He had once been Colonel Caleb of the Farspace Fleet. Now, promoted to the soulless rank of Admiral, he moved like a ghost through corridors lined with medals and silence. But today… something clawed at him. A compulsion. A tremor from a buried place.

He bought lupines. Tall, excessive, dignified in a way grief never is. The kind you buy for someone who will never see them. And then he walked — alone — to the cemetery.

He had only been here once before. With you.

Josephine’s grave was strangely well-tended. No weeds. Edged clean. A vase of pink lilies — fresh, impossibly so — sat nestled against the stone like someone had just set them down and whispered something soft and final. Her favorite flowers. He remembered.

His first thought: the groundskeepers. Maybe the city did something for the dead on anniversaries. Some quiet bureaucratic kindness. But that didn’t explain the lilies. How would they know?

His eyes scanned the black headstone. “Josephine,” carved in solemn, obedient serif. A name, a dash, two dates, and silence. His grandmother. Gone six years.

She hadn’t died of age. The blast had taken her.

But you — you were different.

Five years. Five years since you vanished. Gone not like a candle snuffed, but like smoke ripped from the air.

He had never accepted it. Not really. Some part of him believed you were taken. That you had been forced to go.

Because the truth — the one that stared back at him in sleepless nights and shattered mirrors — was that you did leave. You walked away. No message. No farewell. Just absence.

The storm was building in the clouds above, heavy and low like judgment. Thunder sat unspoken just beyond the hills, crouching. Caleb stood still, arms at his sides, as the sky thickened.

Why?

It was a question that never left. A question with a thousand answers. Each one sharper than the last.

The scent of wet earth rose in the air. Ozone, crackling like something electric and cruel. His hand twitched toward his wristwatch. He was due back. His itinerary was brutal. The war waited for no one — not even the grieving.

He knelt, placed the bouquet down with the softness of ritual. A last gesture. A futile offering.

Then his eyes drifted. To his own gravestone.

There it was. Cold. Familiar. His name, etched beneath hers, waiting for its second date.

And something else. A white envelope.

Untouched by time. Unsullied by rain or rot. Resting gently, like it had grown there.

His breath caught.

The lilies. The letter. The impossible coincidence.

Then the first drop hit — heavy, warm — against his cheek. A second, on the envelope. Then more.

Drip. Drip-drip. Drip—  Draaip.

The kind of rain that doesn’t fall, but descends. Like judgment. Like memory.

Caleb stepped forward. One foot. Then another. His boots sank slightly into the earth, as if the ground resisted.

He reached out — hands trembling, trembling — like the time he pulled an FS-90 out of a death spiral back at the Academy, nose brushing the snow-capped ridges of the mountains peaks.

He lifted the envelope. It was light. Too light. But on it — one word, scrawled in handwriting he knew too well.

Caleb.

Nothing more.

He shoved it into the inner pocket of his uniform, as though it were explosive. As though it might burn through the fabric and into his chest.

And just like that — as if spurred by some instinct he couldn't name — he turned on his heel and walked fast, too fast, back toward the car.

His heart didn’t race. It pounded.

Like thunder.

The drive to the airfield felt like a lifetime, though the roads were mercifully clear. No evening traffic, no pointless delays. The driver, attuned to the admiral’s mood, pressed hard on the accelerator, but still — Caleb tapped his fingers against the armrest with restless urgency, the motion sharp and impatient.

The envelope continued to burn in his chest.

Rain traced thick, winding rivers down the window, a slow, rhythmic descent like tears he never shed for you. When you left, it wasn’t just his heart that broke. It was his soul, his body, his being. Everything cracked and caved inward — except his eyes. Those remained stubbornly dry.

Now, though… he was close. And that made him angry.

Furious, even.

It infuriated him that just as he had begun to stitch some version of his life back together — a life without you, without your voice, your touch, your name — you reappeared. Like a ghost. Too close to ignore, too far to hold.

If you had wanted to return, you would have come back. Not like this. Not through riddles and shadows and silence. You would’ve stood at his door, or on a tarmac, or behind him in some briefing room like the world hadn’t ended. And he — damn him — he would have forgiven you. Instantly. Because that’s who he was. That’s what you had always counted on.

And that was what made him want to scream.

He didn’t want to forgive. He didn’t want to read your damned letter, to parse your reasons, your pleas, your desperate little words asking to be understood.

He didn’t want to analyze your cruelty. He didn’t want to empathize with it.

For the first time in five years, Caleb felt like he could finally, truly erase you. Not forget — never forget — but cut you out like rot. And live with the absence.

The letter pressed against his chest like a bullet. He placed his palm over it, broad and unsteady, as though trying to keep it from puncturing skin. As if it hadn’t already pierced him, deep and final.

The only sane choice would be to throw it out the window. Let the wind take it, let the rain dissolve it, let the world carry it into the dark.

Maybe you hadn’t even meant for him to find it. Maybe this was a confession to no one. A whisper into the void. Maybe it wasn’t meant for him at all — just for yourself.

To ease the weight.

To breathe again.

Selfish.

Selfish to write it. Selfish to hope for release, when he was still walking in agony, flesh and blood wrapped around something broken.

He didn’t want you to breathe.

He didn’t want you to be free of the pain, not when he was still wearing it — every day, every night, every silence between heartbeats.

How dare you write to him?

It was beneath an admiral to take the controls.

But today, Caleb didn’t care.

Protocol could burn. Chain of command, procedure, rank — all of it. He needed to feel the illusion of control again, even if it came in the form of a military jet barely older than some of the crew still stationed on the tarmac.

He didn’t ask the pilots to stand down. He ordered them. One glance at his face, and none of them argued.

The rain was steady now, carving grooves into the tarmac like old scars. The cockpit smelled of steel, vinyl, and cold systems spinning up to life.

Caleb slid into the pilot’s seat. No ceremony. No reverence. Just quiet, deliberate motion. The envelope — that stupid, unbearable envelope — landed in the co-pilot’s seat like a stone slab. Heavy enough, he thought, to drag the aircraft down with him.

And maybe that would’ve been for the best.

He ran the preflight checks by muscle memory.

Fuel quantity. Sufficient. Confirmed crossfeed valve closed.

Hydraulic pressure. Green. Full.

Flight controls. Surfaces free and correct — elevator, rudder, ailerons.

Navigation systems. Online. INS aligned. No drift.

Avionics. Check.

Oxygen. Flow normal, regulators armed.

Engine start. Ignition armed. Starter sequence began. One engine, then the second — turbines spun up with that low whine that sounded too much like a scream if you listened the wrong way.

He couldn’t breathe. But he was going through the motions.

Flight clearance received. Tower approved for immediate departure.

The jet eased down the taxiway, engines rumbling like restrained violence beneath him. His hands on the throttle were steady. Too steady.

Takeoff checklist. Flaps set. Trim neutral. Brakes released.

He pushed the throttles forward.

The aircraft responded like it wanted to run. Acceleration pressed him back into the seat. Rain lashed the windscreen. The moment the wheels left the tarmac, the ache in his chest twisted tighter.

There. He was airborne.

And it didn’t help. Not like it used to.

Altitude climbed. Ten thousand. Twenty. Forty. Cruising.

He stabilized at 37,000 feet and did something he almost never allowed himself: he engaged the autopilot.

The moment the system took over, he tore off the harness with a sharp, frustrated motion. The metal buckle clattered against the seat.

His hand reached for the envelope.

It was still warm from being pressed to his chest. He turned it over in his fingers, letting the edge bite into his skin. He very nearly tore it in half.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he broke the seal, carefully, precisely — like disarming a mine.

And there it was. That handwriting. Your handwriting.

Messy. Crooked. Rushed. Impatient. Every letter a little too hard, as though you’d nearly punctured the page. You had always gripped your pen like it was the only thing anchoring you to the world. You hadn’t changed.

For a long moment, Caleb didn’t read. He just stared at the shapes of the words. The loops and slants. Like he was watching you from the other side of interrogation glass — close enough to touch, unreachable all the same.

And then he started.

Once. Again. A third time.

Each pass scraped deeper, like reading the report of his own autopsy.

His hand trembled. He didn’t even realize he was breathing too fast until the cockpit hissed a low-pressure warning. He ignored it.

He slammed the harness back across his chest and keyed the comms.

“Control, this is Delta-Two-Alpha requesting vector for immediate return.”

There was a pause.

“…Confirm that, Delta-Two-Alpha. Reason for return?”

He took the yoke again, flicked autopilot disengage with a sharp tap. The jet jerked slightly, now fully under his hand.

“Command directive,” he said flatly.

Another pause.

“Understood. Return approved. You’re clear for turn on heading zero-one-five.”

Caleb didn’t wait. He threw the aircraft into a steep bank, cutting through the clouds like a blade.

He knew where to find you. He had known before he stepped into the cockpit. He had known standing at the grave, the envelope still untouched.

But he hadn’t wanted to find you then.

Now?

Now he didn’t have a choice.

The viewing deck of the Linkon TV Tower was nearly empty.

Closing time was drawing near, but the rain had chased away what few tourists and visitors remained. You stood at the railing in a long lavender raincoat, hood pulled deep over your head. The fabric clung to your arms and back, soaked through. Your sneakers were long past wet, the chill of the concrete seeping into your bones. But you didn’t move. Didn’t shift. As if the weather had pinned you here in time, or maybe memory had.

The city below had disappeared — swallowed by fog, by stormclouds, by everything that refused to be seen. No headlights, no stars. Just the endless roar of rain and the cold sting of being the last one left.

Your fingers rested lightly on the metal bar. Your eyes were turned upward, into the vast nothing. Watching clouds drift across an invisible sky. You might have stood there till morning, if not for the footsteps behind you.

Slow. Measured. Not security. Too quiet.

“I would give a lot to know what you’re thinking right now,” said a voice too worn to belong to the man you once loved.

You turned slowly.

Caleb stood a few paces away, still in uniform. The rain hadn’t spared him. His hair was damp, the shoulders of his coat dark with water. But he stood like the storm couldn’t touch him. Like it wouldn’t dare.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” you said.

“I almost didn’t.”

You smiled — not from joy, but from pain that needed a face.

“I thought maybe you’d moved on by now,” you said. “Married. Found peace.”

“I’m not built for peace,” he said flatly.

“No,” you murmured, “you weren’t. But I hoped... maybe you’d become someone who was.”

He took a step forward, his boots clicking against the wet metal. “You hoped I’d forget you.”

“I hoped you’d survive me.”

The words hit. You saw it — the smallest shift in his jaw, the flicker in his eyes. But his voice stayed calm.

“You knew I wouldn’t.”

You didn’t deny it.

“I wrote the letter because I needed to say it. Not because I thought you'd ever read it.”

“You didn’t want me to.”

You hesitated. “No.”

“Then why leave it where I’d find it?”

Another silence. Then: “Because I wanted to believe you wouldn’t come.”

Caleb’s expression didn’t change, but his gaze sharpened. The air between you grew tighter, like a pressure drop before impact.

“I read it,” he said.

Your breath caught. “I know.”

“I know everything now.”

You nodded.

He didn’t shout. He didn’t accuse. But his voice was a blade dragged slowly across flesh.

“You could’ve told me. You could’ve stayed.”

“I couldn’t breathe, Caleb.” You didn’t mean to say it out loud — but the truth had a weight of its own. “You loved me like I was something to guard. Not someone to hold.”

“I was trying to keep you safe.”

“And I was trying to live.”

His lips parted, as if to argue — but nothing came. Because you both knew: you were right. And so was he.

You took a step closer, rain dripping from your sleeves.

“I didn’t want you to be there when it started. I didn’t want you to watch me fade.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s too late.”

Caleb looked at you like you were a puzzle he used to know how to solve. Like something once sacred that had rewritten itself in a language he couldn’t read.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” you said.

“Good.”

Your breath hitched — not from the cruelty of it, but from the honesty.

“I just wanted to see you again,” you whispered. “Once. Before...”

You didn’t finish. You didn’t need to.

He stepped closer. This time, the space between you nearly vanished. But he didn’t reach out.

“You always ran when it got quiet,” he said.

“And you never let anything rest.”

He didn’t deny it.

“I hated you,” he said, voice rough. “For five years, I hated you for leaving. For taking my soul with you and vanishing into nothing.”

You closed your eyes.

“And now?”

He hesitated.

Then: “Now I just hate that there’s nothing left to save.”

The rain didn’t stop. Neither of you moved.

But something broke, quietly — not between you, but inside you both.

And maybe that was the beginning. 

Or the end.

He stepped closer. Not to you — no. To the railing.

Leaning casually, almost carelessly, over the edge, he stared down into the city’s abyss. The lights below were blurred by fog, rain, and altitude — a slow-motion fall into nothingness. Even resting like that, shoulders relaxed, head tilted slightly as he looked down, Caleb seemed impossibly distant. Removed.

Admiral.

Not just a rank anymore. Not a role. It had consumed him — the strictness, the cold efficiency, the discipline etched into every movement. He was the title now. All calculation, no softness. All control, no warmth. A man weaponized by grief, then sanctified by command.

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” you asked quietly, your voice fragile, almost drowned out by the rain.

He didn’t answer at first.

You studied his face — the years had been merciful to him in the way they only are to men shaped by war. Just over thirty. A trace of silver at the temples. Skin clean-shaven, jaw locked, cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass.

He looked like marble come alive. Cold, perfect, untouchable.

You wanted to reach out. Just to touch his face. To feel warmth. To remind yourself he was still made of skin, not armor.

“We saved a lot of people that day,” you added, almost to fill the silence. “From Wanderer.”

“I remember,” he said, his voice low. “On the train ride here, you fell asleep on my shoulder. There was some romantic song playing on loop — too sweet to ever be real.”

You smiled, barely. It hurt. “Caleb… would you still do it now? Jump like that? Into the void. As if death is something you can bargain with. Something you can command to pause.”

He tilted his head, still watching the city below.

“I can stop a fall. I can control flight paths. Bend gravity to my will. But not death. If I could…” He paused. His voice dropped lower, quieter. “I wouldn’t be here.”

When he turned to you, the change was surgical. A full turn of his body, attention locked on yours. His eyes scanned your face with precision, not feeling.

He looked at you like he was trying to remember.

Like five years had burned away not just the love, but the memory of it.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you think I’ll be able to save you this time?”

The question landed like a shard of ice in your spine. You flinched — not visibly, but inside, where it counted.

There was something wrong in his voice. Not anger. Not desperation. Just… wrong. Like he was rehearsing something he didn’t understand.

“I’m not asking you to save me,” you said. “I never wanted that. I never wanted to be your project. Your fragile rose behind glass — something that, if shattered, would take your whole world with it.”

He didn’t reply. But he looked away. Not down. Not up. Just… away.

And then — a sound behind you.

A door creaked. Footsteps, hesitant. The voice of someone too young, too aware.

“I— I’m sorry— sir— admiral— I didn’t— The tower’s closed, I—” The poor security guard stumbled over every word as he recognized the face that had appeared in military reports, field briefings, and news feeds. The ghost in the sky. The man who never fell.

Caleb turned slightly toward him, not quite sighing — more like resetting. 

“Where are you staying?”

You blinked. “Caleb—”

He raised a hand, not unkindly, but final.

“Where.”

You swallowed. “The Midland Motel. Down by the shuttle terminal.”

He said nothing, just nodded once and began walking. You followed.

You knew you shouldn’t. But you were too tired to argue. Too wet, too cold, too broken.

He didn’t offer his coat. Didn’t say a word. Just pressed the call button for the lift and waited in silence.

The car ride was quiet. The city blurred past in gray, streaked neon. His vehicle — black, sleek, military grade but dressed as civilian — moved like a shadow through the storm.

He didn’t look at you. Didn’t speak.

You kept your arms wrapped around yourself in the damp raincoat, your soaked sleeves sticking to your skin.

He brought you to a hotel you didn’t recognize. Modern, expensive, silent. The kind of place that smells like clean money and consequence.

At the front desk, he handed over a card — no hesitation — and said, “One bedroom suite. Highest floor. Immediate check-in.”

No questions asked.

The elevator ride was wordless. The carpet muffled your wet shoes.

He opened the door. The lights came on softly. Beige walls, minimalist decor, glass and brushed steel. Tasteful. Lifeless.

He handed you a folded robe from the closet. “Bathroom’s through there,” he said. “Go shower. I’ll order food.”

You took the robe with slow hands, staring at it for a moment too long.

Then, wordlessly, you turned and walked into the bathroom. The door closed with a quiet click behind you.

Warmth. Dry tile. A mirror.

And, for just a moment — silence.The kind that wraps around you like grief you haven’t cried yet.

The robe was too large. Too soft. Too warm.

You could have wrapped it around yourself three times and still gotten lost in it.

On the small round table near the panoramic window, a meal waited. Caleb hadn’t bothered to order anything you used to love. He remembered, of course — that was never the issue. He simply hadn’t tried. The selection was closer to a field ration than a dinner: high protein, complex carbs, dense fats. Efficient. Precise.

You weren’t hungry. You hadn’t been for a long time.

He’d removed the jacket of his uniform, now down to a crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. And still, something in the room made it feel wrong to sit without permission. He didn’t even look at you — just gave a practiced gesture toward the chair.

You sat on the very edge of it.

Your gaze lingered on the veins in his forearms, raised and defined — marks of control, of command. Of power. Hands that once cradled you through entire nights, hands that had trembled against your skin as if you were the only thing in the world keeping him human.

Now, all of it felt like a dream.

You broke off a piece of warm bread. Turned toward the rain outside. Watched the world bleed behind the glass.

“Did you see a doctor?” he asked.

Not worry. Not fear. Just curiosity. Clinical, detached. A data point to confirm.

You shrugged slowly. “Yeah. Dr. Zane was the first. Then came the rest.”

“And he didn’t tell me anything?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” you said. “I asked him not to.”

“So I wasn’t worthy of the truth?”

You exhaled — sharp and stung, like you’d been slapped. “Caleb… do I really have to explain this? I was trying to spare you the pain.”

He laughed. Cold. Harsh. Suffocating.

The room, already dim, felt darker suddenly. As though the lights had dimmed in reverence to his bitterness.

“Spare me? Oh, brilliant. You really did a hell of a job. I didn’t suffer at all. You disappeared and I just breathed a sigh of relief, right? Out of sight, out of mind — that’s what you think?”

“It’s not the same.”

He slammed a fist down on the table. Plates jumped. Glass cracked under his hand.

“If you had died in my arms, at least I would’ve known. I would’ve known you didn’t leave because I wasn’t enough. Because I loved you too hard, too deep, too much. I would’ve known you had no choice.”

“You wouldn’t have let me die in peace!” you shot back, voice rising. “You would’ve torn the damn planet apart looking for a cure. You would’ve ripped through every system, Farspace tunnel, shouting that it’s almost over, that we’re so close, just hold on—”

He stared at you. Unblinking. Breathing slow.

The storm inside him didn’t explode. It collapsed, inward — contained by the vice grip of discipline. Of rank.

“If loving you with everything I had — completely, recklessly, overwhelmingly — was a crime…” His voice was low now. Not soft. Deadly. “Then yes. I’m guilty. You pronounced the sentence without a trial, Pip-squeak. And I served it. Five years, no parole.”

He stood, pushing away the untouched plate. The chair didn’t scrape. It moved like a blade being sheathed.

“But let me tell you something.” He turned his gaze on you like ice hardening in place. “Love, when betrayed and ground into dust, doesn’t always fade. Sometimes… it turns into contempt.”

The word hit like a slap across the soul.

You couldn’t speak. Your breath stalled in your throat.

“Eat something,” he said. “And get some rest.”

“And you—?”

“I have too much work to babysit you.”

“I don’t want to stay here!”

He paused by the door. Turned half toward you — not enough to be kind.

“Well, that’s a shame,” he said. “Because I do. Sorry, sweetheart, but tonight? You don’t get a choice. I may be, as you so astutely pointed out, a cold-hearted bastard — but even now, I can’t let you wander the streets in wet clothes, racing to meet your own end.”

With that, he slid back into his uniform jacket in one fluid, dismissive motion and stepped out.

The door closed behind him with mechanical precision. The lock flashed red. Like a warning.

Your only way out now was through the window.

You didn’t remember falling asleep.

Most likely, you just shut down — the body giving out where the soul had already emptied. There were no tears. No breakdown. Just the vast, aching silence of being done. As if the last thread tethering you to this world had snapped soundlessly in the night.

Caleb had been the only family you ever had. He didn’t want to be your partner anymore — that, at least, made sense. But now he didn’t even want to be your brother. Not your anchor. Not your history.

He had become a stranger. And you had made him that.

You had no one to blame. No one to curse. The damage had your fingerprints all over it — deliberate, cruel, irreversible.

You regretted it. You knew it was a mistake.

But what could you do now?

Five years ago, you walked away — selfishly, completely — leaving him alone with the bleeding wreckage of his own love. And you hadn't spared yourself either. You’d just taken the pain and buried it, hoping time would do what courage couldn’t.

And now, with the same selfish silence, you had come back. Uninvited. Unexplained. Unhealed. You didn’t know what you’d hoped for — redemption, maybe. A flicker of warmth. Or just… recognition.

But instead, you lit the same fuse all over again.

You knew, even before boarding the train, that he’d find you. Even if he wasn’t looking. Even if he didn’t want to.

And still — you came.

The knock at the door startled you. You shot up, heart hammering in your throat.

Room service? Caleb? No. Caleb wouldn’t knock.

A second later, the door’s lock blinked with coded lights, and a young man in a tailored aide’s uniform stepped in. He was polite enough to knock. But not enough to wait for a response.

Not Liam. Someone much younger.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he said with crisp formality, almost saluting before catching himself.

He tried — really tried — to keep his gaze level, but you could see the questions in his eyes. He didn’t know who you were, why you were important, or why the Admiral had seen fit to personally house you in a suite normally reserved for political dignitaries.

“I was ordered to bring you a change of clothes and arrange breakfast,” he said. “Admiral Caleb instructed me to return in thirty minutes and escort you to the hospital.”

You blinked. “Tell the Admiral that’s unnecessary.”

The aide offered a tight, apologetic smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. “He also told me to inform you that, if you refuse to come voluntarily, I’m authorized to use force.”

The words hit harder than you expected.

You swallowed, fighting the wave of humiliation. Of course he would go this far. You shouldn’t be surprised. And yet, it burned.

“I see,” you said quietly. “Then I’ll just have coffee.”

The aide hesitated. “Ma’am—”

“You’re not going to shove breakfast down my throat, are you?” you snapped, sharper than intended. “Fine. For the sake of compromise — coffee. And a yogurt. That’s it, Lieutenant.”

He nodded with practiced obedience. “Yes, ma’am.”

And then he left, leaving you alone with your rage and your helplessness.

The coffee tasted bitter. The yogurt was sour. Your taste buds had changed — everything had. Food had stopped being pleasure long ago. It was fuel now, nothing more. You absorbed calories. Not flavor.

Another memory — gone.  Another joy stripped from a life grown colorless. Another piece of yourself you hadn’t noticed was missing… until Caleb reminded you it was never coming back.

Some part of you expected they'd take you to Akso Hospital.

It would’ve made sense. Zayne knew your case better than anyone — your body, your history, the long and winding ruins of your health. But Caleb didn’t trust him anymore. Not enough to put your life in his hands.

Zayne had already failed him once — by keeping your secret.

Instead, they brought you to an unfamiliar place. Private, sterile, quiet. Too many white walls. Too much controlled light.

Caleb was already there, standing in the center of a vast conference room surrounded by doctors in crisp lab coats.

Even without a word, he commanded the space. In uniform, he looked taller than any of them. Broader. More permanent. Even the chief physician seemed to defer to him instinctively, as though gravity itself bent slightly in his direction.

You paused in the doorway, watching the way their attention latched to him — every word, every breath, every small flick of his hand. He wasn’t just giving orders. He was delivering truth.

And it made your blood boil.

With silent, focused fury, you crossed the room. Stopped too close. Closer than decorum allowed. Closer than memory permitted.

He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

“You’re doing exactly what I was afraid of,” you hissed, voice low and sharp, aimed straight at his throat. “I’m not a lab rat. I’m not your property. You don’t get to manage me. I have a right to my own choices.”

He looked you over slowly, without shame or apology — from your scuffed shoes to the oversized hoodie and jeans that hung loose on your frame. He’d remembered your size, but even so, they fit like clothes left behind by a body that used to be stronger.

“Fine,” he said simply. “You can leave.”

You blinked. Taken aback. Then pivoted sharply. “And I will.”

“Just know,” he said, his voice still maddeningly calm, “if you stay — I’ll stay too. If you stop running, you’ll have the chance… to live what time you have left not alone. Not in silence.”

You froze.

One breath. Another.

Your shoulders sagged. The sharpness in your spine dulled. And slowly, you turned back to him.

His face hadn’t changed. That same cold mask. Not unkind — just unreadable.

“You’d stay?” you asked, barely audible.

He exhaled, finally. A quiet thing. His fingers brushed the edge of a metallic button on his uniform — a nervous tic, barely there.

“We were family once,” he said softly. “No one should die alone.”

Your lips parted slightly, as if to answer — but no words came.

There was no sentiment in his voice. No drama. No heartbreak. Just a statement of fact.

Death wasn’t something that scared him. It was a language he knew fluently — one he had spoken too many times, in too many places, across too many battlefields. He’d seen it. Worn it. Come back from it.

Even now, he didn’t flinch from yours.

It was just another ending. Another line of code. A final set of coordinates.

No pleading. No shaking. No denial.

And somehow — that was exactly what you needed. Not mercy. Not hope. Just someone to stay.

For once, it didn’t matter what you deserved. It mattered that you weren’t alone in this room. Not anymore.

The carousel of tests spun you until nightfall.

Scanners, probes, bloodwork, neurological assessments — round after round until your skin felt bruised from inside out. You were growing irritable, frayed at the seams, more from the dread than the procedures themselves.

They weren’t just gathering data. They were preparing to keep you here. Not for a night. Not even for a week. You could feel it — that low hum of administrative inevitability, ready to steal your time in the name of preservation.

You hadn’t even tied the hospital robe back around your chest when the door hissed open again.

“Oh, do come in. Why not take a piece of my liver while you’re at it?” you snapped, not bothering to turn.

“Your liver’s fine,” came the reply.

Of course. Caleb.

You turned too fast — too defensively — forgetting the robe was still gaping open. Not exposing skin, no. That wasn’t the issue.

It was the mark.

A thick, black web, raised and pulsing, spidered across your chest, the origin rooted deep in the center — where the Aethor Core was housed. Where power should have blossomed. Where your strength was supposed to live.

But it didn’t pulse with life. It cracked. You were coming apart, slowly, precisely, down the middle. Left from right. Light from shadow. Every beat of your heart was a fracture.

You covered your chest too late. He had seen.

He approached, unhurried. Unstoppable. The kind of step he used when nothing in the world could change his mind.

He pulled off one glove with a smooth, practiced motion and pressed his palm to the place where the damage burned hottest.

Right over your heart. Where it splintered loudest.

You closed your eyes. Pain hit like a detonator — sharp, white-hot, cellular. Like a memory of impact. A blade. A bomb. A scream that had never been given voice.

“At any moment,” you whispered, answering the question he hadn’t asked.

He nodded. No surprise. He already knew.

He knew what the Evol had become. That your body couldn’t carry what it was never designed to hold. That the Core — meant to empower — was now the source of slow, elegant devastation.

He knew you were made of chaos. Born to fracture. Destined to burn.

You, who had broken him. And so many others in your wake. Your love had never healed. It had only bled slower.

He didn’t flinch.

He pulled away from your chest, reached for the t-shirt folded over the back of the chair, and helped you slip into it. His touch was clinical. Gentle. Resigned.

Not cold. Not warm. Just necessary.

You swallowed against the lump rising in your throat. It didn’t move.

“Come on,” he said, voice suddenly softer. “Let’s go.”

You blinked. “More tests?”

“No. There's a fair. In our old district. Crowds, noise. Bad music. Terrible food.”

You snorted — just once — but held back the gallows humor itching to spill from your lips. Too early for jokes about death-day parades.

“All right,” you murmured. Pulled your hoodie over your head. Slipped on your sneakers.

You bent to tie the laces, but before your fingers reached them, Caleb was already kneeling before you.

Kneeling.

Your breath hitched.

Just like back then. Just like a lifetime ago.

You shifted your weight awkwardly, as if the floor had gone uneven beneath your feet. The moment was too intimate. Too real.

“An Admiral tying shoelaces,” you said with a weak smirk. “Now that’s more paradoxical than the Colonel ever was.”

He looked up at you. Fingers tightening the knot. A ghost of a smile pulled at his mouth — brief, boyish, and so devastatingly familiar it made your chest ache.

“Let’s agree I outrank your dignity today,” he murmured. “Don’t make me invoke protocol Alpha-Pip-Squeak.”

At some point, it started to feel like time had folded in on itself.

The sounds, the smells, the fireworks, the shrieking laughter of children, the curling smoke from endless food stalls — it all swirled into a surreal kaleidoscope of celebration. A world too alive.

 Too bright.

It felt wrong. Your heart was failing, slowly betraying you, yet the world kept spinning, singing, dancing without hesitation.

At first, it stung. The unfairness of it. The cruelty.

You didn’t want to die. You didn’t want to vanish into memory.

You had dreamt of children — your children — running through crowds with cotton candy bigger than their faces, covered in chocolate and ice cream. You used to see your future so clearly: a wide house with a garden and a swingset, and somewhere up in the attic, a claw machine you’d insisted on installing, turning the whole floor into a chaotic arcade.

Your eyes filled with tears.

You blinked them away, catching Caleb watching you. You smiled.

“Smoke,” you murmured. “Got in my eyes.”

He nodded. Didn’t believe you, but let you have it.

He wasn’t wearing his Admiral’s uniform anymore. Jeans. A T-shirt with a stupid graphic. A jacket. A cap. He looked familiar. Almost close. Almost yours.

You walked slowly, shoulders brushing occasionally, hands near but never touching. Neither of you tried to bridge the gap. It would’ve felt dishonest. And you were grateful for that honesty. Even if it hurt.

You took a few shots at the game booths. Your hands still remembered. When you won an oversized plush flamingo, you handed it to a girl with bright red ribbons in her pigtails. She couldn’t have been more than six.

You asked her name. Rolled it around on your tongue. You could’ve named a daughter that.

Caleb noticed when your steps started to falter. Without a word, he led you toward an empty table at the edge of the crowd.

While he went for food, you let yourself sink back into the chair, exhaustion tugging hard at your spine. Your eyelids fluttered, but you refused to let sleep steal this. This might not be happiness, but it wasn’t pain.

And that was enough.

He came back with a platter full of street food. You wouldn’t taste much of it. But you remembered. You knew. And for now, that was enough, too.

“It’s a clear night,” he said. “Wanna ride the Ferris wheel?”

You nodded. You’d say yes to anything that would delay the return to sterile rooms, to IV drips and ticking clocks.

The cabin swayed gently as it rose. Wind cooled your cheeks, carrying away the stubborn tears that kept threatening to fall. But you wouldn’t cry. You wouldn’t let grief ruin this night.

“Are you still angry?” you asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you still… hate me?”

He didn’t answer right away.

His gaze drifted over the glowing chaos below, where lights bled together into a gold-and-rainbow puddle of motion and life.

“No,” he said at last. “And I never did.”

He turned toward you, reached up, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“I said it in anger. I was too furious to mean it.”

“I deserved it.”

“You deserved my anger,” he agreed. “But not this. Not a slow, painful fade. Not the kind of desperation that makes you choose impossible things.”

“Caleb…” your voice cracked. “Please… don’t say goodbye yet. It’s not time.”

“I’m trying to be honest,” he murmured. His eyes dropped to your hands, folded like a small prayer in your lap. He looked like he wanted to reach for them — but didn’t. “I’ve learned what hiding the truth from the people you love can cost.”

You swallowed. “I’m… still someone you love?”

He nodded, steady. “There’s no one closer.”

“Then promise me—”

“No.” The word was sharp. Too fast. Too raw.

“No,” he repeated. “I won’t even try.”

“But you could be happy again. If you let yourself open up—”

“Could you?” he cut in. “Could you promise that if I go first, you’ll find someone else? That you’ll love another man? Hold his hand, kiss him, like I never existed?”

Your answer was immediate.

“No.”

Too quick. Too honest.

And he knew. You both did.

Whatever tied you together was deeper than flesh, deeper than time. You could peel away the skin, erase the past, burn the memories— but your soul would still reach for his in the dark.

And his would still be holding on. Waiting.

Until the next life.

He didn’t take you back to the hospital.

By now, he knew what you had understood five years ago. It was pointless. There was no cure.

You lowered yourself carefully onto the bed, curled up on your side. You looked at him — just a silhouette in the dark, and still somehow larger than life.

“Stay with me tonight,” you whispered.

He didn’t hesitate.

He slipped off his jacket, climbed in beside you. Didn’t touch. Just lay there — facing you.

You stared into each other’s eyes for a long time. Until they closed on their own. Until sleep claimed you.

And the nightmare followed.

The same one, always the same — your body splitting apart, bones breaking under pressure, your chest tearing open as the Core rejected you, gave birth to a creature that looked almost like you. But not you.

Black. Cold. Merciless.

Your body left behind, hollow — a deflated skin, a costume discarded.

You screamed. But you didn’t wake.

You thrashed, fighting against the blanket, clawing at your chest, trying to force the monster back inside, back into the dark where it belonged.

Hands. Strong, steady, familiar.

They caught you. Held you. Rocked you.

Lips brushed your temple. Words — soft, foreign — spoken in a language your heart remembered even if your ears couldn’t make them out.

“No… please…”

Caleb held you like a child, pressing your face against his chest.

Tears — hot, fast — fell onto your cheeks. Not yours.

His.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart. You hear me? You’re not alone. I’m right here. I’m not leaving. I swear to God, I’m not letting go. Come back to me. Please, come back…”

“Caleb…”

“I’m here. I’m here, baby.” His arms tightened, anchoring you in place.

“I’m so scared,” you whispered, fragile.

“I know, Pip. I know.”  His voice cracked — raw, guttural. “I’ll take it all. All the pain. I’ll kill every monster in your path. I’ll tear down the night itself. Just say the word, and I’ll burn this world to the ground to bring you peace.”

“I love you…” The words came with sobs now, spilling out, no longer held back.

His lips kissed your forehead. Your temple. Your cheeks.

“And I love you. My girl. My sunshine. My joy. My… Pip-Squeak.”

“I’m sorry I stole this time from us.”

He shook his head, still holding you like you might slip through his fingers.

“I forgave you a long time ago. How could I not forgive you? God, how could I ever stay mad at you? I’ll be here, right here, until your very last breath.”

He kept whispering. Murmuring softness into your hair. As if the five years of agony had never happened.

 As if you’d never left.

And slowly, gently, you drifted back into sleep. Held in his arms. Wrapped in his warmth. In his love.

With one thought cradling your soul: If the universe is kind — let me go like this. Let me go in his arms. Let me go loved.

All morning, Caleb didn’t let go of you.

Like he was making up for every moment of distance, he kept touching you — a fleeting kiss, a gentle brush of fingers, little gestures wrapped in warmth and care that tore your heart in half.

You didn’t want to let go of him either.

And when you loved each other, it wasn’t just love — it was desperation.

Through trembling limbs, through broken breath and quiet cries, the pain poured out. The guilt. The fear.

It wasn’t sex. It was absolution.

Then he drove again.

Said he wanted to show you something. You didn’t look out the window. You looked at him. Held his hand. Silence said more than words ever could.

You only grew uneasy when the car pulled up in front of a building — far too official to be anything like a park or a gallery.

“Where are we?”

“It’s… a military lab,” he said, with a small, apologetic smile. Then he kissed you again. “Just need to drop in. Work.”

You followed him inside.

A narrow, impersonal room. Cold lighting. The air too clean.

Caleb gestured to a chair. You sat. He knelt next to you. Kissed you again — too gently. Too long. Something about it felt… wrong.

“I’m sorry, Pips,” he whispered. “I just… I can’t do nothing.”

“Caleb? What are you doing—?”

You saw the glint of metal. Just before the needle plunged into your artery.

“CALEB!”

“Even if you hate me for the rest of your life, I have to try. You have to live, baby.”

You wanted to scream, to shove him, to run —  but your limbs turned to jelly.

You slumped into his arms. And everything went dark.

The lab was silent.

Sterile.

Lifeless.

Two rooms. One pane of glass between them — just wide enough for you not to miss a single second of the show.

You were strapped to a hospital bed. Wires trailing from your arms and chest. Your head throbbed.

Across the glass — Caleb.

“No. No, Caleb, stop! This is insane!”

 Your voice cracked, but your chest—  your chest was… light. The weight, the crushing pain — gone.

You began to thrash. The heart monitor shrieked in alarm.

You pulled at the restraints — raw, bloody skin tearing against metal cuffs.

You didn’t stop. Didn’t care.

Slippery with blood, your wrists finally slipped free — it felt like peeling flesh from bone.

You tore off the tubes. Fell from the bed.

Your legs wouldn’t hold you. So you crawled.

Crawled to the glass.

“CALEB!”

You slammed your fists against it, over and over again.

He lay on the other side — restrained. But the straps couldn’t hold the violent spasms. And the glass couldn’t muffle the sound of his screaming.

“CALEB! YOU PROMISED!”

You forced yourself upright, pounded your fists until your knuckles split open.

“You promised… you said you’d stay… you said you’d be there until my last breath— CALEB— !”

Your voice disintegrated into a scream.

You kept hammering. Like a moth caught in a jar, helplessly throwing itself against the cruel, unyielding glass.

Kept crying.

The door hissed open behind you. A man in a lab coat.

You lunged at him — knocked him flat. Ran.

Another body in the hallway — you shoved them aside.

You found the next door. Slammed your palm to the entry panel.

It opened.

“CALEB—!”

You collapsed onto him, draping your entire body over his, as if your weight alone could stop the process.

Black veins had begun to trace up his neck. The same pattern that once bloomed across your chest.

“How could you…?” Your voice broke into pieces. “You can’t leave me… you promised…”

For a moment, his eyes found yours. His hand twitched. Reached.

You seized it. Gripped tight.

Tried to unbuckle the straps.They didn’t give.

Hands grabbed you from behind. Dragged you.

You fought like a wild thing. Thrashed. Kicked. One of them fell — you crawled back to him.

Then two more came. You were screaming. Your throat raw.

“No! Don’t take him! DON’T TAKE HIM FROM ME!”

And just before you could lunge forward again—

Another needle.

Your body gave out. Everything dimmed. Collapsed.

But even in that final, spiraling moment—

You whispered one last time: “Caleb…  please… don’t leave me…”

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Your heart hadn’t beaten this steady in years.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

It would’ve been better if it had stopped.

You didn’t open your eyes. You didn’t ask where you were. You knew.

You were in a world where he was gone.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

You used to live with physical pain — you knew how to endure it. You knew how to die with it. You’d pictured your grave more than once — just beside the one marked “Josephine.”

The one where, for a time, they’d already carved “Caleb.”  Now they’d just correct the second date. As if it had all been a clerical error.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Shut up,” you muttered, ripping the sensor from your finger.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.

The monitor whined in protest.

You clamped your hands over your ears, buried your head under the pillow.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

“What the hell?!”

Another monitor?

You pulled the pillow away. Opened your eyes.

On the second cot, just a few feet away— Caleb.

Alive. Awake.

His monitor was singing the same rhythm. And on his lips — the hint of a smile.

“You bastard!”

You flung the pillow at him. He caught it.

“Did you mourn me?”

“That’s still pending! You—YOU!!! You took my Aethor Core?!”

You looked around for something else to throw. He raised his hands in surrender.

“Easy, Pip-Squeak. I didn’t take anything. Your precious Core is right where it belongs — in that merciless, vengeful little heart of yours.”

“I’m merciless? You made me believe you were—!”

You stopped.

Because you knew. God, you knew you would’ve done the same.

You slid off the cot carefully, clutching the IV stand for balance. Crossed the short distance to his bedside, testing each step. Sat down on the edge. 

You reached for his hand. Fingers trembling, unsure. But the moment you touched him — he was warm.

Not fading. Not cold. Not gone.

Warm, alive, present.

And it shattered something inside you.

“You weren’t dying because of the Core itself,” he said gently. “It was the energy feedback loop. The Core stopped syncing with your biopattern. Basically, your system crashed, and the power cell started pulling directly from your heart to survive. Which, you know, kinda fatal.”

“So what… you swapped our batteries?”

“In layman’s terms — yes.”

“And that doesn’t kill you?”

“My protocore’s a lazy old tank,” he grinned. “It got a nice boost from yours. Just enough to last me, I think.”

“You swear that’s the truth?” you arched a skeptical brow.

“I do.” He reached up, hesitantly, brushing your cheek.

You didn’t pull away.

“I told you I’d take your pain.”

“And you also promised you’d stay with me till my last breath,” you whispered, lips nearly brushing his.

“And I intend to keep that promise,” he said, pulling you close and kissing you. “And if you try to run again, just so you know — I’ve got a year’s supply of those sedative syringes.”

You let out a small laugh, nudged him gently, then climbed onto his cot, curling into his side, head on his shoulder.

“I’ll keep that in mind in case you pull another stunt like that. Admiral.”

His arm slipped around your waist. His grin widened — softer, familiar. Like the old days. Like he was just your Caleb again.

“Well,” he said, “those are consequences I’m willing to accept.”

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

His heart beat stronger.  And yours — yours found his rhythm. Matched it.

Perfectly. Just like always.

Because the truth was simple.

You couldn’t exist in a world where one of you was missing.

[delta-pavonis]

Fic: Solar Futhark

Dreamling (Solarpunk Urban Fantasy AU) | Rated E | 8.2k words | complete

CW: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Solarpunk, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Drow!Dream, Druid!Dream, Half-elf!Hob, GunslingerBard!Hob, investigators, work partners, partners to lovers, banter, temporary bodyswap, being captured, held prisoner together, starvation, tied together, confessions under duress, love confessions, soulmates, mates, escape, prison break, animal transformation, possessive Dream, matriarchal drow society, subjugated male drow, male gestation, male pregnancy, mention of forced pregnancy, mention of platonic soulmates, Dream has a cock and a cunt, pussy eating champion Hob Gadling, cunnilingus, oral sex, vaginal fingering, squirting and vaginal ejaculation, vaginal sex, anal fingering, hair-pulling, rough sex, cum slut Dream, sex magic, Hob probably has a copy of the Belmont Book of Penis Spells, large cock, multiple orgasms, discussion of fisting, happy ending

(AO3 hates me right now, so I will post this there later.)

Hob cackles as he tucks the large hourglass under his arm and fucking runs.

“Oh, what the hell…” Dream drops the vase of flowers he had been planning on using as an improvised weapon and takes off after his partner. A partner who is rapidly climbing the rankings for stupidest sentient being Dream has ever known. “Gadling! What in the name of every god extant and extinct do you think you are doing?”

The half-elf startles for just a moment as Dream easily catches up to him despite his head start and the crowded market streets. “This is evidence, right?”

At this rate Dream is going to pull a muscle rolling his eyes at Hob. “We do not steal evidence! I do not have the least idea of where you learned how to be an investig–”

“Pirates!” He chirrups happily, skidding around a corner as horns start to sound the alarm throughout the resonant underground halls of the Duergar city.

The answer is so absurd that Dream is struck speechless. 

Then a rumble sounds to their right and it has Dream reaching across Hob's chest to grab his gun in its shoulder holster under his duster. Luckily the gun and the hourglass are not under the same arm, because Dream is completely out of spells, both divine and arcane. He jumps ahead up the stairs and twists, taking two shots at their pursuers and grinning when he hears a shout of explicatives.

Another set of stairs, then they are scrambling up a wall, grabbing the bottom rung of a camouflaged ladder, and are back in the surface’s sewers before the next round of horns sound. Dream slides the cover over the secret entrance and breathes a sigh of relief as, with a golden shimmer, it seals itself once again.

Panting and apparently completely uncaring of the state of the water around their feet, Hob drops to his arse with a thud. Little bits of duckweed and algae slop up onto Dream’s boots.

“We should keep moving.” Dream scowls at his footwear as he also breathes in huge, heaving gulps. “We don't know the power of their artificers and–”

“Don't have ‘em,” Hob shakes his head. “It made bartering for certain items with them a total crapcircus because they didn't value the same basic material goods. Everything they do is mechanical. Non-magic. Luckily we didn't get stuck down there often.” Dream just stares at him; theoretically those are all common words, but fuck if he parses their meaning right now with the adrenaline crash just starting to take its toll. Hob smirks, lopsided and definitely not charming. Absolutely not. “Pirates, remember?”

He feels a headache coming on and so pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are you actually trying to tell me that before joining the Houndsguild you were a Hawkshaw?”

“Uh… yes?” Hob blinks at him as if Dream is the one asking the dumb question. “Thirteen years. Is that so hard to believe?”

Dream just stares. If this half-elf was a Hawkshaw, one of the pirate codekeepers (the closest to lawmen such outlaws might ever get), then there is so much more here to uncover, so much more to Hob, that he isn't even sure where to start. Hob drops back down in Dream's mental rankings of stupidity. Dream breathes out and now, a little calmer, some of Hob's behaviors slot into place. The impulsivity. The recklessness. The charisma to get himself out of just about any problem caused by said impulsivity and recklessness. “No, actually, now that I think of it. It makes some sense.”

The smile that brightens Hob's face is also extremely not charming. Or cute. No. Not at all. “Help me up?” He holds out his hand and Dream automatically grips his forearm as he continues to speak, “I know we got off on the wrong foot when we first met, but I hope you are coming to realize that in this, in solving cases like these at least, I am actually competent.”

Dream grudgingly nods, but also cannot resist the opportunity for a good jibe. “It at least explains why when we first met you were balls deep in the barmaid bouncing on your lap in the middle of a crowded tavern.” He smirks back, trying to convey that he isn't really judging, just teasing. “Never met a Hawkshaw who didn't want to be the absolute center of attention.”

Hob splutters out a laugh and gets his feet under him, blushing all the while. “Hey there! It is a specific tactic! Think of it like slight-of-hand and bardic performance had a baby, but it acts on a group level. While everyone is busy watching me…”

“Your fellows are working without being noticed.” Dream shakes his head ruefully, ceding the point to Hob. “Not bad.”

“Fun, too.” Hob's grin goes lopsided again as he waggles his eyebrows and he stares at Dream for a beat longer than necessary. Dream has to resist fidgeting under that warm gaze and so distracts himself with their usual banter.

“If that is your kink, then I am sure it is fun.” Speaking of fun, watching Hob's eyes widen and his neck flush when Dream says the word ‘kink’ is extremely fun. He studies his fingernails and tries to exude nonchalance. “Exhibitionism isn't really to my taste, though. More of a leather and ropes type myself.” He hears Hob inhale sharply and smirks, still not looking up. “Did you know that if you get strips of leather soaking wet they shrink and constrict as they dry?”

Dream looks at Hob through his lashes, sees him open-mouthed and panting, eyes dilated. Delightful. 

Maybe he will be able to get through this partnership with his dignity intact after all. Or, at least, Dream certainly won't be the first one to lose his composure.

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“Got you,” Hob thrills at hearing the voice he now commands come out as that rumbling purr he loves so much. “Do you yield?”

He looks down to see his own face twisted with a sneer that is familiar but he has never seen on his own features. “Absolutely not.” 

It is decidedly strange to hear his own voice this way–not quite similar enough to trigger the embarrassment one feels when listening to a recording, but still disconcerting. 

Then again, all of this is disconcerting and decidedly strange. He is currently inhabiting the body of his work partner, a drow who Hob had fallen ass over tea kettle for decades ago. He is using said drow’s body to pin his own to the dirt in a forest clearing outside the overgrown castle ruins they just investigated. They are now speaking again after a long stretch of silence, a silence that was only interrupted because their respective bosses told them they had to work together on this case. Which was very much not how Hob had imagined their reconnection going, but beggars can't be choosers. Or so humans say.

Hob is learning quickly that drow not only look different than other elf-kin, but that they see, hear, and smell differently, too. It makes sense, given that their senses are attuned to a vastly different environment, but as a half wood-elf he had just never thought of it before.

As Hob lowers his face, Dream's long white hair cascades over his shoulder. “I was hoping you'd say that.”

He flexes his hands around the wrists he has pinned and spreads them wider, giving him a stance with the leverage to hop up and have his feet come down between Dream-in-his-body’s calves with enough force to pry his legs apart. The elf beneath him grunts as his thighs splay and their pelvises crash together. Even through the spelled denim they wear Hob can feel how aroused his friend is, no matter how he denies or ignores it.

“I feel it is rather narcissistic of you to enjoy the possibility of a sexual encounter with your own body.” He relishes the breathlessness he can hear in his own voice, how the body beneath him trembles. Hob knows exactly what has to happen to drive his own body to that point and if he is causing that in Dream��� well. He was rather hoping they could have one of their catfight fuck sessions before the curse wears off.

“Come on,” Hob says, enjoying the rough, raw sexuality he can convey with just a slight change in tone with Dream’s vocal cords. “It gives a whole new meaning to go fuck yourself.”

It is fascinating to see what is so clearly Dream's eyeroll cross his own face. Drow vision is far more sensitive to movement than his own and it allows Hob to see even the slightest twitch of brow or flutter of lashes or movement of lips. It is kind of distracting, all this detail.

But that is nothing compared to the distraction of this sense of smell. Hob is no doubt never ever going to get this chance again, so he might as well indulge a little while he can. He drops his face into his own neck and inhales deeply. “Tannatell’s tits do I always smell this good to you?” Hob repeats the act, this time dragging his nose up into chestnut hair as he breathes in. “How can you work like this? I’d be on the edge of coming all the goddamned time. No wonder progress on this case has been so slow, you’re the smart one and you only have half your blood going to your brain. Fuck, it is like I am… your...” he trails off as that thought completes itself in his head. 

Oh.

Now, drow vision might have traded brightness of color for its enhanced sensitivity to motion, but there is no doubt, when Hob lifts back up and looks down, that there is a fiercely red blush on Dream's cheeks. And Dream refuses to meet his gaze.

Hob lets go of the wrists he holds and sits back on his heels so he is kneeling between Dream's thighs. He watches as the other elf brings his hands to his chest, rubbing gently at them where Hob's grip was tightest. Dream keeps his head turned to the side the whole time. 

“Dream, why didn't you t-”

“Don't. Just don't.” His eyes close and his face crumples into something pained. It guts Hob to think that this is something painful for Dream. “The first time we talk about this can't be like… I do not want it to…” Hob has never heard Dream fumble for words and it is distressingly alarming. “I would prefer to be in my own body when we have this conversation, please.”

Hob can't do anything but grant that request.

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“If we get out of this the first thing I am doing is getting a three hour massage, bloody fuck these chains are tight.” Dream tries to twist his wrist to get some wiggle room and can't even manage that; all the movement does is jostle their chairs. His partner whines. “You alright there, Hob?”

They are chained to a pair of chairs, back to back, with heavy steel links. The chains aren't spelled, but they don't need to be when they are this tight: there is no way Dream will pull off even the smallest somatic component restrained like this and Hob certainly can’t play an instrument or draw a gun. Even worse, the room is unnaturally dark.

Dream hadn’t realized how used he had gotten to the sunlight and the greenery of the surfacelands until they were taken from him. For a moment he takes comfort in thoughts of twirling tree branches forming the beams of great towers, arched windows carefully grown in between, columns of elevators going so high they meet the top of the buildings in the clouds. He thinks of winding streets made of sandstone and brass and overflowing with greenery, the whirring music of solar panels as they track the sunlight along with their flower-kin. 

The thought of the movement of the sun reminds Dream that time has been passing, that they have been in here long enough that he is starting to have trouble tracking time–the only clock he has to go by is his heartbeat and that is only reliable for so long. Hunger has long since passed into a dull ache, which tells him it must be more than a couple days. Both of them have vacated all the remaining volume of foodstuffs left in their digestive tracts, removing another marker of time. 

They have not seen another soul since they awoke here. There is a dim illumination that comes from… somewhere, but Dream cannot pinpoint it. It is only enough to see his own knees by, make out the faintest outline of the large stone blocks of the ceiling that is a mere few feet above their heads. It is not enough for Hob to see anything, dull as his half-human senses are. 

Cruelly enough, water drips from the seams in the stone structure in a few places, landing on the top of their heads, on Hob’s shoulder and chest, on Dream’s cheek. It is the bare minimum to keep them alive and Dream suspects that is very much on purpose.

Dream leans his head back with a sigh and it presses against Hob's. 

“You ever wonder what would have happened if we met under different circumstances?” Hob's speech is slurred enough that it makes Dream reconsider if those arrows they got hit with were a poison targeted for those of the surface. It adds a new layer to the puzzle of who has captured them. “Like, if I wasn't working that night in the tavern, wasn't being the biggest distraction possible?” He is silent for a beat. “I would've asked to join you at your table. Started to chat you up properly. Instead of pretending we were old buddies as part of the case I was working. Because we’re not friends, are we?” His chuckle is hollow. “No, most definitely not. Perhaps I would’ve tried to woo you with song… paint you a picture with music. Gods, you were so beautiful. Are. So beautiful.”

“Hob…” He doesn't sound like himself, can't possibly be meaning to say any of this. 

“Do you have any idea how badly I want you? Fuck, like all the time. From the very first moment I saw you, the swish-click of your air walker boots on the tavern floor, noticeable to a trained ear even with the din of patrons.” Dream can hear him swallow. “It never goes away, you know? This yearning for you. It lives inside me now.”

He closes his eyes and tries to ignore it. Hob cannot be meaning to say this right now and Dream certainly does not want to hear it without Hob’s consent; he is relieved when they lapse into silence once again. 

But it doesn't last.

“If you get a chance to escape, you have to promise me to take it, even if you can't get me out.” Hob’s voice is a threadbare whisper.

No. They can't talk like this. He won't have it. “Hob, you’re-”

“I am not delirious and I am not talking nonsense!” He is panting now and Dream swears he can hear Hob's racing heartbeat. It is another piece of evidence that he is not himself. “Promise me, Dream. Promise me you will save yourself if you have the chance, even at my expense.”

“No.” Absolutely not. Dream's answer is immediate and brooks no argument; he won't even consider it. The idea is anathema, like teaching the Druidic language outside of a Circle or attempting to unbalance Nature itself. “I will not leave without you.” 

Hob’s breath rate is increasing, pushing into hyperventilating, and his voice is unsteady as a newborn foal’s legs. He sounds almost on the verge of tears and it makes something in Dream’s heart crack. “Please, Dream! I need you to promise me.”

He grits his teeth hard enough to make them squeak. “I will make no such vow.” Dream growls. It is harsh, he knows, but he will also not lie to Hob. Not after everything they’ve been through. 

They never got a chance to talk about it, what lay implied between them from their adventure with that soul-swapping curse. Not properly. Not before this case, which pretty much immediately went tits up. Fuck, they should have spoken about it. 

Dream adds this to his long ledger of regrets.

When Hob speaks again the words are clearly forced through a rising tide of panic. “I need to know you’ll be safe, that y-” 

“Breathe Hob. We don’t need to plan-”

“Promise me!” he sobs. “I need to know you wi-”

The crack in Dream's heart cleaves it in two.

“I will not leave without my Mate!”

For a moment the only sound in the small room is Hob’s panting, then Dream lets his head fall back; this time it lands on Hob’s shoulder with a dull whump.

“You were right. What you felt during the curse.” Dream closes his eyes. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you. I just… we were… we’ve been…”

Hob turns his head, twists his shoulders, as much as possible, until his nose nudges the point of Dream’s ear. “Stupid. We’ve been truly. Amazingly. Stupid.” 

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They crawl out of the cave system into a raging thunderstorm. Might as well be a hurricane for how the wind is blowing the rain and trees sideways. However, the sight of cypress trees and the salty smell of the ocean limits the possible places that they have been taken to. 

“Holy shit we're in Port Essen!” Hob gasps in breathless laughter. When Dream looks at him he is smiling, almost glowing, underneath all the dirt and grime and soil and debris they are covered with, that is all rapidly turning to mud as the forceful winds and driving rain wash them clean. He looks to Dream and it is like the sun has risen, warmth diffusing through Dream's skin. “I grew up here!”

That raises a red flag in the back of Dream's mind–he doesn't believe in coincidences. 

“We need to move. Get as far away as possible. Fast. Get on.” Dream doesn't say more, doesn't explain, just grabs some of the reedy dunegrass at his feet and pops it into his mouth as he makes the appropriate hand motions. 

Hob lets out a yelp as Dream transforms into a dire elk, huge and black. He wouldn't be able to fly in such rain and he has no meat for a spell component, so his dragon form is out; the elk will give Hob a smoother ride over the widest variety of terrain. 

Once fully shifted Dream drops onto folded legs, but that still means his back is at about the height of a horse, so he angles his head towards Hob to lend an antler for leverage.

Luckily Hob catches on quickly, hefting himself up onto Dream with a grunt. “West,” he says as he buries his hands in the ruff of thick fur around Dream's neck, “We’ll hit forest and freshwater fastest if we go west.”

Dream stands, looks back at Hob once to make sure he is settled, and then leaps into action. Hob lets out another yelp the first time Dream lands from a bound, but he sets a rhythm and the bard in Hob cues onto it almost immediately. 

Then he outright laughs.

“Dream,” he whispers into his fur, must be leaning over to get so close to his ear, “you are amazing, dove.”

Dream would laugh as well, if he could. 

He has never had a rider before, not in any shifted form he has taken, and that it is Hob on his back, moving fluidly with him, legs around him, clinging to him… well. Apparently one doesn’t need wings to fly.

But first they need to disappear. They need to get gone and regroup and get food and maybe bathe in a cold stream and start assembling their meager knowledge of their captors so that they can send out feelers for information and start the tedious process of revenge. 

Because Dream will eat their hearts raw for making this the bower in which he told Hob the nature of their connection. He will make them watch as he sucks the marrow from their living bones for how they have treated his Mate. He cares not that he himself has been tortured; Dream has done more than enough terrible things in his life to have earned such an experience. But Hob? No. He will not let them survive this insult.

However, getting to that point, when he will be able to revel in the suffering of those who caused so much of the same, will take time. Dream is always thorough in his planning.

And while they wait, keeping to the shadows and gathering their knowledge and power, Dream will sup upon his Mate. He will devour the finest meal he will ever have. Savor the small pieces that he can pick up between his fingers and drop into his mouth and lick from under his fingernails. Drink long draughts of pleasure of Hob’s body and thereby nourish his own soul. Dream has been starving and did not know it, did not really understand what he was missing, until his body was weakened by the captivity and his mind sharpened by the pain his Mate experienced. 

Dream vaults over some rocky ground, avoiding it completely, and then as they crest a hill the treeline comes into sight and he could cry for the relief of it. Within the embrace of the forest Dream will have all the tools he needs to keep them safe. And then he can look towards the future. 

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The most shocking thing, honestly, is how shocked Hob isn't.

“Dream,” he sounds like he is calming a skittish horse, “I have been in love with you for literal decades. This isn't a problem for me. So we're tied together on a metaphysical level, so what?”

The druid just blinks. 

Hob sighs, running a hand through his hair as he relaxes back against the trunk of the tree. It reveals the gentle point to his ears and Dream has a bolt of desire lance through him, urging him to put his mouth there. He shoves it to the side.

They are deep in the densest portions of this forest now, having ridden for hours, past the midsummer sun setting and the quarter moon rising. They slept almost immediately once they stopped running, along the banks of a creek deep enough to wade into. Once sleep was had, Dream went hunting while Hob washed their clothing, which now lies drying on some rocks and tree branches close by. They have been so exhausted that only now is Dream noticing that Hob being completely naked is rather… distracting.

The trees, strangers though they are to Dream, have generously given them ample shelter on the creek’s bank; even if someone does get close they likely won't see or hear a hint of them through the lush greenery. The maple Hob leans against has been particularly taken with the half wood elf, although Dream is unsure if Hob notices the tree doting on him, swaying its leaves to keep him shaded despite the moving morning sun.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I know close to fuck all about drow, your culture, your biology… really just what is told in popular stories, movies, whatnot, which may or may not have truth in them.” His head thumps back against the tree trunk and he has to tilt to the side to look at Dream. “But tell me what I need to learn and I’ll learn it. Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it. The last thing I want is to be a burden to you, Dream.”

A burden?

Dream shakes his head, as much to clear it as to disabuse Hob of such a notion. “No, Hob, I…” He searches for the words and none come, stubborn as they often are, so he decides on action instead. 

Looking Hob directly in the eyes, Dream crawls across the space between them, over the gunslinger's legs, and sits with his knees on either side of Hob's thighs. He is so warm beneath Dream that the drow shivers, but all Hob can seem to do is stare in shock at the fact that they are naked and Dream is in his lap.

By the Gods it feels good to be this close to his Mate. It will feel better to touch.

Hob gasps when Dream's hands land on his chest, slide up slowly to his shoulders, his neck. He takes time to savor every hill and valley. Mine. One hand moves higher, fingers curling around the top of an ear, petting softly and making Hob’s mouth drop open and his eyes flutter closed. 

“You are not a burden, Hob Gadling,” Dream reassures. “Far from it. You have heard that traditional drow society is matriarchal, yes?” Hob nods but doesn’t open his eyes, instead leans into Dream’s hand on the side of his head. “Add soulmates to that and who do you think gets to end up with the Mate they truly want?”

Hob looks at him at that. “Are soulmates not perfectly matched? Made for each other? Fated?”

“Mmm, a topic of much debate.” Dream cards through Hob's hair with his fingers as he talks. “At its core ‘soulmate’ for drow seems only to mean you are tied to each other deeply. For better… or ill. And it is certainly true that you can fall in love with someone who is not your Mate. There have even been drow who found themselves unattracted to their soulmate, at least sexually.”

Hob’s hands alight oh so carefully on Dream's thighs, a touch radically different than during the adrenaline-fueled ‘work partners plus sex' arrangement they have had for the past few months. And the touch is light years different than their first time together, when an actual duel to the death had turned into a battle of a totally different kind. To be clear, they were no less feral in their fucking when they were high on the rush of escaping imminent danger than when their lust had ignited due to mutual hatred.

Right now, though? Dream lifts up onto his knees, his ass leaving the comfort of Hob's strong thighs, as he leans in to nuzzle into Hob's temple. 

“But attraction isn't in question here.” Hob isn't asking; they can both see their mostly erect cocks laying ignored between them.

“No,” Dream chuckles, “It certainly is not.” He drags his nose down so he can bring their lips close, not quite a kiss. “Rare is it allowed for drow males to be able to truly choose their Mate. So many are deemed unfit, taken to serve only as brooders for the Great Mother’s many children. And so it is not something I dared dream possible for myself. Before now.” He speaks against the corner of Hob's mouth. “I want you to fuck me, Hob. I want to know what it is to feel you spend inside me.”

With a wanton cry Hob is kissing Dream, crushing them together, and all the skin contact is glorious, as are the needy noises coming from his Mate’s throat. But Hob doesn't even know… he doesn't know.

“Hob!” Dream gasps, pulling away. “You don't understand.” They are both panting softly and Dream almost gets distracted by another kiss. “I said brooders. Female drow provide only eggs. Male drow gestate and birth our children.” That seems to get Hob's attention and he blinks his eyes until his gaze is sharp once again. Only then does Dream continue. “My cunt, Hob.” The wood elf inhales sharply. “I want you to fuck my cunt.”

Dream is barely finished with the sentence when Hob surges up and wrestles the druid to the mossy ground. Laughing, Dream pushes and scoots away, smirking up at Hob, parting his long slate-colored legs and reaching down to stroke his cock, tugging it up to reveal the wet folds hidden further down. Hob moans, eyes fixed to where Dream is showing himself off. Their fucking has always been frantic, hurried, and with Dream doing the penetrating, so Hob hasn't ever been given the chance to explore what lies deeper between Dream's legs. He looks ravenous for it.

And Dream is ready for such an exploration, except Hob doesn't even stop to touch: he grabs Dream's thighs, slings one onto each shoulder, and pulls Dream's hips to his mouth. “Hob!” Dream barks. Hob is ravenous, quite literally, licking and obscenely slurping up fluids, and Dream can do nothing but scream his pleasure. 

Hob laves up and around until he can suck on the side of Dream's cock before purring, “Knew I smelled something more when you’d fuck into my throat, could swear I heard something more wet than just your spit-slick skin slapping my face.” He takes Dream's prick all the way into his mouth, sucks until the drow cries out, then backs off to allow filth to keep spilling from his lips. “Fuck, when we were under that curse I chalked up any feeling that what was between my legs felt different to the fact that drow senses are so different. I never thought…” He licks back down, exploring the wet folds with his tongue and lips. When he next needs air, Hob speaks with his damp cheek against Dream's thigh.

“I can't fill you with children, but I am gonna come in you so many times it is going to damn well feel like I did.” Each word is a puff of steam-hot air on where Dream is most sensitive, making him writhe. “Until there is enough spend in you that I can press on your belly and make it flood out. Cover these pretty thighs in my cum. Once it drips down to your ankles I will lick you clean so we can start all over.”

“Fuck, Hob.” The bard has always been good with his words in bed, but it hits differently here, with Dream revealed to him completely. Further, he’s hit upon a specific kink that Dream has the tools to actually indulge in and not just spin pretty stories about. “There’s a spell. Originally it was to increase chances of conceiving, but more often nowadays it is used in modified form by those of us with a cum kink.”

Hob's groan is muffled when he leans forward into Dream's genitals. “Those of us….modified…”

Dream laughs, fingers finding Hob’s hair. “I’ll take you to Elegy one night. There are many of us, if you know the right clubs.” Hob lets out a needy whine at that. “I’ll need some cum–preferably yours–as a spell component. Then I cast on your bollocks so that the next time you come you produce, ah, lots more.”

His eyes appear above the rise of Dream’s hip. “How much more are we talking about here?”

He smirks. “Let's just say that the modification I was talking about involved merging the fertility spell with a spell that summons water in a person's lungs in enough volume to drown th-ahAH!” Dream is cut off as Hob dips back down and his tongue snakes inside Dream's body, his moan vibrating through Dream's pelvis.

Oh, it is so good to be touched there, for Hob to know all of him, to be laid bare before him, his Mate. 

Then Dream feels Hob shifting, moving away so Dream's knees are on his shoulders and he’s sliding a hand around from where it was holding up Dream's hip so that rough fingers can–“Oh yes!”

Hob pushes one finger inside and Dream’s entire body arches. “Let’s see, does your anatomy track with…” he mutters as he changes his angle over the course of a few thrusts and then it is like his finger strokes Dream’s cock from the inside and Dream screeches in surprised pleasure. “Yeah it does.” Hob sounds smug, which is so godsdamned sexy it only pushes Dream closer to tears. He slides a second finger in and Dream can’t stop himself from rocking into it. “Okay gorgeous, I’m gonna loosen you up with a couple orgasms and then you can have me.”

“Noooo,” Dream whines, plaintive, “Want to come with you in me!”

“Oh, you’ll do that, too.” And fuck him, he can hear Hob's grin. “Gonna make you come so many times you start babbling in Druidic. Break down every sense of propriety you have.”

Dream laughs through a moan, making it tumble and bounce. “An ingenious plan to learn the secret tongues.” He uses the word deliberately, playful and so fucking happy.

“Learn the-” Hob clicks his tongue against his teeth, chiding. “Are you saying that you are not satisfied with what my tongue currently knows?” Of course, he lays the flat of said appendage along the underside of the head of Dream's cock, rubs it back and forth as he looks up for an answer.

Seeing his Mate look at him like that, his cock aimed into his open mouth and his fingers buried inside him and his amber eyes burning so bright they are almost gold–fuck, it is so much. And the little movements just under the head of his prick plus the repeated deep massage of whatever that place inside him is, and Dream’s eyes widen as pleasure rushes in. 

He barely gets out a surprised, “Hob I’m-” before something inside him feels kind of like it pops and suddenly there is liquid pouring out of him along with his orgasm. It is as if his climax spreads out from a single point within his pelvis, pushing out sweat and screams and cum and tears and whatever else it can squeeze out as it hits the edges of his body.

Dream watches, awed, as his cock shoots white onto Hob's tongue, Hob's eyes closing as he groans, collecting all of it before he swallows. But also fluid gushes down, over his folds and along the seam of his ass; when Dream moves a hand he feels it dripping all the way to the small of his back. The liquid is almost as thin as water. It is most certainly not cum, nor is it the same as the lubrication his cunt produces. 

It takes another moment for it to click. “Holy fucking… did you just make me squirt?”

Dream looks up to find Hob licking glistening fingers that are no longer in his cunt. Which might be the most erotic, obscene thing he has ever seen and he feels like his brain short circuits a bit. Hob blinks at Dream twice before his own realization dawns. “Have you never done that before?”

“No!” Dream can't help but giggle. “I didn’t know that I could!” 

Hob watches, eyes rapt, as Dream takes his own fingers, the ones that have a bit of the fluid on them, and sticks them in his mouth. Slightly bitter, not as alkaline as cum, not as earthy as his cunt. 

His Mate watches his every move and looks like he might spontaneously combust. Dream can't resist teasing. “Like something you see?”

Hob actually growls as he lowers Dream's hips to his lap. His fingers, calloused from the instruments he plays and the grips of pistols, slip under Dream, to the top of his ass. Then Hob pulls his hand slowly forward, scraping, over one entrance, then then next, all the way to the base of the dark cock, collecting Dream's fluids in his hand as he goes.

Dream sees only a momentary glint of sunlight off the small pool of liquid cupped in Hob's fingers before they are heading for his mouth. Oh fuck. He opens his mouth, thinking to accept Hob’s offering as it is poured, but then Hob is smearing it, from one cheek, across his open mouth, to the other cheek. Hob tries to pull his hand away but Dream grabs his wrist, licks a long stripe up the inside of his fingers. When he releases his Mate’s wrist he purrs, “Again. More.” And that hits a goddamned button, because Hob repeats the collecting motion quickly, gathering as much as he can, and then turning his hand over as soon as he gets to Dream’s mouth, dribbling the liquid in. He uses Dream's bottom lip to wipe the last dregs off of his skin and then Hob is grabbing Dream by the neck and kissing him something fierce. 

His tongue is a lick of fire and it catches on the kindling of Dream's body, creating a blaze that tears through the drow. Lust. It gnashes, claws, in its effort to get out through Dream's skin and if he doesn't get proper fucked right now–

He rips his mouth away from Hob's with a wail. “Fuck your plans. If you don't get your godsbedamned prick into me right the fuck now I am taking the control of this operation away from you, so help mYES!” 

Hob drives into him to the hilt and Dream howls like he is worshipping the moon. “Bratty thing, aren't you?” He grabs a fistful of Dream's long white hair and yanks his head back with enough force to make his whole dark torso bend back into a U-shape. It pulls electric pleasure up Dream's spine as Hob sits back on his heels. “Seems you were never broken to saddle. Is that it? Do you need me to train you to be ridden? To be a good mount?” 

Oh hell yes. 

Two can play that game.

Dream gets a foot up onto Hob's chest and shoves him away hard, forcing him not only out of Dream's body, but also to sprawl backwards and drop his grip on Dream’s hair in shock. At the same time Dream twists, shifting from being on his back to up on all fours and then lowering his chest and face to the ground. It angles his ass up into the air and towards his Mate, and then he lets his knees slide apart. Presenting himself.

“My God…” he hears Hob gasp. 

“You think I need training?” he purrs, all seduction as he looks back over his shoulder. “But you haven't even mounted me properly yet.” He hears Hob panting even from a distance. “Come on, lover, ride me hard.”

He can't help but chuckle as Hob scrabbles to comply, crawling up behind him and pressing their thighs together but holding their hips apart. Hob palms both sides of his ass, meager flesh there is, and parts them with groan on his breath. “How hard, dove?”

Dream sways back into his grasp, forcing himself open wider. The stretch feels good, like anticipation. “Pretend you’re hammering nails with your cock.”

Hob’s muttered curses accompany feeling the head of his prick lining up. They are perfectly ready and yet then Hob stops just so that he can gather all of Dream's hair carefully into one rope to loop around his fist. Dream whines and buries his face in his arms. He just… he just needs. Please. Please.

“Alright, baby, alright. I got you.” Hob soothes, free hand petting down Dream's thigh. 

Hob fucking into him again is a homecoming; this, this is where he is supposed to be. 

The first withdrawal and thrust back in slaps their skin together so hard it sounds like a whip crack. “YES!” Dream gets up on his elbows and digs his fingers into the soil. He feels his magic root him to the ground. “More!”

Hob tugs on Dream's hair hard enough to make him yelp. “You’re here to get fucked, so take what I give you. Brat.”

And doesn't that make lust curl hot in his belly. He whines and lets his head drop limply between his shoulders, as far as the grip on his hair will allow, hunches to rest his forehead on the ground. “Please Hob. I need… please.” Hob complies swiftly this time, fucking into Dream with these slow rhythmic thrusts that hit like a battering ram. He feels each one shake his very foundations. “So good,” Dream cries, “Yes! So good!”

It is the beat of a drum and Dream falls under its sway. He is hypnotized by it, losing his higher faculties and left only to scream his pleasure as he tries desperately to get fucked faster. But Hob continues the basic rhythm for what might as well be forever, until Dream is sobbing into the ground and smearing mud on his cheek as he hiccups out soft pleas. 

Finally, he falls silent, nothing left in him but the ache of his need. And that's when he hears Hob's quiet chanting.

Pace like a drum. 

Chanting.

It is a spell.

Hob is casting a spell using Dream's body as an instrument and the rush of arousal at the thought nearly makes him pass out.

“Was wondering when you’d figure it out,” the bard laughs, hands sliding down Dream's thighs and back up. “If your body is meant to birth children, then this spell is for you.” Hob sings one last phrase in a language Dream can't parse right now and then the magic snaps into place. 

It takes a moment, but as Hob fucks back in Dream realizes what is happening: his cock is getting larger. It is incremental, but that stretch definitely wasn't there a minute ago, that insistent press against the insides of Dream. 

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” he moans, helpless to the rising tide. “So full. Oh gods.”

The bastard above him chuckles. “Not even halfway done, pet. This spell is calibrated exactly to the receiving party’s limits. Gonna find out exactly how much your pretty body can take, then fuck you loose on that. So next time you can take just a little bit more. And then a little more. And a little more. Until you can take my fist.” Dream wails at that. “Until you can take my fist wrapped around my cock.” The thought makes his entire body shake. “You like that idea? Want me to jack myself off buried inside your cute cunt? Move my fist faster and faster, use a finger to curl up into your G-spot, make you squirt around me…”

He keeps talking, but Dream can't make out the words anymore over the whistling of blood rushing in his ears, over the throbbing, thrilling fullness thrumming deep in his body. It is so fucking good. 

But then on the next measured thrust Hob drives in deeper as well as wider and Dream loses the last thread of sanity he ever had. 

Digging his fingers into the ground like claws, the druid snarls and uses a surge of strength to pull himself off of Hob and then quickly fuck himself back, feeling how Hob's cock gets a little bigger with the in and out motion. This spell was meant to be taken slowly, but Dream needs more and he needs it now. 

Dream rolls his body again, making Hob groan and his hands tighten to bruising around Dream’s hips. “I told you to ride me,” he growls, “So fuck me like you damned well mean it. Fuck me like yoAAAAHHHH!!”

He screeches as Hob pulls him off the ground by only his hair, arms dangling and fingers brushing the ground, until he can get his hand around Dream's mouth. Dream lets his weight sag into Hob's grip and the gunslinger has no problem holding him up. “Fine, you want me to use this spell to ruin you?!” Hob bucks twice in rapid succession, the spell working each time and Dream splays his legs wider, as if that will relieve the building pressure. 

It doesn't. 

Dream mewls into Hob's hand. “Do you want that?!?” Hob roars.

He nods vigorously, as much as he can with Hob's large palm across his face, and presses backwards as much as possible. 

“So be it!” Hob releases Dream's face, letting him flail to catch himself before he falls into the dirt. Then Dream hears the sound of Hob spitting and before he knows it a wet finger is sliding down the cleft of his ass. “If you want to be filled so badly, then I will make sure to fill you completely.”

On the next delicious thrust of Hob’s cock deep into his cunt a finger drives into Dream's ass and the noise he makes is nothing short of a squeal. “YES!”

It is so much. Fullness and pressure and stretching and it doesn't hurt in the least, more like it feels as if his body was made for this, to take and take and take. And on each pounding thrust in Hob gets bigger and bigger, and just when Dream thinks he can take no more, the stretch deepens and his body accepts another finger or another millimeter. 

“Fuck, look at you,” Hob's hoarse whisper is tinged in awe. “Never seen the spell last like this. Never seen a body so greedily take more and more and more. So fucking perfect. And all mine. Mine.”

“Yes! Yours!” Dream wriggles, letting his shoulder and face take his weight as he reaches back and grabs behind his knees, pulls his legs further apart. “Please, Hob, wanna come like this. Please touch me, lover. Mate.”

Hob groans and the hand that is not buried in Dream’s ass finds its way to his cock. It barely takes two strokes before Dream is coming, shaking and screaming and oh fuck if Hob just keeps going… 

“Don't stop,” he pants, Hob still driving into him, wider each time, making his body sing, “Oh fuck don't stop gonna gonna gonna—HOB!” 

Dream howls as he comes again, writhing as Hob keeps thrusting, faster and harder, his fist still tight and pumping Dream's cock, and then Hob’s fist gets tighter and twists. It is too much so much too much, but then Hob fucks into him harder and his vice-tight hand starts twisting on every upstroke and he can't possibly not no oh gods oh gods! 

He cries through his third orgasm in as many minutes, overwhelmed and overstimulated and Hob keeps fucking him, even as Dream’s entire body goes liquid and he slumps onto the mossy ground. Hob’s fingers leave his ass with a slick squelching noise and then his Mate’s whole body is pressing Dream down flat, legs splayed, his hips still pistoning his spelled cock in and out of Dream's cunt. “That's it baby, I finally hit your edge. Not gonna get any bigger than this today. You good to let me keep going? Want me to come in this pretty pussy of yours?”

“Yes, please, yes.” Dream rasps, throat raw from his screaming. 

Hob presses his chest down onto Dream's back until not even a molecule of air is between them, his breathing heavy behind Dream's pointed ear. “Want you to do this to me, too, darling. Cast the spell and fuck me until I am gaping and exhausted.” He fucks fast and stays deep, never pulling out very far, and Dream doesn't know what is better, the images Hob paints with his words or how easily Hob‘s now-huge cock rams into his cervix on every thrust. “So good around me. You can already take so much… can't wait to see how far I can stretch you. Can't wait to try that spell of yours, fucking drown you in my cum, so stark against your gorgeous skin. Probably not healthy to cast it more than once in a day, but I’m nothing if not reckless. Wanna flood your cunt, your ass, and your stomach.” Dream moans, shivering and helpless beneath him. “Make you lick up whatever spills out of your holes. Swallow it down. Make sure you take all of it. Then plug your holes, gag your mouth, keep it all inside.”

It is like Hob had seen the beginnings of Dream's most depraved fantasies and he can't help but continue them. “That's… I want that so badly. And more, Hob. I want more. After all that I want you to tie me up, wrists to ankles behind me,” Hob makes a noise like a sob and buries his face into Dream's neck, rhythm stuttering, “And then I want you to spend all over my cock. Because I haven't come yet, you haven't let me.” That pulls a whine from Hob. “And after all that there will be paltry cum left in you, but that's all I get. That's all I get to use to rut against the hard floor. Smacking my hips down onto the wet tiles, but at that point any contact would feel like heaven. Would come so hard, for you, my love.”

A hitch in Hob's breath and he starts slowly pulling out as he climaxes, drawing it out using Dream's body just like he has used Dream's hand in the past, cock twitching wildly. He lengthens the pleasure enough that he gets to push back into Dream at the very end of his orgasm, gets to bury himself to the hilt as his last little jolt of overstimulation. 

Panting, prick softening within Dream, Hob lets all of his weight collapse onto his lover. “Fuck, you’re amazing. I can't believe I get to have you.” He nuzzles into Dream's hair. “My beautiful Dream.”

“My Hob,” he sighs, “my Mate.”

[fineiguessimintowhump]

Yes, sir

after re-reading for editing i have one question for the general and it's is the intolerable misbehaving in the room with us right now? show me the intolerable misbehaving.

cw: military whump, captivity, pow, starvation (mentioned?), resigned whumpee,

The guards throw him on the general's rug without any care. His bound hands are useless to catch himself, and he only hurts his wrist when by trying. One of them kicks him in parting, and Leo bites his lips to prevent any sound from escaping him. The general doesn't spare any of them a glance, not even looking up from the document he's reading.

The guards leave, the tent growing quiet. Leo slowly straightens. He doesn’t get any further than to his knees, silently waiting to be addressed. A few months ago, he would have been screeching, struggling, lunging at that man to tear his throat - with his teeth if he had to - but he has learnt better.

There's a weight settling in his stomach, a nervous kind of energy spreading through him. He doesn’t even try to hide the trembling in his hands; he's starved and exhausted, shaking is nothing new.

There's the shuffling of turned pages, and Leo glances up. The general is still not paying any attention to him. He looks down at the rug under him. Dirty and rough, spots that would be unidentifiable except – it's blood, of course it's blood, some of it probably even his.

He'd thought it coarse even through a layer of cloth, the first time. Now, it feels almost like a luxury.

"The guards tell me you haven't been eating."

The general isn’t looking his way, writing something down with that fancy quill of his. He hasn't been asked anything yet, so Leo stays quiet.

“We spent quite some time… rationing you. I recall your being quite distressed by the idea. So distressed in fact,” the general finally looks up, pointing the tip of his pen towards Leo as the corner of his lips lifts in a slight smirk “that when the guards brought you to this tent, at your own request, you dropped to your knees, right in that spot, and begged.”

He uses his desk to push himself up, approaching Leo with slow, steady steps.

“Did you feel like repeating that day, mutt? Should I ask for stale bread? Teach you open, and chew, and swallow again?”

Leo doesn’t reply, keeping his eyes on an interestingly shaped spot. Those aren’t questions you answer, he’s learnt; those are questions you get struck to.

The general stops in front of him, in the perfect spot for a kick to the sternum. Or the face.

“Look at me.” He doesn’t wait for Leo to obey, fingers tangling in his hair to tilt his head. “We had an agreement, didn’t we?  Why the sudden defiance?”

Leo tries to turn his head. It’s going to hurt, no matter what he says, so he’d really like for the general to grow bored and leave him in peace. The general grabs his chin, holding him in place.

“No. We are having a conversation. Unless you’d like to wait until screams are-”

“Don’t-”

Leo expected the hit, not the kick that immediately follows. He folds in two, hands still useless to steady himself.  The general sighs, as if disappointed, and takes a step back.

“Don’t interrupt. Explain yourself.”

Leo swallows, slowly straightening back up while keeping his eyes on the general’s shoes.

“I’m not hungry.”

The general scoffs, starting to walk. He’s slowly circling around Leo, who curls up tighter in hope of softening the blow he’s sure will come soon. He follows the general from the corner of his eyes for as long as he’s able to, stilling when the man leaves his sight.

“You know better than to lie to me – or should I go over that lesson with you again?”

Leo feels the ground shake slightly as the general gets closer to him. He can’t help but to shiver, trying to curl up tighter. Something hits him in the back and he forces himself to straighten. He keeps his eyes facing forward, knowing better than to look.

“Your misbehaving is becoming intolerable, mutt. My patience is not limitless, as you know. Try again.”

Leo has to remember to breathe, having instinctively held his breath. He can feel how close the general is, and bracing himself for a hit only worsens his trembling. Blood is rushing through his ears, and he’s sure the numbness in his fingers isn’t from the rope. His lips part, and he’s not sure where the words pouring out of him are coming from.

“You won’t kill me. Thought I’d do something.”

There’s a chuckle right next to his ear. It doesn’t blossom into full-bellied laughter, but it lasts long enough that Leo shifts a little uncomfortably. A hand settles atop his shoulder, tightening painfully around him.

“Did you, now? And why would you want such a thing, hmm?”

It feels like he’s bearing the general’s whole weight, and it presses him down. Leo doesn’t feel grateful for the rug anymore, knees painfully digging into every single strand, it feels like. He tries to relieve himself of part of the weight by leaning forward slightly but the general only follows, still looming over him.

“Is life in my camp truly so harsh? I’ve been kind to you, no?” His grip shifts slightly, and Leo feels something in his shoulder move. “Certainly, nicer than the guards. Is little traitor unable to cope with the morality of his actions, is that it?”

Leo doesn’t snarl – he knows better, he’s too exhausted, he’s not sure – but he raises his head and turns to look at the general.

“I’m not a traitor-”

The general’s fingers dig into his shoulder and he cuts himself off with a whimper. The man’s expression is devoid of any emotions and Leo’s breath catches in his throat. He forces himself to speak again.

“I’m not a traitor.”

The general’s lips twist into a smile. “No? A dog brought to heel, then. A mutt in need of discipline, if I’m feeling mean.”

He finally lets go of Leo’s shoulder, fingers tangling in his hair instead. “I thought you’d learnt something from the time we’ve spent together, but apparently that hasn’t been the case.” He exhales sharply, speaking into Leo’s face. "You are property of the empire. And before that" – the general’s grip on his hair tightens and he pulls Leo’s head back sharply – “My property. I have the final say about everything that concerns you. If I have food brought to you, I expect you to eat it. You will die when I am done with you, not before, and certainly not on your terms.”

He holds him in place, meeting Leo’s tired eyes with contempt. Leo is dropped, and this time doesn’t even bother to try and catch himself. He has a feeling the general would have kicked him down, anyway. He sees the general walk away, the man returning to his desk.  

“I expect an answer. It’s something even your sham of an army must have taught you.”

Leo twists just enough to rest his cheek on the rug. He looks away from the general, eyes on the light filtering from outside. He closes his eyes, the words like ashes on his tongue.

“…Yes, sir.”

There’s the scratching of quill on paper again, and the general stops paying attention to the prisoner in the middle of his tent.

[mintyeggs]

DUMPSTER ARTHUR LORE

My version of Arthur Lester, or I guess now he's officially going to be known as dumpster Arthur (sorry man), has essentially the same storyline up until the Dreamlands, where the slight canon divergences start, culminating in the deal made with Kayne in Addison, with a very different "catch" as payment for John's return.

This is a bit of a long one, so click the readmore!

CW: cannibalism, autocannibalism, self harm, starvation, all canon typical shit

Starting with the prison pits in the Dreamlands!

Instead of giving in to killing and eating Faust after learning about what he'd done, Arthur held out a little longer by eating bits of himself. He has bite scars on his right arm and his legs, all avoiding the parts of himself that John can feel.

John was not exactly psyched about Arthur having to do this, especially because it takes a lot out of his friend; not just physically. He even tried offering Arthur his arm instead so the poor guy wouldn't feel it, but Arthur adamantly refused, because he'd already bitten John once before (their pinky) and was pretty horrified at how right it felt to have flesh between his teeth.

He doesn't talk to John about that, though, especially while they're still fighting about John's outburst about Faroe. John remains relatively in the dark about Arthur's internal struggle eating human flesh, even his own, since it's kind of hard to tell if he's feeling more fucked up than usual given their situation.

The altercation with Faust ends up pretty much the same way, Arthur broke and attacked him, forcing John to relive his death while he ate. John does start to notice something is off with Arthur psychologically at this point, though he assumes it's because Arthur has just killed and eaten someone for the first time.

They also do not talk about this because Arthur refuses (mostly out of shame and fear that John will think he's a monster haha)

Given how long Arthur was able to hold out before killing Faust, they're in the prison pits for about a month longer than in canon, and upon escape, Arthur doesn't feel the same amount of hope at their future.

Things proceed pretty close to canon at this point, they meet Kayne, they get their shit wrecked by the King, Arthur cuts his own throat, John gives himself up to save Arthur's life, etc etc.

The one big difference here is something the King says to taunt Arthur; he mentions that Arthur has come closer to knowing his form of love than any human ever has, and it has scarred Arthur permanently, even if he doesn't see it yet.

Now, to Addison!

Upon landing in the cabin and calling Kayne, Arthur is presented with a different option; get John back, safe and sound, memories intact. However, when asking about the catch, Kayne says something along the lines of "you'll have your golden boy back, but part of you will forever remain in the pit".

Kayne here just kind of wants to fuck with Arthur and watch him like a TV show, so this is more entertainment than anything power-seeking; Nyarlathotep (who I assume Kayne actually is) delights in cruelty and causing madness. Note, Kayne doesn't actually do anything to Arthur here, he's just kind of exacerbating Arthur's self doubt about his own humanity and sanity. No worse enemy than one's own mind, after all.

Kayne also does inform Arthur that John is in the Dark World! This obviously sways Arthur's decision quite a bit, and he immediately agrees to Kayne's terms, even assuming part of himself would be sent back to the prison pits, John not being alone in the Dark World is worth it to him.

Some of the main consequences to this decision!!

Arthur isn't really able to come to terms with John intrinsically being a part of the King in Yellow, and neither is John!

Arthur still very much views John as something that never was and can never be the King in Yellow, so he holds him to those standards, making some of their fights while in Addison have a different flavor to them.

In the same vein, John isn't able to have that "aha" moment of accepting his past as part of him, instead continuing to fight tooth and nail against the things he thinks are something the King would do.

As such, when Arthur snaps again and attacks Larson, and starts his descent towards bedrock in the mines under Addison, John is much harsher towards him, starting to see Arthur as the monster the King in Yellow is.

This culminates in Arthur killing Uncle, where another big problem makes itself apparent; the smell of blood makes Arthur painfully hungry, and he realizes this is what Kayne meant when talking about the part of him left in the pits.

Arthur reverts to his old habit of satiating his hunger here, and John sees him bite himself again, this time as a form of self-harm and what Arthur thinks is due punishment for becoming a monster, and they have their heart to heart about reaching bedrock.

John definitely knows something is up at this point, and is quick to reassure Arthur that they'll kill Larson, but they need to save the people of Addison first, if only to prove to Arthur that he's not the monster that either of them thought he was. John also comes to the realization that he might've been the cause for all of this; he remembers how the King said that knowing his love had scarred Arthur permanently.

So, after freeing Addison, John's main focus becomes separating them again, but this time it's for Arthur's own sanity. They do learn about the order of the fallen star, which John thinks is a better lead for separating them than searching for Anna Stanzyck.

That leaves us where most of my drawings of Dumpster Arthur are set timeline wise! They're in New York, grappling with Arthur's growing hunger and self-harm habits and finding a way to separate them, something Arthur is getting less and less willing to do, given as John is pretty much the only thing holding him together now.

I'm working on a comic about them finding a vessel for John, the construct body built by a fringe cult worshiping Hastur. This essentially is just an anchor for John, while he's still bound to Arthur, that body does give him autonomy and allows him to project without causing Arthur any stress (beyond emotional).

All of this is kind of subject to change, but a couple people in the tags of some of my art pointed out how interesting it is to focus on Arthur becoming more of a monster, something I definitely am going to explore a bit :^)

As a reward for finishing reading my very long brain vomit dump, have some fun(ish) Dumpster Arthur facts!

he wears a trench coat way too big for him because he thinks it makes him look bigger and more intimidating. john does not have the heart to tell him it just makes him look like a really sad wet cat

john takes on a bit more of a caretaker role for arthur when they reach new york! part of learning his own humanity comes with caring for someone else the way Lily cared for them in the hospital.

arthur also does have some nerve damage at this point in his right arm, so he does kind of twitch and shiver like a chihuahua when it gets particularly bad

john and arthur create a version of asl meant for one-handed signing, though it's rather hodge-podge to anyone who signs traditional asl. this allows john to communicate without arthur translating (noel has a bit of trouble reading the signs at first but learns quick) and also allows arthur to communicate silently with john.

[toads-and-whumps]

(My thinly disguised rambles as

BBU Holiday/Special Event Whump Prompts

because the middle of summer is a great time for this.)

CW: Box boy universe, institutionalized slavery. Brief: implied dubcon/noncon, gore mention, child neglect mention, starvation mention, alcohol/being drunk

• A guard dog's owner volunteering them to be santa at a charity event or something. They're the only person available who really fits the look. They're not used to all the affection that kids give when they're playing santa, and just as they get used to it, the event is over and they have to go back to the dog house. Alone and sad

• a domestic having to prepare thanksgiving dinner for their owner's large, extended family. Serving people as they make passive aggressive remarks about the food or the domestic themselves. When it's all over, they're owner tells them to clean it up, either ignoring or not hearing the domestic ask if they can have the leftovers.

• A owner taking their romantic out for Valentine's Day. They've been neglecting them lately, perhaps other responsibilities come up or their toy isn't new anymore. During their time out the romantic does everything they can to be fun, flirty, whatever they want. They think it's worked and they have an in to their owner's heart again, that's until their owner kisses them goodnight and closes their bedroom door with a conclusive thud.

• The boxie's owner is hosting a party, maybe it's christmas or thanksgiving or something else, but whichever way, it's terrifying to have so many unpredictable people in the building. Their owner makes it known that if any guest needs anything, ask them.

- Maybe a group of people pull them away and they're at the mercy of whatever torture they want to inflict.

- Or maybe a gross creep tells them to follow them, chills racking down their spine as they hope their owner will notice their missing soon.

- It could be a shy, introverted guest taking them into another quiet room, petting through their hair as they complain about how they were forced to come here.

- Maybe a guest that's never seen the horrors of the system so clearly, or an undercover activist leads them out of the grand house, promising a better future while the boxie shakes.

• A domestic or platonic trying to make a holiday special for their owner's neglected kid(s). Their owner freaks out on them, asking why they're trying to upstage them.

• A boxie out trick-or-treating with their owner. The boxie turns a street corner and almost walks into someone with a costume that has incredibly realistic gore, a knock-off WRU collar, and boxie facility clothes. The person almost apologizes, but then scoffs when they see their collar, telling them to know their place. The boxie doesn't hear them, though. They're too far off reliving when another trainee was being mauled by a guard dog at the facility.

• An owner painfully pinching their boxie, who they refuse to let wear green on Saints Patrick's Day.

• An owner coming home drunk on New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, they're an angry drunk.

• An owner making their boxie sit on and take a picture with one of those really creepy easter bunnies. Maybe they were having a good time before, parts of their childhood slipping through the white fog, and the day ends with that.

• A boxie tasked with hiding Easter eggs. They use this as an excuse to sneak farther and farther away, eventually dropping the basket all at once and making a run for it.

• The favorite boxie (probably a romantic or platonic) being spoiled on whatever occasion it is and the others' jealousy boil to a peak. Maybe the owner asks where they got that bruise from, and the favorite freezes for a moment, before going on about how clumsy they are.

• An owner being harsher with their boxie's punishment before halloween, and random trick-or-treaters complimenting the boxie on their 'makeup skills.'

- Ooh and then they hate halloween after they're rescued :o :D

• Someone giving the boxie as a christmas present.

- Ya know how sometimes people will give kids pets as gifts? And how the parents will be standing there like "omg why?" That, but with a human being.

-Or like, imagine a boxie liking the person that bought them. They were really nice and charming. Then they stuff them in a box and when their intended owner unwraps them they're greeted with the owner's crazy, flat eyes and wide smile.