#graphic rating scales

[alnilaem]

coyote head and the body of a man — (e)

ghost/fem reader There's a killer on the loose. But your logging town is small and quaint and doesn't even appear on maps, so you know you're safe. That all changes when a gruff, big, taciturn man shows up at your workplace one day. Or; Simon is a fugitive serial killer, and you're the housekeeping girl that caught his eye.

cw for explicit content, graphic violence, possessive behaviour, size difference, cunnilingus, stalking

pinterest board | ao3 | for @spidehpig <3

Sometimes, you believe you were born in the centre of a dying star. 

Born on the crest of death and fated for a bleak life. Dead, before you even had a chance.

The universe sweeps before you. Infinite. Expansive. Hungry. You float at the mouth of the galaxy and it swallows you whole, but doesn’t seem to like the taste of you—too bland, too trite—so it spits you back out and sends you tailspinning. 

You land with a lack of courtesy. Tossed between trees and dropped in a basin. You find yourself in nowhere, Oregon. In a town flecked by a lake inlet and a clement fjord, where the moose population outnumbers the people population. It has a maritime allure but strangely enough, isn’t commercial enough to be a tourist hub. It’s too hidden in the thicket. Too deep in a borehole.

Every day here is the same. It's an abyss that yawns before you with no end in sight, lacking undue entertainment and vividness and excitement. There’s no light pollution so far off the beaten track, so oftentimes, you’ll wish upon shooting stars for someone to come for your deliverance. 

There’s a reason they say be careful what you wish for.

The day isn’t even halfway over and your bone tips already ache with hard work. 

It isn’t to say your workplace is busy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. A cut-rate motel with more vacancies than residents found far-removed from the highway, taking only cash, no card, which is good for deterring paper trails and welcoming the transient but is bad for providing records when the police come knocking. 

You’ll get the occasional trucker, the sparse backpacker. In any case, folks stay here when they don’t want to be bothered. They’ll drive past the splintery welcome sign and stop at the diner for earthy, full-bodied coffee and a slice of famous rhubarb pie. They’ll recuperate in the motel and leave before sunrise, and you’ll be there to clean up what they leave behind, scrubbing the memory out of the fibreglass bathtub for whoever’s next. 

It’s a place where time fleets away. Hallucinatory. Where people pay their due and you hang your head because after all, you’re nothing more than the housekeeping girl. Cottony pinafore and a black dress. Mary Jane flats. Fingers desquamating from years of bleach and vinegar stuck in your nail beds. You get handed dog-eared tips and in return, you don’t ask questions. But maybe you should have.

You’re sliding the window cleaner back into its compartment on the cleaning cart just as your boss scales the veranda. He’s grinning and sporting sweat stains across his armpits. A patchy beard. A loose tie. 

Your nerves lock up tight when he grasps your shoulders. His razorous fingers and the pinchbeck of his wedding band saws under your skin. The dregs of his afternoon drinking knocks into you, and you try not to let your body betray you. Despite that, your eyes water and your nose crinkles. You white-knuckle your dress and almost pop the fabric of your pinafore. 

“How’s my favourite employee?” he grins. “Is she workin’ hard?”

There’s an irreverent innuendo somewhere in his smile. You ignore it and opt for a stale smile.

“I’m working,” you eke out. “I've got to restock the bathroom, then I’m done.”

“That’s good, peach. Real good,” he watches you collect toiletry essentials, then tacks on, “there’s a man in the lobby.”

You falter. The travel-sized shampoo bottle almost slips between your forefinger and thumb. 

“An outsider.”

It’s an observation, not a question. If the man in the lobby were a local, Phillip would have given you a name because in this town, everybody knows everybody. The fact that a name was bereft tells you your new guest came from elsewhere. Maybe he’s cutting through the main road on his way to Yachats for your town’s cascade mountains and bigleaf maple, or for the diner’s famous rhubarb pie. In any case, he's in need of a rest stop. 

“Mh. I’m gonna check him in. Just wanted to let you know I’m givin’ him this room, so try to hurry it up, okay peach?”

You blink slowly. This motel holds twelve rooms—there’s never been a need for any more—and currently, nine of those are occupied. That leaves three. There’s no reason for your boss to put up the new guest in Room 11, especially when you’re still cleaning it.

Phillip reads the question in the bend of your eyebrow. He smiles knowingly and pats your head. “He requested a room on the higher level. Room 9’s aircon is busted and Room 6 shares a wall with the Pettie’s. They’re loud.”

You sigh. “Ah.”

“Sorry peach,” he smiles like he’s apologetic, but you don’t think that’s the case. “Just get it done, alright? And add some extra coffee packets."

You furrow your lips. Displeasure flutters over you but you wash it away with a smile, refusing to irk him. You nod and pivot, bones bending against your skin for an escape as his hand whispers against your bum in an encouraging caress.

Anger simmers in your marrow. Phillip simply chuckles, disparaging.

“That’s a sweet peach.”

His voice gets muted by the tinny, rattling radiator as you make it to the bathroom. You stock it up dutifully—perhaps taking extra long to ensure he's not waiting outside for you—and spritz air freshener around the room when you finish. It’s a flaky, expired bottle of Platinum Ice which barely masks the town’s deep-seated smell of old-growth forest, petrichor and woody debris. You hope the new guest doesn’t have a sharp nose. 

You make sure to stuff the coffee station with extra packets before stepping out of the room. Off the mysteriously stained carpet, onto the veranda. You putter around with your large keyring, thumbing through the nickel-brass since you also have a key to the elementary school, post office, and city hall (aptly titled shitty hall by locals, since this town isn’t much of a city and the building’s roof is held together by nothing but rusty rivets and tassels of sprig collected in the corners). You’ve got so many keys because again, everybody knows everybody, and it isn’t rare to see the housekeeping girl at the motor lodge supplementing her income as a part-time teaching aid. 

Finally, you find the master key. You lock the room and roll the cleaning cart into the utility room before locking that too. Your wrist drags across your forehead, wiping away sweat, and you tug on your dress because perspiration has pasted it onto the pert curve of your breasts, the squish of your thighs. You furtively glance down your bodice and watch how the sweat pocks your skin, knotting your nipples against your cheap bra. Lament catches you in regards to your shower after work—it’s going to be freezing since the heating system here is so fickle—and in the paroxysm of your grief, the sound of heavy breathing eludes you. 

You don’t hear his footsteps. He’s an ambush predator. Stalking and shadowing in the tall grass, waiting for the moment your hackles melt to bite into your neck like an unripe stone fruit. You don’t see him, but you feel him. His breath tickling down your neck. The erogenous zone behind your ear. 

A gasp parts your lips and you whip around, coming face-to-face with a paunchy chest plated by moth-eaten flannel. You heft your head up, exercising the hinge in your neck. Paling at the sight that greets you.

He has a Cabela’s cap on. It’s pulled over his eyes, but a few blonde curls peek out from under the crown of his hat. He has a damaged, blistered face. A cauliflower ear. Nicks on his cheeks that distend from his skin and have turned pallid with time, rippling like seafoam petticoats on waves as he flickers his jaw. He wears jeans and mud-clogged boots and holds a duffel bag. 

His gaze unties you. You slowly find words, fitting them in an orderly queue in your mind as you avert your gaze and stare at the floor. Squirming. Preening. Sweltering.

“Welcome to Sockeye Inn, mister…” 

Silence. He lets your words awkwardly trail off. Doesn’t do anything to belay the discomfort in your belly. The man simply stares at you with brown eyes. 

Humiliation crawls up your spine and settles on your cheeks. It burns through your skin, withering you away, to which you fidget with your fingers and baldly nod towards the door.

“Your room is ready,” you murmur. “Enjoy your stay, sir. Uh– if you need anything just give us a shout. Phone’s on the bedside table.” 

Foolishly, you wait for a response again. Nothing. He towers over you, owlishly blinking, one slower than the other because he seems to have a lazy eye. You clench your skirt and softly shoulder past him, heading for the stairs as you hear him putter with the keyhole. 

You’ve halfway scaled it when a rasp distorted by what seems to be years of cigarettes stops you dead in your tracks. 

“Bring me a BLT and root beer.” 

You burn up at the muscle in his voice. The drag. Just as you’re about to reply, his room door slams shut and rocks across the veranda. 

Your dress is stickier than it was before. Perhaps an ice cold shower isn’t so bad after all.

The end of your shift slowly arrogates. 

After delivering food to Simon Riley—you glinted at the logbook while waiting for his order, reading his name—you left his room as soon as possible. You set the food down and found yourself plugging your nose. The Platinum Ice you sprayed before didn’t accost you— instead, it was pomade. Lucky Strike cigarettes. Decaying heartwood. Bleach. 

You pointedly breathed through your mouth. It didn’t actually help though, since you could taste it then. The ethanol in the air drizzled over your pockmarked tongue and glided down your throat. Collected in your stomach. 

You almost retched it back up at the sight of him.

Through the foggy shower wall, the colour of his hazy contour was striking. It seemed to be a tight fit for him, hemming in his lumberjack build. The shampoo bottle looked like a damn accessory in his large hands and his chased shoulder blades pressed soap against the glass pane, sudsy. 

Your curiosity pulled your gaze lower. Down to the heavy mass between his thighs, thick and fat. Bulbous. 

His spine suddenly went erect, straightening like a chary animal. As if by the agitated pappus of his skin, his chin lifted in your direction, and that’s when the earth collapsed under your feet and you beetled for the door. 

You distract yourself in the kitchen. Emptying the dishwasher. Taking the garbage to the bear-proof receptacles. Putting the oven on steam clean. Kate, the kitchen supervisor, stares at you oddly under her hairnet but she isn’t going to reject a set of helping hands. 

You scrub at a pan hoping it will erase the image burned into your mind. Hoping that the steel wool will have the same effect on your temporal lobe as it does on the pan. You don’t realize your hands are chafing and the pan is flaking, not until Kate is passionately complaining beside you, her spit dashing onto the side of your face.

“—fuckin’ freeloaders. They drain our taxes but can’t even do their damn jobs. Wait until one of their family gets butchered, you’ll see, that’s when they’ll start taking this seriously.”

She waves a newspaper in your face. The paper stack fans in front of you, blowing you with cool air. You’re just barely able to read the big, blocky headline. 

Connection Made Between Ventura, Gilroy and Eugene Serial Killer — Aptly Coined the Ghost.

“Eugene!” Kate slaps the newspaper, frazzled. “Not even three hours from us!”

You scarcely listen to her, her voice ripening into white noise as you scrutinize the police sketch on the newspaper’s margin. The offender is drawn with an overripe balaclava and probing eyes. Dark brown, as if his corneal opacity has laid claim before death. His eyelids have no tension, but a furl of crow's feet gather at the corners. It’s uncanny. Eerie. And even though he’s pressed on paper, you can’t help the unease welling inside you. 

A part of you waits for the other shoe to drop. For him to manifest and crawl out of the paper, dripping ink and viscous tar, ruining your Mary Jane flats and the floor you’d just mopped.

Hemlock hits the back of your throat. Lemony, sedgy. Your eyes fixate on the information detailing his crimes. Spines broken and necks snapped with inhumane strength. Pieces of flesh carved with the precision of either a surgeon or a butcher. Rigour mortis locking the victims in a scream, nail beds caked with skin which implies a struggle, but leads nowhere since the Ghost’s DNA hasn’t been found on any database.

(He’s as elusive as his name suggests. Investigators say he could be foreign, or that he has a clean record. The latter seems unlikely for the violent calibre of his crimes.)

There’s also his modus operandi—slicing off his victim’s ring finger, taking it with him. A cruel reward. 

“They say he’s taking Route 101,” Kate tacks on. “That he’s a long-hauler. How the hell will they catch a long-hauler?”

You shake your head, shrugging. Your tongue is too heavy and your gums rub against the round of your cheeks when you try speaking. The sentence gets snagged on your molars, and all that comes out are sparse words, lamely falling to the floor with how out of breath you are. 

“…They’ll catch him.”

“They better,” she shortly huffs. “I don’t want this town making the paper for all the wrong reasons.” 

Death comes to you in a cornfield. 

You’re sprinting through the crop, barefoot and scantily clad and pricked by thorns. Your clothing catches on thistle and corn husk, slowing you down, but the quick-footed trampling at your tail keeps your pace steady and stable.

Your lungs burn. Your bones rasp. Your eyes well up with how fast you’re moving, with how your retinas strain to see more in the pitch black than just reflective corn silk and the crescent moon. 

The midnight sky is close to swallowing you whole, but at this point that would be an act of mercy. The whistle of his cleaver slicing through the air and the stomp of his boots are promptly catching up, heckling you, barely whispering against the flowy cotton of your dress.

By a cruel twist of fate your foot catches on a tiller and sends you flying. Your nose softens the impact, the crack of cartilage reverberating through your skull, glutinous red spurting down your chin as you try scrambling to your feet.

But true to his name, Ghost, he slips through matter and suddenly, he’s standing in front of you.

Black, sweaty tank top. Freshly sharpened meat cleaver. Stout arms. Predatory eyes. Rotting balaclava—which at this point, you’re starting to believe was grafted onto his face, fitting him like skin. 

You raise your hands for mercy. 

But you should know dead stars have exhausted all their luminosity—that after death, they hold no power. That space is a graveyard. That’s why the Ghost poises his cleaver behind him. That’s why the last thing you see is his cleaver handle swinging towards you, about to collide with and shatter your cheekbone into a million pieces—

—but daylight strikes you with no clear trajectory. 

It’s your alarm that rings, waking you up from a nightmare, telling you to brush your teeth and scrub yourself down and pop your supplements before biking to work. You do so sluggishly, standing under the shower spray as you massage your cheekbone. Burning your toast as you scour the news for developing details on the Ghost case. Ordering a cup of coffee from the local diner and gulping it down behind the motel lest Phillip catches you.  

Your nightmare—omen, prophecy, portent of death?—pursues you like the persistent stench of fish on an angler’s hands all morning. You flinch at the slightest noise while scrubbing toilets, you constantly look over your shoulder while sweeping floors.

Malaise builds in your blood vessels like creosote. It doesn’t thin into fluid, flowing in and out of your appendages and around your sex until you situate yourself in front of Room 11. Fluffing up your skirt and puffing out your chest.

You announce your presence and rap the door with your Mary Jane flat because your hands are occupied with new bed sheets. Your knuckles blanch around the linen, quivering, struggling to keep it in your grip. The sheets almost flutter to your feet when a voice penetrates the door, abrasive and husky. Rough. Grating against your spine and shaving down the vertebrae. 

“Door’s open.”

You wait a few seconds before contorting yourself against the threshold. You try the handle and lo and behold, it’s unlocked, swinging open when you press your weight onto it. 

You step inside and toe off your flats. Next to Simon’s boots, they look fit for a doll, and a dizzy spell ricochets through you at the size difference. At the stark reminder that he’s as big and packed as a thick tree stump.

You walk inside and heed the CRT television playing the news. 

It does nothing to soften the scream that rips out of you as you round the corner.

Simon is in bed, pulling on a cigarette. His pudgy tummy and bristly chest are bared, the steel wool of his happy trail disappearing into the bed sheets furled around his hips. The flat sheet is thin enough to outline something stirring. Something thick and pressed against his inner thigh. 

He stares at you, eyes of Argus. It’s so intense you’re sure he can sense the slick running down your back. The dew that settles in the gusset of your panties. 

You stutter. “I can come back later.”

Simon sits up with a groan. It rattles you. His joints must be fettered with age, or hard work, but in any case your head goes cottony with the picture of him splitting wood and hauling heavy bovine flanks. 

You swallow thick as he shakes his head. “It’s no problem, sugar. I’m not even here.”

The pet name makes you squirm. You sure do feel like it—sugar, that is—with the way you could melt on his tongue, wedge yourself between his teeth. Turn syrupy and sappy at the back of his throat.  

He takes another drag of his cigarette. You watch raptly as his jaw feathers around it, lips proffering another plume of smoke. 

He blinks. “Well?”

You eke out an apology and fiddle with your hands. 

“I’ll have to, um, change your bedsheets first.”

Simon shakes his head. He taps the ashy casualties off the tip of his cigarette and you watch as it sinks onto the bed sheet, almost burning through the floral motif. “No need.”

“Well,” you cough, forcing your eyes away from him, “if I don’t, my boss…”

Simon pricks up. The hind of his spine straightens the same way a dog would sit straight and plumb after hearing rustling in a bush. His muscles tighten, thick, and his face twists into a sneer. The bed sheet around him falls and you lock up tight lest it bare his pubic bone. 

“Is he a minger?”

“I’m sorry?”

He huffs. “‘s he a bully?”

“Oh, no,” you blandly laugh. “Mister Graves isn’t a bully. He just…”

“Makes you uncomfortable?”

There’s a lapse between acknowledging his question and spitting out an answer that makes you kick yourself. Simon already looks dubious. You hug the sheets closer to your chest and smile, your cheeks feathering like beeswax.

“He’s a kind man.”

“Not wha’ I asked,” he says. The bed creaks as he leans forward, the sheets slipping lower, scarcely covering his sex. “I asked if he does stuff he shouldn’t be doin’.”

Your heartbeat quickens. Briefly, you wonder if he can hear it. He probably can, albeit softly, due to his lumpy cauliflower ear.

“He’s a married man,” you mumble. “He doesn’t touch me if that’s what you mean. Not like that.”

“There’s only one way to touch someone,” Simon grunts. His chest starts churning a little, as if he’s agitated. “Does he put his hands on you?”

Your skin burns, remembering. A phantom scar runs through you, long and creeping, mapping all the places in which Phillip’s pinchbeck wedding ring has burned you. The suture of your spine, the pappy flesh of your neck, the rise of your hips where his palm has melted through your dress and smarted your skin.  

Your silence makes Simon grunt. 

Panic surges up your throat. You feel the need to defend Phillip, in some approximation of gratitude and fear since you’re on his payroll and you don’t want to reap the consequences should you rat on him and he find out. 

“No!” you hurry. “Mister Graves isn’t like that. He’s a good man. Honest.”

Simon’s eyes push against your skin. He scrutinizes you, tests you. Waits to see if you’ll fidget too much and flake away and sink into the carpet. 

He growls. “You fancy him, is tha’ it?”

Answering yes is the only way to shake him off your leg. You do so archly, so it seems as though the thought of your boss has you flushing when really it’s Simon. He’s fully upright, and now you can see the girthy base of his cock. Stirring, twitching. You suppress a moan.

“Yeah…” you murmur. You can feel your makeup turning blotchy, running down your cheeks. “It’s just a bit…embarrassing, is all.”

He lapses into it again. Staring at you. Razoring his way into your head and thumbing through your consciousness, searching for an Achilles’ heel. A crack he can break into a hole because he has the size for it—barrel-chested, stupidly thick fingers. 

Simon slips out of bed and disturbs the coiled aches of the mattress. He holds a washcloth over his crotch. It’s crusty and keeps shape and covers almost nothing, confirming your inkling. 

His bulbous cockhead winks at you from under the hem. It’s heavy. Leaky. Dripping precum that laves down his legs and gets caught in the wiry hair of his thigh. 

Anxiety pools in your armpits and around your groin. Or maybe that’s just arousal. Brackish and sticky, rubbing your pussy lips together, hugging your clit. 

Simon pulls on his cigarette once more and then folds it into the bedside table. You should scold him. You should tell him that he’ll have to pay for damages even though the wood is already degraded and mouldy. You should scuttle out of the room and call for Phillip, but that would be a crueler fate. Instead you stay fixed to the carpet as Simon steps forward. Cock swinging between his legs, tummy jiggling. 

You don’t know whether he’s going to pull you in for a kiss or rip off your dress or—and you’re unsure why you think of this—take you by your skull and smash it against the television stand. He has the muscle to, surely, but somehow you know he won’t. And the thought of that makes your skin hot.

You’re at his mercy.

You gird yourself for his lips or for your dress to be torn off, but your preparations flux away as Simon steps close and crowds you against the television stand. The stench of Lucky Strike cigarettes and gamey meat impair you, as he reaches behind you and increases the television volume. You want to say something but cotton fills your mouth and the news report floods your ears. It’s fragmentary—you can only heed oddments of the news anchor’s latest updates. 

The Ghost is still at large. Corpses keep popping up around California and Oregon, each with their ring fingers sliced off. The tipline has been leading investigators nowhere, shepherding them to the end of the earth and over the edge, floating, where they’ll move through molasses and will never be able to catch him. 

White male. 6’4”. 196 centimetres. Brown eyes. Heavyset. Likely military background. Likely a surgeon, or a butcher. A dangerous, ruthless individual. 

If spotted, do not approach. 

Simon’s breath fans against your neck, rousing the bristles of your warm cheeks. He turns off the television and steps back. An ether opens up in the pit of your stomach as your gaze falls on his bulging pelvis, on the purplish veins and webbing muscle, sitting like a tuft under his navel, disappearing behind the washcloth where his cock stirs. 

Simon tuts. “World’s goin’ to shite.”

You nod.

“You shouldn’t be out here anyway,” he tacks on. “Should be at home takin’ care of your man’s house. Keepin’ safe.”

You flash your naked ring finger embarrassingly fast. “I-It’s just me…and my cat.”

His eyes darken. His head tilts down at you. He purrs. 

“Better get started on mine then,” he breathes. “Put yourself to good use.”

You shyly get to cleaning his room. 

You try to ignore his hand disappearing behind the washcloth, pumping his cock. You can’t ignore the silk ruining your panties. Scarcely, you manage to ignore the caution creeping up your back. Your lower instinct that screams at you as you feel his stare tracking you across the room, burning. Smouldering. Warning. 

Daylight scissors into you.

It melts the sleep in the corners of your eyes. It clears the haze in your head. It interrupts the sultry dream you were having. Your flesh is still pocked and your clit is still peaked, as you rehash the contents of it. 

You can still feel Simon’s weight on top of you, sweat compressioning you, the sheets gathering under your slick back. Your underwear had dangled from one of your ankles, flapping and swaying as Simon pounded into you. Your head bobbed over the lip of the mattress. Your tits bounced, nipples caught between his gnashers. Your slick ran down your cunt and over your asshole, pooling onto the floral bed sheets. You just quit your job. You didn’t care about the sheets. Or the Pettie’s down the veranda. Phillip was on the other side of the door too, and he could hear everything. Your moans. Simon’s balls dragging over your furled hole. His groans—

—And the sudden tearing of cartilage and skin stretching, rubbery, as Simon shifted into something else above you. Something larger. Deadlier. His drool dripped onto your chest, and his cock was suddenly too big for your pussy, popping back out until only his tip managed to squeeze inside your puffy hole. He snarled down at you, but it got covered by a creeping balaclava. You still reached your orgasm, quivering around his cockhead. Watching him go spotty and graphite-like in your vision, as if he were a composite sketch.

You get out of bed and wash the absurd dream away under the shower. The nozzle hits your clit weakly, and you never reach your high. You show up to work pigeon-toed and sweaty. Pent-up. You scrub harder at bathtubs and almost snap at Phillip when he swats your bum. Almost. Simon is watching from the dining hall, and he makes you skittish.

The day rolls by sluggishly. There’s a Do Not Disturb sign dangling from Simon’s door, so you don’t get the chance to see him in his room. You huff and puff at the Pettie’s and give Kate attitude. It’s the peak of afternoon when you’re sent home, shoulders stiff because Phillip squeezed them and tacked on, ”I can always help out if you’re stressed, peach,” before shepherding you out the door.  

You bike into town. Indulge in the diner’s famous rhubarb pie because the motel’s cherry pie is nowhere near as good, though you’ll never tell Kate that. You polish off your treat then ride to the beach (which is more of a graveyard for birds and braided, washed ashore sea meadow), and prop your bike against the wooden bollards.

The beach is familiar with you. It sees you when you're overwhelmed by the monotonous colour of your life. You never worry about meddling kids or loud teenagers or anything, because the stench of fish usually keeps them away anyway. It's your own Shangri-La. Your little Eden. Albeit overcast and greyscale, with an ocean spray that gets into your hair and dries out your mouth.

You slip out of your Mary Jane flats and wade through the sand dunes, breathing in salt and sulfur and tasting it on your lips. You maneuver around seawrack and driftwood and eventually find yourself seated behind a tussock of seaoats, watching as the waves lazily beat against the shore.

It's easy for you to lie down and get comfortable among the scent of iodine and the feel of pillowy granules. It's also easy to let your eyes flutter shut, lulled into limbo by the ebbing tide and murmuring waves.

You stir awake with flaccid lungs.

Presentiment hangs in the air, thick, like a blanket of smog. It interrupts your breathing pattern and makes you light-headed. Vertiginous. Makes you see things that aren't there…

…Such as the off-white scleras and twists of dilated blood vessels that stare at you from the foreshore.

They approach you eerily. Two pieces of driftwood floating over the waves, jolting slightly as it hits the sand, splintery and mossy and heavy.

The man feathers toward you from the blue glow of the beach. You squint through the darkness, because maybe it's the sheriff, but you know he walks with a drunken gait and he…strides like a bear on its hind legs.

The way he lurches for you says otherwise. Perhaps he's rather a panther or a coyote, or some crude backyard breed of all three.

A large palm splits itself over your mouth. An arm lays beside you and secretes a musk of sweat and iron. A knee digs into the plush of your cunt, agitating your clit, as a warm breath fans over your pulse point.

"Waited for me, didn't you?" he rasps against your neck.

In your stupor, you brace your hands against his shoulders. A sticky substance coats his skin, too viscous to be sweat.

Nausea knots in your throat. Tremors wash over your body. You dig your nails into his flesh, and when your hands don't fall through it like you hoped, you gravely realize he's made of muscle and skin instead of your drunken, sleep-inspired imagination.

You experience a cruel loss of equilibruim. If you weren't already lying down, you'd collapse to the ground. You go limp in the sand, thawing into his hands which you unwillingly notice are caked with that sticky substance too.

"There's dangerous folk 'round here," he grunts. "What if someone else followed you? A big, bad man?"

A chord of recognition stirs in your brain at his voice. That brash accent.

"Simon…?"

He chuckles. "It's me, sugar."

You squeeze your thighs together but it's abortive. He pries them apart anyway, and cups your pussy through your panties.

He rubs you through the gauze, knuckling your soft lips. Through the darkness you barely see the misshapen silhouette of his mouth. That snarl, curling off him as if he suffers from some chronic wasting disease, slowly atrophying and turning into some vestigal cadaver.

He kisses down your sternum. Grips your hand and forces it over his crotch. Your fingers brush over the solid mass. It's hard due to both stiffened denim and his thickening cock.

"All for you," he mumbles. "Take it out, sugar."

You fumble with the metal teeth of his zipper. You pull him out with both hands and your mouth goes dry. Tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth. Deadly nightshade hitting the back of your throat. Despite you, your thighs squish together, and a rumbling chuckle slips through the seam of his lips.

He's huge. Fat and heavy, so much so you need both fingers to wrap around him.

"Give it a kiss, yeah?" he coos. "Like a sweet girl."

You spread your lips against his cockhead. You pull away and a string of precum chases you, but Simon is pushing your head back down and bucking his bristly pubic bone into to your nose.

"There it is," he grumbles. "Such a big girl, aren't you?"

You look up at him with wide, wet eyes.

The stiffs of hair on his pubic bone tickle your nose. You smell sweat and iron, but you can't tilt your head away, because the stout muscle of his arms keep you in place.

Fighting is futile. His cockhead hits the back of your throat like oleander and he holds your jaw in place, dimpling your cheeks with his rough fingers, letting his balls slap against your chin.

Just as you're getting used to his size, he pulls out, breaking the strands of saliva and precum between you.

"Take off y'panties, sugar."

You pull them off and squirm at the way the gusset clings to your pussy lips a little while longer. Simon takes it against his nose and sniffs it, running his fingers through your pussy, spreading your slick.

You don't get a warning before he's curling one of his fingers into you. Massaging your walls. Scissoring you open. Thumbing your clit.

He adds another and twists them deeper—meaner—into you. He swallows your whimpers but spits them back into your mouth when he empties his saliva down your throat. He keeps stroking the inside of your pussy, your sticky walls, and rubbing your clit.

He squeezes your cheeks together and gives you a big kiss. He coos condescendingly into your lips, and licks away your fresh track of tears. "It's supposed to hurt, baby. Don't be mad, alright? It'll feel good soon."

He gets deeper and deeper. Knuckle-deep, when he curls his fingers inside you. You lock up tight and thrust your hips through the bulk of your orgasm, trembling and quivering around him.

Your lips quiver around a plea when he pulls his fingers out. It's a lapse of judgement on your part—you know it—but you can't help it anymore.

"Please what?" He grins. It's ugly. Like a truss of stitching falling off his face, mangled and chewed up.

"Can you g-go…" you squirm when he rolls his tumb over your clit, agonizingly slow. "Can you go–"

"C'mon baby," he whispers against your lips, "spit it out. Big girls use their words."

"Canyougodownonme?" you gasp and grip onto him, bucking your cunt into his palm.

He chuckles against your mouth. He kisses down your chest. He crinkles his nose against the husk of your pussy. He deeply inhales and vibrates at your scent. He darts his tongue out and flattens it against your dewy folds, licking a stripe up your slit.

You writhe but he holds you in place with those big, thickened hands of his. They're wet but at this point you can't tell if it's your arousal or that mysterious substance on him. You can't even think about it, not with your thoughts melting away, escaping you like the humming waves.

Simon's a bit too aggressive in how he eats you out. It doesn't come from a juvenile attempt influenced by sex-on-screen with undue emphasis, but rather his tongue spelling devotion into the fat of your cunt.

Your fingers flex into his blonde head of hair. It's closely cropped, but you still manage to pull him closer, grinding yourself down on the bumpy bridge his nose. You pull on his hair and he growls and sends a quake up your spine. He wraps his lips around your clit and swirls his tongue further into you, softly suckling your juices out.

The waves fold over each other, beating against the shore. They crest and crash and just as they race up the sand dune, teasing your flexing toes, your second orgasm crashes into you too. You twist and twirl Simon's hair in your grip and almost miss the feel of something cold being slipped onto your finger.

You're shaking, trembling, as you raise your hand. You're hazy and the moonlight is shrouded by clouds. It makes the mystery object look smeared across your vision, blotchy and spotty.

You hold it a little closer to your face, examining the twinkle as Simon massages your thighs to ease the quiver.

You turn your hand over and whisper your thumb over its curve.

You bristle when you realize what it is. It hangs off you a little loosely, burning your knuckle.

A pinchbeck wedding ring.

Stained with red, and still warm from the body it was pulled from.

Bile gathers in your throat and burns your mouth. Tears gather in your eyes. A small gasp parts your lips, billowing out of you like the mushroom-head of a flare just as realization fully commits itself to you.

You shiver. Both through realization, and your orgasm. "…What did you do to him?"

"Took care of him," Simon grunts, caressing your hair. "I'm supposed to handle the monsters under your bed, ain't I?"

You spare him a glance. You heed the white of his teeth and a smudge of—you know it's blood—across his cheek. His eyes, hidden in the shadowy canopy. His nose, bent out of shape and speckled with blood.

"You're not going to hurt me."

He brushes your hair back. "No."

You pant into him when he captures you for a kiss. "…Why?"

"I'm supposed to take care of ya," he grunts. "That's what couples do, no?"

He pushes something in your grasp—a folding knife. Your thumb slips over the two initials engraved into the handle—your initials.

"How do y'feel about Kate?" he asks.

Your coworker flashes into your mind. "I like her"

Simon—the Ghost—grunts. "And what about that bloke at the diner? What's his name?"

"I– Franklin?"

"Hn. Does he bother you?"

You thumb through your memory. Perhaps what you say is an embellishment, giddy of what Simon's going for.

"He did steal my bike once…" you mumble.

Simon pricks up. His chest puffs out and squishes against your arm. "He married?"

"Yeah, um," you swallow, "for about ten years."

"You want his pretty ring? Or his wife's?" Simon asks, then kisses you. "Anythin' you want."

Your lips stretch into a smile.

Simon cups your cheek, blood rubbing off on you. For the first time ever, you feel exhilarated at the thought of the future. At the thought of being taken care of. Doted on.

Suddenly the town doesn't feel so cold anymore. It doesn't feel like an invisible barricade is hemming you in. Simon is your ticket out of here, and a ticket to your new life.

You can abandon your pinafore and Mary Jane flats and maybe he'll spoil you with frilly socks and a cute sundress. Maybe he'll fuck you in his truck or in gas station bathrooms as the corpse of a man who wronged you rots in the truckbed. Maybe you'll get caught but at least you'll be together and at least your name will finally be known.

Not as the housekeeper girl, but Mrs Riley.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Good Omens graphic novel update: April 2024

Admin & updates

PledgeManager

Earlier this month, we launched the PledgeManager, where shipping is being facilitated. If you missed it, you can read the initial announcement here. We have been adapting the FAQ page to add further recurring asks, so please do visit there if you have a particular query as a starting point. You can view this here. We are working through all queries received - some are taking a bit longer than others, as they need to be raised with PledgeManager, or others involved, so we appreciate your patience in these instances where we are yet to get back. The most common question, which we include here, is the sock sizes:

If you need to change your size, you have the ability to self-unlock your order and make any adjustments you need to. For socks that are part of a tier, there is a button to unlock and modify on the bottom of your receipt where you can alter your choice. If they were an add on, PledgeManager recommends that you remove the item from your cart and add it again with the correct size selected and complete their order to finalize the change.

Shipping

We are also aware of queries arising about the shipping rates themselves. While we have been open from the start of the project that shipping will be charged at a later date, we understand that the resultant cost has come as a surprise to some and that some prices are higher than expected. We want to be transparent on this: we have been working with our fulfillment partners on confirming product weights and the rates for shipping globally during the months since the project’s completion. The cost of doing this ethically - ensuring that everyone involved in the process from creators to those packing boxes is paid fairly, as well as ensuring the packaging is robust at this scale - is substantial.

We’ve done our best to minimise extra costs around shipping, while also not cutting any corners – we want your pledge rewards to reach you safe and sound. We have also subsidised costs across a number of territories, but costs for shipping to many locations remain high. The final thing we’ve done is lock in shipping costs now, a year out from fulfillment. We expect third party shipping costs to increase over the coming year, following the upwards trends across the board so far, but we will continue to absorb any subsequent rises.

We want to assure backers that the shipping does not include a profit margin for us, and every charge to our backers is something we’ve tried to minimise.

We absolutely understand that this is disappointing to many, and we endeavour to keep making the surrounding campaign the best it can be.

The timeline

The PledgeManager will run across 2024, and close at some point ahead of publication date (Spring 2025). When that date has been decided, we will give everyone as much notice as possible.

FAQ

As above, here is the centralised FAQ page. This will be updated over the coming year.

Cameos

Prior updates had noted the deadline for this has passed, however given the new publication date of the graphic novel, this has been extended slightly for God Tier and Archangel Tier backers. Please check your messages and emails if you backed either of these tiers and have not submitted your likeness.

Merch and more

Things are ramping up at Good Omens HQ, first of all with this delivery of one or two mugs at the warehouse:

We’ve also got David Aja’s print featuring Aziraphale, Crowley and Dog, in their glorious orangey hues which will appear in Serpent Tier+:

The trading cards are at the testing stage for game mechanics, while some of the early design prototypes are in for artist variants and we really can’t wait to start sharing these with you when they’re a bit further down the road. Almost there.

For those ready to capture your inner Pratchett and Gaiman on the page (Demon+), we have your notebooks:

More from Colleen…

We’ve continued to see gorgeous artwork arrive from Colleen and here’s one that slipped into our inbox this week:

And we thought we’d sign off this month with a glimpse at our favourite antiquarian bookshop:

[jamdoughnutmagician]

Teenage Dreams (13 going on 30 AU) - part 1

Eddie Munson x Reader

Being 13 sucked, all the cliques and groups in school, fighting for popularity and all you wanted to be was 30, flirty and thriving, just like the cool girls in Star Magazine.

Next Part ->

Word Count:2,763.

SERIES MASTERLIST

Masterlist // Eddie Munson Masterlist

*dividers by @saradika-graphics

Thirteen, what a terribly awkward age for anyone to be. Never quite sure about where you were supposed to fit in. All the popular girls would pour over the latest gossip magazine, nattering about which heart-throb of the month they thought was hotter. You couldn’t help but overhear the shrill giggling about how far they’d gone with their boyfriends, with a scandalised scream from the group when Stacy Evans revealed how she had made out with her boyfriend at Jessie Miller’s party last week. The boys weren’t much better either, all hanging out in their groups, guffawing and joking, rating seemingly every girl in the cafeteria on a scale of one to ten.

And you weren’t an exception to this, no. As you carefully weave your way through the bustling school’s cafeteria, balancing your tray in your arms you catch the attention of Jason Carver, the most bone-headed of all the boys, but he was a promising young talent in the school’s basketball team, so he got away with a lot of the stuff he did and said, with nothing more than a light warning breezing past him.

“Nice Hello Kitty shirt, did your mommy pick that out for you?” comes Jason’s shouted remark, high-fiving his crew when they laughed at his joke.

“Hey, Carver, leave her alone! All you care about is throwing balls into laundry baskets anyway!” and there was Eddie, your best friend in the whole world, always at your side through thick and thin. He slings a friendly arm over your shoulder as he walks with you to your usual seats. “How’s it feel to be turning the big one-three, you’re officially a teenager now!” He laughs playfully.

“Don’t remind me!” you squeal back, shoving his shoulder with a laugh of your own.

As you walk with him to your seats, you are once again stopped in your tracks, confronted by Nancy Wheeler, the school’s resident popular girl and her small army of followers who went with her everywhere.

“Hey, bestie can I talk to you for a moment?” she narrows her eyes towards Eddie “Y’know, just us girls.”

“Alright, I can take the hint, Wheeler. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” Eddie smiles before walking off.

“The girls and I were so excited about coming to your birthday party tonight, and I told Steve Harrington about it and he said he wanted to come with us,” Nancy started, twirling a dark, bouncy curl around her finger.

“Really?”

“Yeah, but Mrs.O’Donnell is up our ass about this group project, and Steve said he would help us out, so I guess nobody is going to be able to make it, which is a shame, because we really all wanted to come.” she says with a tilt of her head and an almost pleading look in her blue eyes.

“I could write your report for you.” you offer.

“Fabulous!” she cheers, her pink lip gloss glinting under the fluorescent lights “Then I’ll see you at your party I guess.” She smiles, and with that, Nancy is gone, her gaggle of girls following closely behind her.

Eddie walks beside you as you make your way home, your backpack slouching down your shoulders with every step.

“Y’know I can’t believe you invited Nancy and her army of girls to your party tonight.” Eddie grumbles

“They’re my friends!” you defend.

“Nancy and her clones are not your friends, okay?”

“Well not yet anyway, but they’re so popular and I just think if I could get them to like me, maybe I could hang out with them.” you explain. “I mean it’s middle school, right? And not being popular is like, total social suicide.”

“I thought you didn’t care about that stuff! Why would you even want to hang out with them in the first place? You’re way cooler than them. They’re always so concerned about following “the latest trends”, they’re all so unoriginal!”

“I don’t want to be original, Eddie, I want to be cool!” you whine.

Eddie shakes his head at you dismissively, before reaching into his pocket.

“Want some skittles?” he asks, pulling out the brightly coloured packet.

“Skittles are for kids, Eddie.” you scoff with a laugh before holding your hand open to him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” he smiles, dumping a handful of skittles into your palm. “I’ll see you at your party later, birthday girl.” 

You wrap your arms around him in a hug, saying your goodbyes,  before going your separate ways.

You fluff your hair in the mirror, swiping on a sparkly layer of strawberry pink lip gloss and adding the finishing touches to your baby blue eyeshadow. The electric sound of Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ stream through the tape player in your bedroom, it was a mixtape Eddie had put together for you for your birthday last year full of all the songs that he knew you liked plus a few more that he thought you might enjoy.

You turn yourself around in the mirror one final time, smoothing down the wrinkles on your flouncy pink party dress with your hands before putting down your lip gloss on your cluttered vanity table when you hear your mother knocking at your bedroom door.

“Honey! Can I come in?” she calls out.

You offer her a grumble of affirmation and she swings her way into your room.

“There’s my little birthday girl!” she squeals, pinching your cheeks.

You pull away from her, groaning with embarrassment.

“Mom! Stop teasing me, I’m not a little girl anymore, okay! I’ve got to look perfect if I want to get in with Nancy and her friends!”

“Oh, darling, you don’t need to worry about stuff like that. Just because you don’t look like the girls in Star Magazine, doesn’t mean that you’re not beautiful in your own way.”

“But I don’t wanna be beautiful in my own way!” you whine. “I wanna be like these girls.” you say, pointing to the beautiful, fashion model in the magazine spread out on your bed. They seemed to have it all figured out, always looking so effortlessly beautiful and carefree, without the stress of teen angst looming over them at all times. Thirty, flirty and thriving, the article had read, and that’s what you wanted. To be a flirty thirty-year-old without a care in the world.

“Sweetie, there’s a reason you don’t look like these girls, they’re models.” comes your mother’s response.

“I want to be thirty.” you pout.

Your mother hugs you close, placing a kiss to your forehead.

“You’ll get there one day, but until then, you’re my beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter.”

You’re alone in the basement of your house where it’s been decorated to within an inch of it’s life, brightly coloured streamers hang from the ceiling and a sparkly ‘happy birthday’ banner is plastered to the wall.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ music video plays from the small tv in the corner of the room, and you can’t help but join in with the familiar dance. When the music video first came out, you and Eddie had spent ages learning the routine religiously, it was one of the few songs that you both liked, the music being fun and funky enough for your tastes, whilst the music video was the right amount of creepy and spooky to capture Eddie’s attention.

You get lost in the music, the dance moves so ingrained in your brain that they come second nature to you, so much so that you fail to hear the creaking footsteps as Eddie descends his way down the steps to the basement.

“Happy Birthday!” he shouts, carrying a large pink box in his arms all neatly tied up with a sparkly bow. “I’ve got you a special present!”

“Oh my god, Eddie!”  you beam. “You know you didn’t have to get me anything!”

“And come to my best friend’s birthday party empty-handed, come on, you know that’s not my style.” he smirks as he sets down the box on the table. 

“What is it?” you look at him eagerly.

“Well it’s your birthday present, why don’t you go ahead and open it up and find out?”

You pull at the ribbon bow and lift open the box to reveal a carefully hand-built princess castle dollhouse. It’s carefully made with lots of little cardboard boxes stuck together, painted a soft baby pink, complete with hand-painted twirling vine flowers climbing up the spiral towers. Inside the walls are lined with lavender paper and colourful candy wrappers in place of stained glass windows.

“Remember, how you said you wanted the Barbie princess castle for your birthday last year? Well I wanted to give you something better than Barbie’s castle, and give you your own castle.” he smiles. “Look, and there you are, the birthday princess in her castle!” he smiles, nodding towards the miniature princess figurine, painted to look exactly like you in the mock-up throne room. “It was a D&D miniature I had been saving for this exact moment!”

“Oh Eddie this is beautiful!” you bubble, this was the sweetest thing that anybody had ever done for you.

“Wait! I almost forgot the best bit!” he smirks, reaching into his pocket to pull out another miniature D&D figure. “Can’t have a princess castle without a knight in shining armour to protect it now, can you?” It was a small knight, painted to look like Eddie, with his long dark curls, holding up a sword and a shield. “Thought you might need me to help protect you and your castle from those pesky dragons.”

You marvel at the amount of thought, care and attention to detail that Eddie had put into your present, your smile beaming across your face.

“And for the finishing touch, just a sprinkle of wishing dust!” he says, sprinkling a small amount of iridescent silver glitter over the castle.

“Wishing dust?” 

“Yeah, wishing dust knows what’s in your heart of hearts, your true desires and will make all your dreams come true.”

You and Eddie have a moment of peace, before the doorbell sounds out across the house.

“Oh they’re here!” you squeak, rushing around to tidy up as best as you can before letting Nancy in. “I’m just going to put this away for a moment, just so there’s room for everyone here.” you say picking up Eddie’s hand-made castle and putting it in the broom closet.  “Put on some music, please Eddie!”

You make your way to the front door, quickly smoothing your hands down your party dress before opening the door to Nancy and her gang of girls.

“Come on in, the party’s downstairs.” you smile, gesturing for everyone to make their way into your house. One by one all the girls follow Nancy inside, everybody shedding their jackets and dumping them into your arms as they go.

Just as you were about to close the door, Steve Harrington rolls up, with his friends Tommy and Billy trailing closely behind him. He was so cute, way more popular than you’ll ever be, but it never stopped you having a crush on him. He was the boy that all the girls wanted, with his head full of soft, shiny, bouncy hair and charming smile, it wasn’t hard to see why he had all the girls falling at his feet. The most popular guy in school, and he was coming to your birthday party. 

“Hey, Steve!” you wave him in, trying to play it cool. “The party's just getting started, come on in!”

Downstairs everyone was gathered together, and Eddie had put on his music, a noisy mix of screeching guitar strings and heavy drum beats. I suppose in leaving him in charge of the music, he was bound to play a little Metallica.

Although, however much Eddie was rocking out to Master Of Puppets, everyone else turned their nose up at his music choices. Particularly Nancy, who took it upon herself to wander over to the stereo, flick the switch off and eject the tape from the player, filling the room with immediate silence.

“You know, it’s only you who actually likes this music, freak.” Nancy sneers, pushing the tape into Eddie’s hands.

“Whatever,” Eddie shakes his head, making his way over to you “I’m going to head next door, go get my guitar, okay?” 

“Do whatever you want, Eddie. It’s not like I need a play-by-play of everything.” you tell him, in an effort to look cool in front of Nancy and her friends, which earns you a tittering giggle from the group.

“See you later, loser!” comes a whining laugh from one of Nancy’s friends as Eddie walks away.

“Hey, I have an idea of how we could spice up this party!” Nancy pipes up, flouncing across the room. “We could play Seven Minutes in heaven!” 

Everyone nods, a murmur of agreement sounding.

“..And since you’re the birthday girl, it’s only fitting that you go first.” she smirks, taking her satin scarf from around her neck and tying around your eyes as a blindfold, before walking you towards the open door of the broom closet. “You just go in there, and we’ll choose some lucky guy to follow you in, and then he gets to do whatever he wants with you for seven whole minutes. I know Steve is dying to spend some one-on-one time with you” comes her bubblegum sweet voice in your ear.

Nancy steers you into the closet, her hands on your shoulders.

“Before I forget, you did write my project report for Mrs. O'Donnell's class, right?” she asks.

“Yeah it’s on the table.” you nod.

“Thanks. Remember, keep that blindfold on and no peeking! Oh! And by the way, Steve’s big on going to second base.”

Nancy quietly locks the closet door, leaving you stuck inside waiting for your perfect first kiss with Steve Harrington.

Nancy and her gaggle of girls, along with Steve, Billy and Tommy make their way out of your basement, walking back up the stairs, passing Eddie as he comes back down.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

“She’s waiting for you in that closet over there!” and with that Nancy leaves, quickly dashing from the party in favour of something more her scene.

Eddie shakes his head, Nancy had been bitchy enough to think that it was funny to leave you locked up in the cramped space of the broom-closet. He unlocks the door to see you sitting on the floor of the cramped up space, with the scarf tied around your eyes.

“I thought you weren’t going to come.” you say softly, thinking that finally you were going to get the chance to kiss Steve Harrington. “Where are you? I can’t feel you.” your soft voice comes out as you reach your hands out to find your man of mystery.

Eddie quietly allows himself the moment to reach his hand out to yours, letting his fingers interlock with yours.

“Oh Steve, I knew you were worth waiting for.” you sigh dreamily.

“Sorry to burst your bubble” Eddie laughs uncomfortably.

“Eddie?! What are you doing here?” you gasp, pulling the blindfold from your eyes. “Where’s Steve? Where’s everybody gone?” 

“They all left!” 

“What did you do?” you ask accusatorily.

“I didn’t do anything! I just went to get my guitar, and when I came back everyone was leaving!” Eddie defends.

You feel the red hot flare of embarrassment eating away in the pit of your stomach. Embarrassed that Nancy would actually want to be your friend, embarrassed that someone like Steve would actually go for a girl like you, but most of all upset at the fact that in reality, nobody wanted to come to your birthday party.

“No, get out!” you cry, pushing Eddie away from you.

“Wait! Please just let me talk to you! Please!” he pleads, but it all falls on deaf ears as you sink back into the closet, closing the door, leaving you to sit with your emotions.

“Leave me alone Eddie! I hate you, I hate me, I hate everybody!” you cry out shrinking into yourself, bringing your knees up to your chest, and slumping your head in your folded arms, letting your frustrated tears fall freely.

“I want to be thirty!” you cry out. “I wish I was thirty, flirty and thriving!”

A glistening sparkle washes over you, as you hug yourself tighter, wishing so hard that all of this was just a bad dream, that you were going to wake up from this and be living your dream life.

Thirty, flirty and thriving.

@paybacksawitch @penguinsandpotterheads @ali-r3n @aphrogeneias @eddiesxangel @mrsjellymunson @munsonology @onegirlmanytales @xxbimbobunnyxx

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard settings details - Display and Graphics

This post is under a cut due to length.

This information comes directly from the game.

DA:TV menu 'pages': Display, Graphics, Audio, Controls, Gameplay, Interface, Accessibility, Other.

For some of the settings, additional detail on a specific one (the one that was selected at that particular point during the video, e.g. "Window Mode" was set to "Full Screen") is given after the general explanation/definition of the setting itself. These are in italics at the end of an entry.

DISPLAY

Display Mode

Active Monitor: Select the monitor for game display. Window Mode: Switches between full screen, windowed, and borderless windowed modes. You can press ALT+ENTER at any time to switch between full screen and windowed modes. In full screen mode, the game will play on the entire screen. Screen Resolution: Changes the game's display resolution. The game's level of on-screen detail is determined by the number of pixels it contains. Higher resolution increases the number of pixels displayed, which will result in a clearer image. This comes with a potential cost to performance. Refresh Rate: Sets how often your display will refresh game visuals. A higher refresh rate means a smoother picture, depending on your computer's hardware. Frame Rate Limit: Sets the maximum framerate for the game. VSync: Synchronizes the game's framerate with the display's refresh rate to prevent screen tearing.

Calibration

Brightness: Adjusts the intensity of the game's visuals. Makes all visuals lighter or darker. Contrast: Adjusting the contrast will change the difference in color and light between the brightest and darkest parts of the screen. Enable HDR: HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode provides enhanced color and contrast ranges. This option can only be enabled on supported displays. HDR must also be enabled in your operating system. Use the HDR Calibration option below to adjust. HDR Calibration: Launches the HDR calibration tool which adjusts the HDR settings to best match your display. The maximum brightness level should generally be adjusted to match what your HDR display will support. Measured in nits. This is only available when Enable HDR is turned on.

Upscaling

Unsample Method: Improve performance and visuals by rendering the game at a smaller resolution, then "upsampling" to a larger resolution for display. The pixels that make up the difference between the two resolutions are generated using advanced algorithms. Unsample Quality: Select the desired quality level for the upsampling method selected. DLSS Frame Generation: DLSS Frame Generation can generate additional frames that boost your overall frame rate. In order to use Frame Generation, you must have an NVIDIA RTX 40-series graphics card. NVIDIA Reflex: NVIDIA Reflex is a technology that helps reduce input latency while playing the game. In order to take advantage of NVIDIA Reflex's feature, you must have a supported NVIDIA graphics card. Anti-Aliasing: Anti-Aliasing smooths out pixels along the edge of objects that can look sharp or jagged in certain situations. Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) uses information from current and past frames to address aliasing issues. The high setting uses a large range of frames and will result in a higher quality anti-aliasing effect, but with a higher performance cost.

Resolution Scaling

Render Scale: Controls the resolution the game is rendered at relative to your display resolution. Settings below 100% may decrease visual fidelity, but can improve performance. Settings above 100% may increase visual fidelity, but can negatively impact performance. Dynamic Resolution Scaling: Automatically lowers the game's resolution in real-time to maintain the target frame rate. Target Frames Per Second: Determines the target frame rate for dynamic resolution scaling. Minimum Resolution Scale: Determines how low the resolution can be scaled when Dynamic Resolution Scaling is active.

GRAPHICS

Graphics Preset

Graphics Preset: Graphics presets are predefined configurations that simultaneously adjust multiple graphics settings to achieve a balance between visuals and performance. Restart required for setting change. Maximizes visual fidelity by setting most graphics options to their highest values. Recommended for the Ultra hardware specification tier.

Textures

Texture Quality: Selects the level of detail and resolution for textures applied to objects in the game. Higher settings will result in more detailed textures, potentially at the cost of performance. Restart required for setting change. CPU - Moderate. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Major. Texture Filtering: Adjusts the appearance of textures at varied angles and distances. Higher settings will increase texture quality, though potentially at the cost of performance. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Minor.

Light and Shadow

Lighting Quality: Adjusts the appearance of shadows, reflections, and light-scattering. Higher settings increase the visual fidelity of light effects. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Major. Contact Shadow: Contact Shadows improves the appearance of shadows when objects are close to one another. It fills gaps between objects and shadows that can occur with static lighting. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Minor. Ambient Occlusion: Ambient Occlusion is a technique to simulate soft shadows where objects are close together or where surfaces meet. This makes the scene look more realistic. Disabled when Ray-traced Ambient Occlusion is enabled. CPU - Minor. GPU - Major. VRAM - Minor. Disables Ambient Occlusion. This potentially increases performance at the cost of visual fidelity. Screen Space Reflections: Screen Space Reflections simulate reflections of objects and light on visible surfaces. Enabling this will result in high-quality reflections. Disabled when Ray-traced Reflections are enabled. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Moderate. Volumetric Lighting: Adjusts the appearance of volumetric lighting effects. This simulates how light interacts with atmospheric elements like fog, smoke, dust, and clouds. Higher settings increase the quality of these types of elements. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Minor. Sky Quality: Adjusts the appearance of the sky, clouds, and celestial bodies like the sun and moon. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Minor.

Ray Tracing

Ray-traced Reflections: Enables the use of Ray-Tracing to simulate realistic reflections of objects and light on reflective surfaces. This is a more advanced technique and requires specialized Ray Tracing compatible hardware. CPU - Major. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. In selective mode, the game will only enable Ray-traced Reflections in specific areas that can best take advantage of the feature. Ray-traced Ambient Occlusion: Enables the use of Ray Tracing to simulate soft shadows where objects are close together or where surfaces meet. This makes the scene look more realistic. This is a more advanced technique and requires specialized Ray Tracing compatible hardware. CPU - Major. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion is always on. Ultra Ray Tracing: Enables the highest level of ray tracing effects, which provide better quality visuals at the cost of performance. This setting is available on the Ultra and Custom graphics presets and is only recommended for high-end graphics cards.

Geometry

Level Of Detail: Adjusts the distance at which objects are visible and the level of detail as they get father away from the camera. Higher settings increase the visual quality of objects at distance. Restart required for setting change. CPU - Major. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. Strand Hair: Strand hair simulates the appearance and movement of individual strands of hair. Enabling this will result in more realistic and natural-looking hair. CPU - Major. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. Terrain Quality: Terrain is the natural landscape and ground surfaces. Higher settings will increase the detail and overall quality. CPU - Moderate. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. Terrain Decoration Quality: Adjusts the appearance and detail of terrain elements like rocks, vegetation, and other environmental objects. Higher settings will increase the quality and density of the terrain elements. CPU - Moderate. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate. Visual Effects Quality: Adjusts the quality and detail of visual effects throughout the game. This includes particle effects, decals, and screen effects. Higher settings will result in higher quality effects. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Moderate.

Camera Effects

Depth of Field: The Depth of Field effect causes some elements of the scene to be in focus, and others to be out of focus. This effect is generally only used in cutscenes and conversations. CPU - Minor. GPU - Minor. VRAM - Minor. Depth of Field is only enabled in cinematic sequences. Vignette: The vignette creates a subtle darkening of the image towards the edges of the screen during cinematics and gameplay. This is generally used to enhance the atmosphere of scenes. CPU - Minor. GPU - Minor. VRAM - Minor. Motion Blur: Motion Blur slightly blurs fast-moving objects. This helps make motion appear smoother and more natural. CPU - Minor. GPU - Minor. VRAM - Minor. Post Processing Quality: Adjusts the overall quality of the post process effects above like depth of field, bloom and motion blur. Higher settings will result in higher quality effects. CPU - Minor. GPU - Moderate. VRAM - Minor. Field of View: Adjusts the field of view, which changes how much of the game world is visible during gameplay. A higher field of view allows you to see more of the game world. CPU - Major. GPU - Major. VRAM - Moderate.

[source]

[duckprintspress]

Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale

A guest post by Aeryn Jemariel Knox. (@jemariel)

Ah, the citrus scale. It’s like a cryptid roaming the edges of modern fandom communities. Long-tenured veterans speak of it with affectionate mockery while newcomers google curiously. A relic from a bygone fandom era, the citrus scale saw a brief resurgence in 2018 during the Tumblr porn ban, suggested as a way to avoid the new bot censors trawling for posts with the NSFW tag—though never, I think, in seriousness. 

That may have been jocular and short-lived, but it does point to the reasons why the citrus scale was created in the first place. Certain fandom activities have always had to fly under the radar to one degree or another. Whether you’re trying to evade legal action or simply avoid deletion based on explicit content, a certain level of obfuscation is sometimes worthwhile.

It’s not hard to find the generally agreed-upon definitions of the citrus scale’s levels. According to Fanlore, KnowYourMeme, and others, this is more or less the “official” citrus scale:

Orange: Light stuff, kissing, nothing below the waist or under the clothes. 

Lime: Groping, implied sex without details, fade-to-black, no intercourse or intimate contact.

Lemon: Sex, in full detailed glory. Woo-hoo! Regardless of the actual acts performed, if you can tell who had an orgasm (or, perhaps, had an orgasm denied), how, and where, it’s a lemon.

Grapefruit: We’ll get into this later.

But these tidy categories are clear thanks to the benefit of hindsight. In the Wild West of the early internet, it was not so easy to pin down exactly what you might be getting into based on which term was used.

At its origin, the citrus scale wasn’t a scale at all. It has its roots in hentai (and was always more popular in anime fandoms), stemming from a specific early hentai film by the title of Cream Lemon (1984). Hentai being what it is, this led to certain subculture communities referring to any story with explicit sexual content as a “Lemon.” And for a while, that was the extent of it. Then came fanfiction.net purging explicit content (2002), Livejournal suffering Strikethru (2007), and other events that pushed burgeoning fandom communities out of their growing hubs and back into smaller, isolated communities centered on a single fandom or pairing. In the relatively sparse early ’00’s internet, anybody could spin up an Angelfire website, pass the link around to their friends, and get a reasonable amount of traffic.  Websites devoted to the works of a single author or small group were common.

I mention this to describe the landscape in which fandom lexicons grew and evolved in the early-mid 2000s. Each pocket community had its own rules, lingo, and expectations; venturing outside of your home pocket could lead to some pretty major miscommunications. 

“Lemon” was established early and its definition has hardly shifted. It means that the labeled content (art, fic, mood board, etc.) includes sex. Intercourse, bumping uglies, etc. However, some yaoi fandom niches used it specifically to mean gay sex of the male variety. In some communities, “lime” developed as a corresponding term for feminine gay sex, while other communities brought it up with the usage that eventually “stuck,” “not quite a lemon.” Given that lemon and lime often go hand in hand when discussing actual flavors, the fact that we had some divergent term evolution is not surprising. But coming in from a different pocket of fandom and seeing “lime,” thinking you’ll be reading semi-softcore sexual tension and instead being confronted with graphic sapphic antics? Bit of a shock, I’m sure.

A more dramatic example is the rating level of “Grapefruit,” which occupies two completely different ends of the scale. In some circles, grapefruit was defined as “less intense than lime,” G or PG-rated stories that were more soft or cute than sexy. In other circles, it was used to mean the exact opposite. Kinkier than kink, smuttier than smut, grapefruit art and fic was where you went to have your eyebrows singed off. Some communities were even more specific, using grapefruit for stories featuring non-consensual sex. This was where darkfic lived – in modern day parlance, your “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” works. To say that this usage difference caused some disagreements would be putting it mildly.

Nobody really worried about orange. Orange just existed, not bothering anybody.

When these terms were coined, the internet was not an assumed aspect of everybody’s daily life the way it is today. There was no Tumblr, no Facebook, no social media to speak of. There were no large repositories of internet lore and knowledge such as Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme. It was a playground. And what do you do on a playground? You make friends! The citrus scale, like so many fandom tropes and concepts, was defined by groups of friends that created them ad hoc to meet their own needs at the time. No one could have predicted that it would become so much a fandom history that it’d be enshrined, nor that I would be writing a blog post about it two decades later. From the common source of lemon, people extrapolated what the rest of the scale might look like, and there was no authority to tell them they were wrong. (Except other fans. That hasn’t changed.)

In conclusion, it’s best not to take the citrus scale too seriously. At best, it’s a cheeky way to avoid censors who try to bar a community from engaging with explicit works, but it’s also varied to a fault and open to interpretation. If you and your community have come up with a use for it that suits your needs, then congratulations: you’re part of a fandom tradition stretching back to the roots of the internet. Just don’t try and tell anybody else that they’re wrong. You might start a flame war.

References:

Prokopetz: Orange and Grapefruit

She’s Got Plans: What is the Citrus Scale in Fanfiction?

Unwinnable: Lemon and Lime

Past Fandom 101 Posts:

Everything About A/B/O Dynamics You Wanted to Know (but were Afraid to Ask)

How to Diversify Your To-Be-Read Pile

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖Make it Stick: Pt. 1 The Dragon

Rating: Explicit

Chapter Rating: Mature

Pairing: Bucky x ofc x Steve

Word Count: 1103

Tags: dark!fic, mob/mafia au, mob!Bucky, mob!Steve, dubcon/noncon, sexual coercion, half-sibling incest, m/f/m, non-con drug use, mentions of torture (non graphic), double penetration, forced tattooing, forced orgasms, enemies to lovers

Summary: When his babygirl—his sweet pea, little one, puppy ... half-sister—is recaptured after her latest attempt at running away, Bucky makes a power play in front of the entire Bratva to remind her exactly who she belongs to.

Dark and smutty content below the break. Consume responsibly.

“Да. Good. Make sure she stays that way. Now, tell me everything.” Bucky listens to his henchman’s answer, pissed in general but only getting truly angry when he hears one specific detail. “She was with who?! Ублюдок!!” He takes the phone away from his face for a second as he curses in three different languages. Fucking Gleb. He fucking knew it. He’s going to cut his fucking dick off! When he brings the phone back up to his face, all he utters is a deathly quiet, “We’re in the Dragon’s Den. Get them here. Both of them.” He ends the call.

The gun at Bucky’s back has stopped buzzing. Funny, how it’s the sudden lack of pain that makes goosebumps rise to his skin. “Boss?” Natasha asks.

Bucky’s eyes flick over to Steve, who’s sitting next to the Karpovs on the couch. One moment of intense eye contact between the two of them, and Steve’s face goes wan in recognition. Tight-lipped, Bucky gives an almost imperceptible nod of confirmation. Steve squares his shoulders and pushes up to standing to go over to the bar. The guy has an almost preternatural ability to predict Bucky’s wants and needs, which is one reason why he’s risen through the ranks so fast (well, it's one, leastways). He artfully flips a lowball, knowing what this situation calls for without having to be told; ice and two fingers of the Russo-Baltique that’s so expensive, Bucky once stabbed a guy’s hand into a table for drinking it without permission.

Steve delivers the glass and retreats to stand sentinel along the wall. Bucky sips, sets it down, growls and grabs it up again. He rolls the liquor in his mouth as he fumes, a dark plan starting to form in his head. It comes together quickly, because it’s not like he hasn’t spent plenty of time fantasizing about it before now. What he’d do when he finally got her back.

His little one is tenacious and likes to make trouble. She has a penchant for running away, but she’s never lasted this long before. It’s been over ten months—long enough to put the fear of God in Bucky that he could actually lose her for good, if he isn’t more careful. So, he has to be careful, has to make a statement, send a message. He has to make it stick.

Luckily, when it comes to “sending messages,” Bucky Barnes can be very creative. Like tattooing, torture is an oft underappreciated artform. “Dimi,” he barks. “I’m expecting some special guests tonight. Go and sort things out downstairs. I want the place packed by ten—Make sure it’s with the right people.”

“Boss?” Lev pipes up, confused. He’s Karpov’s kid brother: new, inexperienced but eager, still “earning his scales,” as the boys like to say.

Dimitri jerks his head for his brother to follow him. “Boss wants a demonstration. C’mon.” He’s already got his phone out as they leave the room to get things arranged. Bucky’s “demonstrations” usually require plastic sheeting and a crowd of people who are either Hydra themselves, or else educated enough to know to keep their mouths shut about Bratva business.

“Where’d they find her?” Steve asks.

Bucky scoffs, still fuming. “Floating off the coast of Belize. On my own fucking yacht. Can you even believe that?”

“Sounds like her.”

“Lena?” Nat hums. “Who’d you send?”

“Maximoff and Belova have her.” Bucky grits his teeth at the sting as Natasha uses a wet cloth to wipe off the excess blood and ink. He can feel her scrutinizing her work. “You can keep going,” he tells her, but she ‘tsks’ in that way that only a Russian tongue can really do.

“We’ll come back to it. Skin behaves differently when you’re not relaxed.”

“I’m am relaxed!” He hears how ridiculous he sounds and heaves a long sigh, trying to let his shoulders untense to at least somewhere below the level of his ears. “I’m relaxed.”

“Keep saying it and it might come true.” Nat rolls away on her stool, peeling off her gloves with finality. “Your blood pressure and vodka’ll push the ink out faster than I can stick it. Just come over to the Red Room once it’s done scabbing and we’ll finish it then.”

She’s already packing up her stuff when Bucky gets the idea. “Wait.” He narrows his eyes at the rolling toolkit that Nat keeps in the club’s upstairs lounge just for him and his men. “Do me a favor,” he says slowly, the idea taking shape in his mind. “Run down to the shop and print out a transfer for me. Cyrillic. A small font. Something pretty but … bold. Easy to read.”

Natasha tenses. “What do you want it to say?”

“собственность дракона.”

“No,” she says, and when Bucky looks over, she’s standing ramrod straight.

“Clearly, you disapprove.”

“I’m not inking it.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he snaps, low on patience tonight, even for Natasha. “Print it out on a goddamn transfer sheet and bring it to me.”

She’s doing that dead faced thing she does—where she goes still like a doll to avoid making some expression she doesn’t want you to see. Right now, Bucky suspects it might be sheer disdain. “Size?” she asks. “Shaping?”

“One line straight up the forearm. Delicate lettering, but clear as a fucking bell to read.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what spacing—”

“You know how big she is, you figure out the fucking spacing!” he yells. “Or what the fuck am I even paying you for?!”

Natasha goes eerily still, then abruptly pivots to leave, the severe line of her hair whipping around with the motion. She’s unhappy with him.

“Red ink!” Bucky calls out, the door slamming shut after her a millisecond later. He grinds his teeth together and stands up from the chair he’s been perched in for the past three hours, carrying his drink over to the mirrors so that he can get a better look at his back.

Scales, teeth, claws. Crouched and curling across his shoulders, tendrils creeping up onto his neck, marking him as what he is: Дракон.

The Dragon.

“Will you help me?” he asks Steve, quiet now that it’s just the two of them.

“Depends on what you want me to do.”

“It depends”—No other man in the Bratva could give such an answer and expect to remain in one piece. But Steve’s gaze is steadfast when Bucky meets it and tells him, “She’s gotten away with too much for too long. It’s time to shorten the leash.”

In the mirror, Steve’s eyes darken. He nods.

Take me to part 2!

Masterlist

If you like what you read and feel so inclined, please consider dropping a tip in the Kofi🍵 cup!

Commissions: contact via Tumblr messenger or Kofi

[wednesdayfunnys]

things the boys use as conversation starters that everyone who doesnt already love them finds really really fucking annoying

stan: complaining and oversharing. “oh my god i had the worst night ever i feel terrible i barely slept and my dad’s driving me crazy and i wanna put a gun in my mouth im not even close to kidding”

kyle: criticism/pointing out a flaw/pointing out something off about you today. anything from “dude, you look like shit, whats wrong?” to “oh my god what are you wearing??” to inserting himself into an ongoing conversation with a loud and passionate contradiction bc hes jUst bLunt

eric: bragging, usually about things not worth bragging about, like his “epic” trips to the bathroom or the 5 views he got on some video he posted online.

kenny: wildly explicit stories in graphic detail like hes doing standup. sometimes his sex dreams, sometimes a porno he’s seen, sometimes a straight up made up story. he’s looking for laughs.

butters: really really boring mundane stories. “yesterday i went to the grocery store with my mom and what do you know it they moved the ketchup across the store again! geez louise we must have hunted for that stuff for half an hour! that store sure does like to move their stock around.” he might as well be talking to himself

tweek: inocherent babbling about whatever he’s fucked up about today with not much context. also he will explain the entire plot of a movie or episode of a show he likes without taking a breath and he does not say hello first

craig: snide comments. stuff that can really only be answered with “dude fuck you”

clyde: gives you a girl’s name and demands you rate on a scale from one to ten

jimmy: dad jokes in the vein of “hey why are watermelons always having weddings? because they cantaloupe :D”

tolkien: self deprecating rich boy humble bragging

[boundinparchment]

FICS FOR GAZA

Although my schedule is a bit unforgiving, I'm still writing when I can, and thus I'd like to put that effort additionally into participating in @ficsforgaza via the "Sponsor a WIP" option.

There are several WIP that are (for now) exclusive to this list and it is my hope that these projects will encourage donations towards vetted fundraisers. Word counts will be set based on achievable goals per my schedule to avoid overwhelming myself and burning the candle at both ends. I may write more than the donated word count but will always seek to meet it.

(banner credit to @/saradika-graphics)

HOW IT WORKS

$1 = 100 words written!

Make a donation to a vetted fundraiser of your choosing and send me a screenshot of your donation minus identifying personal information along with the title of the WIP you're sponsoring. These screenshots are sent to ficsforgaza to verify that they aren't used for multiple writers. For every $1 donated with submitted proof, I'll write 100 words of that particular WIP.

This link leads to tagged posts of donation posts that have been verified.

Template:

"Hi Juni, here's proof of my donation to [insert donation title]. I'd like for this to go towards [insert WIP title]. Thank you! (screenshot depicting evidence of donation depicting dollar amount; the amount donated will scale based on the rate of $1 = 100 words to be written)."

Once your ask or message is received, this post will be updated and I will track progress as words are written. This post will be managed weekly when possible.

Oneshot works will be posted when they have been fully funded; longer fics will be posted as I go to help drive donations (roughly every 300 donated words, subject to change).

ELIGIBLE WIPS

GENSHIN IMPACT

THE BEACH EPISODE - DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME SPINOFF

Drabble, probable smut and explicit rating, these two deserve a little break away from their main plot.

An interlude for Dream a Little Dream of Me. Maestra and Dottore have a little vacation and time to themselves.

current wc: 0/2,000 donated (goal) wc: 200/2,000 progress tracker: 0/2,000

THE WISDOM OF RAVENS - Raventorre/Female Reader

Beauty and the Beast retelling; monster/human relationship; quid pro quo; slowburn

The Tsaritsa was so displeased by a betrayal that she left her Palace behind and sealed it with a powerful curse. Tales told of the Winter Palaces' haunted halls, sights of wings as wide as a drake's and eyes as red as blood. There was no voron, no raven; you knew that. But you also knew that if you stayed out here, you'd freeze to death. That much was certain.

current wc: 0/2,000 donated (goal) wc: 0/2,000 progress tracker: 0/2,000

HONKAI STAR RAIL

VERTIGO EYES - Sunday/Female Original Character

Slowburn; long fic; female reader with personality; art history nonsense ensues; eventual smut; spoilers for 2.2-onward with speculation on Sunday's fate.

Armed with only a new-found sense of purpose, Sunday makes a trip to the Belobog History and Culture Museum after the Express receives your request for consideration. History is so often writ with blood that should never have been spilled and the mistakes of those who think they know best. And Sybilla is running out of time.

current wc: 1,072/2000+ donated (goal) wc: 300/2,000 progress tracker: 300/2,000

THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE - Boothill/Female Reader

Slowburn; longfic; female reader; semi-enemies to lovers; speculation regarding cybernetics and other elements of machinery alongside humanity; eventual smut; spoilers for Boothill's story.

Intellitron repairs didn't pay well, even on Penacony. Certainly not compared to salary from the IPC's Research and Development department. You had put all of that behind you, though. Or so you thought. Until a certain Galaxy Ranger stepped into your workshop with a grin and a smoking barrel.

current wc: 0/2000+ donated (goal) wc: 200/2,000 progress tracker: 0/2,000

CHANGELOG

5/29/2024:

Graphics updated

Eligible WIPs updated to include only new WIPs

5/30/2024:

Updated donated word count

6/10/2024:

Updated "Vertigo Eyes" progress wordcount

Added "The Wisdom of Ravens"

7/7/2024:

Updated “Beach Episode” spinoff donated word count

7/30/2024:

Updated synopsis for “Vertigo Eyes” from reader insert to original character

8/14/2024

Updated the donated word count for “Vertigo Eyes”

8/15/2024

Updated the total word count and written word count for "Vertigo Eyes" (donated count: 300, total word count: 1,072)

Posted Chapter 1 of "Vertigo Eyes"

[incorrect-tit-tour-predictions]

they do a slideshow of all of Phil's medical mishaps over the years complete with graphic pictures of each injury

and then they rate them on a scale of 1 (cheese) to 10 (almost met god, he’s a chill guy)

[lynnettys-world]

CALM AFTER THE STORM |BTS OT7 X READER| HYBRID AU (M)

{Chapter Twelve – Wounds Can Heal Too}

Pairing: OT7 BTS!HYBRID X FEM!HUMAN READER

Kim Namjoon: Black Mackenzie Valley Alpha wolf

Kim Soekjin: White Alpha Lion

Min Yoongi: White Alpha Jaguar

Jung Hosoek: Alpha Snow Leopard

Park Jimin : Alpha Albino Cobra

Kim Taehyung: Alpha White/ Bleached Tiger

Jeon Jungkook: Alpha Black Panther

Reader: Heaven Valentino Human

Status: Ongoing

RATED (M) FOR MATURE

words: 4.8K!

WARNING: EVENTUAL SMUT, BLOOD GORE, DETAILED GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION, ABUSE (ALL FORMS), PROFANITY, VIOLENCE, MENTIONS OF SUICIDE, CHARACTER DEATH(MINOR), SADOMASOCHISM ACTS, MENTIONS OF BDSM, ETC...

CHAPTER WARNING: This chapter includes mentions of self-hatred, negative intrusive thoughts, blood, violence, and revenge. (Mild/non-triggering)

Previous Next

MATERIALIST

Heaven's POV

It had been a challenging two weeks since I rescued the boys, and the tension in the house had certainly increased dramatically.

The boys, for the most part, continued to ignore my presence, with the exception of Namjoon, who would offer a casual greeting in the mornings and a welcoming smile when I returned from work.

With a significant investor meeting on the horizon for our upcoming project, I had thrown myself back into work full-force. 

This project was not only a crucial milestone for my business empire but also a platform to raise awareness for the often-overlooked hybrid community.

The concept of a clothing line designed specifically for hybrids had blossomed the moment I brought the boys into my home. I knew it was a risky venture, given the prevailing prejudice against hybrids, but I was determined to make a difference.

I had a secret weapon up my sleeve that I believed could tip the scales in our favor, and failure was simply not an option.

My days had blurred into a relentless cycle of work and little rest, fueled by a drive to see this project through to success.

As I trudged wearily towards the front door, exhausted from another grueling day at the office, the prospect of finally being able to rest my heavy eyelids felt like a distant luxury.

As I was about to take the home elevator up to my room, the exhaustion of the day had me craving a shortcut instead of taking the stairs. However, a movement caught my attention in the corner of my eye, momentarily bringing me out of my daze.

With a few blinks, I focused on the source of the movement and a chill ran down my spine.

A large white snake, easily measuring twenty to thirty inches in length, was slithering slowly across the gray marble tiles, weaving an eerie path before me.

Before panic could fully grip me, another presence entered my field of vision, causing my knees to waver involuntarily from the jolt of fear.

A majestic black panther sat before me, its intense gaze locking with mine, deep green eyes piercing through my senses as though challenging me to react.

In a state of shock, I attempted to retreat, forgetting about the snake, when a low, menacing growl resounded from behind, sending shivers down my spine and causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end.

Frozen in place, too petrified to even dare a movement, the weight of impending danger hung heavy in the air. Each breath felt like a struggle, heavy and strained, as a surge of primal fear coursed through me.

Summoning the last shred of courage within, I mustered the strength to turn around, only to find myself face to face with a large snow leopard, its wild eyes capturing the essence of untamed wilderness in a chilling stare.

In that moment of peril, surrounded by formidable predators, a profound sense of vulnerability enveloped me, rendering me dizzy with fear. 

Each heartbeat seemed to echo like a drum of impending doom, a symphony of dread reverberating through the confines of the space.

Amidst the surreal encounter with these dangerous creatures, a desperate prayer escaped my lips, imploring any divine entity listening to heed my call for salvation. The juxtaposition of seeking a moment of respite and finding myself encircled by perilous beasts painted an unsettling tableau of inexplicable events.

Why had fate chosen this moment, turning a simple journey to seek rest into a harrowing trial of survival?

All I yearned for was peaceful sleep.

As I found myself lost in the intensity of the situation, my senses were heightened by the heavy sounds echoing from the stairs.

It was as if time slowed down as a large, fur-covered figure appeared before me.

A black wolf -- Namjoon.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks as I processed the fact that my beloved hybrids, Jimin, Hoseok, and Jungkook, had also shifted into their hybrid forms.

Namjoon stood as a protective barrier in front of me, his growls reverberating in the air as he faced off against the three hybrids who had transformed into a snake, leopard, and panther.

Each of them exuded a raw power that sent chills down my spine.

In his wolf form, Namjoon's imposing figure loomed over me, reaching an impressive height of 6 feet and boasting a 9-inch length. His lustrous black fur glistened in the ambient light, casting an eerie yet alluring aura around him.

The sight of his large paws firmly planted on the ground and his sharp canines gleaming sent a shiver down my spine.

Lost in the mesmerizing presence of Namjoon, I was abruptly brought back to reality by a cold sensation snaking up my leg, winding its way around me with a deliberate slowness that made my skin crawl.

The snake, who I recognized as Jimin, coiled around me, his grip tightening gradually, encircling my body with a suffocating hold that left me paralyzed by fear.

Just as the tension peaked, a deafening roar pierced the air, drawing my attention to a majestic sight in the living room. 

There, standing regally, was Jin in his magnificent white lion form, a sight to behold with his pristine fur and a mane that added to his already imposing stature.

My gaze shifted back and forth between Jin and Jimin, the conflicting emotions of awe and terror battling within me.

Jimin's tightening grip served as a stark reminder of the danger that loomed around me, my sharp inhales reverberating through the room as the situation spiraled into a surreal nightmare.

In the midst of chaos, I found myself standing frozen, my heart pounding in my chest as I witnessed the violent clash between Namjoon and Jungkook.

The room was filled with tension as their large bodies collided with a deafening thud, sending shivers down my spine.

I realized the gravity of the situation, I had never felt so helpless before, my mind racing to come up with a solution to defuse the escalating confrontation between the two hybrids.

Panic surged through me as I scanned the room for any sign of assistance, only to remember that I had sent all my staff home for the weekend, leaving me alone with the seven hybrids.

A sense of dread washed over me as Hoseok entered the fray, the sight of blood painting a grim picture of the danger that loomed in front of me. 

Desperation clawed at my insides as I knew I had to intervene before things spiraled out of control.

"Jimin, please, if you can hear me," I implored, my voice trembling with fear as I addressed the snake hybrid coiled around me. "I beg of you, we need to stop this fight before it descends into a bloody massacre."

The urgency in my plea was palpable, each word carrying the weight of the dire consequences that awaited if I failed to bring an end to the violent clash unfolding before me.

My mind raced with thoughts of possible strategies to diffuse the tension and restore peace among my hybrids before irreversible harm was done.

Despite the chaos reigning in the room, a sense of determination welled up within me, propelling me to take action and prevent further bloodshed.

With each passing moment, the stakes grew higher, and I knew that time was of the essence in resolving the conflict that threatened to tear apart the fragile peace that held our unique household together.

I knew it would be risky to remove the nano chips from their bodies, especially when their animal aspects started merging with their human psyches, battling for dominance.

The suppressed desire to be wild and shift had been boiling beneath the surface for so long that now, they were letting their animalistic sides run rampant.

I had a strong feeling that Jimin was somewhere in the midst of it all. All I needed to do was to locate him and help him regain control, to synchronize his psyche with his animal form. It was crucial for him to find that balance.

Thankfully, when Taehyung shifted a couple of weeks ago, he appeared to be in tune with his animal side. However, I could sense that the animal part of him was struggling to assert itself, and he was fighting to keep it in check.

Hybrids like them needed to establish a deep connection with their animal counterparts to form a strong bond. This mutual understanding was vital for co-existence - to find a balance of power.

Regular shifting was a key component in maintaining this delicate harmony. Without it, hybrids risked losing control, becoming feral, and possibly losing their human sides forever.

It was a delicate dance between their human selves and animal instincts, a dance that required finesse and mastery.

If we didn't act swiftly and wisely, the consequences could be disastrous for all of us.

"I know you're in there, Jimin. I know you can hear me," I began, my voice tinged with a mixture of sorrow and desperation.

"I'm sorry I let you down. I'm sorry I broke my promise. I was so stubborn, so willful, thinking no one would ever dare challenge me in my own home. But I was wrong, and my arrogance led to your abduction."

The memory of the day the boys were taken played out in my mind, each detail a painful reminder of my shortcomings.

"I allowed you to suffer, despite vowing to shield you from harm. I understand that forgiveness may not come easily, but please, for the sake of your pack, find the strength to break free and help me stop this. Please," I pleaded, my voice faltering as tears welled up in my eyes and streamed down my face.

Silently, I beseeched Jimin to acknowledge my plea, hoping against hope for a sign that he had heard me.

The tension that had gripped my body began to dissipate, replaced by a glimmer of hope as Jimin unwound himself from around me, his serpentine form moving away before disappearing and reappearing in front of me.

His gaze, so striking with its eerie silver hue, met mine, revealing a tumult of emotions beneath his composed exterior. 

There was a brief moment of connection, a silent exchange of understanding, as his eyes scanned the room and settled on Jin in his majestic lion form, who stood poised to intervene and help get things under control.

As I stood there, my heart sinking with despair, I couldn't help but feel a mix of emotions swirling inside me.

The chaotic scene before me, with my hybrids engaging in a heated confrontation, left me feeling helpless and overwhelmed. Jin and Jimin's attempts to diffuse the situation were in vain, as Namjoon, Hoseok, and Jungkook remained stubborn and unyielding.

Trying to maintain my composure, I felt a wave of exhaustion crashing over me, the adrenaline that had fueled me earlier now dissipating.

The room seemed to warp and blur before my eyes, making it difficult to focus on anything tangible. My head throbbed with a dull ache, and I struggled to keep my thoughts clear amidst the chaos unfolding before me.

In that moment of disorientation, I found myself struggling to even form coherent words. My voice came out as a mere whisper, barely audible amidst the clashing of my hybrids.

"J-jimin," I managed to mutter, hoping to reach out to someone, anyone, who could bring some semblance of peace to the turmoil surrounding us.

Just as I felt myself teetering on the edge of consciousness, a sudden command cut through the tumultuous noise.

A deep, authoritative voice resonated with power, its tone laced with a steely resolve that demanded obedience.

"Enough!" the voice boomed, startling me with its forcefulness.

As the weight of that single word hung in the air, a sense of finality washed over me.

My body, weary from the strain of the confrontation, finally gave in to the darkness that threatened to consume me. 

Sounds became muffled and distant, like echoes from a far-off realm, yet amidst the fading clamor, I could discern a faint call of my name.

The voice sounded fragile and desperate, as if reaching out to me from a place of deep vulnerability. It carried an undertone of fear and longing, as though afraid that I would slip away into the void, never to return to the light of consciousness.

In that fleeting moment, as darkness encroached upon my senses, I clung to that haunting plea, a poignant reminder of the fragile threads that bound us together in our shared turmoil.

3rd Person's POV 

Two days had passed since Heaven fell unconscious, leaving the hybrids on edge with fear and uncertainty.

The air was thick with worry for Heaven's well-being, but also tinged with anger towards themselves for not heeding earlier warnings.

Despite their dismissive behavior and sharp tongue, Heaven had never once held a grudge against the hybrids. Even when faced with insults or harsh treatment,

Heaven always responded with a smile, offering reassurance and understanding.

The hybrids couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt for their past actions. They regretted not listening to Heaven, not showing more care and compassion when it was needed.

The realization that Heaven remained forgiving and kind in the face of their indifference only fueled their sense of remorse.

They questioned themselves, wondering why Heaven had to be so forgiving, so gentle. Why couldn't she have been more like the other humans the hybrids had encountered - cold and unforgiving?

Perhaps then, the hybrids wouldn't be grappling with this overwhelming guilt.

But Heaven's inherent kindness and understanding demeanor stood in stark contrast to the harshness the hybrids had grown accustomed to.

It was a reminder of their own shortcomings, highlighting the stark difference between Heaven and the rest of the world.

As time passed and Heaven remained unconscious, the hybrids found themselves wrestling with their emotions. 

They were torn between their anger towards themselves and their deep-rooted appreciation for Heaven's unwavering kindness.

The internal conflict waged on, leaving them to grapple with their own sense of morality and empathy.

Faced with their own flaws and the stark contrast presented by Heaven's forgiving nature, the hybrids couldn't help but feel a growing sense of vulnerability and unease.

The guilt weighed heavily on their hearts, a reminder of the missed opportunities to show compassion and understanding.

Despite their misgivings and internal struggles, one thing remained clear - Heaven's impact on the hybrids was undeniable.

Her kindness and forgiveness had touched something deep within the hybrids, stirring emotions and prompting reflection on their own actions and behaviors.

The days passed slowly, each moment filled with a mix of fear, uncertainty, and a burgeoning sense of regret for the missed chances to be better.

As she lay unconscious in her bed, her breathing steady, they watched over her with heavy hearts.

"When is she going to wake up?" Jungkook asked, his eyes bloodshot from crying and restless nights spent worrying about her.

"The doctors said she might wake up tomorrow or in the late hours of the night," Namjoon replied, his voice calm but the other hybrids could sense the worry hidden beneath his composed facade.

~Three Days Ago~

As Yoongi and Taehyung thundered down the corridor, the echoes of their hurried footsteps reverberated through the tense atmosphere.

The commotion had drawn them irresistibly, Yoongi's brow furrowed in concern while Taehyung's eyes widened with apprehension.

Upon reaching the chaotic scene, they beheld a sight that made their hearts clench with worry. Your body leaned against the wall weakly trying to stop the fight.

Your slight figure swaying unsteadily as you struggled to maintain your balance amidst the escalating conflict. Yoongi's alpha instincts surged to the forefront, his protective instincts dictating his next move.

With a voice that brooked no argument, Yoongi's commanding roar sliced through the air, halting the fight in its tracks.

"Enough!"

The hybrids turned as one to face the source of that authoritative command, their expressions a mix of surprise and deference. In that charged moment, all eyes were on Yoongi, his alpha side in full control of the situation.

But even as the conflict dissipated, your strength gave out, your body finally succumbing to the strain. With a gasp, you began to crumple to the ground, your eyes fluttering shut as darkness threatened to engulf you.

In a swift and fluid motion, Yoongi's strong arms encircled you, catching you securely before you could hit the unforgiving ground.

As Taehyung moved closer, his features etched with concern, Yoongi cradled you gently, his touch surprisingly tender despite the urgency of the situation.

The gravity of the moment hung heavy in the air, the tension palpable as your unconscious form was held in the protective embrace of the alpha, a silent promise of safety and security in the midst of turmoil.

~Present~

Yoongi had not left her side for the past two days, refusing to budge, growling at the nurses who constantly tried to reassure him that they were only there to help.

That night, the hybrids were on edge, unsure of what to do next. In a panic, they decided to call her brothers, who arrived in a rush at the news of their sister's condition.

Not wanting to worry her family further, the hybrids held back some details of how she ended up in this state, fearing her brothers might react rashly and take them away.

And so she lay there, connected to the drip and monitor, looking unnaturally pale and frail, causing the hybrids to ache with worry.

"You go ahead and rest, I'll keep an eye on her," Yoongi declared firmly, his gaze unwavering as he took on the responsibility of watching over her.

Reluctantly, the others filed out of the room, closing the door behind them, leaving Yoongi alone to stand guard by her side.

Yoongi's POV

As I stood by her bedside, the weight of regret and guilt bore down on me heavily. I couldn't shake off the immense sense of responsibility for the current state she was in.

The room was quiet, save for the soft rhythmic sounds of her breaths, a painful reminder of her fragile state.

Her peaceful face, lying there so vulnerably, stirred a whirlwind of emotions within me. The remorse in my heart couldn't be contained any longer, and the words I had held back for so long finally found their way out of my lips.

"Please, can you hear me?" I implored softly, the rawness in my voice revealing the depth of my regret.

"I want to express how truly sorry I am for everything. I understand that my apologies may sound inadequate, mere words in the face of the pain I've caused you. I know that no amount of remorse can undo the hurt I've inflicted."

The memory of that fateful day when we were taken flashed vividly in my mind. In the chaos and fear that gripped us, I let my distrust and prejudice taint my judgment.

Blinded by my past experiences with humans I failed to see the truth, to see beyond my own fears.

"When we were separated, I let my prejudices cloud my perception. I blamed you without evidence, succumbing to my own insecurities and biases."

The weight of my admission hung heavy in the room, mingling with the palpable air of regret.

Tears welled up in my eyes, a silent testament to the pain and regret that gnawed at my insides. I bared my soul, laying bare my vulnerabilities as I continued to pour my heart out.

"I cannot excuse my actions, nor do I deserve your forgiveness, but I need you to know that I never intended to cause you harm. I was consumed by anger and hurt, my judgment clouded by my own pain."

Beneath the facade of strength that I had upheld for so long, a sea of emotions surged, threatening to engulf me.

The walls I had meticulously built around my heart began to crumble, leaving me exposed and vulnerable. A bitter, broken laugh escaped my lips, echoing the shards of regret that pierced my heart.

In that moment of raw honesty and vulnerability, I allowed myself to confront the depth of my remorse and the magnitude of my mistakes.

The silence that followed my confession was deafening, amplifying the weight of my words and the gravity of the situation. Through the haze of tears and regret, I found myself grappling with the harsh reality of my actions and the irreversible consequences they had wrought.

As I sat there, a mere silhouette of the creature I once thought myself to be, I knew that this moment of reckoning was both painful and necessary.

And so, with a heavy heart and a trembling voice, I whispered a final plea into the silent void,

"For whatever it's worth, I am truly sorry. I can only hope that someday, somehow, you can find it in your heart to forgive me."

And with that, I stood there, enveloped in the suffocating embrace of regret and remorse, knowing that the road to redemption, if it existed at all, began with this moment of truth and vulnerability.

The weight of guilt and self-blame seemed suffocating as I sat amidst the ruins of what was once a peaceful haven. The wreckage around me mirrored the turmoil within me, a manifestation of the chaos I had caused.

Thoughts of unworthiness and regret swirled incessantly in my mind, each whispering a harsh truth that cut deeper than the last.

"You are worthless," one voice sneered, echoing the self-condemnation that had taken root within me.

"Just leave," another urged, an enticing escape from the pain and devastation I had wrought.

The echoes of my own self-criticism reverberated like a ceaseless barrage, each word a sharp blade slicing through my already battered soul.

"Nobody loves a selfish bastard," they taunted, a cruel reminder of the isolation that seemed inevitable in the wake of my actions.

The most insidious of all was the internal voice that demanded the ultimate penance, the final act of self-punishment. "Kill yourself already," it hissed, a chilling suggestion that I struggled to push away.

In that moment of darkness, when despair threatened to consume me whole, a single word shattered the suffocating silence.

"Sweetheart."

Her voice, filled with an inexplicable tenderness, called to me like a lifeline thrown in the midst of a stormy sea.

My eyes, clouded with tears and self-recrimination, widened as I beheld her gaze, a mix of confusion and something else—something that felt like love.

"H-Heaven?" I choked out, my voice a broken whisper tinged with disbelief.

She looked at me, a smile playing on her lips despite the weariness that lingered in her eyes. With a softness that belied her strength, she spoke words that pierced through the darkness surrounding me.

"Why are you hurting yourself, huh? My love, none of this is your fault. You deserve all the happiness in the world, and I swore to give it to you."

Her voice, though weakened by her own ordeal, carried a conviction that resonated deep within me. In that moment, her unwavering faith in me was a beacon of light in the shadowed landscape of my self-doubt.

As her words wrapped around my wounded heart, a glimmer of hope flickered to life, banishing the darkness that had threatened to consume me.

In her eyes, I saw a reflection of a love unconditional and steadfast, a love that dared to defy the darkness that threatened to engulf me.

In the poignant moment when the floodgates of emotions finally gave way, I found myself dropping to my knees beside her bed, overwhelmed with sorrow and regret.

Tears streamed down my face as I reached out for her hand, my heart heavy with apologies that spilled out in stammered phrases.

"I'm so sorry... I-I-I shouldn't have pushed you away, I-I-I— " My words were cut off as she gently placed her delicate hand on my trembling lips.

"Shhh, my love, there's no need for apologies. You have nothing to blame yourself for," she reassured me, her voice filled with warmth and understanding.

"You are the most precious person in my life, along with the boys. I would never trade the moments we've shared for anything in this world."

As she wiped away my tears and urged me to smile, I felt a glimmer of light in the midst of my overwhelming emotions.

Her words, filled with love and sincerity, gave me a sense of reassurance and comfort in that tumultuous moment.

With a wide, gummy smile breaking through my tears, I leaned into her embrace without hesitation. The thought of protecting her at all costs, of shielding her from any harm or pain, resonated deeply within me.

I vowed silently to myself that I would stand guard over her for the rest of my days, a fierce protector ready to shield her from any threat, even if it came from within myself.

In that tender moment, as I purred softly and felt my tail coil around her waist, a sense of peace settled over me. The connection between us, the depth of our bond, wrapped around us like a comforting blanket.

Suddenly, the tranquility of the room was shattered by the sudden entrance of the six idots, their presence jolting me back to the reality of our surroundings.

Way to ruin the moment. Sigh.

Heaven's POV

My dear Yoongi doesn't seem to understand just how special he truly is, and I've taken it upon myself to remind him each and every day until he finally embraces and loves himself the way he deserves to. His enigmatic nature only adds to his charm, and I am determined to show him his worth.

As the rest of the boys burst into the room, their faces lit up with relief and joy. Jungkook immediately made a beeline for my bed, playfully nudging Yoongi who was already holding me tightly in his arms.

"C'mon, hyung, it's my turn now. Stop hogging her," Jungkook whined, provoking a low growl from Yoongi, which only made me chuckle at their playful banter.

"Jungkook, sweetheart, come over here," I beckoned, and he eagerly made his way to my side. Yoongi reluctantly released his hold on me, grumbling as he moved aside to let Jungkook envelop me in a big hug.

Jungkook's large frame completely engulfed me, his chest providing a warm and comforting refuge. The sound of his content purring filled the room as he held me close, unwilling to let go despite the protests from the other boys.

"Yah! Jeon Jungkook, you've had your turn for ages now. Let us have a chance too," Hoseok exclaimed, joined by the chorus of agreements from the rest of the group.

"No," Jungkook stubbornly declared, reminiscent of a child unwilling to part with their favorite toy.

His determination to keep me in his embrace only elicited laughter and playful protests from the others, a heartwarming display of their bond and affection for one another.

Oh man, I can't even begin to express how much I've missed being with them. It seriously felt like forever since we all hung out together, cracking jokes, laughing until our sides hurt, and just being our goofy, carefree selves. 

My heart was overflowing with joy and love as I watched their silly antics, the way they bantered and teased each other like no time had passed at all. It was like the universe aligned just for us to be together again, and it felt so right.

I knew deep down that we all needed a fresh start, a chance to truly accept and love one another without any hesitation or doubt.

It wasn't going to be a smooth ride, that's for sure, but I had this unwavering faith that this time, we would stick together no matter what life threw our way.

I promised myself in that moment to shower them with all the love and protection in the world.

I wasn't going to let anything or anyone come between us again. This time, we were going to stay united, unbreakable.

And then there was Jeong-sin. 

Oh, Jeong-sin. The one who dared to disrupt the peace, the delicate balance of our bonding. 

He thought he could just waltz in and wreck everything we had worked so hard to build.

Jeong-sin. You've messed with the wrong Valentino. You've awakened a side of me that you never want to see.

A side filled with determination, vengeance, and a thirst for revenge that burns like a raging fire.

I swear on every star in the sky that I will make you pay for what you've done. Your days of causing chaos and mayhem are numbered, and when the time comes.

Revenge will be a sweet dish served on a silver platter with your head on it. You'll wish you never crossed paths with Heaven Valentino.

So, watch your back, Jeong-sin. Because I'm coming for you, and when I do, you'll finally understand the true meaning of hell. 

Mark. My. Words.

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Hey wonderful readers!

I just wanted to drop by and say a big thank you for taking the time to read this chapter. I hope it brought a smile to your face and maybe even made your day a bit brighter.

And hey, no worries about the angst in the previous chapter - we all need a little drama in our lives sometimes, right? But I promise this chapter is all about redeeming our boy Yoongi and giving him the chance to make things right.

I have to admit, it was tough writing about Yoongi hating himself. It's never easy to see our favorite characters in pain, but hey, it's all part of their journey towards growth and redemption. And let's be real, a good cry now and then is good for the soul, right?

Thank you all for your continuous support, whether it's through notes, comments, or just by simply being here and reading along. Your love and encouragement mean the world to me, and I truly appreciate every single one of you. You're the best readers a writer could ask for, and I'm grateful to have you on this crazy journey with me.

Don't forget to leave a comment or a note if you're enjoying the story - it truly helps me know what you like and what you want to see more of. Your feedback is invaluable, and I cherish every word you share with me.

Until next time, my lovely readers! Stay awesome, stay kind, and keep spreading those good vibes wherever you go. And remember, your eccentric Author-nim is always here, ready to bring you more adventures and emotions in the next chapter. 😉

Sending you all the virtual hugs and high-fives until we meet again in the next installment of our story. Take care, and keep shining bright like the stars you are!

With love and gratitude,

Your eccentric Author-nim 🌟

TAGLIST OPEN!

TAGLIST: @strxwbloody, @strawblueberrys, @taetaeheart22, @canarystwin, @drenix004, @ghostlyworld, @loumin908, @rinkud, @nikkiordonez12, @taekritimin123, \\@mnguyeeen7, @danielle143, @welcometomyworld13, @avadakadabra93, @kiaralynn3838, @sugathy

[thingsthatbleedfic]

Chapter 9 Update

by @ghostly-cabbage, @kkachis​ and @artistfingers​

Hello everyone! Happy TTB anniversary !!! This is not the anniversary of posting, but rather, the day that Fin pitched the idea that became this fic back in 2021. Insane that it’s already been that long. Granted we talked about it for almost 7-8 months before we started writing with the intention of posting. 

Secondly, thank you so much to every single reader, and everyone who has ever done art or a fan work. We appreciate you and are honored everyday that something we created has inspired other people to also make things (and to play in this sandbox with us. The more the merrier!). 

This fic is a labor of love, but more than that, it always has been, and always will be, a large-scale collaboration <3 

Enjoy!

Fandoms: Alex Rider, Danny Phantom & SCP Foundation | Rating: M | Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Chapter Summary: It was only a matter of time. 

Chapter Word Count: 6.9k

Read NOW on [Ao3] 

Snippet under the cut because it’s maybe a little bit spoilers :3c 

Snippet: It emerges through the ceiling, head first, heedless of the matter.

Its limbs reflect dull lamp light, pallor skin and deep set eyes. Its weight shifts like water over rocks as it crawls, ropy muscle bunching and rolling.

There’s a part of Yassen that wishes he could be so naive as to not have seen this coming—he’d known this was a possibility since they left Venice. It just seems that he’d miscalculated how likely it would be. 

Scorpia has found them.

Dr. Three has found them.

[shadowgast-recs-weekly]

Shadowgast Recs: Featuring Empire Sibs!

This week, we have seventeen recs featuring Beau and Caleb's friendship! Check them out under the cut, and don't forget to comment or kudos if you like them!

Courting of the Caleb by VexedVixen (17417, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

Essek is courting Caleb, though Beau has to point that out to Caleb.

Reccer says: I like cultural differences, and Beau is the best wingman who notices all. But she'd never admit it and also never wants to hear about it. Overal very sweet, a little funny and very well written.

like 80/20 on the kinsey scale by Jakia (2772, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Caleb needs professional lesbian input about his sexuality

Reccer says: I do just like sexuality talk, little freakouts and coming out to people, especially if it goes well.

Cold night out by Fafsernir (2330, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Caleb and Beau huddle for warmth and talk about what it means to move forward in relationships with complicated histories.

Reccer says: All the little touches that made me go, "Oh, yeah, that's Beau." (And the little touches that made me go, "Oh, yeah, that's gotta be what that mechanic really feels like.") Caleb's playfulness counterbalanced by his gravity and how much himself he is in both. They're having a conversation about other people and how to let themselves love them, but it's also a process by which they're each using the other as their compass to move forward, however small the steps.

Hard Mouth by road_rhythm (216143, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-con

In the wake of the Battle of Cognouza, Caleb comes under attack from something in his dreams. Essek and Beau are forced to cooperate in a race to save him.

Reccer says: This is a Shadowgast fic, but all of the Nein get their due, and the Empire Kids are as important a relationship as Shadowgast is. It has such a great Beau: tough and vulnerable, insecure but brave--and she plays off of Caleb and Essek to great effect.

widogast's magic mosaic by burningdarkfire (8402, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

After Aeor, the Mighty Nein go their separate ways - but Caleb carries the lessons they've taught him everywhere. Eight things the Mighty Nein have taught Caleb (and that he teaches them in turn).

Reccer says: Each of the vignettes that make up the fic has so much happiness in it. It strikes me as a fic *about* happiness. But that happiness often feels laborious. It is work. And that's what makes it feel real, and vital, and rewarding.

The Worlds Between Us by Nellaplanet (159375, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Caleb and Beau just wanted to live their life with their weird friends next door, but they're already very deeply entrenshed into the magical other planes that they know nothing of yet. They find out quickly once Caleb gets kidnapped by the Shadowhand.

Reccer says: Caleb desperate to find out more about his past, Nott being so protective, Beau being so protective, Essek having the horrifying realisation of developping a conscience, Jester not realising why Beau would freak the fuck out once she realises not her friends are not actually normal human beings who are a bit weird, Caleb honeypotting, Essek honeypotting, difficult relationships. This fic has everything.

Deception and Other Party Games by Sethrial (27318, Not Rated) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

The Empire slaves have been given to Essek, because obviously he doesn't have enough to do. He doesn't particularly want them, but he shall simply have to make the most of it.

Reccer says: The characterization, worldbuilding, sexual tension, and dramatic irony in this are all choice. There's so much that happens off-page but is instantly legible--which only enhances the sense of how well the M9 work together. It's hard to say which dynamic is tastier: the honeypot 4 honeypot of the Shadowgast or the seamless communication of the Empire kids.

The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings by Sethrial (16871, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

Caleb died. That's something he has to come to terms with. He died and went to hell, and now he's back with a job to do and a demon gently reminding him to do it.

Reccer says: "In a modern 'verse, Caleb comes back from the dead seeing a demon named Mollymauk. Does taking his meds help? Hard to say. Molly won't leave him alone for long, because he has these little jobs for Caleb to do--small things. Negligible things. A bit too much soap in his mop bucket at his night job, a few twists of fate, and hey, presto: a dead body. That sort of thing. No sane person would call that murder, but psychotic or not, Caleb's under no illusions. Then one day he meets a girl named Beau--and Beau has a demon, too. As fantastic as its premise is, what stands out to me most about Devil's Hands is how incredibly real it feels. Caleb's insomnia, his hit-or-miss coping strategies, the shape and texture of his night job and his useless past achievements and his life are all so vivid and relatable that they're equal parts enthralling and exhausting to read. The underlying mystery is compelling, and Caleb and Beau's partnership is a cocktail of deeply weird, half unwilling, and meant to be (maybe). WIP.

Illumination guides your purpose by Beleriandings (5192, General) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

Beau asks Caleb to take a look at a relic of the Calamity with her. Together with Yasha and Essek, they bear witness.

Reccer says: Patia's sphere is always a rich vein for fic, and I particularly love how this fic frames its central event—the characters confronting the sphere's message and contents—and also how it uses that in turn to frame the life and work all four of them are about to embark on.

Show me your teeth by VexedVixen (1141, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

Essek has fangs and Yasha wants to know how it feels. Beau does not want to hear about Caleb's sex life.

Reccer says: It is very funny and honestly who of us hasn't wondered. I'll always like Beau being disgusted by hearing anything about Caleb's intimate life.

Unfinished by road_rhythm (101718, Explicit) Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn

Eleven years after something went wrong and shattered the Nein and Caleb and Essek's relationship, Essek and Beau track down Caleb to try to unravel a conspiracy in the Cerberus Assembly.

Reccer says: It's raw and twisty and the world-building is so, so good. I gasped out loud more than once (this fic is a wip.) This is also my favorite Beau - she's a badass and a mess all at once, and you can feel how much they care about each other even when they're furious with each other.

dreaming I'm alive by lakrisrot (enheduane) (8620, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Beau spars with Essek. Caleb watches.

Reccer says: I liked it!

I'll Show You What It Means to be Spared by thetickingclock (4543, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Beau, Astrid, Eadwulf, and Caleb go after a rogue Scourger. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

Reccer says: A visceral dive into how Beau relates to the wizards in her life and to their whole insular, unsavory, mega-traumatic *deal.* Deft character studies of everybody, particularly Beau and Astrid, and of how Caleb relies on Beau and the faith he places in her. Shadowgast and Beau/Yasha are comparatively minor in this, but those relationships are still the stable foundation that allows Caleb and Beau to be their present selves and not their past.

oh, by the way by eeveev (932, General) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Caleb drops the “Essek-and-I-are-dating” bomb on Beauregard, and his timing is, as always, impeccable.

Reccer says: short and sweet empire siblings, with caleb being a troll <3

Like a Haunting by thetickingclock (2161, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Caleb navigates the straits between that happenstance name and Bren Aldric Ermendrud.

Reccer says: It really gets at the trust and intimacy of Caleb placing his story in Beau's hands, both the first time and after the fight at the Blooming Grove, as well as what Essek means to how he creates (and destroys) himself in the present.

Fucking Up (On Purpose) by devil_seabird_king (ShaaKi) (1884, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Beau has a question for Yasha but nerves bring her to Caleb's door instead, where she gets advice from an unexpected source.

Reccer says: I liked it!

And two recs for this final one!

things that gods despise by dawl_and_dapple (113496, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

A modern AU where Beau and Caleb are both working in Geneva in the 1980's, and find out that magic is real

Reccer 1 says: I love the world building in this fic, it is especially interesting mixing the magic of D&D with physics. the relationship that Caleb and Beau is just stellar, with so much good dialogue between the two! Reccer 2 says: It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it being very good. The relationship between Beau and Caleb is definitely one of the highlights because they do grow together like siblings. Also featuring Nott, who is always to love and Essek and Caleb being a little shady.

Aeor is for Lovers is an 18+ Shadowgast Discord server. The above fanfic recommendations were pulled from our community for this weekly event. All fics, unless otherwise specified, will primarily feature Shadowgast. Have any questions about what this is? Check out the FAQ! Next week, we’ll be back with Sickfic!

[minecraftbookshelf]

In the Age of Icons: Mistakes Are Made

Chapter One: The Day Of

A Marriage of State AU Fic

[AU Masterpost (includes the AO3 link)]

Characters: Jimmy Solidarity, Xornoth, Katherine Elizabeth, Mythical J Sausage

Relationships (for the AU as a whole): Eventual (very slow burn) Flower Husbands, (established) Shadowbeans/Jizzie, (obnoxiously new) Jornoth, Eventual (very far future) Nature Wives

Wordcount: 4214

Rating On AO3: This particular fic is rated T, future installments in the AU may go all the way up to E for graphic violence but most will be between T & M

Chapter POV: Jimmy Solidarity & Xornoth

Summary:

The Codfather weaves his fingertips together so that the slight webbing between his fingers touches. It's the first time in a while he's had both hands away from his shoulder, where at least one has been hovering near his sword hilt almost the entire time, despite Katherine's glares. "It's a marriage treaty, between the royalty of the oppositions, bound in blood and salt, for peace and mutual gain." His voice has gained a slight sing-song cadence to it, even through what is clearly a slightly stumbling translation, that Xornoth recognizes from their own anytime they are reciting something from their childhood lessons, even to this day.

Warnings: A sort of general reminder of the narrative tool "Unreliable Narrators"

This AU features multiple arranged marriages across the spectrum of platonic-romantic and the complicated nuances of chosen and arranged.

Any section from Xornoth's POV does have parts that read like very violent and occasionally graphic intrusive thoughts due to the whole "there is a demon living in their head" thing. If that's something you think you might have issues with, please proceed with caution if you choose to proceed at all.

--

Jimmy spends the majority of his flight to the Overgrown fuming and imagining the many different ways he could kill Sausage. It's cathartic indulgence and if he's busy imagining swarms of axolotls and pufferfish descend on the Mythlandic king in his minds' eye than he isn't worrying about the actual situation and what it could potentially mean for him and the Swamp.

Much. He isn't worrying about it much.

The fact that Sausage had made it past the Swamp border and all the way to Jimmy's house without being seen or stopped is...fine. It's fine.

The wind catches Jimmy's elytra at an odd angle and he dips alarmingly low for a heart-jolting moment; his tail flailing out on instinct in an attempt to steady him in a non-existent current. He catches himself before he actually crashes into the treetops, though he does have to bank hard to the left in a way that pulls the harness sharp against his shoulder. The joint twinges at the strain and he grimaces. He'll probably feel that tomorrow. He's been skipping out on his stretches, in all the chaos of the escalating tensions, and his bad side has been worse than usual. He can feel the tension of the old scar tissue at his elbow and the tightness of the muscle down his neck and shoulder.

Joel will yell at him for that.

On the bright side, maybe he'll go to war with the Mythlands and then he'll be too busy to get yelled at. He thinks Pix would call that 'silver linings.'

The trees thin out and give way to green grass fields dotted with sheep and flowers and Jimmy angles his trajectory downwards. The magic saturating the Border of the Overgrown brushes his scales as he enters and he shudders. It doesn't matter how many times he comes to visit Katherine, every time is just as unsettling. It feels like the time he bit an electric eel as a fry. A tingle and a buzzing that leaves the webbing between his fingers numb and his teeth hurting.

Katherine's house materializes on the horizon, the layers of glamour falling away and Jimmy banks into a spiral to land. He's been airborne for so long that he's barely even damp and, last minute, he decides to land in the water feature instead of on the grass surrounding it. He lands in the fountain with a splash and a sigh, the water closing over his head and offering blessed relief. His gills flare, water flowing freely through his right side and even managing a pass on his left. He allows himself a moment to settle beneath the surface and let the itchy dry feeling of his scales fade, away from the biting cold and thin air of the skyways.

He rolls over and stares at the sky, taking a minute to just exist. It's uncomfortable; his elytra, his trident, and his sword all pressing into his spine, but at least it is calm and quiet.

His view is almost immediately obstructed by a far, far too familiar silhouette tinted red and gold.

Jimmy bolts upright and almost slams his forehead into Sausage's.

He scrambles back and to his feet where he stands, dripping, in the fountain to the backdrop of the displeased gazes of Katherine's door guards and the giggles of the King of Mythland.

How did this go so wrong so fast?

"Hello, Jimmy!"

He manages to clamber out of the fountain without tripping and falling flat on his face at least. He splashes Katherine in the process, where she is hovering off to the side but he can't really be bothered to worry about that. All he can manage to do is stare at Sausage's smirking face.

"Hello, Jimmy!"

Katherine's greeting is much less mocking and Jimmy looks back down to acknowledge it. Way down. Katherine is the shortest emperor and the white tips of her ears barely clear his elbow. She is smiling up at him as if she hasn't invited him to her house only to ambush him with one of his greatest enemies. As if he hadn't trusted that her home was safe. As if he hadn't trusted that she would stand with him.

"What is he doing here?" He jerks his chin at Sausage, who is still giggling like a child. He sees Jimmy looking and grins at him, all teeth.

Behind the mask, Jimmy bares his own teeth and takes some comfort in the knowledge that he has more of them; and they are sharper. He straightens his spine and does his best to stand at his full height instead of curling slightly to the left. His sword and trident clank softly together over his shoulder.

Katherine looks briefly unsure before she sets her expression and gestures at her door. "We should all go inside and talk there. I would like to help negotiate peace between The Swamp and Mythland."

She's using her official voice. Sausage keeps giggling and Jimmy can barely hear it beneath the roar in his ears. He leans down to try and whisper into the faerie queen's ear.

"I really need your alliance right now, Katherine." He hopes his desperation doesn't show in his voice.

She gives him a reproving look that throws him right back to his brief time spent in a classroom. "I'm allied with everyone, Jimmy. You know that."

"He invaded the Swamp," Jimmy hisses, his ear-fins flaring, ignoring the shudder down his spine from her use of his Name, even in part. "He crossed our borders. Again. He's threatened war." He's no longer whispering by the end, standing to his full height, shoulders back, sword hand by his shoulder.

"And according to him, you've threatened it right back!"

It's almost a physical blow, the way the betrayal hits him. He manages to keep from physically staggering back only because Sausage appears beside him and throws an arm over his shoulder. Something the Mythlandic king has to stand on tiptoe to accomplish. It yanks Jimmy uncomfortably sideways and down and his trident almost slips from his back.

"Come on, Jimmy! Let's talk!" Sausage smiles, all teeth like an alligator, lurking on the surface of the water. "We can make peace!"

Jimmy knocks his arm away and straightens, doing his best to loom over the other ruler. His extra foot of height should be more of an advantage than if feels like. He grabs for the hilt of his sword and is only stopped by Katherine, who flies right up into his face to frown at him.

"No weapons!" She shakes her finger right in front of his mask and Jimmy clamps down on the instinctive urge to yank up the Codfather head and bite it. That would be no help to anyone, especially himself. No one takes him seriously as it is. Except maybe Pix. Maybe.

Instead he focuses on glaring at Sausage over Katherine's shoulder. The king of Mythland beams back at him, hands clasped innocently in front of himself (well away from the hilt of his own greatsword), head cocked to the side. The picture of harmless amiability were it not for the malicious sparkle in his eyes. Ohhhhhh how Jimmy would love to feed his organs to Lizzie's axolotls. He flexes his claws before Katherine grabs his arm and tugs him towards her front door, six tiny fingertips digging into his scales above his vambraces. (The embossed leather the only armor he'd worn, he hadn't realized he'd wish for more.)

Sausage trails behind them and as much as Jimmy reminds himself that not even Sausage would have the audacity to attack him in Katherine's house (probably) he can't quite shake the prickling tension from having an enemy at his back. It feels like the first time Lizzie and Joel took him to clear an ancient monument and he'd stalked through the twisty corridors and boxy rooms with the creeping feeling of being stalked in turn.

Sausage slips and almost falls on some of the tacky slime he'd accidentally tracked in and that does help. Even if he does feel bad for messing up Katherine's floor. He can feel the impassively judgmental stare from Katherine's guards, who's features do not change but still somehow radiate disapproval. He knows he probably shouldn't take it personally, most fae don't think highly of outsiders but it still feels personal.

Sausage recovers quickly and shakes out the fur lining of his coat. "Is it just me or does it smell fishy in here, now?"

"Sausage," Katherine looks disapprovingly back over her shoulder. "That's rude."

"Oh," Sausage blinks at them both, "I'm sorry, Jimmy, I didn't realize."

Jimmy wants to stab him so badly, he sets his shoulders and refrains. He can do this. He's technically trained for this, even if the skills are rusty, fallen aside before the more hands on duties that rebuilding the Swamp has required.

"Oh, this one is new!" Sausage immediately changes the subject, pointing at one of the skulls hanging on the wall of the hall. It's some kind of middling-sized land animal...a sheep maybe? with poppies filling the eye sockets and woven in a crown, there are delicate lines of gold painted across the surface of the bleached bone.

Katherine beams, her irritation at the rudeness forgotten (or at least set aside, fae never truly forget breaches of etiquette) "It is! It's a gift from a childhood friend," she looks fondly upon the skull for a moment. "We've been reconnecting lately."

Sausage nods sagely, "It is always good to spend time with your friends."

"It is," Katherine's ears twitch and her wings flutter briefly before she resumes walking. "Which is why we are going to fix this."

She leads them down the hall towards her library, a room so thoroughly warded that Jimmy can feel the magic against his scales when he passes through the door in an echo of the fae-realm boundaries.

It is a cozy room, despite the elegance and delicacy. It makes Jimmy feel out of place and reminds him a little bit of Lizzie's war room, if a better lit and less damp version. Every corner is full of plants and flowers and books and crystals, and blessedly free of guards and staff and other judging eyes. It's just Jimmy and Katherine and Sausage and the Elvenking sitting in the corner.

Jimmy may or may not do a full and proper double take.

Huge white and black wings, glittering obsidian antlers, an incongruous cup of tea on the side table. Apparently this meeting has interrupted the...reading time? of the King of Rivendell. Jimmy grits his teeth at the presence of one more ally for Sausage and turns his attention to the other two rulers instead. He'll worry about the Elvenking if they decide to become a problem.

-

In retrospect, Xornoth probably should have left as soon as Katherine escorted Sausage and The Codfather into her library, her expression tense and serious despite the cheerful tone to her chatter but in all honesty they were so startled at first that they froze. Now its been just long enough it would be too awkward to get up and leave. And the others are in-between them and the door, which just makes it worse. So they sit in the corner, tome in hand, trying their hardest to pretend they aren't getting a front row seat to the latest incarnation of the Mythland-Swamp dispute, featuring The Codfather's tangible rage and frustration over Katherine's stubborn neutrality.

(Which is understandable, but arguing a fae over their nature is a futile task and The Codfather seems too much a fool to realize it.)

The palpable hostility in the room has Xornoth's feathers fluffing against their will. Katherine is doing her best to mediate but she might as well try to climb a cliff-face in a blizzard. Sausage seems more interested in taunting The Codfather than coming to any kind of agreement and The Codfather himself stubbornly refuses to even consider any kind of negotiations until...a disc is returned?

Meaningless frivolity.

Xornoth isn't quite sure of the intricacies of the Mythland-Swamp conflict, since most of it happened during Rivendell's seclusion and so they don't even have any accounts of it other than what has been acquired in the past few decades. Accounts that are, somewhat understandably, for the most part slanted towards the Mythlandic perspective. (It is Mythland that Xornoth is allied with and it is Mythland that writes things down while The Swamp seems to lean heavily towards oral histories.) They don't think they've heard anything about a disc before, that might be new.

Both Sausage and The Codfather are known for their chaotic natures. If this does escalate to war (as both have threatened multiple times in the past hour) they will both involve their allies. As much fun as it would be to go toe-to-toe with the King of Mezalea in the arena, if Xornoth has to deal with wartime logistics because of these two acting like elflings not yet out of the home, they will just walk off into the mountains and wait for the winter to take them.

Do not pretend such reluctance. I see the truth.

Xornoth turns a page.

"At this point," The Codfather snarls, leaning on the back of the sofa he is standing by, looking inches away from leaping across the library to strangle Sausage (or try to at least) regardless of Katherine's policy on unapproved violence, his speech has been steadily growing more formal as the debate raged on, but also with a lot more insults in a multitude of languages. (Which Sausage had been more than happy to return.) "I don't think I'd trust even a-" he makes a series of humming, clicking syllables that Xornoth recognizes as Oceanic, but does not understand "-from you lot!"

That, of all things, is what grinds the entire conversation to a halt. Even Sausage stops his mocking dance around the edge of the room to look at The Codfather in confusion. "A who now?"

Katherine is frowning in concentration, mouthing words to herself while she tries to translate. "An...in-law treaty?"

"You know," The Codfather waves a hand dismissively. "A Binding Agreement."

At least he's speaking Mythlandic again, a language Xornoth supposedly understands.

"No, we don't know," Katherine still looks confused by also speculative. "Please explain. What kind of binding exactly is this?"

The Codfather weaves his fingertips together so that the slight webbing between his fingers touches. It's the first time in a while he's had both hands away from his shoulder, where at least one has been hovering near his sword hilt almost the entire time, despite Katherine's glares. "It's a marriage treaty, between the royalty of the oppositions, bound in blood and salt, for peace and mutual gain."

His voice has gained a slight sing-song cadence to it, even through what is clearly a slightly stumbling translation, that Xornoth recognizes from their own anytime they are reciting something from their childhood lessons, even to this day. They've never been able to quite shake the "student voice."

You are still only a student. And you will be so long as you refuse to take what is rightfully ours.

"Oh!" Katherine's face lights up with recognition and she bounces on her toes, wings aflutter. "I read about that! It's an Oceanic thing!"

Oceanic, not Swamp. Interesting.

The Codfather tilts his head to the side, radiating bewilderment despite the mask completely obscuring his features. "Um...yeah? Wait, do land-folk not do those? At all?"

Both Sausage and Katherine shake their head and Katherine expands verbally, talking right over the Codfather's hushed 'oh.'

"Not between empires, not since the Worldspawn Treaty. It's not uncommon for different families within an empire to form alliance through marriage though."

Xornoth wisely stays silent, though they can't quite help but touch the enchanted jewel fastening their cape at the shoulder. Only Katherine notices, but she's the only one of present company who knows what it means anyway.

"Oh," The Codfather seems a bit taken aback. "I thought it was just that it hadn't happened recently, not that you didn't at all."

"No," Sausage looks intrigued. "We don't."

"We could though," Katherine says suddenly, looking ecstatic. "The treaty just rendered those kinds of alliances of limited use, it didn't forbid them. What about a marriage truce between The Wither Rose Alliance and The Swamp!"

All three of them stare at the faerie queen like she's crazy. (At least, Xornoth is assuming that's what The Codfather's emotions are.) Sausage's eyebrows alone are conveying enough skepticism for the whole room. The Codfather's tail swishes uneasily.

Like a fish on a hook.

Sausage latches onto the movement with a smirk. "Aw! Do you not want to marry me, Jimmy?"

"I would rather move to the desert," The Codfather says without hesitation. "Or the Nether."

"Maybe not the two of you," Katherine says, even her spiteful optimism clearly powerless against the reality of what the outcome of that would be. Wise of her. Xornoth doesn't trust them to not kill each other before they make it to the wedding night. If they even made it to the wedding itself. "We are trying to make peace, not break it irreparably. But the Wither Rose Alliance is the largest alliance. Surely something can be arranged. For a...Binding Agreement the two parties have to be of equal or near-equal standing, right?"

"Well yes, but-"

"So," she says triumphantly, cutting The Codfather off before he can even get started. "One of the other emperors?"

There is a moment of silence as they all contemplate, even Sausage looking more focused than usual.

They are going to hurt themselves, trying that hard to utilize what little intelligence they have.

"Fwhip?" Sausage eventually offers, somewhat unsure, but also clearly just trying for a reaction.

And he gets one; a loud, rattly, snarling hiss that, despite usually considering The Codfather's threat level somewhere between "negligible" and "non-existent", Xornoth find themself sitting up straighter and even has Sausage taking a step back, visibly startled. Deep in the corner of their mind that Xornoth does their best to ignore, a shudder of disquiet resonates for a moment before being cut off.

Katherine's eyes are wide and, seemingly without realizing it, she takes to the air slightly, hovering over the floor, set to evade any attacks. Xornoth realizes that their hand is on the hilt of their sword and slowly, so as not to draw attention, they withdraw it back to their book. Their wings stay mantled, primaries brushing against he walls of their alcove.

"Okay, not Fwhip," Katherine says hurriedly, slowly dropping back down to the floor and smoothing her skirt out in a nervous gesture she's had since she was small. Usually she does better at controlling herself. She'd had the unphased exterior trained into her well before Xornoth ever met her and, however amiable and relaxed she likes to appear, they know its always there beneath.

If we pinned her wings to the wall like a butterfly and made her watch, that would phase her.

Xornoth contemplates smashing the side of their head into the wall. Unconsciousness has about a 50/50 chance of bringing peace and quiet with it. Unfortunately, the hangings in this library nook are imported from Rivendell, several layers of thick woolen brocade. It probably wouldn't be a very effective attempt. And would have them looking crazy in front of two allies and a...not quite enemy. (Though if they don't sort this out that will probably be changing very soon.)

Let there be war, one step closer to our full power.

Katherine has moved on. "What about Gem?"

Sausage snorts a laugh but also looks a little terrified at the idea of even suggesting such a thing. Perhaps the wisest he's been all day, based off what Xornoth has gathered about what seems to amount to a neighbors' spat between him and The Codfather. (Albeit a neighbors spat with centuries of animosity behind it and that is now threatening war.)

The Codfather shakes his head a little frantically, the copper-beaded tassels on the side of the mask clinking against the trident slung across his back. "She's scary."

He seems to realize that he said that out loud and quickly scrambles like a fish suffocating on a rock to cover for it. "And, uh, Great Wizard isn't a title with a lot of..." He flounders a bit. "There could be a new Great Wizard tomorrow, if someone beat her. It has to be a more permanent title."

Personally, Xornoth finds the likelihood of anyone replacing Gemini Tay at any point during a mortal lifetime (and possibly longer) very, very unlikely. It takes a lot to outshine bringing the dragons back. But The Codfather is right. And not only is Gem scary, she's also mean. Which most people don't realize because she spends so much time keeping Fwhip and Sausage from getting themselves killed. Xornoth has been to enough Wither Rose meetings to fear her though. She would eat The Codfather alive.

They do also find themself a little bit impressed, they hadn't thought he had that level of awareness of the internal workings o the other kingdoms.

If we gutted him like a fish he'd squeal so nicely.

It's been a while since Xornoth turned a page. They turn a page.

"Pearl can't be that closely tied to any other ruler," Katherine keeps going. "Too many people across the Empires rely on their trade with her and it isn't fair to your people to risk their well-being that way."

Honestly, if it came to war, Xornoth is fairly certain that Pearl would fight to remain neutral. It would destroy her, being unable to help her friends. Rip that golden heart of hers right out of her chest and shred it in the dust, but so many people from all the lands depend on Helianthia's crops and herds to remain fed. And her sense of duty, to her own people and all the others would take precedence over her loyalty to her friends, and that would kill her swifter than any blade.

If the war did not destroy her lands, and her with them, first.

The page in their white-knuckled grip begins to tear on the edge.

Rip them all to pieces, give the farmer the fight she wants.

Rivendell would follow Helianthia, Xornoth acknowledges. They are not as selfless as Pearl. And even if they were, they could not condemn Rivendell to another harsh winter of starvation and death. They would stand to defend her against all comers (and there would be many who came, lured by the resources she guarded) both as a friend and as a political alliance. Rivendell is not back to the point of being able to sustain themselves, not if the winters continue to worsen the way they have been. Loathe as they are to admit it, even inside their own head where no one can hear.

Well, no one but-

Wheat fields burn so easily, all it would take is a single spark in the right place and all of Mythland would be in flames.

Carefully, carefully, Xornoth sets their book down on the table beside them and places their hands in their lap. Katherine will stop allowing them to borrow her books if they start spontaneously combusting them. Hopefully she doesn't notice the slightly singed cover.

"Joey?" Now it is Katherine who's skepticism is betrayed in her voice and Sausage actually snorts a laugh. All three of them look over at Xornoth, though The Codfather quickly looks away again.

Free us of the silly bird.

"Good luck with that," Sausage says, giggling, and waggles his eyebrows at Xornoth. They pretend to not see, giving their full attention to the tapestry on the wall beside them in a vain attempt at pretending that their painfully un-subtle affair is not the most gossiped about topic among the emperors at present.

This is an old one, probably gifted by their grandparents to the House Blossom Lady of the time. The knot-work symbol in the corner is one they are unfamiliar with, not the signature of any artisan from their lifetime.

"And Xornoth is already married," Katherine doesn't acknowledge Sausage's behavior, beyond an annoyed look, which is probably for the best.

The Codfather jerks his head sharply to the side, "and that's all the royals in your alliance." He sounds almost smug. "None of them work."

And that is when Xornoth makes what they will refer to for centuries to come as "The Mistake." They pick their book back up and affect disinterest as they impulsively decide to wipe the smug grin they are imagining off The Codfather's face. "There is my brother."

There is a long moment of silence. Xornoth eventually looks up and gets their first inkling of how badly they might have just messed up when they see the astonished expression on Sausage's face, and the slowly dawning delight on Katherine's. They stubbornly ignore the blank cod-face staring directly at them.

Why do you consistently choose to prove your incompetence.

"Your brother is alive?" Sausage says but is cut off by Katherine.

"Oh!" she says, bouncing on her toes, hands clasped under her chin. "That's perfect!"

--

Chapter Two [TBA]

Chapter Three [TBA]

[paganwitchisis]

The Price of Freedom

Rated: E for Explicit

Pairing: AFAB Female Tav X Astarion

-Multichapter series-

Tags: DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT! Abuse, torture, smut, oral sex, rape, healing, beatings, dismemberment, breeding kink, act 3 spoilers, canon divergence, blood, violence, graphic depictions (It is Cazador after all)

Summary: While on a separate quest, it is discovered that Tav is pregnant with Astarion’s child. Problem is, Cazador finds out as well. Things get pretty dark as Cazador abducts her along with Astarion, intent on nefarious purposes. Will the couple be able to heal from his onslaught and what of the child? Read and find out! (Heed the tags! This plays out differently than other Cazador dark fics)

Note: The use of the word “mate” is more of a shortened version of soul mate, not the alpha stories on werewolves for this fanfiction (obviously we are dealing with Vampires so yeah, no werewolves at all)

RATED 18 PLUS!!!!!

Chapter one - You are here (AO3 link here) Word count is 4.2k words

Chapter 2 - Here (2.3k words)

Chapter 3 - here

Chapter One - A Hot Tip

Tav was going to shoot an arrow into his scaly face if the dragonborn was lying.

The dragonborn kept swearing over and over again that the information was legitimate and that a powerful enemy blocked the path. It was rather cryptic as far as tips went but Tav shrugged her shoulders at it. Most tips seemed to be cryptic now anyways. Tav considered his proposal. Five thousand gold on an untested and most likely fake tip for something she was already beginning to look for behind her lover’s back.

“How do I know this isn’t a fake tip?” Tav asked as she spoke to him at the bar. It was early morning still, and the crew were still sleeping away upstairs. Hells, Tav only got away because she snuck out of Astarion’s arms, and when he awoke, she told him the truth. She told him she wanted to get something to eat and that he should get some rest. She would be back soon, but if she didn’t conclude her business with this dragonborn, this man named Jorath, Astarion would grow suspicious and come downstairs and ruin her surprise.

“You don’t, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I swear on Tyr, this isn’t a ruse!” Jorath pleaded.

“If this is so real, then why sell it to me? Why not get it yourself or sell it for a lot more?” Tav asked, pressing the scaled friend.

“I found the location and information by accident in a chest sealed by magic while fishing in the Chiontar, but it claims a very powerful protector guards the treasure. I’m not stupid. I won’t die trying to get that damn thing, and I wont have someone track me down for revenge cause their brother’s cousin’s nephew was killed looking either. I’d rather sell it for a moderate price and not die, than try to get rich and not live to spend it either.“ Jorath explained between sipping his coffee.

Tav kept picking around her food but refused to eat most of it. Maybe it was the late night she had but she wasn’t feeling that great that morning. Tav sighed and shook her head when she heard the door to the companion room open upstairs, and she knew she had to quickly make a decision.

“Fuck…Fine! Here is the gold. Write down everything. I mean it, all the information, and you better not have sold this to anyone before us or I will hunt you down after we get back. Got it?” Tav threatened, and grabbed the paper the dragonborn held out to her before shoving it in her armor as she scooted off the chair and retreated up the stairs. Tav didn’t make it far before having to find the privy to dry heave her empty stomach.

After a bit of time, Tav resigned that after they get the artifact she was searching for, she would ask Halsin or Shadowheart to look at her because she was afraid she was getting an illness. In the meantime, Tav stood up and sat on the toilet fully clothed to read the paper Jorath had passed her. It stated that it was not far from them, located in Rivington, but it didn’t say what the threat was that protected the item was. It just said the protector was powerful. That at least meant that there was a good chance the item was still there.

There was a light knock on the door that startled the woman from her thoughts.

“Darling, you okay in there? You’ve been gone from bed for a while.” Tav smiled softly, she almost forgot the bathrooms were public and so hearing her lover’s voice almost made her jump in her skin when he came looking for her.  Tav shoved the note back in the armor and walked out of the stall to greet the man. Astarion wanted to kiss her, but she stopped him.

“I may not have thrown up, but I feel like it, Star.” Tav used the nickname only she can use with him.

 “The food here sucks. I’ll pick something up when we’re on the way out today.” Tav quickly made up an excuse. In reality, she wasn’t sure what was causing the feeling, but she pushed it aside. Right now, she had more pressing concerns.

She wanted to help Astarion permanently stay in the sun’s gentle light rather than run from the harsh rays that would burn him, should they not figure out how to help him before concluding the tadpole business. Astarion, of course, still would comment about the ascension and sacrificing his siblings to gain power and the ability to walk in the sun, but Tav still hoped it wouldn’t come to this. She knew he was better than that. She knew he didn’t need to kill others to get his wishes, and sought to look for answers in advance to prove just that. Tav hoped that if she found this legendary Sunwalker’s Ring, that she could spare her lover from having to make a choice he may regret…

“You sure you’re okay? This happened yesterday too.” Astarion asked while concerned. Tav began walking back to their rooms with Astarion close by.

“I believe so. I haven’t been taking care of myself, to be honest. If it helps, I’ll have Halsin or Shadowheart look me over when we get back.” Tav reached for the handle, but before she could turn it, a cool hand overlayed hers.

“Why wait, darling? What is so important about today’s mission?” Astarion asked curiously. Tav smiled and kissed Astarion’s cheek. “It’s a secret. But after this, we go after Cazador…Promise.” Tav said against his skin as she backed up against the door and opened it to the group room they shared with the others.

“To be honest, we would have gone after him right away if it wasn’t for Orin infiltrating the camp and kidnapping Lae’zel. Now that Orin is gone…” Tav said.

“...And I have her wonderful daggers…” Astarion smirked.

“We just have one stop and then we can go after that fucker. Trust me…Please?” Tav asked as she clasped her hand around his and threaded her fingers through his. Astarion quirked the corner of his mouth up in a small smile.

“My dear, you know I trust you.” Astarion whispered his response as they made their way inside since Astarion did not want to air his feelings. Only one woman would know his heart and how he felt and it wasn’t a show. Tav smiled at him and let go of his hand.

“Good. Make sure you're ready to go in twenty. I’ll be right back.”

“So I’m on the team, hmm?” Astarion teased before she had a chance to scamper away.

“Of course! When are you not on the team?” Tav giggled and Astarion couldn’t help himself from taking her lips. Her laughter died as Astarion pressed his lush and supple lips to hers. As much as he wished to deepen the kiss, he was keenly aware of their surroundings, especially when Karlach yelled out in support of the couple. Astarion pulled back slowly as he didn’t wish for Tav to think he regretted any form of intimacy they took and shook his head while Tav nervously rubbed the back of her neck.

“I’ll, uh…Be back.” Tav stammered and went off to Karlach. Astarion chuckled at how easily he could fluster her when he noticed Tav showing a piece of paper to Karlach, although from their distance, he couldn’t make out what it said or the significance. Astarion shrugged and figured it must have been the map or something of that nature. If it was important, Astarion figured she would have shared it with him.

In the end, Astarion waited an hour while Tav made her rounds and selected Shadowheart and Karlach to accompany them to wherever they were going. Of course, Astarion wasn’t surprised that Karlach was chosen considering Karlach was Tav’s best friend, more or less, but Astarion was surprised by Shadowheart. The woman misses most targets on a good day, so the only reason to bring her would be for healing, which meant that Tav expected they would get hurt, which meant wherever they were going, it was not going to be easy.

As the four of them made their way to Rivington, Astarion had to ask.

“Alright, darling, you’ve proven your point on being mysterious. Now, why are we over here? At the very least, you have to tell us something about all this….” Astarion asked as he was at Tav’s side, Shadowheart and Karlach behind him.

Tav stopped walking and shuffled off to the side so she wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Tav looked at Karlach and gave a knowing look, a look that Astarion caught and noticed immediately.

‘She told Karlach where we are going….maybe even what this secret is.’ Astarion thought to himself and couldn’t help feeling a little dejected. She felt comfortable speaking to Karlach, but not him? Astarion tried not to read too much into it. Maybe there was a reason. Astarion waited and listened as Tav turned and spoke to the group.

“I’m here to get something, and it isn’t far. It will help us, but I can’t tell you what yet. All I know is there is supposed to be some kind of protector, but I am hoping we can get around that somehow. Unfortunately, I don’t know what this protector is, otherwise, I’d have a better plan on the ‘getting around’ part.” Tav purposely didn’t look at Astarion right away, but when she did, he had a rather unhappy expression. To be fair, both him and Shadowheart did.

“Let me see if I understand this. You want us to go somewhere to get something that you won’t tell us about yet. This will be protected by most likely some powerful enemy, because let’s face it…And no offense…”Astarion turned to Shadowheart at this point. “You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a plan for us to need healing. Not that you aren’t capable of offense, but we all know you are chosen for healing…” Astarion then looked Tav dead in the eye. “so we are going into a scenario were we will all get screwed, and for what, my dear? Hmm?”

“Gods below, I’m agreeing with the vampire…” Shadowheart muttered while pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Also, love, don’t think I’m not privy to the looks between you and Karlach. She knows everything, I assume, yet she still is with us, so either whatever it is will help us or is incredibly romantic.“ Astarion said sarcastically at the end.

Karlach laughed at this and replied loudly.

“Considering it’s for you, you think…”

“Shut up!” Tav hissed, and Karlach closed her mouth immediately. This was not what Astarion expected, but from the sigh behind him, Shadowheart must have had an idea it was something along these lines.

“Can we go?” Tav asked and walked off at a brisk pace into the woods. Astarion followed but his mind was elsewhere. Part of him wanted to smirk and give a witty retort like he usually did after being handed such information. Another part of him knew this was a potentially dangerous mission, especially after Tav showed him she wasn’t feeling the best the past couple days, yet she pushed herself for some item. Even if he tried to shut this down, refuse to go or stop her in some way. He knew he couldn’t. She would be stubborn and just go on anyways.

Astarion growled before replying. “I don’t like it. I just want that clear. I’d much rather we all be safe and back at the Elfsong instead of walking to a potentially painful way to die…”

Tav gave him a sad smile. “It will make sense later. I’m not afraid something will happen. Not with you watching my back.”

Astarion cursed himself and wished he could stay angry at her, but he knew he couldn’t. He cared deeply for her and he could be upset but never truly angry at her. Astarion reached his hand out but didn’t look towards her. He didn’t have to of course when he felt her hand wrap around his tightly and saw her shoulders relax in his peripheral vision. He could practically feel Karlach bursting at the seams in retaliation to the public display of affection, but it really didn’t bother him as much as he made them think it did. Soon, Astarion’s thoughts were interrupted as he tumbled down an embankment thanks to Tav yanking him down with her. Apparently she went down first, and thanks to them holding each other’s hands, Astarion’s perception meant nothing.

Astarion put his arms out and wrapped himself around his lover to break her fall. Thankfully, after rolling down the wet grassy terrain, Astarion felt his backside collide with the cement ground where they seemed to have stumbled onto the entrance of whatever they were looking for. Astarion let go of Tav and stood up, rubbing his sore left butt cheek as he held out his hand to help his lover to their feet.

“Are you okay?” Astarion glanced at what he could see of her body, and everything seemed okay. Tav nodded, but before she could speak, Karlach called from above.  

“We’ll be down in a moment. There are stairs on the other side. May take a few more minutes but I’m liable to break something if I follow you two down there. Hang tight, lovebirds!”

Tav scoffed and shook her head as she waited for the footsteps to recede before she spoke to Astarion.

“We don’t have much time, considering I am the reason you got hurt.” Tav stepped forward and placed a hand over Astarion’s as it rested on his backside, now forgotten. “I…Well…” Tav looked away with blush overtaking her features.

“Now love, you’ve never been coy before, and you’re right, we don’t have much time before we have a peanut gallery. What is it you want to say?” Astarion said with a smirk. He was entertained by this and was curious where Tav was leading her earlier comment. Tav took a stabilizing breath and hooked her thumbs in his belt. She dared not touch his hips or skin after the confession at Moonrise. This earned a questioningly raised eyebrow.

“I want to see your injury. If you’ll let me…You don’t have to, of course. I’m just worried, and you hit the ground hard when you held me to shield me from getting hurt.”

Astarion chuckled “You want to see my bruised ass? I mean, I won’t say no, but I didn’t suspect that’s how you get your rocks off…” Astarion cupped her cheek and kissed her lightly before using his dexterity to loosen his trousers.

“You know what I mean. I worry about you.” Tav admitted and felt relieved when Astarion gave her a toothy grin which showed off his fangs.

“I know, my dear. I think it’s cute. A bit embarrassing, I suppose, but cute.” Astarion dropped part of the back of his trousers so she could see the blossoming bruise. It was a mix of purples and yellows. Astarion pulled his trousers up and made himself presentable while he spoke. “So, darling, now that you found an excuse to look at my ass, how bad is the damage?“ Astarion was laughing to himself as he turned around and slipped his arms around her waist.

“Looks painful, to be honest.” Tav whispered as Astarion began kissing her jaw line and the tip of her nose.

“I guess tonight, when we have a moment alone, maybe we can see where the night takes us. Maybe we can find a way to heal it.” Astarion muttered jokingly when he finally took her lips.

“Don’t push yourself, Star. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. We don’t have to do anything.” Tav whispered, her hand on Astarion’s cheek.

Astarion reached around, Tav’s ass cheeks in hand, and ground his hard-on into her soft belly. “Does it feel like I don’t want you, my love? We just…you know. Doesn’t mean all intimacy is off the table. We’ve been going slowly as it is. Even if all we end up doing tonight is cuddling and kissing, I’ll be happy.” Astarion leaned down, and this time he slipped his tongue in while Tav was surprised. Tav pressed into this kiss and moaned low and deep. Thankfully, Astarion was once again aware of his surroundings as he kissed her again and pulled away. Confused, Tav watched as Astarion adjusted his hard cock in his pants before he gave some space between them, just as Karlach burst through the door with a panting Shadowheart close on her tail.

“Are…you both okay?” Tav asked, giggling.

“This woman is insane! She thought she had to go up the stairs to go down the stairs! Next time, I’m rolling down the grass with you both.” Shadowheart exasperatedly exclaimed while Astarion barked out in laughter.

“In my defense, no one hands barbarians maps for a reason!” Karlach tried to explain, and although she seemed to be pouting, she wore a smile on her face the entire time.

“Okay, okay, guys. Let’s go. The faster we find this, the faster we get back to the Elfsong and I can get a nice long bath.” Tav had no sooner let the words leave her mouth did she have Astarion’s tadpole in her head speaking to her wordlessly, a private conversation still playing out between the couple.

“We can rent the room next door to ours for our use. There is a private bath in there, my dear. We both could use a nice soak. Maybe together? We haven't been bare to each other completely since the Last Light Inn. What do you think?”

Tav was going to respond when a hand flew out and yanked her back. Tav was going to say something as she was upset she was jostled around so easily, but then she realized whose arms held her against their body so tightly. Astarion held her in a death grip as where her foot would have landed was a trap tied to a spring loaded arrow. She would have gotten hurt, if not worse, were it not for the elf…

“Are you okay?” Astarion asked as he finally put her down gently on her feet. Tav just nodded, not trusting her voice. Thinking she should still speak to him, she opened up to speak to him via the tadpole.

“Thank you for saving me, and about what you suggested earlier? I’d love to get a private room with you. Then we can cuddle every night.” Tav watched as Astarion smiled, and although no words technically passed their physical lips, enough was said to know. Astarion kissed her forehead before disarming the trap and taking point. He wasn’t sure what this item was but it was obvious that whatever it was, others were after it too if there was a need to set up traps.  

The group made it from room to room before they found a large room that seemed mostly empty except for a throne far on the other side of the chamber. The ground was mostly cement and carpet with a couple chests and treasure-like items behind the throne. Tav had a bad feeling about this room…

“Wait.” Tav said to the rest. “before we go on, you guys should know why we are here.” Tav looked to the side and looked at her lover when she spoke next. “As I was eating, I was given a tip…well…haggled one, from a very loud bard. This tip was found in a sealed chest in the Chionthar so no one knew of it yet, but long story short, Karlach was right and we are here for you, honey. The Sunwalker’s ring is supposedly here, but I was warned it is being protected. However, I don’t know by what. I figured, since this tip was just rediscovered, I should act on it as soon as possible. I didn’t want it to be found by someone else in case we need it. In case we resolve this tadpole business and you’re stuck in the shadows. I know you and me have spoken about…an alternative, and we have conflicting opinions on it, but I love you too much to see this ring fall through our fingers.” Tav had barely finished her explanation when she felt soft lips press against her own. Tav wanted to close her eyes and just enjoy her lover, but everything in her body was telling her they were in danger. Astarion must have known it too as he pulled away.

“We’re getting this ring, and then I’m ravishing you as soon as we get back and we get some fucking privacy.” Astarion told Tav via the tadpole, licking his lips for added effect, and to make Tav squirm with the thought of just what he meant, exactly. Sex had been off the table for some time, in fact, they haven't slept with each other since about ten weeks ago. Since then, they have had intimacy, just not the expected kind. It started out with them sharing a tent and taking time to ask little questions about each other (favorite food, color, animal, etc.) with a bottle of wine, or just laying in their tent and reading while lounging on each other. Every night in the privacy of their tent, they would cuddle and hold or touch each other. When she had needs, Tav found she would try to sneak off until the shadow curse made things more difficult and dangerous. That was when she found out that Astarion knew she was sneaking away to handle her desires and would rather they explore them together. At first, he would kiss and eventually fondle her chest as she masturbated. Then he would start to ever so slowly become included more until they reached the point they are now. The rules were pretty simple now between them, she couldn’t interact or touch anything below the belt, but otherwise the rest was fine. Now, Astarion’s new favorite had been tasting her. Tav still would ask and offer to reciprocate and she would remind him that she would love doing that as well, but so far, he had yet to give her the honor. Of course, she was also more equally adamant that they didn’t have to do anything at all. He didn’t have to push himself to do anything. Astarion was starting to find his way with his body and be present during these acts, however, as long as it was her, he was having a lot of fun enjoying himself in the discovery. When they found the Elfsong, it was wonderful. They had beds and warm baths for the first time in a long time, however they lost the privacy and no longer could they sleep in the same place together. As a result, Astarion’s nightmares and terrors returned. Once in a while, Tav would slip into Astarion’s bed in the middle of the night when he had a rough night. When nightmares refused to leave him. Tav would never let Astarion deal with the nightmares alone, regardless of sleeping arrangements. The beds were just too small to comfortably sleep together every night. None of the friends said anything, they all understood, but Astarion hated it. He hated the pity and the looks. Hells, once in a while he would wake to find Clive, Karlach’s stuffed bear in his arms as he suspected the barbarian placed him there to help him. Whether or not that was because of his lover, he couldn’t say. The need for privacy was a two-found one. He had a desperate need for his lover and the feeling of having her close by again provided him with a sense of comfort and safety he no longer took for granted. Astarion said nothing to Tav but he longed to make love to her. He cursed that he still could not, but he also knew that he was the only one trying to rush things and that she loved him. She would wait for however long that would take. Astarion just wished he didn’t feel so touch starved in the mean time. He knew she felt the same way, but it wasn’t until recently the private room opened up.

“Ah…it’s about time we had guests.”

Note - This will be updated every week and is sweet for a bit before the Cazador content shows up.

[deancasbigbang]

Title: Illicit Ink

Author: allmystars

Artist: LamiaSage

Rating: Explicit

Pairings: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury/Dorothy Baum

Length: 48000

Warnings: Sex Work, Graphic Sex, Attempted Blackmail

Tags: Alternate Universe, Sex Worker Dean, Tattoo Artist Castiel, Smut, Happy Ending, Sexual Tension, Angst

Posting Date: October 26, 2023

Summary: Dean Winchester has a secret. He does this thing maybe two or three times a week, and he loves it, don’t get him wrong, but… He’s a camboy, and that’s not exactly something he wants shared around the breakfast table. When Dean decides he needs a change, it’s nothing too drastic, just a tattoo. But the hot-as-sin tattoo artist he gets to do the job might just change everything.

Excerpt: Broad shoulders, a trim waste, and the kind of jawline that could cut glass. Dean’s eyes wander to the head of dark sex hair and striking blue eyes that make his heart skip a few beats. But the tattoos… Fuck, they climb up strong, thick arms, wrapping around his biceps and disappearing under the shirt sleeves of his t-shirt. A swirl of blue, a burst of crimson. Twin snakes twisting together around his wrists, the scales almost reflecting the light in some kind of optical illusion. “I would assume you’re my one o’clock?” Blue eyes arches a dark eyebrow as he peels off a pair of nitrile gloves. “You Castiel?” Dean asks, somehow more put together than he thought—maybe he won’t make a fool of himself.  “Mm-hmm,” he hums, crossing the room in a pair of ass-hugging jeans and holy fucking fuck.  “Then I guess I’m your one o’clock.” Dean smiles, but it feels a little awkward on his lips, and judging by the way Castiel looks at him—like he’s not convinced Dean is sane—it’s not nearly as charming as he hopes for. “Follow me, then,” he says, plucking up a folder from behind the counter before turning for the hallway. Dean takes a moment to let his eyes fall to the thick curve of Castiel’s ass, those runners thighs testing the seams of those jeans, before he follows him past the couch and into the hallway.

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