#i’ll fix wilds bangs later

[froggtogs]

wip

[eoe-1379]

The Dream Queen (poly AU)

Chapter 2 Chapter 3

⚠️ 18+ MDNI ⚠️

Tags: Group sex, rough sex, anal play, oral, bdsm, gang-bang (let me know if it needs more).

Golly guys I really got carried away with this AU. I haven’t slept a wink, been writing and editing since 1am. In fact I think I’m obsessed? I have many plans. I've been delerious for about three hours so if something looks crazy I’ll fix it later lol.

I made this a 5:1 dynamic with the intention of paring the LI’s in intimate scenes in future fics for this AU.

Oh also its about 5000 words I think

It was deliciously forbidden.

The thought gripped you and wouldn’t let go: all five of them, in the Dream, with you. Knowing the rules. Knowing the risks. None of it mattered. Once your mind was made up, there was no stopping you. After all, you were The Queen.

The Dream State was designed for one-on-one communion—a deeply erotic piercing of the veil that allowed glimpses of the future under each Pink Moon. Tradition demanded only one lover could join you upon the altar. But it was that time of month, and your thoughts ran wild and ravenous. For every minute spent ticking items off your royal to-do list, there was another where you squirmed, wet and restless in your stockings, or fell back into your throne, flushed and flustered.

It didn’t help that your harem of lovers was intricately involved in your day-to-day affairs.

Xavier, Warden of the Crown, an angelic figure of ethereal grace and glittering steel who kept you safe from the world beyond the tip of his sword.

Rafayel, your Royal Attendant, always within reach, whether with a comb or rouge for your cheeks, his beauty soft and ethereal like morning mist.

Zayne, the Court Physician, with scarred, skilled hands that knew your body better than his own.

Sylus, Master of Shadows, his ruby gaze ever watching, listening for threats that the Court couldn’t see.

And lastly, Caleb, your Hand, your oldest confidant—devoted, obedient, and fiercely yours.

All day, they had waited patiently for your choice. But sitting there, atop your throne, watching them move through shafts of light and crystal, it occurred to you: You didn’t want to choose. You wanted them all.

Rising from the throne demanded silence from the Court. Every pair of eyes fixed on you, but five more, intent and burning, stood apart from the rest.

You smiled, devious and decisive, then said nothing. Turning, you disappeared down the ceremonial hall.

The Anointing Chamber greeted you with a rush of heat—a gust of steam and smoke. The air thick with incense, mingling rosewater and florals, tinged by the scent of burning candles.

Rafayel descended into the pool to wait for you, the yards of his tunic trailing behind him like a tail.

Attendants circled you, expertly stripping away your royal garments, layer by layer, until you were naked in your own pool of silk and chiffon.

You stepped into the water with purpose, and Rafayel glided beside you, his movements fluid. He held an open bottle in his palm, offering it to you with reverence.

“Trillium, vanilla, and amber,” he murmured, a glint of mischief in his eyes. “A new blend—made only for you, my Queen.”

He warmed the oil between his hands, then slid his artisans fingers from the nape of your neck to the crown of your scalp, working the oil through your hair with practiced, soothing strokes.

You let your body fall back into the cradle of his chest as he bathed you, his fingers trailing over every inch of your skin. You closed your eyes, sinking into the worshipful touch. His hands lingered, gently caressing your breasts, thumbing your nipples in a brief moment of distraction before returning to his duties. The sensation sent sparks down your spine, but you had to stay focused—there would be time for bliss soon enough.

Rafayel lowered you beneath the water like an offering, his hand cradling your neck as the pool’s warmth lapped at your lashes. His fingers smoothed your floating hair until you emerged from the depths, sparkling and renewed.

You exited the pool with Rafayel at your side, allowing your maids to dry you off as he selected your ceremonial attire from a carefully arranged display. With the help of attendants, he draped you in strands of rose-quartz and pearls, diamonds and rubies, sapphires—anything worthy of your decadence, in his eyes. Each gem was placed with care, not to conceal but to accentuate your nudity. You were not to be hidden. You were to be worshipped.

Soft pink petals scattered beneath your feet as you strode toward the corridor where your other lovers waited.

They stood in a line, eyes fixed on you—each one holding his breath as you approached. You moved toward them, each man dropping to one knee as you came closer. Their gazes burned with intent, expectation. And as you stood before them, poised and regal, you allowed the silence to stretch—letting it sink into their very bones.

“Highness, the rite demands a singular bond. Who do you choose to accompany you?” Xavier’s voice was clear and formal, though edged with uncertainty. Like the others, he was stunned by your silence earlier—and he feared it meant you’d chosen solitude. That they’d displeased you.

You smiled slowly, deliberately, tapping each of their shoulders in turn. “I choose… not to choose.”

Confusion flickered between the five of them as they exchanged glances. You laughed softly, reveling in their stunned expressions. “You’ll all enter at my side. Six hearts. Six bodies. One Dream.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Zayne inhaled sharply. Sylus cocked his head, unreadable. Rafayel looked awestruck, lips parted in disbelief. Caleb simply nodded, though a tremor betrayed itself in the tight line of his shoulders.

“You break sacred law with that command,” Xavier said at last, his voice low and reverent, cheeks blooming with the faintest flush. “But we’ll follow you anywhere, my Queen.”

They nodded in unison, not one of them daring to oppose you. You hadn’t expected resistance—not really. They were yours. Devoted. Helplessly so.

Caleb stepped to your side, his hand brushing along your arm with a tickling touch.

“If this is your will, we won’t question it,” he murmured. His fingers flexed, lingered, then left your skin tingling as he turned toward the servants. “Let the ceremony begin.” At his command, the drums began—deep and resonant, like an echo of your pounding heartbeat. Their rhythm pulsed through the temple as you led the procession toward the towering double doors of the Dream Chamber. You kept your face composed, serene, but inside your chest your heart fluttered like wings caught in silk.

When the doors shut behind you, the sound of drums faded into a distant hum, replaced by stillness. Before you, stretched a clearing awash in starlight. The moonstone altar stood at its center, glowing pale and ghostly, encircled by pillars that held up nothing but endless sky. Spring’s sweetness drifted through the incense-heavy air.

The men moved behind you—some familiar with this sacred place, others seeing it anew. Candlelight danced across the marble, casting gold-veined shadows and warming the cool breath of the night.

You stepped forward with slow grace, conscious of the way your feet sank into the grass, the way jeweled strands chimed against your hips and breasts, the way the wind carried your scent through the chamber like a claim. This was your realm.

You climbed the altar and reclined into the carved hollow, designed for two.

“Only two may lie upon the altar,” Caleb murmured beside you, his voice husky—not with worry, but something far more primal.

“Then come close,” you replied, gesturing languidly. “There’s room for the rest of you nearby. Find it.”

A moment passed in silence before Xavier stepped forward. He laid his sword on the dais and began removing his armor. He settled beside your wrist, close enough for you to run your fingers through his hair as he relaxed, closing his eyes.

One by one, the others followed—finding places around the altar, each taking a position that felt both ritualistic and intimate. Rafayel leaned against a low stone step, Zayne rested with arms folded behind his head, Sylus remained half-shrouded in shadow, watching as always. But Caleb—ever bold—slid into the altar beside you, curling against your side like he belonged there. His lips brushed your forehead, his fingers laced with yours. His scent, his warmth—it grounded you. Soothed you. Your breath slowed. Your pulse did not.

The sky darkened above, stars bleeding into focus. A tremor pulsed through the moonstone beneath you, the altar coming alive with ancient magic. You arched slightly as your body reacted—tense, eager, slick with anticipation. The air thickened with desire, heavy as the incense that still hung on the wind. You could feel them. Their breath. Their restraint. Their aching need, each of them teetering on the edge of respect and ruin.

Then—the veil tore.

Reality shattered like glass. The altar dissolved into silken sheets, the world around you melting into something dreamlike, surreal. Ethereal.

The men shimmered into form around you, cloaked in nothing but desire.

Rafayel was the first to approach, fingers trembling as they traced the jeweled strands across your bare skin admiring the craftsmanship before daring to worship what laid beneath.

The bed under you expanded, made vast by the magic of the Dream—a silken expanse large enough for all five men to gather close without crowding.

Caleb’s calloused hands found your abdomen first, his touch steady, possessive. His breath warmed the shell of your ear.

“You’re trembling, my Queen,” he murmured. “Let me hold you steady.”

You melted into his strength, letting the warmth of his muscles cradle you like the arms of a storm, willing to be gentle—for now.

Rafayel’s hands slipped beneath your adornments next, framing your torso like he was measuring the proportions of a goddess. The others closed in, no hesitation in their movements. Every one of them reached for you with clear purpose.

Sylus caught your wrists and lifted them overhead, binding them with red silk—tight enough to hold. Rafayel followed suit at your feet, his ribbons matching like twin vows. Then a blindfold descended over your eyes.

You smiled. “Keeping me in the dark?” you teased. “I see.”

Their laughter echoed softly—low, warm, and hungry.

Something featherlight brushed your clit and your back arched instinctively, a gasp catching in your throat.

“Let me polish her,” Rafayel pleaded, his voice like velvet. His hands followed—warm oil coating your skin, his skilled fingers massaging it in slow, deliberate strokes from your ears to your toes. He didn’t just rub it in—he worked it into the very soul of you, layer by layer, like the final glaze on his most sacred art piece. By the time he finished, you were trembling, every nerve singing. A moan escaped—soft, needy, involuntary.

“Stop touching her like one of your sculptures,” Xavier cut in, his grip suddenly hard on your thigh.

Rafayel’s tone was lightly mocking. “What would you prefer, Warden?”

“She came here for more than worship,” Xavier muttered in reply.

You knew his presence here—his dominance. His discipline. It set your pulse racing.

“He’s right,” Zayne added coolly, two fingers pressing lightly against your throat. “Her heartbeat gives her away.”

You smiled behind the blindfold. They understood. Worship was constant - everywhere else. But here—in the Dream—there was room for chaos. For danger. For surrender.

Someone’s mouth captured yours with a heat that curled your toes. The taste gave him away—Caleb. Rich with spice and temptation. His tongue was a feast, and you devoured him like a woman starved.

You moaned against him, thighs clenching as slick gathered between. Two fingers parted you gently—curious, practiced—while another pair of hands pinned your legs open, patient and firm.

It began softly. Touches layered like whispers—exploratory, claiming. Hands roamed your body with reverence, brushing your sides, cupping your breasts, gripping your hips. One mouth sucked gently at a nipple. Another kissed your temple. Lips found your palms, your ankles, your ribs.

You lost track of them—whose touch belonged to whom. It no longer mattered.

Then something sharper—teeth—grazed your shoulder. Another set tugged too hard at your nipple, pulling a cry from your lips before you could silence it.

“Now, sweetie,” Sylus drawled, slow and teasing, “you can take much more than that.”

“We’ve barely begun,” Xavier added, his tone almost amused.

You could hear them shifting around you, repositioning, strategizing—planning your unraveling with care.

A hand found your throat—gentle at first, thumb brushing the sensitive skin. You responded instantly, your hips grinding up toward the unseen source. Strong hands met your motion—and then came a slap. Sharp. Perfectly placed.

“Ah—hnn!”

You hissed under your breath as another landed, the sting blooming outward in waves. The hand at your throat tightened—not cruelly, but with just enough force to fog the edges of your mind.

You were smiling.

Something firm, smooth, and unfamiliar entered you, coaxing a wriggle from your restrained body. There was no escape, only submission. Silk ropes began coiling around your torso, around your breasts—binding you with ceremonial precision until they looked ready to burst.

A mouth wrapped around one nipple, then the other. Heat. Tongue. Pressure. You whimpered as the sensations overwhelmed. Finally, someone kissed you—deep, slow, all-consuming. The kiss stole the last of your breath. When you parted, it left you dizzy.

You spoke the only command you’d give that night, voice hoarse and charged:

“Don’t hold back.”

Zayne’s breath found your ear, hot and hungry. “As you wish.”

Xavier’s hand remained clenched around your throat as he took his turn first, positioning himself between your spread thighs and letting a slow strand of spit fall from his lips onto your exposed, quivering cunt. He watched, fascinated, as your body twitched when it landed—cold against your feverish heat.

With one hand around his thick cock, he dragged the swollen head through your folds, slicking you further with his pre-cum—not that you needed the help. You were always soaked for him.

Looking down at you now—limbs restrained by rival lovers, body bound in silk and trembling—he was transfixed. The things he wanted to do to you went far beyond honor… beyond duty… far beyond dignity.

“You’re putting too much pressure on her carotid.” Zayne’s precise voice broke through the haze. Xavier’s brow furrowed.

“I tighten my grip, she gets wetter,” he muttered. “Are you arguing with my results?”

“No,” Zayne replied calmly, “only your technique.”

You writhed beneath them, moaning as Xavier rubbed his head against your entrance, teasing without mercy. His abs tightened, every twitch betraying how close he already was.

His grip on your throat loosened just enough for your head to lift.

Then Sylus pressed your head gently back to the pillows, his palm warm over your mouth.

“You fight like dogs over a feast,” he muttered darkly. “How about you feed her instead?”

Two long fingers slid past your lips, tracing your tongue, teasing your throat until you suckled around them instinctively—moaning, hungry.

“Good girl…” Sylus purred, watching your lips wrap around his knuckles.

That was all Xavier could take.

With a sharp snap of his hips, he thrust into you in one smooth, brutal stroke, burying himself to the hilt. Your muffled moan vibrated against Sylus’s fingers, and Xavier’s groan echoed low and primal in his chest.

Restraint shattered. He moved with intention—each thrust a calculated act of dominance, deep and punishing, but never careless. The more you squirmed, the more you tensed around him, the more desperate he became to possess you entirely.

He bent over your bound form, fisting your hair in one hand as he crashed his mouth against yours—kissed you like a man starving, teeth grazing lips, tongue demanding compliance. He listened to your breathing, the short, rapid gasps. You were slipping.

Too far.

“That’s enough, Warden.” Zayne’s voice cut through the rhythm.

Xavier didn’t stop. Couldn’t. He was right there—right at the edge of flooding you, of being the first to mark you full.

“Let the good doctor intervene, X, before she blacks out,” Sylus added.

Xavier exhaled through clenched teeth, one final growl in his throat, before releasing your neck.

Zayne’s hand replaced his—not to choke, but to hold. Steady. Measured. His fingers traced the line of your jaw as he checked your pulse, his touch cool and clinical.

Xavier withdrew reluctantly, your pussy clenching around nothing, desperate and twitching until Zayne’s elegant cock took his place��stretching you wide, filling you with deliberate precision that seared you to your core.

“Relax,” the doctor murmured, voice calm. “You’re perfect.”

His hands and eyes roamed your body like a scholar handling a sacred text—mapping every curve, tracing each dimple, memorizing the way you trembled beneath him. Every twitch, every gasp, every moan was another data point, another mystery to decode.

He started slow, measured—then picked up speed, but never let you fall over the edge. Not fully. He hovered you there, dangling, getting off on your helplessness. He studied your responses the way a surgeon studies anatomy. The sharp inhale when he pinched your nipple. The arch of your spine, feral and possessed, when he slipped a finger up your ass mid-thrust. And through it all—he never once stopped fucking you.

He handled your hips like a precision instrument, adjusting your angle to take him deeper with each stroke. Your mouth hung open, tongue lolling, as ragged breaths rasped past his practiced grip at your throat.

Then Sylus appeared at your side, whistling low as he observed the scene.

“Let me in before her legs lock up,” the spymaster said, voice dry as aged wine. He crouched beside you, running his fingers down your slick inner thigh with ravenous delicacy. “I like my toys pliant, not paralyzed.”

You whimpered—empty, desperate, trembling for release.

Sylus made a soft sound, but there was warning laced beneath it. “Don’t whine, sweetie,” he murmured, stroking the curve of your hip. “Not yet.”

He leaned over you, drinking you in with his eyes like a starving man before a banquet. Gods, you were perfection like this—bound, flushed, wrecked. Fucked half-senseless and still strung tight with need. A puddle of pleasure at his feet. His.

He grinned, fingers drifting lazily over your bellybutton, amused at the way you jolted under his touch.

“Look at you,” he mused, “begging without saying a word.”

He tugged at the ribbon around your wrists, tightening it with practiced flair until your fingers flexed. “Still snug. Good. You always squirm better like this.”

He grabbed your hound-bound ankles, pushing them inward until your thighs spread wide like wings, exposing the dripping center of you. A perfect cradle for his head.

He sank low and buried his mouth in your folds, tongue hot and greedy. You bucked against his face, sobbing out choked gasps as his teeth scraped where it burned the most. But he didn’t rush. No, Sylus savored you—pulling back just when your muscles began to clench, forcing your orgasm to wither in your gut. Again. And again. It drove you mad.

He was delighted.

You writhed helplessly as his fingers teased your entrance, his tongue darting and dragging, keeping you on the edge until your nerves were aflame. Just when you thought you might slip into madness, he conjured one of his favorite toys—a sleek little beast from back home—and pressed it hard against your clit.

The vibrations hit you like lightning.

You screamed, thighs spasming, body twitching involuntarily as the stimulation overwhelmed you. The toy didn’t waver. Sylus watched, fascinated, as tears slipped past your blindfold and your slick coated his chin.

“You’re drenched,” he murmured, almost sweet. His thumb stroked your cheek in mock affection.“Whose name were you trying not to scream?” He didn’t wait for your answer. One finger pushed inside, curling with surgical precision. “Bet it was mine.”

The others were gathering now—drawn to the center of your unraveling.

Xavier’s grip sank deep into your thigh.

Zayne’s fingers ghosted across your breast.

Caleb pressed his lips reverently to your shoulder.

And Sylus devoured you like the finest wine—nose buried, tongue relentless, drinking everything you gave. The others watched. Some stroked themselves. Some only stared. But all of them wanted more.

When he finally thrust inside, it was with devastating control—each stroke painting your nerves with heat and pressure. You clenched around him, body overwhelmed, arching in time with his rhythm.

“You don’t fall apart until I say so,” he whispered against your temple, curling an arm beneath your back to draw you tighter. Deeper. “You’re close, aren’t you, sweet girl?”

You nodded, blindfold damp with unshed tears.

He kissed your jaw. “Good,” he purred.

The men’s chorus—gruff moans, breathy praise, low curses of reverence—faded into a hypnotic rhythm behind your whimpers. They traded places each time you came close to breaking. Just when the tight band in your belly threatened to snap, someone would retreat, leaving you panting and twitching. Fingers and tongues soothed you only enough to keep you pliant—until the next man drove you right back to the edge.

Sylus took his time. Always did. He weaponized denial, drawing it out until your body trembled with need, ruined more by absence than action. Xavier, ever the Warden, liked control. Dominance. He staked his claim with brutal purpose, finally sliding into your ass with a low growl as Zayne kept you bouncing on his cock beneath—two perfectly synchronized rhythms tearing you apart from both ends.

Caleb had been hesitant at first—caught between jealousy and that sick, hungry awe he couldn’t tear away from. Watching you get undone again and again lit something in him. Finally, he found his place—his cock dribbling at the tip as he guided it to your lips. You opened with a welcoming moan, warmth and obedience making him shudder as he slid in across your tongue.

You smiled around him. You liked this.

They passed you between them like a sacred thing. A worshipped, well-used doll—supported here, bent there, held up or flipped over. The restraints came off only when they trusted your body could no longer resist them. And it couldn’t. You were nothing but instinct and sensation now, boneless with pleasure, driven by their voices.

“Beg louder.”

“So responsive.”

“Can’t even think straight, can you?”

“Even your cries are a symphony.”

“G-good… girl.”

Then—finally—your body began to fray. Every nerve burned. Every breath hitched in your throat. You couldn’t speak. Couldn’t beg. Couldn’t stop it.

When Rafayel’s mouth found your core again, reverent and unrelenting, something inside you shattered.

“Ahh gods!” You cried out.

Caleb cradled your face with trembling fingers, guiding his cock back between your lips with a broken groan. Xavier’s hands left bruises on your ass as he spread you wide, holding you open for Rafayel’s final assault. His tongue was merciless.

The orgasm hit like a tidal wave snapping free from a dam—violent, devastating, unstoppable.

Rafayel whimpered as he came, his mouth still moving even as his climax spilled warm beneath your hips. You screamed around Caleb’s cock, eyes rolling behind the blindfold, every muscle locking. Your back arched hard enough to hurt. Your legs refused to move. Your whole world dissolved into blinding, hot-white pleasure.

Caleb moaned as he spilled down your throat, your lips fluttering weakly around him as you swallowed what you could—though more still leaked from the corners of your mouth

Sylus and Xavier followed almost in tandem, gritting through their release, cocks painting your chest in thick, warm ropes as their soft groans mingled in the heat of the dream.

Zayne replaced Rafayel between your legs, his final thrusts careful but deep—one hand on your hip, the other stroking your clit as he finished with a hiss, filling you to the brim.

Silence followed the crescendo of ecstasy —heavy, holy.

Your body went limp in their arms, used, adored, claimed. You floated now, weightless and slack, wrapped in the heat of their limbs as they coiled around you like a living shrine. Fingers smoothed over your skin—gentle now, grounding. Touches meant to soothe, not take. No one spoke. Breath was the only sound. Yours, shaky. Theirs, hushed.

Caleb moved first, slipping a hand beneath your knees, cradling your head to his shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, a vow made in breath and bone.

Rafayel curled up beside you, scattering kisses like flower petals across your flushed skin.

Sylus poured water from a flask into a carved crystal cup and brought it to your lips with surprising tenderness.

“Drink,” he said. “Goddesses don’t faint on their altars.”

Zayne hovered nearby, eyes sweeping your body—not with hunger now, but with clinical calculation.

“Muscle spasms might set in. Keep her warm.”

Xavier said nothing. He simply lay beside you, head bowed, one arm across your waist like a living shield.

No one moved. No one let go. Somewhere in the stillness, between the whispered reassurances and the lingering tremble in your thighs, the afterglow shifted into something deeper. Sanctuary.

Caleb’s breath warmed your cheek. Rafayel’s hand threaded through your hair. You floated in their voices, their touches, their love. The moment stretched, timeless.

But then—Silence.

Not peace. Absence. The warmth evaporated. The weight of bodies, of hands, of hearts—gone. The altar vanished beneath you. No silk. No flesh. No light. Just cold stone under your spine, coarse and damp with something ancient. You gasped awake, lungs seizing like you’d never breathed before.

Darkness greeted you. Not the soft dark of sleep. Not the velvet black of the dream. This was emptiness—void. No blindfold. No bonds. No warmth. You sat up, heart pounding. The vision bled into your bones:

The world cracked. Not like glass—like truth. The dream realm shuddered and peeled open. Stars rippled overhead like the surface of water. And there—you saw yourself. Alone. Curled in a cocoon of void, weeping in sleep that never ended. Your men were scattered across a barren dreamscape, bleeding through memories, clawing through shadows. Searching. You reached for them, desperate—but your hands passed through mist. The dream shattered and you were alone.

-

Somewhere far away, Xavier jolted upright. The blanket he’d draped over the altar slipped to the floor. “She’s not breathing!” He exclaimed, coming out of a nightmare he didn’t understand.

“No—she’s not here.” Zayne’s voice sliced through the room, already moving toward the altar. “She’s gone.”

Sylus stood frozen, lips parted around a curse.

Caleb called your name like a prayer.

Rafayel clutched a piece of cloth that still smelled like you.

-

Elsewhere…

You screamed, but only the cave bore witness.

As always thank you for taking the time to read, I hope you enjoyed it!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I’ve been dreaming of the Spearman of Spades.

The journey was tough, and the battles tougher. At the height of his success, he's his own worst enemy.

With this spear and his strength, he will dutifully serve his sovereign.

How does a moment last forever? How can a story never die?

Deuce hardly recognizes the young man in the mirror.

It's him--it's very obviously him: navy bangs, aquamarine eyes, the spade mark on his left eye, Heartslabyul uniform--but it doesn't feel like him. Not the same stiff, awkward first year that had stumbled onto Night Raven Campus, all his rough edges still not sanded down. The time had flown by, rounding him out.

Second year Deuce is different. Built studier, packed with more muscle from track meets. The wild glint in his eyes is tamped down, shielded by a certain seriousness.

It’s still me… right?

Deuce swallows, anxiously fidgeting with the brim of his hat. It's a keepsake passed down from his senior.

"I won't be needing this for my internship. It's yours now," Trey had told him. "Wear it well, okay?"

"... Do I deserve to?" he mumbles to his reflection. Me?

"Of course you do, idiot. Quit doubting yourself."

Deuce startles--but calms once he feels an arm sling around his shoulder, and a familiar cheeky face joins him in the mirror. Ace hangs off of him easily, the two troublemakers peas in a pod.

"Hey. Nervous?" his friend asks with a smirk.

"More than ever," he confesses. His breathing is shaky, despite his best attempts to wrestle control of it.

"Well, don't be." Deuce rolls his eyes at the simple, snarky response. Very Ace of him. "I don't care what anyone else says, you'll kill this." A pause. "If you don't pass out before then, that is."

"Thanks for the encouragement." The sarcasm is palpable.

"Don't mention it!" Ace replies cheerily. "Where would you be without me, huh? Better put in a good word on my behalf."

“Can’t guarantee that.”

“Ah, come oooh! Cut your buddy some slack here. I’ve been behaving myself recently, I deserve something nice.”

“Being nice should be its own reward.”

“Bro, you sound like the headmaster,” Ace remarks, wrinkling his nose. Clearly, not a compliment.

Ding!

Deuce lifts a brow. “Is that…”

“Huh? Oh—it’s my phone.” Ace whips out his mobile device, checks his messages, and groans.

“Something up?”

“Yeah, uh… It’s a special guest we’re receiving. You know! For today’s ceremony. They got lost in the hedge maze, so they told us they miiight be running late for this very important date.”

Deuce frowns. “We’re starting in a few minutes and Rosehearts-senpai can be really strict about punctuality.”

“Don’t worry about it!! I’ve got it covered. All you gotta do is go to that ceremony and soak up all the praise.”

Before Deuce can protest, the fanfare of distant trumpets meets their ears. It is a victorious song, one ushering in new beginnings. He shares a look with Ace, who grins wickedly.

"Aaaand there's your cue. Talk about timing.” He aggressively smacks Deuce on the back. "Go ahead, everyone's waiting for you. I gotta go help out our special guest, but I’ll be in the crowd! Catch ya later!"

"See you…” He has barely finished speaking, but Ace is already gone.

Deuce sighs and fixes his posture, shoulders squared and head held high. He runs a hand through his hair, letting his locks fall back into their natural place. His gaze is deep, contemplative—an ocean wondering whether to let a wanderer sink or swim.

A generous gulp of air for his shaky confidence.

Out with the old and in with the new.

With that, he steels himself and makes a bold stride into the gardens.

Heartslabyul students stand at attention, making way for his entrance. Their best tablecloths and decorations are set out, and a band is in full swing. Even the rose trees seem celebratory today, letting loose a scatter of petals dancing in the breeze.

The sunshine, a solitary spotlight illuminating his path.

All eyes on him.

Deuce follows the road paved for him by a crimson carpet. His dorm leader, in all of his finery, awaits him at the other end with a scepter and a stern smile. When he reaches Riddle, the redhead clears his throat.

At once, the trumpets cut off. The song, at its end at his command.

Deuce immediately lowers into a kneel. His eyes are kept trained on the ground, both to steady his stance and to keep from being ill on the spot.

Riddle looks to the waiting crowd, his authoritative voice projecting outward. “Students of Heartslabyul! We are gathered here today to witness the ascension of one among you: Deuce Spade.”

“Yes, dorm leader!”

“He has proven himself worthy countless times over,” Riddle continues, glowing with pride. “Deuce entered this institution with a crude attitude and barely comprehending basic mathematics—but with time and rigorous study, he has risen from delinquency to the ranks of the honor roll.

“What’s more, Deuce has demonstrated immense honor and strength of character. Countless times has he held true to his own moral convictions, defending the weak and the downtrodden. His goodness is immeasurable—a model for us all to follow.

“Deuce Spade wholeheartedly embodies the spirit of strictness extolled by our dormitory. I can think of no better man to have as our next vice dorm leader.”

Riddle gently brings his scepter down upon Deuce. First on the right shoulder, then the left.

“You may rise.”

He does, newly knighted.

“Heartslabyul!” Riddle lays a hand on Deuce’s arm, spinning him around to face the audience. “Your new vice dorm leader!”

The students erupt into applause and cheers. Card suits of all kinda, gathered to celebrate him.

How far he has come.

“Congratulations, Deuce! Congratulations, vice dorm leader!”

“Th-Thank you!” he manages. His nerves are still in control, and his next sentence seize in his throat.

“Any words for them?” Riddle asks quietly. “Something to inspire confidence.”

An acceptance speech?! Deuce completely locks up. I-I didn’t prep for this…

“Um, I’m not sure if I…”

But he sees the eager faces of his peers, thinks of the expectations places on him. His eyes frantically search, seeking another way out, another answer. Then—

In the corner of his vision, figures darting out from the rose maze.

It’s Ace, sprinting as fast as his feet will take him. His cheeks are cherry red from exertion. He falls in line at the back of the crowd, doubling over, hands on his knees, and gasps for his breath.

Ace is followed by a woman, her bobbed hair streaked with blonde and navy—a navy not unlike Deuce’s own. She is dressed modestly, her cap and jacket stamped with a white rabbit logo, aquamarine eyes piercing through the shadow of her hat. Her lips painted a golden brown, a spade dangling from an ear.

Their special guest.

Mom?

"Deuce!!" she calls out, waving an arm at him. "I wanted to be here--to see you on your special day! I'm not too late, am I?"

"Mom...!" his voice rings out, carrying across the garden and to her. "Of course not. You..."

You're always there for me.

Deuce straightens, his courage gathering. He is a flower, freshly watered and reinvigorated as he addresses the onlookers.

“For a long time, I thought I was a bad kid... that I would always be a bad kid, no matter how much I tried. But I'm here. I've made it."

Deuce glances around the assembly. At Ace, at his dorm leader, at Riddle, at the spaces once occupied by his upperclassmen.

"So... thank you very much for giving me a second chance...! For this opportunity! I promise, I'll keep doing my very best from here on out and get better and better every day!"

He bows.

The audience is uproarious. A sharp whistle--from Ace. Riddle nods approvingly.

His tears well in spite of himself.

When he at last raises his head, he sees his mother is sobbing too.

So proud of him.

[waytootiredforthistoo]

microfic that has been lingering in my drafts for like 2 years now because at some point you have to admit to yourself that the full work is never gonna happen:

(post Yule Break, 4th year, when Walburga got pissed and shaved Sirius's hair off.)

“Ooohh… that’s bad.”

“Thank you so much, Mary!” Sirius snarked, shoving the hat back on his head and turning to leave. 

“Oi! I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you.” He paused. “I’ll meet you in your room in 5 minutes. Let me go get Dorcas, she’s great at this stuff.”

“She is?” His voice was uncharacteristically fragile.

"Mhm." Mary nodded confidently. “You remember when Marlene had those really unfortunate bangs last year?”

“No?”

“Exactly.” Sirius finally broke a smile. “Go on. We’ll be right up.”

Dorcas had a similar, if more polite, reaction to Mary. “I think you might have actually undersold it.” She whispered over her shoulder. James muffled a laugh, but Sirius just ran his hand over a bald spot and grimaced. “And none of you helped him?” She looked around the room, catching eyes with a confused looking James. 

“What were we supposed to do about it?”

“You are literally the heir to Sleekezy Hair Potion. Are you not?” She looked at him like that should be obvious.

He clearly disagreed. “Sleekezy tames your wild mane.” He parroted the slogan at her. “Sirius’ problem is that he doesn’t have a mane anymore. Not a Sleekezy problem.”

Mary rolled her eyes. 

“We did go to Madam Pomfrey,” Remus glanced up from the book he was reading. “When we first got back.”

“And what did she say?” 

“Mr. Black, this is a hospital wing, not a beauty salon. If nothing more than you ego has been wounded, I must ask you to head back to your dorm.” Mary was fully laughing at Peter’s Madam Pomfrey impression. It was one of his best. Dorcas at least had the courtesy to cover her laugh with a cough upon seeing Sirius’s sullen expression. 

“Alright, alright.” Dorcas walked over to his bed. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

“Please.” His eyes looked so sincere that it was genuinely upsetting.

Ten minutes later he was back to preening in the bathroom mirror, complementing his own reflection at least as much as he was complementing the girls’ work. 

“Right, well, we’ll leave the two of you to it.” Mary joked, looking between Sirius and his reflection. He grabbed the two of them and pulled them into a hug. 

“Thank you. Thank you.”

Dorcas nodded into his shoulder and Mary whispered. “Any time. It was a dick move of her to do that to you. You don’t deserve her shit.” 

She saved him the trouble of having to respond, breaking the hug with one last nod and a "let's go to dinner, Cas."

[adultswim2021]

Tim & Eric Nite Live #10: “Chocolate Episode” | February 19, 2008 | S01E10

In private, I posited that this might be one of the weakest episodes of the show just by virtue of the fact that it’s a format breaker. I was wrong. It’s just strong in a different way. 

This one begins with a big finale: the cast are covered in chocolate to various degrees, and singing a spirited song about loving Chocolate. Yo La Tengo is there, and closing credits roll. It’s possible that people tuning in live were genuinely confused by this, and thought they somehow missed the actual episode. 

Jon Mugar comes out and announces that the episode has wrapped, and they begin setting up for a post-show writer’s meeting. There’s also static cameras set up in a green room area where Tim and other cast members are cleaning chocolate off themselves. Eric is bugging Tim about paying him $30 for a Lakers ticket, which Tim is, perhaps rightfully, being combative over because it was supposedly a comp ticket that Eric procured. All the cameras are fixed, and it’s immediately clear that we’re watching something that’s not supposed to go out over the air.

I mean, obviously Tim and Eric aren’t REALLY accidentally letting themselves be filmed. They are playing with the same conventions of television that Garry Shandling played with for The Larry Sanders Show. But it’s just uncanny enough to make you wonder if somebody (like an audience member, or maybe certain people on camera) are being tricked.

What happens is a fairly mundane but subtly hilarious “writer’s meeting” involving Tim, Eric, and their cast of misfits. The humor is in the details; Eric is given a cake for his birthday which already has a slice cut out of it. The participants at the writer’s table all bang their heads against the wall trying to come up with a suitable idea for their upcoming “Leap Year” themed show. DJ Douggpound wants Tim and Eric to dress like frogs, speak in subtitled croaks, and lay eggs. Dunn suggests a Princess and the Frog kinda thing and really likes the idea of having both Tanese Gray and Gabby come back for it. Quall suggests that somebody dress like an astronaut and use the phrase “a giant LEAP for Mankind”. 

Things take more of a turn sideways when Eric presents a Youtube clip of Gorillas hanging out as an ersatz Carson-esque animal segment. Tim reams him out for it, bruising Eric’s ego. DLH rehearses his leap year song while Eric gets up from the table bitch about Tim to Jon Mugar who’s standing off to the side. Tim and Eric’s relationship is beginning to erode in front of our very eyes. 

Bob Odenkirk shows up and takes the boys to task for their unprofessional show via a compilation of technical failures. He admits that he thought they were trying to make a bad show on purpose: “I found out from you that you were trying to do a good job”. Bob continues to chastise the cast, and DLH eventually leaves the table. He almost seems like he’s taking Bob’s criticisms a little too personally, though he does a glad-handing laugh at DLH’s ad-lib of “I’m the only chocolate one here!” in reference to the fictional show that took place. Bob similarly props up Quall’s line “I’ll be in the museum with all the other dinosaurs”, and indirectly compliments him by having the parallel thought of the astronaut “Giant Leap” bit.  

Tim loses his temper with Eric for fucking around in the clips Bob shows, and they eventually blow up at one another, devolving into a cake throwing fight. “I’m going to go out the back door because he’s going to fucking jump me again” Tim complains. As people scatter, we cut to color bars. That’s the end! 

This is a terrific episode, and they pull off the near impossible task of improvised, realistic performance with some wild card outsiders. Tim would later do a similar thing with The Trial, a season of On Cinema that consists of fixed-camera court-room footage of his character’s manslaughter trial. That, from what I can gather, was pulled off with the cooperation of professional actors who probably specialize in mock trials. This is MUCH shorter, but almost more impressive because it’s pulled off with non-professional and seemingly presented live. It could have been pre-taped for all I know, but there’s no obvious edits. Along with The Trial, it’s one of the pieces I’m most curious about in Tim and Eric’s oeuvre.

Man, I would pay handsomely for a complete Nite Live watchalong. I really would!

MAIL BAG

as for "microwaving animals" go I feel like Newgrounds was a big source of that kind of a humor. You could microwave any animal on that site, even the olsen twins.

I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but I’m very glad that I was never a Newgrounds devotee.

[random-thought-depository]

Continuing from my last post about science fictional “hyperspaces” (wow, I think that might be the most viral original post I ever wrote; it’s amazing what being reblogged by @argumate can do for a post!):

As a science fiction writer, these are the features I find attractive about “hyperspace” that incline me to favor it over other explanations for “fast” interstellar communication and travel:

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

Hyperspace lets space still feel big. Wormholes/portals and instantaneous “jump drives” tend to make space feel small (though wormholes lend themselves nicely to space outside the wormhole network feeling big and to a feeling of sharp discontinuity between “known” or “civilized” space within the network and “unknown” or “wild” space where the network doesn’t reach). Start-anywhere go-anywhere jump drives without serious limitations have the additional issue that they’re more-or-less equivalent to teleporters, so they create the ultimate MAD setting where defending multiple fixed locations from a peer adversary is very difficult, and they minimize the strategic advantages of sustainable stationary banditry over unsustainable hyper-exploitive mobile banditry, and since the likely implications of that are very depressing I prefer to avoid it (except maybe if I was deliberately setting out to write a dystopia or explore the idea).

I want space to feel big in my writing, to give the reader some feeling of the vastness, grandeur, and inhuman scale of the universe. For my main science fiction setting, I think I’ll give hyperspace travel an effective “speed” of something like 5-10 c in Sol’s local neighborhood. That way interstellar journeys are more manageable than they’d be with journeys through our space, but journeys to other inhabited solar systems usually take at least a year or two (Sol to Alpha Centauri may be less than a year in hyperspace, but add in travel time to and from the Sol and Alpha Centauri hyper-limits, which is probably going to be at least a couple of months for each leg, and it’s probably about a year).

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

Hyperspace feels more like the sort of thing that might plausibly be useable to almost hairless apes with near-future-ish technology. With warp drives and wormholes and jump drives and so on I get the niggling feeling that’s the sort of thing you should probably have to be on approximately the level of an Orion’s Arm Archialect to do. Real theoretical warp drive and wormhole proposals tend to involve stuff like exotic forms of matter and energy and very large amounts of energy. Hyperspace would be a natural phenomenon, so it’s easier to explain it in terms of people exploiting natural phenomena we just don’t know about now, no weirder than being able to travel faster than rowing would allow by building a sail to catch the wind.

You can say that there are some rare atoms that naturally have a structure that extends into hyperspace. With human senses and 2020s technology they just look like ordinary atoms of silicon, iron, etc., but with the right kind of machinery you can detect them, sift them out of the surrounding 3D atoms, and concentrate them. Once you’ve got enough of them, you can make them the core of a pair of transmitters that you can use to send and receive radio messages through hyperspace. With more energy, you can “push” on these structures and “push” those atoms into hyperspace, and then if those atoms are part of a larger solid object the rest of the object and anything touching it gets dragged along with them (with a certain size limit, perhaps related to mass being “pushed” and energy used, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally sending the whole Earth into hyperspace the first time you try this - that’d be one heck of an oops; maybe a later disproven small theoretical possibility of that happening would go down into the history books along with “before they exploded Trinity they were worried it might ignite the atmosphere”); thus you can send a whole ship into hyperspace instead of just information. When you want to leave hyperspace you can reverse the operation and “push” the ship back into our space.

That gives you a nice highly valuable “handwavium” that can be a hook for various plot and worldbuilding points, e.g. there’s not much obvious economic reason to colonize Mars IRL except maybe tourism (anything you could mine there you get more easily from near-Earth asteroids, and it’s too inhospitable to make much sense as a settler colony), but maybe there’s a huge mother lode of these hyperspace-touching atoms somewhere on Mars. These hyperspace-touching atoms would be especially valuable if the process of using them for communication or in hyperdrives “strained” these structures and at some predictable rate caused some of them to “snap,” causing the atoms to become ordinary 3D atoms of silicon or iron or uranium or whatever. Then there’d be a continuous need for (relatively) large amounts of new ones even in a steady-state economy; you couldn’t just keep recycling them and recycling them and just do a little mining to make up for recycling inefficiencies. This would also be an interesting limit on use of hyperspace; using hyperspace radio or doing a hyperjump involves destroying a small amount of a precious resource, so people wouldn’t want to do it frivolously. This might augment that sphere analogy limitation on hyperspace communication I talked about in my other post; even if a hyperspace radio message from Saturn to Earth got there a little ahead of a radio message through our space, you’d probably send a radio message through our space for anything that isn’t time-critical, because the message arriving ten minutes sooner usually just isn’t worth the predictable cost in “snapped” hyperspace-touching atoms.

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

Hyperspace would be an environment, so you can do interesting things with it.

Since hyperspace offers a short-cut because it’s more compact than our space, I like to pull on the idea that it’s like our space but in a more compact state, so it’s similar to what our space looked like when the universe was younger and smaller. Going to hyperspace might be a little like time travelling back to a few tens or hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, before the first stars formed. The environment of hyperspace might be a little like the inside of a giant molecular cloud, but “warmer” and extremely impoverished in heavy elements. The gas density might be a few thousand to a few billion atoms per cubic centimeter (by comparison, sea level air is about 10^19 molecules per cubic centimeter while the interstellar medium averages around 1 atom per cubic centimeter). The gasses and plasmas in hyperspace would be almost pure hydrogen and helium. The cosmic microwave background temperature in hyperspace might be around 50 K; that’s warm in comparison to what it is in our space (around 3 K), and warm enough to probably be a big part of the reason hyperspace has no stars (present day star-forming giant molecular cloud regions have gas temperatures around 10-20 K), but by human standards it’s deeply cold; it’s upper atmosphere of Uranus temperature. With no stars, I’d guess hyperspace would be a place of more-or-less total darkness outside the range of any lights humans passing through might bring with them.

Alternately, if I want hyperspace to have a murky and mysterious quality and be a place where visibility isn’t good and sensors don’t work well (so a vibe a bit like B5 hyperspace), I could say the Big Bang nucleosynthesis era lasted longer in hyperspace and there produced a substantial amount of heavy elements, some of which then condensed into dust (probably more like smoke if it’s similar to interstellar dust in our space - nanometer to micrometer particles). This dust would probably be pretty insubstantial on human scale distances (again, if it’s like the interstellar medium matter in hyperspace would be about 99% mostly hydrogen and helium gas and plasma and 1% dust, and even a relatively “dense” hyperspace with billions of atoms per cm^3 would have less than a billionth the gas density of sea level air), but over AUs it would scatter light and that effect might add up. This would make hyperspace similar to a dark nebula.

If I want to take the “hyperspace is a scary place” further, I could add sources of energy that might further confuse sensors and add dangerous radiation and other dangers to the mix. Maybe hyperspace has a few large black holes or something, with energetic accretion disks and polar jets fed by all that relatively dense gas and adding turbulence to it. Or maybe spacetime in hyperspace is “lumpier” than spacetime in our space and hyperspace has weird “rivers” formed by something related to whatever force drives cosmic expansion and some of the gas/plasma gets caught in that and accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light and then slams into the low-velocity material in the “still” parts in places, creating lots of turbulence and various other interesting and scary things (powerful magnetic fields, radiation, locally intense heat, maybe some of these collision zones are even giant naturally occurring inertial confinement fusion reactors; maybe that’s where the heavy elements in the dust come from). Maybe hyperspace has a lot of cosmic strings; it makes a certain intuitive sense that, hyperspace being more compact than our space, its cosmic eggshell might be densely veined with cracks.

This gets into another interesting aspect; hyperspace might have something equivalent to terrain; hyperspace travel may be easier in some directions than others. And there’s lots of worldbuilding and plot hooks you could hang from that idea.

For example, let’s look at that idea of hyperspace having “rivers” formed of exotic spacetime structures and filled with gas/plasma streams moving at high fractions of the speed of light. If the edge of these “rivers” has a gradual enough velocity gradient and the plasma in the “rivers” is ionized, with enough skill a spacecraft pilot might be able to catch that “current” with a magsail and ride it, then when they’d gotten about as far as they needed to go they could leave the “river” and do magsail braking against low-velocity plasma in the “still” areas. Just gotta be careful to stay well away from the dangerous collision zones! This might be a huge part of the short-cut offered by hyperspace travel! It could be that distances across hyperspace are only modestly shorter than distances across our space (say, Alpha Centauri is 1 light year away in hyperspace), but the really big savings is you can catch one of these hyperspace “currents” and use it to get up to large fractions of c without expending any fuel. A set-up like that does raise some awkward questions about conservation of energy, but I could say something like “the hyperspace ‘rivers’ are areas where dark energy is being converted into kinetic energy, slightly slowing down the expansion of the universe in the process.” It’s not like we know much about how dark energy works, or even what it is, so for all we know that’s a thing that might happen under certain conditions.

Those collision zones would generate substantial radiation, including light, so unlike a calm hyperspace a turbulent hyperspace with energetic “currents” would probably have light. Don’t know how bright it would be; all that dust (made of heavy elements built up over the eons by inertial confinement fusion in collision zones, I like that idea!) would absorb a lot of light over cosmic distances, and stars are pretty bright but most of our space is pretty dark.

That set-up would make hyperspace travel kind of like sailing; there would be “currents” or “winds” you want to catch, and travel might be a lot faster along directions where the currents are favorable. Travel times in hyperspace might only loosely correlate with distance; Alpha Centauri might take longer to reach than Zeta Reticuli. There would also be hazards you’d need to avoid, e.g. the collision zones.

Maybe part of the explanation for the Fermi Paradox might be that Earth is in the middle of a big “still” part of hyperspace; few ships went here because we’re in the middle of a cosmic doldrums that takes years to crawl across.

With a set-up like this, hyperspace may have “weather” that influences interstellar commerce, and “climate change” on historical timescales that influences the trajectories of interstellar societies. Ages when hyperspace is particularly turbulent might cause Dark Ages as hyperspace travel becomes very dangerous. Ages when hyperspace becomes unusually calm might also cause Dark Ages as there are no fast hyperspace “currents” to ride and hyperspace travel becomes relatively slow. In one age hyperspace “currents” may be arranged such that a world is isolated; a few thousand years later the hyperspace “currents” might have shifted and that previously isolated world might be much more accessible and back in the mainstream of interstellar civilization.

One wrinkle: a turbulent, energetic, opaque hyperspace such as this probably wouldn’t be good for sending radio signals across. Maybe the universe actually has multiple “basement” levels, hyperspace is just the one that’s “closest” to our “living room” level and the only one that’s “close” enough that ships can travel to and from it, but there’s a clearer layer that’s “farther away” but still “close” enough that you can send radio signals through it, and that “deeper” clear layer is the one used for interstellar communication. Bonus idea I like: the deep clear layer is even more compact than hyperspace (by orders of magnitude) so it’s overall a much better short-cut in every way except being “too far away” to send ships through it, so finding a way to send ships through it is a huge potential breakthrough that tantalizes generations of scientists and engineers who so far have not managed to figure out a way to do it.

Really, on that note, I like the idea that the universe is analogous to an onion with many “layers,” and hyperspace and the deep clear layer are just the layers that are most easily accessible from our space. There are a lot of “basements” below the deep clear layer, and generally as you get farther “down” the “basements” get smaller, denser, and hotter; going “down” is a little like time travelling to eras closer and closer to the Big Bang (though this isn’t a completely reliable rule - the deep clear layer is smaller than hyperspace and perhaps warmer, but seems to be a lot emptier; maybe most of its matter has been sucked into black holes?). Maybe the whole thing is a bit timey wimey wibbly wobbly and if you go “down” far enough you eventually hit what 2020s science knows as the moment of the Big Bang. As well as “basements” there are also “attics,” but they’re less accessible because going “up” is harder than going “down.” If going “down” into the basements is a little like time travelling to the early universe, going “up” into the attics is a little like time travelling to the deep future, to places that look kind of like what our space may look like in the deep future black hole era (assuming the Big Rip doesn’t destroy our universe before that deep future proton decay story has time to play out). The “attics” are vast, empty, and deeply cold; cosmic microwave background temperatures a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero and precious little else to generate energy, maybe one atom in every cubic kilometer of space. They probably expanded too quickly for stars to ever form there. The total number of layers might be large; maybe hundreds or thousands, maybe billions, maybe a number so big it would need to be expressed in scientific notation. I like this idea because it makes hyperspace feel less implausibly convenient for humans; we’re just taking advantage of a particularly convenient part of a big macrostructure that’s mostly inaccessible to us.

----------

Hyperspace is a natural phenomenon, so it probably isn’t going to be neatly quarantined to just being a thing humans can use for communication and travel. Hyperspace-related phenomena are going to show up in nature, and this offers a neat explanation for any exotic soft SF-ish natural phenomena you may be interested in incorporating into your setting.

Hyperspace (and other “basements” of our universe) also gives you a built-in parsimonious explanation for any other bits of soft SF technology your setting might feature. Want your setting to have e.g. Star Trek style forcefields? You can say they work through interaction with one of the “basement” layers of the universe.

On that note, I have an idea for a more hard SF version of the Babylon 5 “going beyond the Rim” thing or Stargate ascension, based on the “onion universe” concept I described above, which might serve as a partial explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Maybe some “layers” of the “onion” are “superhabitable” to advanced machine intelligences (though not to primitive flesh and blood beings like us). You know the aestivation hypothesis? If advanced machine intelligences could move to an “attic” they wouldn’t have to wait billions of years for our space to cool down; the cosmic microwave background temperatures in many of the “attics” would already be some tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Maybe they could move to a nice big cold “attic” and live there and “mine” a nice compact “basement” that is rich in matter and energy, getting the best of both worlds. Most of these “attics” and “basements” would be completely inaccessible to humans, but beings with better technology and more resources might be able to access many more of them (or maybe even get beyond the “onion” and search the entire multiverse for universes with conditions more to their liking). So the universe’s most powerful and most enduring civilizations might usually leave our space and move to another “layer” or universe that has conditions more ideal for them, and thus be mostly undetectable to us.

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

See: the concept of hyperspace is loaded with potential plot and worldbuilding hooks if you use a little imagination, and I like that!

[stayatiny]

The King ~Chapter Four

Pairing(s) King!Werewolf! Bang Chan x Human!Reader Series Warning(s) – Swearing, Violence, Wolf Dynamics, Smut (in later chapters) and along with others that will be added later. Chapter warning(s) – Lots of Swearing, almost fight A/N – Thank you to everyone who has followed, like and reblogged. I feel someone shaking me awake. I crack one eye open to see Hannah. She’s in everyday clothing. “Hey, Y/N, its time to get up its 10am.” I sit up, rubbing my eyes. “Your brother brought you some clothes. I'll help you get dressed if you need to,” she said. I throw my legs over the side of the bed. I was able to stand on my own and put weight on my ankle. “Good it looks like you can get around on your own now. But do you still need me to help you?” I shook my head. “No, I think I got it. But if I need you, I’ll call you,” I say grabbing my clothes. She nodded, happily and sat on the bed. I was still hobbling not really wanting to put weight on it yet but some. My brother brought me a t-shirt and jean shorts and even some sneakers. I finish getting dressed and handing my dirty clothes to Hannah. Jay even thought about packing a scrunchie for my hair. He knows me so well.

“Chris wanted to make sure that you ate before meeting with him. He knows that you have a lot of questions.” I nod and follow her into the dining room. She linked her arm with mine. I used to roam around these halls with her and Chris when we were young. Before our parents died, our family were the closest nobles to the royal family. So much so that us kids would play together. We hung out and played together constantly. But when I turned twelve, our parents were killed by the king. “Our chef made some French toast and hash browns. I think those are still your favorite, right,” she asked. I nodded. I’m surprised she remembered that. Although I was twenty now, I still eat like a child. “Good.” We continued in silence as she opened the dining room door to see Jay and Chris sitting at the table. “Good morning, Y/N,” Jay said letting me sit by him. I sat quietly while they talked. Chris smiled at me as I sat across from him. I half smiled back. “Did you sleep well?” I nodded looking around the dining room. Nothing really changed except the wall color was now a pale cream color instead of navy blue. I looked over at Chris. He was in a plain white shirt now, but I noticed some stray blood on his face. It was too small of a splatter to be his. I shudder to think on what happened to the suspect. I had heard that his three years as a king he is quite brutal when it came to crimes against his people human or not. Hannah pointed it out to Chris as he wiped his face. “Good. Food should be ready soon and then we can talk, okay?” I took a sip of water. “Okay.” We ate while talking about the olden days of our childhood like nothing ever changed. “Okay, I have to go to work. Chris will make sure that you get home alright?” Jay hugged me and kissed my forehead. Great alone again with Chris… “Y/N, come with me.” I hear Chris say. He grabs my wrist lightly and pulls me into his office once again. It brought back the memories of me finding out the truth a pang of guilt and sadness surging through me. “I’m sure that you have a lot of questions.” He sat in his chair waiting on me to say something. “Just one. Why?” He let out a sigh. He got up and stood in front of me leaning on the oak desk. “From what we gathered, they knew that you wouldn’t have a normal life and they though that killing us would make it better for the humans. But in all honesty, it probably would have led to another war between the two. I don’t blame them for wanting better for you,” he explained. “Why am I just now finding out about this?” Chris frowned. “You should have been told when it happened. I wish someone had I feel like you would have been around more had you known the truth.” I feel myself blush. I do have to admit that I did have a crush on him when I was young. “Maybe I would have. Everything is so different now that you are king.” He frowns again. “I’m still the same guy just with power and not as awkward.” I chuckle. He was. I was getting ready to hug him when fucking Miranda busted through the door. Motherfucker… “Chrisy, I was so worried about you,” she said going to hug him, pushing me out of the way again. I roll my eyes. Hannah followed in after her. “Miranda, leave my brother alone and go home. Also how did you even get in the castle grounds they’re off limits to the public right now?” Miranda smiled. “My mother works for yours remember so she let me in to see Chris,” she said putting her hands on her hips. She glared at me. “What is she doing here then,” she huffed and then pointing to me. I clenched my fist and my teeth. “I mean considering Y/N’s brother works here and my brother was protecting her last night. I also believe that’s its none of your fucking business to know why she’s here. Their family is still one of the most powerful families out there so I would watch who you’re talking too.” Hannah is in her face. Holy shit I forgot how kick ass she is. “At least my family didn’t commit treason.” Before I knew what I was doing. I lunged forward but Chris grabbed me holding me by the waist. “She’s not worth it, Y/N,” Chris

whispered in my ear. I kept trying to get after her. “You need to leave,” Hannah said, looking like she’s ready to her herself. Miranda flicked her hair back. “Fine then but wait till everyone hears that the human is hanging with the big dogs again.” She left out of the room leaving the tension at a high. Chris still held me in case I went after her. “Are you alright now?” I looked at Chris. I fixed my shirt that had raised from him grabbing me. “Yeah I’m fine,” I huffed. Not really but I didn’t want to end back up into his arms again. “I’ll tell mother that Miranda was let in. Why don’t you take Y/N back home? I’m sure she has work tomorrow,” Hannah said, looking to her brother. Oh yeah right full moons a thing. “Right. I’ll walk you home. Do you still know the back way?” I nodded as we left the office. We would take a lone path behind the castle that led to our house. I was tired and ready for a hot shower and my bed. Chris led to the path it was only slightly overgrown with colorful flowers, weeds, and vines. Even though grown over the ghost of a path still remained prominent. “It looks so different out here. But there again it has been years since I’ve been through here,” I said then letting out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah I didn’t realize how beautiful the flowers are through here,” he says smiling. I blush lightly. He grabbed my hand leading me down the path. “You know as kids we were pretty wild, right?” I looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah we were even up until…you know. We were always in trouble.” Chris nodded as we neared our back gate. As we reached my house, Chris stopped me from going in his eyes changing color. “What’s wrong Chris?” He pushed me to the side of the house gently. He points to the door. Its slightly ajar but I never open the back door “Stay here. Someone’s been in your house besides your brother,” he explained and headed in. My hearts starts to pound while waiting for Chris to come back. After a lifetime, or about 10 minutes he comes back out. “You’re gonna wanna see this,” he says following me into the house. Everything was still in place until I got to the basement door. I stared at Chris. He gave me a nod letting me its okay. “What did you keep down here?” My brows knitted together that’s when it hit me. “When my parents papers and journals were seized when the assassination attempt was made what ever was left my uncle put down in the basement,” I said flipping on the light. As light filled the room, I see everything thrown around papers, documents, even our baby pictures laid scattered on the floor. Chris bent down to look at what’s left of the papers. “There’s nothing here but old grocery lists, drawings you and your brother did, and receipts. What ever it was they didn’t find it and left.” I nodded. But what were they looking for?

[valdomarx]

time enough for counting (when the dealing's done)

McShep + Vegas fix-it, requested by @beautifulmonster. 2k, rated M.

Bad beat

John had always known it would end like this. 

Well, the space aliens and the shady government organization had been a surprise. But the bleeding out, alone in the desert - yeah, that was always how he was going to go.

There’s a kind of dark satisfaction in seeing the world turn out exactly as shitty and brutal as you knew it would be. Called it.

His moment of sick vindication is interrupted, though, by a figure standing over him and peering down with cursory interest.

Sharp black suit, spotless even in the heat and the muck. Hands in pockets, head quirked in something that might be amusement. “Should have known you’d pull a stunt like this,” it says, and John would smirk at playing to type but the blood loss pulls him under.

Ante up

He wakes to pain. Vicious, lancing pain and the cloying smell of antiseptic and the beeping of monitors. He tries to sit up and his chest screams until he collapses back onto the bed.

Next to him, a slightly rumpled McKay is tapping furiously at a laptop. “Don’t go dying on me now, Sheppard,” he says without looking up. “I’ve got plans for you.”

Buy-in

The next time he wakes, the light has faded. It must be evening. 

The hospital room - his own private room, he realizes - is nice. Far too nice for the local joint. Must be private. Must have cost someone a pretty penny. He would have told whoever it is to save their cash.

“You’re awake. Good.” McKay strides in, less rumpled now. Neat black suit back in perfect order. “I don’t have much time, so listen up.”

He tells John how they destroyed the Wraith target before he could get a message to his buddies in Pegasus. How this universe is safe, but the spacetime rift has sent that information echoing through other universes. How they’re putting together a team to visit these other universes; warn them, offer to help if they can.

How he’ll be leaving in a few hours to head up the program. How he thinks John might be able to help.

John blinks. His eyelids are sticky and his mouth is full of fluff.

“Why the hell would you bring this to me?”

McKay flashes him an enigmatic smile. “You did save the world. Maybe you’re more of a hero than you realize.”

On the flop

He gets unceremoniously booted out of the hospital a few days later, when it becomes obvious that he’s not going to die and whoever was bankrolling his stay isn’t any more.

His car is totaled. The money inside is gone. He’s got the clothes on his back, a mountain of debt, no job, and -

He sticks a hand into the pocket of his jacket. There’s something in there: a neat rectangle of card which reads, Doctor Rodney McKay, PhD PhD. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. There’s no phone number.

He heads for the nearest motel he can find, picks up two bottles of rotgut whiskey, and drinks until he manages to pass out amid the sounds of yelling and the scuttering of cockroaches. 

Into the muck

Whatever the fuck else might be going on in the world, there is always the constant: 52 cards, 4 suits, the flick of the dealer’s wrist as he lays out your fortunes, the wins and the loses and the ones where you came oh so close.

He’s back at Mikey’s within a week, borrowing more to get out ahead of this debt, even though he knows that’s never going to work.

Maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe he can win what he needs, pay off the people he has to, and use the rest to make a start somewhere other than here. Anywhere other than this desert full of chips and blood and corpses and filth.

It’s going to be a good night, he tells himself as he settles into a squeaky plastic chair at a low-roller table and looks around at his competition. Tourists and chumps, and he can take these guys no problem.

Pot-committed

He’s woken by a shrill ringing. His head feels like he’s stuck it in a cement mixer and his mouth tastes like cheap whiskey and puke. He rolls over, covers his ears with a ratty pillow, and ignores it.

The ringing continues. What the fuck? It’s a phone. It keeps ringing. He doesn��t own a phone.

Whoever the fuck is calling is still going, so with a groan he sits up and, bleary-eyed, looks for the phone. He finds it in his jacket pocket, and he’s almost certain it wasn’t there last night.

“Yeah?” he says as he answers it. “What do you want?”

“Sheppard,” a crisp, familiar voice says. “I’ve got a job for you.”

Sheppard closes his eyes. The last thing he needs right now is a world-ending crisis. “Can’t,” he says shortly. “I’ve got… business to attend to.”

McKay snorts. “Another fortune to lose at the poker table? I’m sure you do.” John can hear judgement radiating down the phone line. Then McKay sighs and softens. “Tell you what, meet me and hear me out, and I’ll see what I can do about clearing that off-the-books debt for you.”

That pings John’s bullshit meter, for sure, because that much money doesn’t get casually tossed around even in defense circles. But McKay gives him the address of a pancake place to meet for breakfast and what the hell, he does like pancakes.

Check in the dark

“We keep running into you,” McKay says, shoveling maple syrup-covered pancakes into his mouth with great enthusiasm. “Or, well, other versions of you. Practically every universe we’ve visited so far, you’re leading the team.”

John raises an eyebrow. Not much surprises him any more, but parallel realities strain even his credulity.

“It would be easier,” McKay continues, “if you were with us. You could help us explain. People trust you.”

John jerks back like McKay has slipped a knife between his ribs. McKay doesn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he does notice and is tactful or manipulative enough not to acknowledge it.

“Come work with me. We’d need to get you some -” he gestures with a fork, “- training, obviously. But you could be useful. You could do some good.”

John shifts in his seat. “I can’t just leave.”

McKay scowls at him. “Right, because you’ve got so many compelling reasons to stay.”

Gutshot

He ends up in some anonymous Air Force bunker in Colorado, of all places, and being around so much military life has his hackles rising. He’s deposited in a blank, windowless room with a desk covered in stacks of carefully redacted mission reports from the Stargate program which he reads voraciously because this is wild, this is unbelievable, but it’s also all true.

McKay finds him a few days later, lounging in the doorway as impeccable as ever. John is suddenly very aware of the fact he’s been sleeping in his clothes.

“Keeping busy?” McKay asks, voice dripping with condescension and something else John doesn’t want to put his finger on.

John nibbles the pen he’s holding as he considers how to answer that, and he notices the way McKay’s eyes flick to his mouth. Ahh. Interesting.

“Staying out of trouble, at least,” he drawls, letting his posture slacken so he’s lounging against the back of the chair and his knees are spread wide. It’s been a while but he knows how to play this game. 

McKay walks around to his side of the desk, each step measured and precise. Not too fast, no sudden movements, a predator lining up for the kill. John tilts his head back and bares his neck, because he knows how to play the role of prey. McKay perches on the edge of the desk between his legs, looks down his nose, and says, “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I can behave.” He looks up from under his lashes. It’s not exactly subtle, but fuck it, they’re way past that by now. “When properly motivated.”

McKay leans in, all sharp smiles and gleaming edges, and John shudders. McKay notices and the sharp edges of his smile glistens. 

“I know you can, Sheppard,” McKay says in a low voice that has the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. “I told you before. I know everything about you.”

Damn the man, John thinks, and then McKay winds his fingers into John's hair and yanks him in for a hot, messy kiss and John stops thinking altogether. 

Afterwards, as he makes vain attempts to pull up his shirt collar to hide the bite marks and to wipe the come stains off the classified military files, John reflects that he may truly be in over his head this time.

Under the gun

A stack of paperwork drops onto his desk with a dull thud. He looks up to find the scowling face of Major Davis.

“Consultant,” Davis says, chilly as ice. “That’s what the Pentagon is willing to offer. You’ll get a salary and accommodation, and in return you’ll help Doctor McKay with his research while he’s on Earth.”

John opens his mouth, though whether it’s to say thank you, to tell Davis to go fuck himself, or to ask for more money, he isn’t sure. Davis holds up a hand to stop him before he can find out.

“I advised against it, given your record. But McKay is a real pain in the ass when he wants to be. So this is what’s on the table. Take it or leave it.”

Tell

McKay’s brow is furrowed and he’s fiddling with some piece of machinery (probably alien, John thinks, and it seems that sort of thing is part of his life now). It blinks to life for a moment before the lights on the top fade away, and McKay swears and bangs it on the table.

“Hey, easy, Chewie,” John chides.

McKay’s eyes narrow. “I thought you said you didn’t like science fiction.”

“Star Wars isn’t science fiction. It’s science fantasy.”

McKay actually smiles at that, something joyous leaping up in the corners of his mouth.

“Knew you were a nerd,” McKay says under his breath, and John punches him playfully in the shoulder. He’s defending his honor, or something.

McKay ducks his head, and a blush creeps up the back of his neck.

Ace high

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” McKay looks even smugger than usual. 

“Yeah?” John slips a leer into the syllable.

But McKay just rolls his eyes. “Not like that. Come on, there’s something I want you to see.”

He leads him down through the base to a lower level, through endless security checks and into a dark hanger. There’s some technology they’ve acquired from an off-world source, he explains, deliberately vague. He’s trying to make some modifications to it, and he thinks John can help with testing.

John has learned to expect the unexpected in this place, but when the lights of the hanger flicker on his breath still catches. It illuminates a ship unlike anything he’s seen before: slick and cylindrical, rear hatch open to show seats and consoles inside.

“It’s fitted with inertial dampers, weapons, a shield,” McKay says breezily. “Oh, and you’ll like this.” He flicks a button on a control and the ship disappears in a haze like hot air. “It’s got a cloak too.”

It’s like something out of a movie, and John is struck speechless. He follows wide-eyed as McKay decloaks the ship to lead them inside and gestures for him to sit.

And woah, the moment he sits the chair glows and a holographic interface springs up in front of him, and he can feel the ship in his mind. He reaches out with a thought and - ping - the display shows a schematic of the hanger.

“Knew you’d be a natural,” McKay says, managing to sound both condescending and delighted. “Want to take her for a spin?”

Yes, everything in him screams, but he thinks about flames and smoke and the shrill, piercing whine of a tail rotor failing, and he grits his teeth against it and says, “I don’t fly any more,” instead.

McKay gives him a long, cool look. 

“We’ll start small,” McKay says, all business, and it’s so easy to relax and follow his lead. “I need you to activate the inertial dampeners while I adjust the shield field strength.”

Okay. Okay. He can do that.

The ship whirs to life.

Short stack

John stares at the blank white walls of his apartment.

It’s better than most places he’s lived in. No roaches, for a start, and it’s clean and has its own kitchen.

But it’s infuriatingly bland, and Colorado is infuriatingly empty, and there’s not so much as a slot machine within an hour’s drive and he is climbing the walls here.

McKay has disappeared on one of those weeks-long missions he can’t or won’t tell John about, and there’s a restless itching under his skin that’s urging him to drink or gamble or fuck or something, and this whole planet seems too small and too constrictive but he doesn’t want to climb under a blanket of booze and drain it all away.

He wants more.

On the river

“Modifications are done,” McKay announces. “Shall we test her out?”

The we makes something squirm in John’s gut but he dismisses it with a lazy, “It’s your alien spaceship.”

McKay looks for a moment like he’s going to say something, but then he pulls out a radio and talks into that instead. “This is Gate Ship One, ready for initial shield test burst.”

“Gate Ship One?” John scoffs. “That’s the best you could come up with?”

“It’s a ship that goes through the gate,” McKay pouts, and damn, that’s kind of cute. “Why, what would your suggestion be?”

John tilts his head. He’s seen footage of the ship traveling through the stargate, leaping through the event horizon and leaving barely a ripple in its wake. “Seems more like a puddle jumper to me.”

“You have the soul of a poet,” McKay says acerbically. 

And damn if that’s not kind of cute too.

Dealer’s choice

“Come with me,” McKay says, and John is ready to say yes before he’s even finished speaking. “To Pegasus. To Atlantis. I need to get back there, and I’m sure we can find a way to make you useful.” A little smirk at the end there.

“I don’t know how the Pentagon is going to feel about that,” John says, deliberately languid to hide the way his heart is pounding in his chest. Escape, adventure, somewhere new, somewhere he could be a new person, and he wants it so much it aches.

“Eh, fuck them. They can’t say no to me.”

“Okay,” he shrugs. “Not like I’ve got anything better to do here.”

McKay gives him a look that shoots straight through his defenses and down to his sticky innards. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and it’s soft in a way that makes the ache in John’s chest twist into a deep burn.

All in

The jumper hovers in the air in front of the stargate. 

“Nervous?” McKay asks, carefully casual, like he doesn’t already know the answer.

John hums. The inside of the jumper feels as much like home as any place he knows. What’s another galaxy to a man with no ties?

“You’re going to love it there,” McKay says with a smile he can’t hide. He dials up the gate and it engages with a tremendous whoosh and a burst of brilliant blue light.

Here goes nothing, he thinks as McKay deploys the drive pods and fires up the engines. One last new start. 

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Craving that good ol angst so maybe like a senpai x reader where the two get into a fight perhaps?

You were just flipping through the TV channels, like you usually did when you were home alone.

Then, all of the sudden, the front door slammed open before quickly slamming shut, which made you nearly drop the remote. “Jesus what was--?!”

“S-Sorry.”

Glancing over, you saw Senpai walk into the living room space, looking annoyed and angry as he threw his bag onto the chair. You watched as he glared down at his microphone--like it was the most disgusting thing he ever laid eyes on.

But before he could throw that, too, you got up and intervened, gently taking his wrist. “Hey, hey...what’s with the hissy fit? How did your match with Skid and Pump go?”

“Take a wild guess. My mic fucking busted, embarrassing me not only in front of them...BUT IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE GODDAMN NEIGHBORHOOD AND LEMON DEMON!!” He shouted, eyes flashing red with rage. “Stupid brats!! I KNOW they were just smiling behind their stupid masks..mocking me.."

You couldn’t believe how pissed-off he was acting. If it was Keith, you could somewhat understand.

But Skid and Pump? Two innocent kids who just wanted to have a fun battle with your boyfriend? You didn’t appreciate that one bit.

Then again, no matter who he met--he always got irrationally angry whenever he lost a singing competition. But this time he’s gone too far.

“How ironic, ‘cause you’re acting like a brat now.”

“...what did you say?” He scowled at you.

“You heard me.” You huffed. “They’re just kids, Senpai. They’re not gonna take singing that seriously. Did you really try to blame them for your microphone breaking when maybe....you did something to it yourself?”

“I wouldn’t have thought to check...no thanks to you.”

“Excuse me? It shouldn’t be my responsibility. You put yourself into the singing business, not me.”

“But-!”

“Have you always been like this?” You finally questioned, just being spiteful at this point. “Blaming other people for your problems? Have you ever considered taking responsibility for yourself for once instead of whining? Or did the time you spent in that video game make you forget the word “responsibility” altogether?”

The mention of the game is what made Senpai snap right back.

"Don't you EVER BRING UP THAT GAME AGAIN!!" He slammed down the microphone, completely engulfed in red flames as he pointed at you. “You know I try to win these battles FOR YOU. It’s bad enough I lose to Keith..AND NOW IT’S TWO STUPID KIDS IN COSTUMES!!! LET ME BE ANNOYED WITH MYSELF FOR ONCE, ALRIGHT?!!”

“The problem is you’re ALWAYS annoyed with it!! If you can’t handle two kids wanting a friendly contest then..you have serious issues. Just grow up, for fuck’s sake. No one’s out to get you except yourself.”

“......” This time around he had no comeback, but he was still seething with rage.

You, on the other hand, believed you had said enough, so you went to grab your shoes and phone.

“I’m..gonna take a walk, maybe apologize to two certain kids who looked up to you as a brother and a singer.”

He remained silent as he watched you leave, shutting the door behind you.

But the moment everything became clear to him, and he realized what he said, he slumped back onto the couch. He held his head in his hands, wanting to scream and cry his eyes out.

Though he shakily reached for his phone instead, looking through his contacts and finding a number he was reluctant to call.

But he needed to..if he ever hoped to reconcile with you.

“Beep bop--huh? S-Senpai?”

“Keith, let’s just...let bygones be bygones for now. I-I..I really need some advice.."

.............

“So you and Mr. Anime Guy just..walk around the park?”

“Yeah. It’s nice to take in the scenery, especially when the sun sets.”

“..meh, not spooky enough.”

“I know, I know.” You chuckled as you, Skid, and Pump took a walk around the local park. After apologizing to them for Senpai’s behavior, you treated them to some ice cream, which instantly lifted their spirits.

Fortunately they didn’t take his words to heart. They were just kids, after all, who didn’t care that they were wearing costumes during the springtime. The outfits seemingly gave them thick skin.

Before long they went on their way home, exclaiming they were going to rap battle Pico since he was back in town. And you waved goodbye to the pair and tossed out your ice cream after finishing it.

You sighed as you continued your walk, though as you approached the benches, you saw a certain strawberry-blond male sitting there by himself.

But you were surprised to see him dressed neater with a small teddy bear plushie in his lap.

How interesting..considering this was exactly where you first met Senpai.

Back then, he had just entered the real world--scared and confused with nowhere to go. But you took him in and learned about where he came from, what really happened to him..and from there a loving relationship blossomed.

He heard you approach and sat up, giving you a shaky smile as he stood. “[Y/n]..I-I... know I said things I shouldn’t have, and...I admit I’m immature and..there's no excuse for that. You were right..the only person I’m embarrassing is myself."

Tearing up, he bowed his head, bangs hiding his eyes as he offered the bear to you. “I know this won’t immediately fix things but...I-I don’t ever wanna hurt you like I did back at home again. I’m so sorry. I’m..gonna do my best to change. E-Even if you stop loving me, I-I’ll change for you.”

After a few moments of silence, you smiled and took the bear from his grasp, though you pulled him into a hug as well. You could feel him shaking, even sobbing a little, as he hugged you tightly.

You knew he was genuinely sorry.

“Sen..I forgive you.” You kissed his damp cheek. “I’ll always love you..even if we have some spats every now and then. Sometimes couples do and..it's okay. I'm sorry for the things I've said, too."

“I know true love i-is..really just a farce in reality but..you’ve shown me what it could be like.” He pulled away to look at you, his eyes softer and brighter than before. “I don’t wanna lose that.”

“You won’t.”

“I promise I’ll lose the ego and be less harsh on others. Today we start anew.”

And you both sealed that affirmation with a tender kiss.

Senpai knew he had to thank Keith later, but for now he wanted to make the rest of this day all about you.

[selfship-sideblog]

So this little ficlet is because of this post. I know the anon didn't ask me specifically, but I wanted to see how I feel about writing this kind of think and if I can do it.

Hope all Sykkuno simps have a lovely day and that you like this!

Disclaimer: This fic is just for fun and if Sykkuno ever says that he isn’t comfortable with fics about him I’ll delete this. Also I'm not comfortable using his real name so he'll go by Sykkuno in the fic.

Note: Gender neutral pronouns for reader, short/small reader.

Word count: 1005

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

"Ok, guys we're starting and - oh we're imposter now. First game of the day and we already got imposter, with Poki," Sykkuno said to his chat as his and Poki's characters appeared on the screen with "Imposter" in red letters above them.

The screen faded into the Dropship of the Polus map. Sykkuno walked to the keys along with the others, faked the task and walked down along with the others before splitting off towards the medbay.

Sykkuno faked some tasks and looked for people to kill. The lights went out while he was alone in O2. He went down and saw Rae on the water wheel, so he just killed her before going up towards the lights and being the first one there and fixed them. He went out of electrical and towards labs. As he walked in the medbay the animation for a reported body flashed before it faded away into the meeting.

Toast had been the one to report the body.

“Ah, Poki already killed two people,” Sykkuno said to his chat.

During the meeting they discussed their positions and the time of the kill. No one suspected Sykkuno, but Poki had a little sus on her but everyone skipped since they were on seven and weren’t exactly sure.

A little later into the round Sykkuno walked into medbay and saw Poki, Toast and Wendy.

“Ok, guys we know exactly what to do.”

As Toast and Wendy started leaving Poki’s character jumped forward as she killed Wendy.

Now to kill Toast-

“Sykkuno, sweetie, have you seen my pho- oh here it is!”

Sykkuno jumped in surprise at the sound of someone’s voice and turned his head to the right. His eyes lit up and his lips turned up. An arm covered in grey appeared on the camera before it returned with a phone in the hand.

“Hey (Y/N), you’re up,” Sykkuno smiled to the person outside the camera frame.

“Yeah, I just got up. Oh God it’s 11 am! It’s so late!” the person shouted.

“That’s not so late.”

There was a chuckle, “Maybe for you bae.” 

Then the person came fully into frame, with a wild mess of a hair, a big hoodie hanging down from their small body, leaned next to Sykkuno and gave him a kiss. “See you later.”

“What the fuck Poki!?”

The unfamiliar person jumped at Toast’s shout, snapping their head towards the computer and their eyes widening.

“I’m asking myself the same thing, Toast!” Poki replied.

“Wait, wait, what happened?” Abe asked.

“What’s going on?” The person next to Sykkuno asked him.

“Oh, well, you just interrupted my double kill.”

“Oh, no I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you were playing!” The person apologized frantically, their eyebrows furrowing.

“No, no it’s alright. Don’t worry about it,” Sykkuno assured them, still his sweet self while in the background Toast was explaining how Poki killed Wendy and that it was probably a failed double kill since Sykkuno was there too, while Poki was trying to accuse Toast. “I’m streaming too though.”

“Oh,” they looked at the camera and waved, “hi!” then they turned to Sykkuno again “Still I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok.”

When Sykkuno’s name was called in the conversation, he just said “It’s not me guys.”

“But did Toast or Poki kill Wendy?” Jodi asked him.

“Uhm, I - I don’t know. My partner came in the room and I was distracted,” he stumbled over his words.

“It’s definitely Poki, we sussed her last round and it’s probably Sykkuno too and they were going for a double kill but he was distracted,” as usual Toast was right.

“I better go before I get you in more trouble,” the person left with an apologetic look.

Sykkuno turned back towards the computer and saw the chat had blown up with messages, but focused on the game. The voting time had ended and the others had voted out Poki.

“Well, it’s over guys. It’s over,” Sykkuno laughed, covering his mouth with his hand.

The next round started and Sykkuno didn’t even bother to call a sabotage and waited until Toast called an emergency meeting. They voted him out and after he was thrown in the lava the “defeat” screen showed up.

“Poki, I’m sorry I got distracted, I couldn’t kill Toast,” Sykkuno said.

“No it’s ok, it happens,” Poki replied.

As the others were talking Sykkuno read the chat and saw a bunch of questions of who the person that came in was and commenting on how cute they were.

“Uh, that was, um,” he lowered his head for a second, hiding his smile, “that was my partner (Y/N).”

The chat was very excited, some were saying they were really cute together, others that they were happy for him and some even asking if they would be featured in his streams in the future.

“I don’t know, they have never said they wanted to be in my streams, but if you guys want I’ll ask them,” Sykkuno answered, brushing the bangs off his face.

“’Was that your hoodie they were wearing?’” he read the question, “Uh, yes,” he answered with an awkward laugh, “they especially enjoy wearing that one, they say it’s very comfortable.”

A lot more questions went by in in the chat but Sykkuno answered one more question “How’s the relationship going so far?”

“Well, uhm, I don’t know how they feel and what they think, and uh,” he began stuttering, not sure how to answer and how much he should share, “how serious it is, but it’s been going good. We’ve been dating for uh, four or five months I think,” he answered.

He thought about it for a few seconds and he decided to say it:

“They’ve made me really happy and I hope they feel the same,” he said, softer than usual and a little blush on his face.

He saw the teasing comments of his chat like ‘that’s the face of a man in love’, ‘HE’S BLUSHING’ and even ‘smittenkkuno’ and just laughed nervously.

[mosswillow]

Come back (Dark!Steve Rogers x Reader)

Word count: 2.3k

Warnings: Dark! 18+, stalking, cults, kidnapping, blood, drugging, bondage.

Summary: Your father's death brings you back to your childhood home and the cult you grew up in. You just need a few days to pack things up before selling the place and leaving forever.

A/N This is for @tansypoisoning​ spooky challenge. I picked the words nostalgia and ritual as a prompt. It’s supposed to have a horror element. I was going for more of a suspenseful/creepy vibe.

It’s been eight years since you left. You walked away and never looked back, at least not until you got the call that your father had passed away in his sleep. His only possession, the small cabin you grew up in, was willed to you. So now you stand outside the cabin, suitcase in hand, taking deep breaths before opening the door and walking in. You look around the one room cabin, taking it all in. you’re surprised to feel nostalgia creep into your bones. A blanket on the couch reminds you of forts you used to build. The smell of the forest brings back memories of climbing trees and picking wild fruit. You notice a knife sitting on the kitchen counter and imagine your father whittling figures out of wood. You look back on your childhood with mixed emotions. It was a cult, plain and simple. Leaving was the hardest thing you ever did but it was necessary. You feel happy and free now. You’ve made new friends and family. You’ve gotten an education, a job. You’ve fallen in and out of love multiple times. You’ve lived life to the fullest. So looking around now and feeling loss is both unexpected and unwelcome.

“Y/N?”

A voice brings you out of your head. You look over to see a mountain of a man standing in the doorway. The last time you saw him was right before you left. The cult had told you that you and him were chosen to marry. It’s not that you hadn’t liked Steve or anything, you just couldn’t do it. You had made friends in the city who had helped you get out. They introduced you to the internet and taught you that there’s more to the world than the little community in the woods. You were to marry him as soon as you turned eighteen but instead you left without a word.

Steve stares at you with an intensity you’ve never seen before. His eyes travel down your body, stopping at your breasts for a few seconds. You cover them by crossing your arms and force yourself not to step back. You don’t owe him anything and shouldn’t feel intimidated by his presence.

“You look good Steve.”

“So do you.”

The two of you stand in silence for several moments longer than is comfortable.

“What are you doing here Steve?”

“Come back Y/N.”

Steve cuts in without interlude, his voice strong and commanding. You close your eyes and brace yourself. He’s always been like this, all of the men you grew up with had the same attitude, Stubborn and assertive. You had hoped you wouldn’t see Steve because you knew exactly what his reaction would be, that he would aggressively try to make you stay.

People in the cult can’t remarry. They have the belief that soulmates exist and once yours is picked that’s it. When you left you were condemning Steve to a lifetime alone. The price of your freedom was Steve's. He would not be allowed to rise in the cult without being married, would never have children or have what the cult deems is a fulfilled life. You remind yourself again that you don’t owe Steve anything. He can leave just like you did.  

“No.”

you make your voice sound as strong as you can. you were taught from childhood that women are supposed to be submissive and docile. It comes back now in full force, pushing you down like an invisible hand. You’re a boss now, having worked hard to create the life you have. You’re strong and confident but here, under the watch of Steve's cold blue eyes you feel like a child.

A look of apathy moves across Steve's face before his expression lands in a controlled smile.  Your body language wavers and you take a step back. Steve smirks at you, leaning against the doorframe.

“How long are you staying?”

“Just a few days, I’m just going through some stuff before I sell the place.”

Steve nods and places his hand on his chin, scratching the stubble that surrounds his jaw.

“Stay safe Y/N”

With that he leaves, shutting the door softly behind him. You walk to the window and look out to see a group of cult members dressed in white cloaks surrounding the cabin, half hidden in the woods. They just stand there, unmoving like zombies. You shudder and close the blinds, locking the door quickly. You need to get out of this place as soon as possible.

---

That evening you hear a knock on your door. You walk to the window and peak out. Nobody is there. You open your door and find a dead rat. A steak knife punctures through the eyeball into its head. You gasp and close the door quickly, locking it and stepping back. You check every window to make sure they’re all locked and look out at the woods only to see darkness.

After the sun rises you open your door and run to your car. It won’t start. You curse, returning to the cabin and grabbing your cell phone. There’s no reception and you curse again. You had reception yesterday. A knock makes you jump and you see Steve in the doorway, eyebrows knitted in concern. You could have sworn you had locked the door when you came back in.

“You ok doll?”

You always hated when he called you that.

“My car won’t start and my phone doesn’t have reception.”

“You want a ride to town?”

You eye Steve wearily.

“Do you think I’m going to kidnap you or something? I could do that right now if that’s what I wanted to do.”

He looks at you like he might pounce at any second. You can tell that’s exactly what he wants to do and the thought of him kidnapping you makes you want to lock yourself away. You’re in a tight spot though and don’t know what else to do.

“Ok, thanks Steve.”

You get in Steve’s truck and he drives you to a mechanic. He puts his right arm on the back of your seat casually, brushing his hand over your hair. the action is purposeful and you both know it.

“Did the cult, uh, leave a dead rat on my doorstep?”

Steve scrunches his face in disgust.

“Um, no we didn’t.”

You look out the window, not totally convinced Steve is telling the truth but also not sure that he’s lying. You never experienced any of the cults rituals as only married adults were allowed to do them. You have no idea if the dead rat is a cult thing or not but can’t really think of any other reason for the events of the evening prior.

You park at the mechanics and get out. It looks the same as when you were a kid. you remember running around playing hide and seek with other children in the woods nearby, coming over for a soda after an afternoon of playing.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

You smile sweetly at the mechanic, Mr. Stark.

“My car isn’t starting and I need to leave tonight.”

“Soonest I can come look at it is tomorrow sweetheart.”

You shift uncomfortably on your feet but nod. One more night won’t hurt. Steve drives you back to your cabin and walks you to the door. He leans over, placing his shoulder beside the door and looking at you. You refuse to make eye contact and unlock the door, opening it and walking in.

“Thanks for the ride.” you say, shutting the door and locking it.

“I’ll see you later.” Steve yells through the door. You hear him whistling as he walks to his truck and you watch though the window as he drives away.

---

That evening you sit at the kitchen table, hugging your knees and biting your nails. As soon as you hear any noise you stand up and open the front door confidently.

“Go away!” You yell to the empty yard.

You slam the door and lock it, moving to the window to look out. Shadows move through the woods but you can’t make out any defined shapes.

You find a baseball bat in the closet and check all of the doors and windows once more before getting in bed. You fall asleep cuddling the bat.

Half way through the night you hear whispering outside your window. It doesn’t sound like talking, more like chanting. You clutch onto the bat and sit up in bed waiting. There’s rustling outside and then suddenly banging on all sides of the cabin. You cry, holding onto the bat for dear life like it can save you. The banging stops as suddenly as it started and the cabin becomes eerily quiet. You run to the window and pull the curtain back but nothing’s there. The rest of the night is spent awake and shaking. You’re not sure if they’re just trying to scare you or do something more nefarious. You’re not going to wait to find out. Tomorrow you’re leaving and never coming back, if you stay here any longer you may never leave again.

---

Mr. Stark drives up around noon and you meet him outside. He takes a look at your car and you sit on the porch watching.

“I need to order a special part.” He yells and you walk to him.

“I can’t stay here any longer.”

“It’ll be in tomorrow and I’ll come as soon as I can.”

You’re stuck. Panic starts rising in you but you push it down. One more night. As soon as your car is fixed you’re getting in and leaving. You don’t care anymore about finishing work on the cabin. You’ll sell it as it, heck give it away. You’re sure the cult will take it.

Mr. Stark gets in his truck and drives away. You spend the rest of the evening working in the cabin, sorting and boxing things. You’re just trying to pass time by at this point and not actually trying to finish everything you originally wanted to.

You check all of the windows and doors obsessively. They’re always locked but that voice in your head tells you to check again and again. As the sun sets, your anxiety rises, finally falling asleep out of pure exhaustion.

“Y/N”

You jolt awake to find Steve standing over your bed.

“What the fuck are you doing here Steve?”

“I won’t tolerate that language once we’re married.”

“Get out!”

“It’s our wedding night Doll.”

Steve reaches out to grab your arm and you pull away, falling out of the bed and scrambling up. Steve looks like a monster in the dark. His tall frame blocks the light coming from the window, blurring most of his features. The only thing you see aside from his outline are his eyes. They glow in the dark, ethereal and terrifying. You run past him and out the door. The woods are familiar, having played in them all growing up and you take a well worn path. You hear Steve calling after you.

“You can’t fight this. We’re soulmates.”

You keep running and crouch down behind a fallen tree. You peak your head over to look back toward the house and see a white figure walking towards you. You stand again and run only to see another ghost like person. Every time you turn in another direction someone is there, walking slowly towards you. You’re surrounded and soon you’re standing in the middle of a circle of people, dressed in white cloaks. You kneel down, tears streaming down your face. Steve breaks the circle and walks toward you, needle in his hand. He sticks it into you and your eye’s flutter before closing.

---

When you wake up you’re strapped to a large stone slab. Memories come back of being told over and over never to touch it, never come near it. It feels wrong to be strapped onto it now and you wiggle trying to get away.  you look down and see that you’re wearing matching clothing to everyone else. How long have you been out? It’s dark outside so you assume it’s the same night. Everything is fuzzy and you look around at the people’s unintelligible faces.

“Steve, do you promise to love, to care for, and to control Y/N” You recognize the voice as an elder of the cult.

“I do.” Steve speaks clearly and you perceive a hint of pride in his speech, like he knows he’s won.

The elder brings a knife to your hand, making a small cut, doing the same to Steve. Your head becomes more and more clear and you pull on the restraints.

“You may kiss your bride.”

“No!” You yell before Steve’s lips cover yours.

When he finally pulls away you yell at him again.

“Leave me the fuck alone Steve, you have no right.”

Steve ignores your cries, undoing your restraints. You try to fight against him but he leans over and whispers in your ear.

“It’s done Y/N, your mine. Do you really want me to punish you now in front of all these people? You know I will.”

You still long enough for him to carry you to his cabin. You’ve never been here before, have never wanted to be here.  He sets you on the bed and you back into the headboard.

“Let me go Steve.”

“It’s done now Doll, you can’t leave ever. I own you.”

“You don’t own me Steve, none of it is real. It’s a cult. I’ll run away the first moment I can.”

Steve's eyes darken and he stalks toward you. You roll off the bed and try to run making it out the door but  fall as soon as you hit the treeline. It feels like something is stabbing your chest and you cry out in pain. Steve slowly walks toward you, letting out a displeased sigh before picking you up. The pain disappears as soon as you’re in his arms.

“It’s ok doll, You’ve just gotten false teachings in your head but you’ve been brought back to me like it’s always meant to be. I’m here to help you learn your place. Soon you won’t even be thinking about leaving.”

“This can’t be happening.”

Steve gives you a look of pure joy.

“Oh, trust me it is.”

[wicked-mind]

Betrayed: Chapter Ten

Series Summary: Everybody thought Steve’s sister had passed away decades ago. But when you show up at the facility and try to attack Bucky, there are questions to be answered.

Word Count: 3.9k

Warnings: Therapy session, mentions of violence.

Masterlist

*gifs not mine

Chapter Ten- Monsters in my Head

For a split second, Y/N thought about running far away into the night after killing Dimitri, leaving Steve and Bucky behind. Every cell in her body told her to run. But she knew the hallucinations were coming, she could feel them scratching at the surface. She ran through the facility, slamming into walls until she reached the detention center. She looks into one of the cells, tilting her head. There was Clint, knocked unconscious with blood dribbling from his mouth, but alive. Y/N grabbed him by the ankle, dragging him out into the hallway out of the cell. Then she turns, hitting the cell door button and slipping inside of the cell as the glass door slammed shut behind her.

This was the first time since she left the facility months ago that Y/N felt like she could breath finally. She didn’t have to watch her mind, keeping Dimitri from slipping in. She slowly slid against the back wall until she sat on the floor, her red eyes staring straight ahead. She could see the reflection of herself in the mirror, her red eyes, the black veins slithering along what she could see of her skin. Y/N had just noticed how bloody she was from the bites Dimitri left on her, the knives that were in impaled through her hands, and killing Dimitri. She tilts her head at her own reflection, watching as it twisted into Dimitri’s figure. Y/N was up in an instance, charging at the reflection and slamming into the glass. She could feel the rage build up again as the venom started her hallucinations, losing a grip on her almost stable mind.

“Ouch, little monster. That hurt.”

Y/N turned hearing Dimitri’s voice in her head, seeing him standing in the cell with her with a hole in his chest, bloodied. She launched herself at him again, running into the wall of the cell, quickly turning to see him again.

“Didn’t know you had that in you.” Dimitri chuckled at her, looking at the blood on his fingers.

Y/N watched him, her body shaking with anger, “Go away.” She growled out to the hallucination of Dimitri.

Dimitri smiled, “Oh, I can’t. I’m afraid you and I are going to be stuck together for a while, on account of you know.” He said, the smile, looking at the bites on her arms, “So tell me, Y/N, did you like ripping my heart from my chest?”

“No…” Y/N growled out, “I didn’t want to do that to anybody in my lifetime, but I had to kill you. It was horrible.”

“You’re lying.” Dimitri said, taking a step towards her to which Y/N took a step away, her back stopping against the glass of the cell, “Tell me the truth. You liked it, you loved the feeling of ripping my heart out.”

Y/N shook her head, “No.” She repeated softly, “No, I didn’t.”

Dimitri kept walking towards her, blood dripping behind him to the floor, “I’m your hallucination, love. You can’t lie to me.”

Y/N shook her head again, growling at his words. She flung herself at him once again hitting the wall, blood from her arms spreading around the cell as she continued flinging herself around trying to attack her hallucination.

—-

“You alright, Steve?” Bucky asked, outstretching his hand to help his friend off the ground.

Steve nodded, grabbing Bucky’s hand and hoisting himself up, “Oh, you know…” He took a deep breath looking at the scar on his arm, “I could do this all day.”

Bucky smiled for a moment at his friend’s catchphrase, then the smile faded, “Y/N ran off. I’m going to try and find her. Clint’s got to be around here somewhere probably banged up, you find him.” He said with a nod at his own plan, before starting in a jog to go around the facility’s grounds.

Steve took a couple deep breathes of fresh air. His stomach hurt from where Y/N had kneed him, knowing he probably was going to have some bruises and soreness later. Steve pulled out his phone, calling Natasha and letting her know what unfolded and to head back. He jogged in the facility, calling out Clint’s name as he searched the large building. Steve walked down the stairs of the detention center, seeing Clint on the floor. He rushed over and pressed two fingers to Clint’s neck to check if he was still alive, which he was. Steve then looked into the cell at his sister, watching her flail around and scream at her hallucinations. He would be lying if he said this angry side of Y/N didn’t scare him but at least she was somewhere she couldn’t hurt anybody. Steve picked Clint up off the ground, heading to the medical bay. He first called the medical team to come in, then gave Bucky a call to let him know he found her in the detention cell.

Bucky immediately jogged back to the facility after the phone call with Steve, relieved that Y/N held onto her mind long enough to at least get her somewhere secured. He jogged down the stairs into the hallway that was lined with cells, stopping at the one Y/N was in, watching her run into walls leaving blood covering the once clean white walls and clear glass. He stepped forward, placing his hand against the glass, “Y/N?”

Y/N froze when she heard his voice, turning to face him. She lunged herself at the glass, staring at him dead in the eyes with her wide, red rage filled ones, “What do you want?” She screamed at him, “Are you here to tell me the same thing as Dimitri, James Buchanan Barnes? Or are you here as a puppet to take me away?”

Bucky flinched at her words, not really understanding half of them. She hadn’t ever call him by his full name, even when she got back she called him Bucky when she hated him. He kept his hand on the glass as he watched her, knowing this was the venom causing her hallucinations and anger, “No, Y/N. It’s me, Bucky. I came to see if you were okay.” He said gently.

Y/N laughed, stepping back from the glass. She threw her head back to stare at the ceiling before returning her gaze to Bucky through the glass, tilting her head, “You came to ask me if I’m okay? Really?” She wrinkles her nose at him, her lips twisting into some sort of sinister smile. She threw herself at the glass, her fist slamming into the barrier, separating her from making an impact with his face. Her knuckles split slightly, causing blood to freshly drip down the glass. Y/N dropped her fist, leaning her forehead against the glass as she watched Bucky closely, scanning him with a wild look in her eyes, “I’ll never be okay because of you and what you did, Soldat.” She spat out at him.

Bucky dropped his hand away from the glass at her words. He was trying to keep his best composure, knowing this wasn’t her talking and that she was currently releasing the anger she felt onto him. But still, hearing her use the term Soldat made his heart drop to his stomach. He thought he would never be called that again, let alone by Y/N. Bucky shook his head, knowing this wasn’t her, “I know this isn’t you talking, Y/N.” He said to her through the glass, “I’ll come check on you later, when you’ve calmed down.” Bucky turned away from her, the words still stinging in his mind.

Y/N turned away from the glass after watching Bucky leave, left alone again with her hallucinations. She froze as she was now seeing herself but more cleaned up wearing black leather, an evil smirk set on her lips. This hallucination was different, felt more real. Y/N growled at the false version of herself, lunging at the hallucination to be met with slamming her hands into the wall.

“Oh, Y/N,” The hallucination chuckled, “We both know I could rip you to shreds and do my hair at the same time if I wasn’t a hallucination.” The evil smirk never left her lips as she spoke.

Y/N watched herself talk, flinching at her own voice. She knew this version of herself. This was the monster version, the one that came out when she gave into Hydra and Dimitri. Pure evil with a little bit of sass, “Why are you here?”

The false Y/N tilted her head, “I know you’re thinking of me. I know you’ve wanted to just be me more times than you can count, let go of all those feelings.” She spat out the last word with a roll of her eyes, “Poor little, Y/N.” She sneered out as she walks towards the real Y/N, “You’re good little sliver of humanity is your greatest weakness. No matter how much you push me away, I’ll be here. Scratching at the surface wanting to be let out. With or without Dimitri, venom or no venom.” The hallucination of Y/N was standing face to face with herself, she leaned over to whisper in Y/N’s ear, “I want out. And you know I always get what I want.”

“I’m not a monster.” Y/N said to the hallucination softly, keeping her eyes on herself.

The hallucination of Y/N laughed, “Really? Then why are in a cell?” She smiled, raising her eyebrows, “Could’ve fooled me with the way you pulled Dimitri’s heart out. That has an eery similarity to me.”

—-

As Dimitri had stated before Y/N killed him, he had envenomated her to last for days. The rest of the team returned, cleaning up the facility from the fight and fixing the power. Steve and Bucky sat in the security room, watching her from the live feed through the screens. Anytime either of them went down, she would be thrown into a fit of rage and speak angry words to them. They decided it would be best if they kept a distance and watched her. The two would watch her throw herself around her cell at hallucinations, talking or screaming at either Dimitri, Bucky, or herself. They watched everyday as the bites slowly healed, her veins slowly disappearing out of sight on her skin. By the third day when they went to check the feed, they noticed she was just sitting on the floor in a corner, staring at one of walls. The two headed down, approaching the cell slowly, watching Y/N but she didn’t move at their presence.

Steve walked closer to the glass, kneeling down a little bit to get a more even eye-line with his sister, “Y/N? Are you still hallucinating?” He asks softly.

Y/N slowly turned her head to look at him, meeting his eyes, “No, Steve. They’re gone. It’s flushed out.” She responded softly, before her eyes moved upwards to look at Bucky who stood behind him. She studied his features for a moment, noting that there was some pain but most of all concern.

Bucky met eyes with her, his heart almost stopping as he recognized the way Y/N looked at him, “Y/N.” He said softly, relief filling his voice. He moved to the control panel, hitting the button that caused the glass door to slide up.

Y/N stood up after the door opening, looking to Bucky and to Steve who was now standing and watching her, “I need to shower.” She said softly, brushing past them and heading up the stairs. Y/N didn’t feel like talking about anything, her mind replaying the past days events. From Dimitri taking her after allowing Dr. Hunt to escape, making her attack Steve and Bucky, to when she ripped Dimitri’s heart out with her bare hand, and the hallucinations that followed. She brushed past everybody, even Wanda, without making eye contact. She disappeared through the bathroom door, shutting it behind her gently. Y/N turned on the shower and then went to the mirror, looking herself over. She tilted her head at her own red eyes, knowing they were the only two left in the world now. She strips her bloodied clothes off, slipping into the warmth of the hot water along her bare body. Y/N watched the water at her feet turn a dirty rust color from the blood that stripped from her body. When she finished cleaning herself off, she turned off the shower, stepping out. She heard a soft knock on the door, “Come in.” She said softly as she wrapped a towel around her body, watching the door open.

Bucky stepped through the door, holding some fresh clothes for Y/N to change into. He shut the door behind him before his gaze met her’s. He felt relieved seeing her cleaned up. She looked like herself again, but he noticed something behind her eyes, something that told him she wasn’t okay yet. He had seen that look before in his own eyes after he’d realize what Hydra made him do. Bucky sets the clean change of clothes by the sink before walking closer to Y/N. He placed both his hands on her arms and when he saw no reaction to back off, he pulled her into a tight hug. Bucky smiled to himself as he held her, Y/N was back where she belonged- in his arms.

Y/N let out a sigh of relief as Bucky embraced her, snaking her arms up and across his back to return the hug. She buried her face into his chest, closing her eyes tightly. She wanted to cry, but she held back the emotion, not wanting to feel that pain just yet. Instead she just held her hug with Bucky, finally feeling somewhat safe in his arms. Eventually, Y/N broke the silence, stepping away slowly from him and keeping the towel secured around her body, “Thank you for the clothes.” She said softly to him, looking up into his eyes.

Bucky smiled down at her softly, knowing she was going through things in her head, “You’re welcome, Y/N.” He lifted his right hand to brush across her cheek gently, before turning to grab the clothes and pass them to Y/N, “After you left, we moved all your stuff into another room, thinking it’d be easier for Wanda since we didn’t know your plan. I can start moving it back if you’d like.”

Y/N shook her head, holding the clothes in her arms, “That’s alright. I think I need some time to… Process everything.” She said softly, biting her lip, “I’m going to change, I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

Bucky nodded, giving a small smile towards Y/N before walking out of the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

Y/N slipped on the fresh change of clothes before brushing through her hair. She brushed her teeth, then walks out of the bathroom, meeting Bucky who had been waiting in the hallway for her. Y/N followed Bucky down the hall and into her new room, it was right across from his. She walked inside and looked around at all of her belongings she had missed. She walked to the window and looked at the blue sky, the warmth of the sun hitting her face before she moved to sit on the bed, looking down at her hands.

Bucky followed Y/N into the room, watching her. Even though she was standing right in front of him, it felt as though she was a thousand miles away. He could tell something was eating at her. Bucky shut the door before walking over to sit by Y/N on the bed, reaching out to take one of her hands into his, “Y/N, talk to me, doll. I can see your mind going a million miles an hour.” He pleaded to her, wanting to know what was going through her mind.

Y/N didn’t look at Bucky as he spoke to her, keeping her eyes on her hand now in his. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find words for a moment. She bit her bottom lip before finally speaking, “I’m sorry for what I said to you Bucky, while I was hallucinating. I’d never say those things to you.” She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes, before returning her gaze to her hand in his.

Bucky frowned a little as she spoke, “I know that wasn’t you, doll. Don’t go blaming yourself for something you couldn’t control.” He pulled her hand closer, causing her body to follow. He wraps his arms around her, leaning back on the bed as he held her.

Y/N followed his movements, allowing herself the comfort of being held by him on the bed. She closed her eyes, leaning her head into his shoulder, “For the first time in most of my life… It’s just me in my mind. I can tell which parts of me were real and which parts were Dimitri….” She whispered into his shoulder.

Bucky nodded. He knew the feeling of getting your mind back in control, “I understand that.” He said softly, moving a hand to run his fingers through her hair, “It’s a lot to process at first. Trying to figure out who you are without them in your brain, but you’ll be okay.”

Y/N pulled her head away from his shoulder, tilting her head to look at his face. Her face looked a little pained, “My hallucinations weren’t being controlled by Dimitri after he died.” She told him, her voice getting softer with every word until they are a whisper, “They were controlled by my own mind, like they are suppressed thoughts and emotions.”

Bucky looked over to meet her gaze, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion, “What do you mean? What did you see?” He asks softly, digging for answers, “What did they say to you?” He could tell this was affecting Y/N quite a bit, whatever she saw and heard was making her closed off to him. He wanted to understand what happened so he could figure out how to help her.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Bucky.” Y/N said, breaking her gaze from his face and leaning her head back on his shoulder. There were too many things she wasn’t ready to share with him, what she had seen and heard in her hallucinations. The truth was she was scared of what Dimitri said, that in some shape or form she liked killing him. Y/N saw herself while she hallucinated, except it wasn’t really her. It was the side of her Dimitri always wanted to create, a monster. Then there was her hallucinations of Bucky. Sometimes he would be just regular Bucky, but most of the time he was the man who took her, “I’m exhausted.”

Bucky nodded, not wanting to push her. He knew in time Y/N would open up to someone. He stayed quiet, holding her until he could tell she had fallen asleep. It made him smile a bit, having her safe in his arms. It felt like they were right where they belonged. Together.

______________

Y/N had briefed the team about her time while she was with Dimitri. She had broken out Hydra agents from prison because Dimitri hoped they’d know more about project red eyes. When they didn’t, he would kill them and Y/N was in charge of disposing of the bodies. Dimitri was trying to find a way to crate more red eyes like him, ones he could control better which is why he often had Y/N steal supplies from labs and even kidnapped Dr. Hunt. But other than that information, she didn’t share much, not even with Bucky. But Y/N had been spending most of her time with him. She would walk into Bucky’s room at night, curling up on the floor with him. It was the only way she could fall asleep.

Y/N sat on the dull grey couch, staring at her hands as she had been doing for the past 40 minutes. After refusing to talk to Bucky or Steve about what she had been through and what was going on in her brain, they had suggested therapy. But she hadn’t talked to the therapist at all, even though Bucky told her Dr. Raynor helped him through some things and to give it a shot.

“What happened to the M&M’s?” Y/N finally asked, breaking the silence. Usually the dish on the table had some peanuts or M&M’s in it, but today it was empty.

“Well, the last three times you just picked out the chocolate and then left. So, no more treats. And Bucky is sitting in the hall incase you try to leave.” Dr. Raynor said, then sighs as she leaned back, “You haven’t talked to anybody about your feelings about anything, just the facts. I reviewed the footage of when you locked yourself in the cell and were hallucinating. Who did you see?” Y/N sighs, rolling her eyes at the doctor, “Dimitri, Bucky, and a hallucination of myself.” She answered, her eyes settling on the doctor’s face emotionlessly.

Dr. Raynor nodded, tapping her fingers on the brown notebook softly, “And what did these hallucinations say?”

Y/N bit her lip, her nose twitching slightly in anger at the memories of the hallucinations, “Bucky didn’t say much. Sometimes it was like he was himself, but mostly he was just the man in memory that took me to Hydra. Dimitri was Dimitri, trying to convince me I liked ripping out his heart.”

Dr. Raynor nodded again slowly, her face unchanging as she listened, “And the hallucination of yourself?”

Y/N stared at Dr. Raynor for a moment as if trying to figure out what to say, “She wasn’t me.” She said shortly through her teeth, not wanting to get into what the false version of herself had said, “Move on.” Y/N demanded, knowing Bucky’s enhanced hearing was probably picking up every word she said.

Dr. Raynor raised an eyebrow at the sudden hostility, but decided to move on instead of prying at Y/N’s hostility, “You may not want to talk about it with me, but maybe you should try talking about it with someone else. Like James, he’s been through this process before. And I know you two are close.”

Y/N frowned a little at her suggestion, not wanting to talk about the hallucination of herself at all to anybody, “I’ll take that under consideration. Thanks, Doc.” She mutters and stood, gliding out the door and shutting it roughly behind her. Y/N was met by Bucky waiting, just as Dr. Raynor had said. She sighs softly and looked at him, “How much did you hear?” She said, then tilts her head at him, “Be honest.”

Bucky smiled down at her, “I tried not to listen too much, but I heard my name a few times. Hard not to listen.” He said honestly. He reached out and snaked his fingers through Y/N’s, holding her hand, “Doc is right you know, you can talk to me. I might even be able to help.” He encouraged, still smiling down at Y/N.

Y/N smiled a little when he laced his fingers through her’s, looking up to Bucky, “I know. And one day I’ll tell you all about it. But not yet.” She said with a soft sigh, “I’m okay, Bucky.” She said it as if she was trying to convince him, but was really trying to convince herself. Y/N couldn’t talk about what the hallucination of herself said. It scared her that maybe it was true, maybe there was a homicidal psychopath just waiting to come out.

__________________________________________________________

TAGLIST: @vicmc624 @the-ayo-lit @daddysfavoritesexkitten @springsoulofengland @tcc-gizmachine @taina-eny @dontputyourfckingdrinkonmytable @vivien-1211 @buckylove123@subtlemalice @abitofeverythinggg @uwu-sebastianstan @nickangel13 @littlewhiterose @big-galaxy-chaos @supernaturalcat7 @littlewhiterose

If I missed anyone on the tag list, please let me know with a quick message. As always, thank you for the support (:

[theyscreamjade]

Sugar Cookies

Isn’t it strange how Christmas..just seems to be the best time of the year? I hope you guys are prepared, you’re in for a treat.

————————————————————————————————————————

You softly sat on the bed within the home you shared with your fiancé Shoto Todoroki. You lifted your foot as it crossed over your lap while slipping your heel on. You and Shoto were invited to a family dinner within the Todoroki household which hardly ever ends right. Since the discovery of Touya and everything, it’s been tense inside the house.

“Shoto? I’ve seen you get dressed faster to see Izuku.” You commented while looking at the red and white-haired individual casually sitting on the ottoman inside the room. You sighed at his silent glare towards you before walking to him, your hand touching his warm chin. “We won’t be there for long okay?” You suggested with a soft smile. His cyan and grey eyes looked into yours before giving you a soft smile back.

You knew how to make him melt like butter with your words. It’s amazing how the once rebellious teen is going to a husband to a wonderful person like you. “I’d hate to be late, so please get ready.” You instructed before walking out of the room to retrieve the dish you were asked (more like demanded) to make.

Since Fuyumi was cooking the majority of the meal, She and Natsuo insisted you make the desserts especially after you made such a delicious apple pie for thanksgiving. Natsuo loves peppermint and Fuyumi loves chocolate, you decide to make three different dessert dishes for them. Chocolate truffles for Fuyumi, White Chocolate peppermint bars for Natsuo, and lastly Christmas sugar cookies. The other two were completed already and the cookies were sat out to cool when you decided to shower and get dressed.

Your fingers grazed the cool cookies before smiling softly, putting your apron on. You wore a Santa clause dress that Fuyumi brought for you last year. Though it swayed with every move you made, it was a bit short. It was an off-shoulder Santa dress. You decided to play it safe and wear stockings so nothing would be exposed during the small gathering.

You picked up the frosting bag of green frosting while you began to decorate the cookies shaped like trees. You focused intensely while each tree was painted to perfection. Afterward, you switched bags to the red ones and began to paint little balls on the tree to represent ornaments.

You were so focused, you didn’t see your dressed future husband who was staring at you in silence. He admired the amount of effort you’d put into his crazy and dysfunctional family even though..he couldn’t focus on that.

He was staring at your outfit. From your thigh-high heeled boots to the sexy dress you were wearing. From the way you always made yourself look gorgeous with your makeup to the scent of your perfume. It was intoxicating to him. Once he fixed his toe, he walked to you and wrapped his arms around your waist. His suddenness made you jump as frosting squirts on your hand.

“Oh! You startled me..” you said softly, laughing it off a bit before reaching for the dishcloth that was sitting on the counter.

Your hand was suddenly pulled back as Shoto’s tongue grazed your hand. His tongue became slightly green from the sweet frosting until he touched the tip of your finger, sucking it without hesitation. His other hand that sat at your waist touched your stomach softly while your body heat increased.

“S-S-Shoto?” You began to say as he pulled you closer to his warm and cool body while his face rubbed against your neck before kissing it.

“I want you..” he whispered, his voice deep enough to send chills through your body. “W-What about...What about the dinner?” You asked, trying to hold your moans back from his soft nips and sucks on your neck. He didn’t respond to your question but instead spun you around to face him. Your lips connected almost instantly as his body pinned you against the counter in the kitchen right beside the fridge.

The sweet taste of the frosting swirled within your mouths while his hands gripped your dress, holding it as if he wanted to snatch it off your body. Your lips moved in sync as his obvious bulge began to rub against you, demanding to be freed. The kiss was broken, leaving you panting for air as he scooped you up and snatched you away.

Lord knows what went through his supposed mind of his, you were plopped on the dining room table. Before you could even question him, his lips connected with yours within the beautiful room. It was a large glass table with gorgeous white chairs. The admirable part of the room was the large windows that surround the room, often reflecting the sunlight or moonlight inside the house. It was such a gorgeous sight and Shoto simply adored seeing you in the beautiful sunlight at dawn.

Your heels clicked on the glass as Shoto’s head ducked down while he snatched his shirt off. The lust between you two was overwhelming and overpowered your thoughts. Your hand was like a magnet and gripped his silky hair when his tongue grazed your eager core.

There was no way you weren’t wet by his demand of wanting you and including the intense, breathtaking make out session. Your once red lipstick was smudged, your hair was a bit wild but who could see you now?

“Shoto!” You cried out, the tingling orgasm slamming against your imaginary knot, begging for a release while your boyfriend was eating you like the meal you were supposed to be having at this moment. Your head snatched back while your chest rose and fell quickly. The top of your dress was at your shoulders, and your now ripped bra hung off the side of the table.

Your bottom lip was snatched between your teeth while you struggled to keep yourself together. “I’m cumming! I’m cumming! Shoto! I’m go-Fuck!” You cried out, sending him a warning as you came to your blissful release. Once he was satisfied, Shoto’s hand snatched you to the edge of the table. You found yourself in a doggy-style position while Shoto held your right leg in his hands. This mere position could send chills down anyone’s spine. He had full control and you are going to feel him everywhere inside you.

He slowly slides inside you, earning a soft grunt from his lips while your mouth opened from his entrance. He paused and smirked, looking down at you. “Looks like you’ve been getting tighter, Baby..” he said softly, applying that he still had a few of him not inside you quite yet. Your right leg was soon lifted and you have spun back around on your back. His hands touched your waist as he pushed himself deeper inside you.

Your hands touched his lower abs while your toes curled in your boots. You prayed he wouldn’t get into the god-forbidden position on this glass table. His hands leaned to your sides while he began to move, slamming deep inside you. Your right hand gripped one of the arms behind it, moaning out in pleasure while a puddle began to form on the table. Unsure to what released this horny man this time, but came you blame him?

You’re a walking masterpiece and he’s willing to admire and love you as much as possible. Each deep thrust sent waves of pleasure through your mind while he slammed all of him inside you. Your moans couldn’t be kept in even if you tried, well..until they increase to screams.

God must’ve missed your prayers before your legs were suddenly opened wider and he slammed himself into your cervix, making your eyes roll back. “D-Don't stop! Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” You screamed out before switching back to crying out his name and moans. He was damn near swimming inside you along with the puddle as perfect evidence. Your nails dug into his arm while the knot tightened again along with your walls, gripping him tightly.

Your mascara and eyeliner were now messed up from sweat that coated your face while your lover coated your neck with new hickeys you’d have to cover. “Shoto! OH FUCK!” You screamed out before your release came again, coating your lover in your warm mess. His hands formed fists while he continued to slam inside you, harder than before at a quicker pace. He was nearing his climax as the ding of the doorbell was missed. He grunted loudly as he released himself inside you as the doorbell ring again along with a loud banging.

“Shoto?! Y/N?! You home!?” Natsuo asked from behind the door while you two tried to come down. Then the lock clicked and the alarm beeped, signaling that it was disarmed and someone had the lock. You mentally slapped yourself, remembering that you have Fuyumi a key to the house when you and Shoto had to travel for a mission. She was in charge of watching the house and feeding your pet turtle.

“I smell peppermint bark! They’ve gotta be in here!” Natsuo said, taking his shoes off as he made his way to the kitchen. “Ohh! They even made sugar cookies! This looks delicious!” He continued, admiring the sweets while Fuyumi became worried.

“Y/N?! Shoto?! You guys home?!” She called out, walking around as she pulled the door to the dining room open. You two turned your head to them, now dressed again with a photo album in your hands as if you two were going down memory lane of your relationship.

“Fuyumi! Wait, it’s that late?! I’m so sorry!” You said, rushing over to the older woman. “I hope we’re not too late, Shoto reminded me that we should take another Christmas photo this year you lied, perfectly as Shoto stood up.

“It’s okay! We were just worried, that’s all! Touya hadn’t shown up yet and just wanted to see if you needed help or something.” She offered as you smiled. “Could you help me finish the cookies and we’ll go together? How about that?” You offered while the two of you walked into the kitchen again.

“Shoto, I think you should call a repairman,” Natsuo said, pointing towards the puddle in the middle of the table. “It looks like you’ve got a leak somewhere.” The older brother recommended, earning a nod in agreement.

“I’ll make sure to get that settled later tonight.”

[breanime]

Theoretically if rio's cute neighbour, the one that watched his son, was being harassed by an ex or just some creepy guy. What would rio do?

So you can find the first neighbor headcannon list here. Also, this headcannon list got long as hell... haha, sorry?

*gif not mine*

Rio had been out of town for the last week, handling business

He’d texted you to let you know he’d be back soon--

--partly to be a good neighbor, and partly cause he wanted to see you

The two of you weren’t dating, but there was definitely something between you

(sexual tension)

And Rio was eager to see where it would go

He walked down the hall to his apartment, his bag slung over his shoulder, glad to be back in his own space

Then he saw your door

The wood was cracked, as if someone had punched it or something, and Rio stopped dead in his tracks

He knocked on your door, eyebrows knitted

You answered with a bat in your hands

“Huh...” Rio said, eyes roaming your body--from your tense posture to the bat in your hands to the tired, exhausted look in your eyes. “... Rough week without me, mama?”

“Oh, Rio,” you sighed, and Rio watched your body relax, “Sorry. I was just--”

“Expecting someone else?” He asked, walking into your apartment. 

He dropped his bag at the foot of the couch and turned to you, frowning

Rio watched as you locked both locks on the door behind him; he’d been in your place about 100 times now, and he’d never seen you do that before

“Yeah, kind of...” You answered. “How was your trip?”

“Fine,” he answered, sticking his hands in his pockets, “but I don’t wanna talk about that right now. Let’s talk about you.” He titled his head. “What’s going on here?”

You sighed again, and Rio wanted to hold you. You were stressed, and he longed to fix it

“I’ve just...” You crossed your arms, hugging yourself. “I don’t want to bother you with it.”

Rio took a few steps forward, until he was in front of you. He eyed you seriously. Someone so beautiful, he thought, shouldn’t look so sad. Not when he was around to help. 

“Bother me,” he said softly, his voice firm but low

“Last year...” You began, looking down. “...I dated this guy, and he was just...” You shook your head. “He was an ass. We broke up, and I never heard from him again... till a week ago... The night before you left.”

Rio’s eyes narrowed; he remembered that night. He’d taken you out for drinks before his trip, spending the night smiling and laughing with you. He’d gotten a call in the middle of it, and when he came back to the table, he saw a man walking away. But you hadn’t said anything about it, and you seemed fine, so he didn’t ask about it.

“The guy from the restaurant...” Rio said, nodding to himself. “That’s your ex.”

“He saw us out, and when you stepped away, he came up to me--but all he did was say hi. He wasn’t weird or aggressive or anything,” you said back, “But then he... I guess he found out where I lived...”

“Yeah,” Rio licked his lips, “that his handy work on the door?”

“Yeah,” you nodded back, “Every day since that night, he’s been calling me nonstop and showing up here, pounding on the door. I called the cops, but they said there’s nothing they can do unless he actually hurts me, so--”

“I got you,” Rio said, grabbing his bag 

He turned to go, but you held onto his arm.

“What are you gonna do?” You asked, eyes wide.

He looked down at you

On one hand, he could lie to you, keep up the polite charade that he made his money the legal way, that his business was simply in “providing capital” like he’d told you once before. The two of you hadn’t ever explicitly discussed what he did, but Rio knew you knew his vague descriptions of his business were just that: pointedly vague

But on the other hand... he could tell you the truth. Maybe you’d be cool with it.

Or maybe you’d shy away and turn from him. 

Either way, he was going to handle this for you, but he couldn’t deny--

--he wanted you to be ok with it. With him. For some reason, as Rio looked down at you, he saw something special, something that made him feel protective of you, something beyond the lust and friendly affection he had for you

When he looked at you, he saw a partner

 “I’ma tell him that the next time he so much glances up at this apartment,” Rio answered evenly, “I’m gonna put a bullet between his eyes. And if he doesn’t like that, I’ll put him down then and there.”

“You... You’d do that for me?” You asked, pretty eyes wide

“I’d of had this handled already if you would’ve told me before,” he confessed, reaching out to cup your face in his hand, “but since I’m here now, I’ll handle it personally.” He leaned down, his mouth just inches from yours. Rio wanted to kiss you so badly, he felt the desire in every part of him with you so close. “Stay here,” he told you, “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

He didn’t move, though, and neither did you.

Your hand flexed on his bicep, wanting to bring him even closer. “Rio, I...thank you.”

He smirked. “Don’t thank me yet.” He leaned in closer, about to say something else

And then you kissed him

Rio had kissed a lot of women in his life (a lot...like a lot a lot...)

But never had a pair of lips felt so good against his own. 

Rio’s arms wrapped around you, and he silently marveled at how perfectly you fit against him. He titled his head, slipping his tongue into your mouth, and you moaned into him. 

Chuckling, Rio’s hands went to your waist, and he led you towards the couch

You took a hold of his collar and dragged him down onto the couch with you, your legs wrapping around his waist as he laid on top of you

“Baby,” he chuckled into your lips, “I gotta go.”

“I know,” you said back, grinning, “I just need a few more minutes...”

He laughed. “For what?” He asked, even as he dipped his head down to start kissing your neck. The little sounds you made when his lips ghosted against your skin were driving him wild. 

...the ex might have to wait a bit.

Rio was kissing your collarbones while lifting up your shirt when a loud band sounded behind him

You jumped, but Rio just turned lazily, one eyebrow raised

“It’s him,” you whispered, and when Rio looked down at you, he could see the fear in your eyes

This, he decided, would be the last time you would ever look like that

“Relax,” he said, his voice low and calm. He leaned down and kissed you sweetly, and he felt you relax under his touch. “I got this. Just stay here,  mi bonita chica.”

Rio got up, kissing the top of your head as you sat up, and reached down into his bag.

“Y/N,” the banging was louder now, “I’m not playing with you--open this damn door right now!”

Rio grinned--it would be his pleasure

Rio opened the door and leaned on the doorway, a lazy smirk on his face. “Hey,” he greeted the man, “you know this is a private residence?”

The man blinked, taking a step back, and Rio chuckled. He knew this type: big, loud, and bad--until someone badder came around. 

“Wh--what the hell are you doing here...?” The man asked, craning his neck to try to peek into the apartment. 

“Yo,” Rio stood up straight, shaking his head, “What you lookin’ for? Huh?” He stepped up, and your ex stepped back again. “Y/N?” He asked. “She ain’t your concern no more, homie. I am.”

“I--I don’t--”

“Oh,” Rio chuckled, “That’s right, I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself.” He whipped out his gun, pointing it directly at the guy’s paling face. “I’m Rio. I’m the man Y/N’s currently seeing, and she wanted me to let you know that this shit,” he waved the gun, the smile no longer on his face, and the man backed up into the wall, eyes wide with terror, “Is done with. You stop callin’, you stop comin’ around, and you definitely stop trying to intimidate her into talkin’ to you. Matter of fact,” Rio went on, “the next time you see her, you better get the fuck away, cause if I hear about you even breathing in the same space as her again,” he stepped up and pressed the golden gun into the guy’s forehead, “I can’t promise I’ll stay this controlled. Is that understood?”

The ex nodded, looking like a bobblehead with his huge eyes “I---”

“No no no,” Rio smiled, “don’t speak.” He glanced back at you, you were standing in front of the couch now, watching. “You got any cash on you?”

He nodded

“Great,” Rio said brightly, “let’s see it.”

The guy reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, handing it over to Rio

“Mm...” Rio eyed his ID, memorizing the name and address for later use. “This looks like just enough to cover the cost of repairing the door,” he said, taking out a wad of bills, “and a lil extra for emotional damage.”

Rio threw the wallet back at your ex, who caught it, eyes never leaving the gun in Rio’s hand

“Okay now...” Rio grinned. “Run.”

He didn’t have to say it twice, your ex scurried away so quickly, that he fell half-way down the hall and just crawled into the elevator. If Rio didn’t know any better, he’d say he smelt piss in the hall now...

Rio closed your door, tossing the gun--which was empty--onto his bag on the floor

He turned to you, laughing when you launched yourself into his arms

“Thank you,” you said, your head buried in his chest, “thank you, thank you, thank you--”

“I told you,” he said, smiling down at you, “I got you. And yo, I was thinkin’...” He held up the cash. “...why don’t you use this on some self-defense lessons, just for fun?”

“But what about the door?”

“Ah, baby,” he leaned down, kissing you, “that’s what we got a super for!”

*******************************************************************************************

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! 

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[pxppet]

hi! for your rarepair commission, maybe anti/schneep (if you're comfortable with it) with the word 'memory'? ;--; (i'm in love with your dapperhost fic btw, so hauntingly beautiful)

cw// hypnotism, amnesia, manipulation, intensity, panic attack

He is lost, he is afraid, the world rages like hellfire around him. 

The doctor doesn‘t know who he is, where he is, his mind swirling with memories he barely can grasp. He is panting, barely able to breathe, his eyes large and wild. He bangs his fist on the wall, cries out, rips at his hair. Who am I, who am I, who am I? screams through his brain. He is in this damp, cold basement bedroom all alone, curled up on a dirty mattress. He screams again, banging his head against the wall behind him. 

Only moments later, the door at the top of the stairs bangs open sharply, causing the doctor to slam back against the wall and give a choked gasp. Henrik scrabbles at the thin blue shirt he wears, gripping to it to try and ground himself. He feels like a drowning soul in a deep, dark ocean.  

A wolf is standing by the bed. Eyes ready for the hunt, feral and beast-like. The doctor grasps onto the first word that has made any sense today. 

“Anti-” he cries, sobbing. He reaches his hands out like a baby, crying shamefully like a child. “Anti, bitte, bitte...” He trails off, crying too hard to fix it, crying to hard to do anything but whine and beg. 

The wolf is a man in an instant. Soft, dark green hair falls around his cheeks, his eyes downy blue and shining with cruel light that does not match the picture-perfect concern on his face. 

“Arzt, what’s wrong? Oh my, my doktor, what’s the matter?” Anti falls onto the mattress beside him, his ghostly arms sweeping the doctor into his arms. Ah, there is another word that makes sense. Arzt. It’s a name. Whose name? The wolf’s? No, no. Is it his? It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t fit in his puzzle-piece brain. 

“Hey, look at me. Hey, come on now, dok, my Arzt, look at me and it’ll get better.” No, no this is the monster! Henrik reels back, panting, his eyes squeezed shut. This is the reason he was afraid! He shakes his head, spittle flying from his frantic mouth. Henrik peels his tearful eyes open, meeting the swirling black pits of the wolf. And oh, oh. 

Oh it does make it all better. His eyes are joy, his eyes are the sweetest ambrosia, his eyes are all the sense the world needs. “Just calm down now, Arzt, just relax, it’s okay. Your poor little head got all scrambled again, didn’t it? You’ve always been harder to control than my Carver...” Henrik nods, nods frantically to anything the monster says. His hands scrabble at Anti’s green hoodie, clinging on to the only memory that feels real. 

“Yes, yes, yes I am bad, I am horrible, punish me, make it make sense, bitte klarstellen!” Henrik cries so hard he cannot keep his eyes open any more. Names and faces and pictures of a warm, soft home flow through his mind. He had someone to get home to right? Someone warm and soft with the same face as this man before him. Someone who was like sunshine, his voice was a giggling melody, he loved hats, he loved... In moments the memories are gone again, slipping far, far gone from him as he stares into the swirling pits of Anti’s eyes. Arzt looks up at Anti, tear-stained and small. Anti stares back at him, his eyes spiraling galaxies, calm and deep. Arzt sniffles and curls up against the monster’s chest, trembling. 

“Don’t worry, doktor. Don’t you worry. It’ll all be better soon. Just let me hold you, and it will all make sense. I’ll fix those shitty little neurons right up.” Anti runs fingers through his hair. They burn at his scalp, but it feels right. It feels like he was supposed to be here all along. Him and the monster’s swirling, magical, peaceful eyes. Nothing else matters. Henrik nods softly, as slowly warm friends with silly hats and funny German names cease to make sense, cease to matter at all. All that matters is that Anti is here, and Anti is holding him. Memories are useless anyhow, Anti says, he doesn’t need them, and Henrik agrees. 

In the doorway, as the wolf cradles the sheep to sleep in his arms, Jameson stares through a crack in the door. He rubs his aching wrists from the ropes he had been in today, sighing as he feels Henrik’s frenzy dying down. He plants his back against the wall by the stairs, closing his eyes and sinking to the floor. He feels all the light leave the house as Anti walks back up the stairs, leaving the dying remnants of what was once Henrik von Schneeplestein asleep on his bed. 

[nocturne-overtures]

Kinktober Day 8

Pairing: Minghao (The8) x Rapline (Seungcheol/S.Coups, Hansol/Vernon, Mingyu, Wonwoo)

W:1.7k+

Genre: Smut

Prompt: Creampie

Tags: Established Background OT13, Collar + Leash, Glasses Kink (kinda. if you squint), Oral (Male Recieving), Frottage, Multiple Orgasms, Breeding, Handjobs, Nude Photos + Video, Biting, Praise Kink, Dirty Talk, Nipple Play, Bukkake

A/N: The full M.List for Kinktober is here, and I’ll be posting and adding links to that post as I go. The prompts span several fandoms, so feel free to check the list to see if you’re interested in any of the future days

Day 7                            Day 9

AO3

Seungcheol knew the moment Minghao approached him that evening, setting a collar and a leash in his hand and looking at him through a pair of circular glasses perched on the edge of his nose, that the night would get interesting.

The leader stood, securing the collar around his neck and adjusting the leash before he hooked his finger under it to make sure it had some space. Once he was satisfied, he met the younger idol’s eyes.

“The word?”

“Carat.”

“What does my baby boy need today?"

Minghao looked away for a moment. Seungcheol waited patiently, gently running his finger along his cheekbone. When Minghao looked back at him, his voice was monotone, though there was the slightest of blushes to his cheeks.

“You, Gyu, Woo, Hannie.”

Seungcheol arched a brow and hummed, gently fixing his bangs.

“How are we doing this tonight?”

A small glint appeared in Minghao’s eye as he pushed his glasses up.

“I want you all to use me.”

It didn’t take long for Seungcheol to call the others into his room, and even less for them all to slip into their roles. Minghao wasn’t usually as vocal about his needs, but when he was, none of the boys had any issues with delivering whatever it was that he needed from them.

Mingyu picked him up effortlessly, holding him in his lap and kissing him firmly until he heard the smallest of groans come from his mouth. Between the thirteen of them, Minghao was definitely on the quieter end, so the others often made it a small mission whenever he opened up to them to draw as much as those sweet sounds out of him.

“Gyu, lie down.” Wonwoo gently ordered, pushing at Minghao’s shoulder lightly. Mingyu obliged, with Minghao straddling him as he subtly lifted his hips, shaking his ass ever so slightly to entice the older man behind him. Wonwoo’s gentle hands fell onto his hips, holding him steady as he pushed into him.

A small sigh left Minghao’s lips as Wonwoo began moving, pressing soft kisses to his shoulder as he rolled his hips. The slow, languid thrusts moved the shorter man’s hips forward, making him rut against Mingyu’s cock as it lay hard against his stomach.

Minghao let out a pleasured hum, closing his eyes as Mingyu trailed kisses up the expanse of his neck, leaving the occasional hickie here or there. The model would be able to cover them up fairly simple, so it wasn’t an issue.

The sound of kissing and the occasional grunt drew Minghao’s attention over to Hansol and Seungcheol as the two of them waited patiently for him, busying themselves with leisurely kisses and slow handjobs. Minghao lifted his head a bit higher, adjusting his glasses before he spoke.

“C-Come here...You’re too far.” He groaned, thankful for Mingyu’s big hands holding him steady as Wonwoo gradually increased the speed of his thrusts. Seungcheol and Hansol broke apart from one another, making their way over to Minghao without the soft-spoken man needing to ask again. Hansol got there first, hooking his finger into the loop in the collar around Minghao’s neck, pulling him closer so his cock rubbed right up against his cheek. Minghao hummed, caressing and stroking his cock before he kissed up the length of it, keeping his half-lidded eyes on Hansol as he slowly wrapped his lips around the base.

“You’re so pretty like this, our pretty slut.”

Minghao’s eyes fluttered closed at the words, readjusting himself as he rolled his hips down faster against Mingyu, completely unbothered when his leader came to his other side, grabbing his hand, placing it over his cock.

“Open your eyes, baby. Look at how pretty you look.” Seungcheol purred into his ear, making him open his eyes minutes later. He looked across from them at himself in the mirror, an audible-though muffled-whine leaving his lips as he looked at his debauched reflection.

They had started fooling around at the foot of the bed instead of at the head of it, so Minghao could see the light pink bites adorning his chest and neck, his mouth stuffed with Hansol’s cock while Wonwoo and Mingyu both held his hips as he was fucked by the former. Some of his stoic attitude crumbled at the sight, panting when Hansol pulled him off of his cock, moving his head towards Seungcheol’s cock instead. Minghao took him in his mouth without hesitation, stroking Hansol’s spit slick cock as he felt Wonwoo cum inside of him.

“Fuck...Gyu, he’s all yours.” Wonwoo mused, kissing Minghao’s shoulder before pulling out of him. Before his cum could roll out, Mingyu raised his hips, and Wonwoo reached between his thick legs to guide his cock into Minghao, stepping aside and admiring the view as Mingyu immediately began rocking hard and fast into him, the bed creaking from the sudden change of pace.

Minghao’s eyes closed again, his body shaking as Seungcheol and Hansol began teasing his nipples, pinching and rolling the small chocolate buds between their fingers. His cock rubbed against Mingyu’s abs as the larger idol slapped his cheeks between some of his wild thrusts.

Seungcheol pulled his cock out of Minghao’s mouth, turning his cheek so he could see that Wonwoo had started recording him on his phone. He trembled, clenching around Mingyu as he looked at the phone’s camera.

They all knew how much he loved to fondly watch back videos of himself as he was getting fucked.

He accepted sloppy kisses from both Seungcheol and Hansol as Mingyu came inside of him after spending ten minutes hitting his prostate with enough force to nearly knock him out of his lap from his thrusts. He hummed in delight, clenching to the best of his ability.

Hansol gently pushed him onto his stomach, placing his palms at either side of his head on the comforters below as he fucked him. Minghao’s thighs had a tell-tale tremble in them as Hansol nibbled his earlobe, whispering sweet nothings to him as he rolled his hips.

“You’re already so full, Hao. Mingyu and Woo-hyung. Really came a lot.” Hansol quietly complimented him, looking down and watching as his cock slid in and out of Minghao’s messy hole, Mingyu and Wonwoo’s cum covering his cock. Minghao’s glasses fell down past his nose a bit as Hansol’s strong thrusts pushed the cum deeper inside him.

“B-Breed….Breed me.” He panted, pulling at the sheets as he felt another orgasm creeping close. Hansol kissed the top of his head before sitting up and reaffirming his grip on Minghao’s waist, rocking hard and fast into him, groaning himself.

The two of them were typically quieter in bed, but they brought out the volume in each other, and Seungcheol watched affectionately with Wonwoo and Mingyu as Hansol milked himself into Minghao’s stuffed and sloppy asshole. A chorus of curses in English and Mandarin filled the room as Minghao came soon after, moaning weakly as Hansol slowly pulled out of him. Minghao raised his hips, his whole body covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

“Hyung….please?” He swallowed shakily and turned around, his hair sticking up in some places and his glasses hanging on by a prayer as they sat crooked on his face. Seungcheol crossed the room in an instant, pressing a kiss to him that made his toes curl slightly. He wrapped the leash around his fist as he slid into Minghao’s messy hole with one, powerful thrust.

Minghao may have been one of the quieter of the boys, but Seungcheol always had a way of drawing the volume out of him, and today was no different. It took only a minute of long, hard thrusts before Minghao began pulling at the sheets, his eyes fluttering as breathless moans and whimpers fell from his lips. Seungcheol tugged at the leash firmly, making Minghao tilt his head back as his body rocked forward with every thrust.

“You’re so warm, Hao-ya. Did the others use you well, hm? Did we breed our baby boy just the way he likes it?” He inquired, his voice a low growl in Minghao’s ear. He nodded quickly, his voice cracking slightly as pleasure began to overwhelm him. His thighs shook as he reached blindly for the others, panting like a bitch in heat as he silently begged for the other three rappers to come back over to him.

They obliged and he found his lips wrapped around Wonwoo’s cock, tasting the remnants of his cum as he stroked Hansol and Mingyu, looking up at them with dark eyes.

“Our pretty boy~ Our Pretty Minghao~”

He wasn’t sure who was praising him, but he came undone from the combined stimulus, clamping down around Seungcheol as the pale leader spilled inside of him. Minghao whined and kept going until he could feel Wonwoo’s hips stuttering ever so slightly. He pulled himself off, closing his eyes and sticking his tongue out to catch Wonwoo’s cum on his tongue and face. Mingyu and Hansol caught on quickly and the tallest turned Minghao’s head, cumming along the rim of his glasses and onto his cheek. Hansol was last, his cum leaving pearl-colored ribbons along Minghao’s nose and lips.

Minghao opened his eyes slowly, trying to catch his breath as Hansol took his phone from the bed, taking a few pictures for him for later.

Soonyoung and Jeonghan would definitely pout the most at not being included this time.

“G-Gimme…” Minghao reached for the phone and Hansol smiled knowingly, passing it to him. He passed it to Seungcheol and the oldest hummed, gently motioning for the others to get out of the shot as he started recording. Slowly, he pulled out of Minghao, keeping the camera focused on his ass as cum sloppily rolled out of him.

Seungcheol recorded until Minghao lifted up. He ended the recording and leaned down to kiss him despite the cum all over his lips. Minghao blushed, looking up at the four of them.

“Thank you...I felt messy today.” He quietly told them, looking away. The rappers smiled affectionately at them and Seungcheol laughed ever so slightly.

“You can feel messy whenever you’d like. Except now, now we should shower before that cum dries on those glasses. They cost like 300,000 won.”

“Thanks hyung, love you too.” Minghao flatly responded, though his lips curled up when he heard the quartet laugh.