#it’s been a while since I really wrote anything rated E on AO3

[isthemedia]

PoolVerine/Deadclaws got me returning to my roots of fanfiction.

Long time followers might remember that one thing I wrote regularly was…well smut.

It’s been 2 years since I last wrote really anything that explicit.

Since I need a a breather from how big chapter 6 is gonna be for “It Can Wait”-I’ve been working on chapter 7 which wasn’t going to be explicit but now just sorta wrote itself as.

(Which is great cause I can actually use “don’t bully me, I’ll cum-this is a threat” line and it works in context. Thank you Wade)

[anna-hawk]

Writer's Block Solution

BJ Rose x implied f!Reader

Summary: You write fanfiction and BJ helps with your writer's block in a very unexpected way.

Rating: E 🔞 // WC: 3,2k

Tags and Warnings: PWP, friends to lovers, very slight Dom/sub undertones, sweet guy turns dominant, unprotected sex, minor angst

A/N: So, I'm sick with the flu and that's when my brain gives me the weirdest ideas. I based this on a trend I saw a while ago on IG and just went with it. If you know the trend, you'll know what I mean while reading. If you don't, that's also fine, as it's a bit embarrassing anyway. In any case, it's silly and maybe BJ is a bit OOC, but who knows how he actually is in the bedroom, right? Right…

Read it on AO3

Reading through your latest paragraph, you huffed angrily, before you selected the whole thing and hit the back button. You drummed your fingers over the space next to the touchpad on your laptop as you thought, before sighing and starting a new paragraph. Again. Ten minutes later, and you were repeating the same process you had over the entire last hour and a half. 

“What’s got you this upset?”

Blowing out a loud breath through your lips, you lifted your eyes to your friend, staring at his tall form over the lid of the laptop. BJ was leaning against the door frame, one foot crossed lazily over the other as he looked at you, a dishtowel in one hand. He looked so domestic in his sweatpants and sweatshirt, added to the soft smile and that stupid dishtowel. He was nothing like the man you were trying your hardest to write about in your story. However, people were waiting for the next part, the smutty part, and your brain refused to come up with anything worthwhile. Any positioning you thought of came out wrong, the way the man was talking and seducing his partner felt off. They were supposed to kiss in an intense way before anything more happened, but you couldn’t even get that on paper. On screen. Whatever. 

“Writer’s block,” you muttered unhappily, going as far as crossing your arms in front of you like a sulking kid. 

Which was ironic, considering that you’d spent the afternoon over at BJ’s looking after Trey while BJ was out training his team. Since you worked from home, you had come with your laptop, and you’d spent the afternoon playing games with Trey or working while he did his own thing. Twenty minutes after BJ had come back, Trey’s best friend had pulled up with his dad to pick him up for a sleepover. Which had led to BJ inviting you to stay over for dinner. While he’d been in the kitchen, you’d excused yourself and sat back down on the living room couch with your story, hit by a bout of inspiration. Which had been kicked out the proverbial window as soon as you’d started writing. 

“Anything I can help you with?” BJ asked kindly, throwing the dishtowel over his shoulder. 

You stared at him and shrugged. BJ knew what kind of stories you wrote, something that had amused him to no end the first time you’d told him after he’d found your open laptop on your kitchen counter, a very explicit scene staring back at him. 

“Dinner’s ready, otherwise, so,” he elongated the last word and clapped his thigh. 

“Yeah, I … I don’t know. I’m just so close to getting it right.” You held your index and thumb close together to indicate that you only needed a little push. 

BJ observed you for a moment and nodded. 

“What’s it about? Are we getting to the good part?” he laughed softly and lifted his eyebrows meaningfully a few times.

You pursed your lips despite his try at humor, and nodded aggressively, which had BJ snorting. 

“‘kay, and what’s happening?” 

“Well…” you began, only to trail off with some wild hand gestures. “I want the moment to like, really build, you know? Make it intense. And…” You looked at BJ again, and tilted your head to the side thoughtfully. “Actually, they’re…”

You slid the laptop off your thighs and put it onto the couch next to you before you got up and walked over to BJ. He watched you approach with a curious expression, his shoulder still against the door frame. 

“Maybe if I get the right perspective, I could write about it better?” you commented thoughtfully, as you stopped in front of him. 

“Okay?” He said slowly, waiting you out. 

“Right, so, um, basically, what’s happening is that the main character is about to leave the room, but the guy blocks the way. They’re both a bit angry at each other because — never mind why — they just are, and…” you moved closer to BJ, like you wanted to cage him in, with your hand going to the wood behind his head. “He does something like that?” You explained awkwardly, feeling ridiculous and not as sexy as how you had envisioned the moment. 

BJ blinked at you for a beat, before he licked his bottom lip consideringly and nodded. A second later, he swiftly moved forward, forcing you back until you were the one hitting the door frame on the other side. One of his hands moved over your head, while the other one went into the pocket of his sweats. He was looming over you. BJ Rose, this kind and sweet dad of a man, was looming over you, his expression intense, his face only a few inches away from yours, as was the rest of his body. 

“Like this?” he asked softly. And when had his voice turned so husky? 

“Um,” you got out, your eyes wide as you realized how absolutely stupid you had been for asking BJ to act out such a scene with you. 

Because while BJ was nothing like the man you were writing about, you didn’t need him to be for you to have developed a giant crush months ago. Since then, you had never let on how you felt about him, since BJ probably only saw you as a friend, no matter how much time you spent together.  

“Does he do anything else? Or what happens next?” 

You locked eyes with him, but were unable to know what he was thinking. One thing was sure, he wasn’t laughing it off and was actually taking your situation seriously. 

“Well, the — um — the main character tries to — um — pull away. But he stops the movement and — and — you know — goes like this?” You tentatively lifted your hand and cupped the back of his head, his skin warm and the short hair at the base of his head feeling soft under your fingers. “But — you know — stronger?” You withdrew your hand, but were still unable to look away from his eyes. 

“‘kay, so let’s try?” he suggested far too calmly.

You blinked. Blinked again a few times and… Oh. Really? Well… It would be stupid to stop now, right? This could actually help you write later. Right? Swallowing, you nodded and moved into action. You pushed against his chest with both hands, sending him backwards a couple of steps, visibly catching him by surprise as you hadn’t told him exactly how the character pulled away. BJ was only thrown for a moment because his eyes sharpened, and he was back on you a fraction of a second later. You actually gasped as your back met wood again. What followed was the feeling of BJ’s hands on you, one going to your hip, while the other one went to the back of your neck like you had explained to him. His grip was strong and secure, letting you know that you had nowhere else to go. In the heat of the moment, you hadn’t realized that your hands had gone to grip onto the sides of his sweatshirt, your fingers clenched tight in the material, while your breaths came in short pants. Your next breath caught in your chest as the hand that BJ had over your nape, slid towards your jaw to tilt your head towards his, his lips now barely an inch away from yours. You were completely unable to move, not knowing what was acting and what was the truth. The way BJ was looking at you was so intense that you felt your stomach tighten in anticipation. He didn’t ask what came next, nor did you think that you would have been able to answer him if he had. As you briefly glanced at his lips, almost as if on reflex since they were so close, you saw BJ’s eyes fill with something that had you suddenly moving again. It only took your head leaning forward an inch to be able to press your lips to his. A moment later, BJ was pressing his whole body against yours as he kissed you back with an intensity and want that you hadn’t expected. Your arms went from his sides to around his neck, as his tongue slipped between your parted lips to slide against yours in a hot caress. The hand on your hip moved fully around your waist to pull you closer, while he pressed a knee between your legs. A high-pitched moan escaped you as he had you riding his thigh, while one of his hands vanished inside your pants to grab a fistful of your ass. Your mind was spinning at the way he was touching you, showing a more passionate side of him that surprised you but that you found you really enjoyed all the same. 

“That okay with you?” he then asked against your jaw, which had you bursting into a short and surprised laugh. 

There he was, the sweet and considerate guy that you had fallen for, still present underneath these more aggressive layers of need and lust. 

“Yes,” you breathed vehemently, before you moaned again as he kept you moving over his thigh and got a satisfied hum from him. 

“Wanna tell me what happens next in your story?”

You stared back at him, panting roughly just like he was, and licked your lips. 

“You tell me.” You decided then, knowing that whatever you’d had in mind until now, wouldn’t compete with what BJ might be thinking of. He had already surprised you quite a bit tonight. 

He gave you a thoughtful stare that only lasted for a second, before he smirked and had you facing the door frame an instant later. You caught yourself with your hands and gasped as BJ pulled and tugged at your clothes until you were standing fully naked in front of him, your bare back facing him. You didn’t have time to feel cold, since he pressed his front against your back, his erection pushing against you. His mouth landed on your shoulder and trailed all the way over to the other one, before it moved up your nape and finally down your spine. All the way down your spine. He pulled your hips back and started sucking and nipping at your ass as he ran a hand between your legs to reach for your entrance. He hummed against your skin at the wetness he found there and pushed two fingers inside you. Your hands tightened on the wood as you gasped and cried out, not having expected the move. With his fingers still inside you, BJ rose to his feet again to begin kissing along the side of your neck. As he withdrew his fingers from you and stroked over your sensitive flesh, his other hand moved to your front and found one of your nipples to gently pull at it. 

“BJ,” you breathed on a short gasp, your head thrown back. 

As if saying his name had triggered something in him, BJ grabbed you by the waist and turned you back to face him. He pushed you against the living room wall this time and cupped your face to kiss you deeply. You had barely taken a hold of his sweatshirt, when he fell to his knees before you and lifted one of your legs over his shoulder. Your mind didn’t have the time to process what was going on before BJ had his head between your legs and was taking you apart with his mouth and tongue. Your head thumped hard against the wall as it flew back from the intensity of the pleasure suddenly coursing through you. With a string of distorted expletives, you curled over him and sank your fingers into the longer hair at the top of his head. Between the whole surreal situation, his fingers on you just before and now his mouth, the leg still holding you up was already starting to tremble with an incoming orgasm. You repeated his name a few times on tiny breaths as your body was wrecked by tremors, but instead of sending you over the edge, BJ stopped altogether and stood again. You stared at him through heavy lidded eyes as you panted deeply, your eyes falling to his shiny lips.  

“Not like this,” he whispered roughly against your lips, only leaving a small kiss there before he had you moving again. 

Curling an arm around your waist, BJ pulled you further into the living room with a few short steps and made you sit on the edge of the sectional couch. BJ followed you down, one hand holding him up at the side of your head, while the other vanished between your bodies as he kissed you. Your legs wrapped around his hips on instinct, and a moment later, you felt his length pressing against your entrance. You moaned loudly into his mouth as your fingers gripped tightly onto his shoulders as he began to slip inside. As soon as he was fully settled, BJ pulled back and began thrusting his hips into yours again and again, never stopping as he drew short gasps and cries of pleasure out of you. 

After the shortest amount of time, your entire body began feeling overstimulated in all the best ways. You clung to him with everything you had as his powerful thrusts and his large body lying over yours had you finally reaching your climax. Your eyes shut tightly while your arms and legs squeezed BJ to you, which got a long grunt out of him as his hips kept moving sporadically. 

“Is this what you had in mind?” he rasped into your ear after your grip on him became less strong. 

“No,” you groaned, grabbing his hair as he frowned. “So much better.” You kissed him hard to show him just how much this meant to you.  

BJ smiled against your lips and slid you further up the couch so he could put a knee on it as he picked the pace up again. You kept kissing as he sunk into you over and over, until he had to break the kiss as he neared his own release, his eyes closing as he lost himself in the pleasure. You took the opportunity to watch him, how his brow furrowed, and his mouth parted on a long groan. Coming here today, you had been light years from thinking that you would be ending the day like this. 

You both breathed quietly for a minute, before BJ gently pulled away and stood at your side. Your heart sank as you realized that BJ was suddenly failing to make eye contact as he turned around to fix his clothes. You gingerly sat up, hoping to avoid making too much of a mess, and watched BJ heading towards the door leading to the hallway, where he retrieved your clothes and the dishtowel that had fallen to the floor at some point. 

“I’ll — uh — go check if everything’s still warm while you — um — yeah,” he said awkwardly, as he handed you the clothes before he went to check on dinner. 

Feeling like an idiot, you balled your clothes into your arms and quickly made it to the bathroom. You hurried through cleaning up and were back in the living room and in front of your laptop in a few minutes. The sounds of pans and cutlery came from the kitchen, and you glanced in its direction as you put your things away into the bag you’d brought with you earlier. You had a mind to simply bolt without saying anything, but what good would that be since you were neighbors? Never come out of your house again? Move away? With a fortifying intake of breath, you walked through the hallway and into the kitchen, where the island had been set for two. 

“Do you want me to leave?” You hadn’t meant to be that straightforward, but better rip the band-aid off quickly, right? 

BJ, who’d had his back to you, startled faintly and turned around. 

“No!” he said immediately, his eyes finally meeting yours again, before he sighed and started over at a lower volume. “No.”

“Listen, BJ, if you want us to pretend like this never happened, just say the word, okay? I didn’t mean to start anything when I asked for your help, but,” you stalled for a moment. “But you need to know that I didn’t just go with it because we were playing out a scene. I kissed you because… well… because it was you and… maybe…” you sighed and looked at your hands. “Anyway, you decide, okay?” 

You pulled the chair out from under the island and sat in front of your plate, waiting for BJ to do the same. 

“I don’t wanna pretend like nothing happened,” BJ started softly, remaining where he was. “I just thought I maybe went too far with everything.”

You lifted your eyes to him and saw him looking back with a troubled expression as he leaned against the stove. 

“Did I give you the impression that you did? Or that I wasn’t into everything you did a hundred percent?” you smiled faintly, between perplexed and amused by the difference between the BJ who’d known exactly what he wanted and how to push your buttons, and the BJ standing in front of you right now, back to his sweet self.

A small smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, which had you laughing in earnest. 

“Yeah, yeah, you go ahead and be smug.” You rolled your eyes good-naturedly. “Now, what about dinner? I had someone make me work up an appetite here.” 

BJ barked out a laugh and did as asked before taking the seat across from you. 

A while later, as you finished eating, BJ stared at the laptop sticking out of the bag you’d placed on the chair next to you.

“So… you think you have enough… footage to write this scene?”

The fork that you were in the midst of putting down, stopped briefly in its course at the question before you finally placed it on the plate. 

“Well.” You sat back against the chair and put on an exaggerated thoughtful expression. “I think I’ve got enough for this one, yeah… But, you know… I have several other stories planned. With more intense looming going on and arguments to be settled with make-up sex and… other things like that. Who knows… maybe I might need your help again… After all, I strive to be as accurate as possible.” 

BJ watched you with a smile that kept growing as you talked, his tongue peeking from between his teeth as he held back his laugh. His eyebrows dipped for a second in a would be serious expression. 

“That so, huh?” He got up and walked around the island, putting a hand on the back of your chair as he leaned over you. Loomed over you. “The things you’d do for your writing.”

Your teasing smile broke into an actual full on bright smile at his behavior. “Only the best for my audience,” you shrugged, before BJ leaned all the way down for a long kiss. 

Little mutal tags for @darlingshane @lucy-sky and @slavic-empress since this is a lesser known character and I know you guys appreciate him.

[the-one-who-lambs]

About me!!

I'm Hannah (she/they). This is my Cult of the Lamb side blog; I follow back from my main @onethirdofimpossible and I also go by that username on AO3. I'm in my mid twenties and I'm from the US. If you're here, it's probably because you've read my fics, but I've written many fanfics for Cult of the Lamb. My works are typically focused on narilamb or the Bishop family, but I go all over the place: whether you like to read multichaps or oneshots, rated G or E, shippy or not, angst or fluff... there's probably something I've written that you'll enjoy! I'm best known as the author of The Risen Lamb and the Fallen God (the old version that I wrote back in 2022, and the new-and-improved "director's cut" version that is my current wip!) and The Care and Keeping of Baby Eldritch Gods.

A few other hobbies I have besides writing are cooking/baking, making plushies, digital art, and playing flute!

Despite being able to write pretty consistently, I'm a Ph.D. student in environmental science. If I haven't posted a fic update in a while, I'm probably preparing for a conference or getting into a fistfight with hydrostatic equilibrium or something.

Links

All my written works on AO3

Twitch, a recent endeavor of mine where I stream games and occasional art/writing!!

Fic playlist for The Risen Lamb and the Fallen God, with all songs in chronological order of what they refer to in the fic c:

I have a ko-fi but paypal is giving me shit so if you REALLY wanna b nice I have a Throne. I don't expect anything ever but if u get me something I'd die for you. and write more stuff while happier.

FAQ below the cut!

How long have you been writing?

I've been writing fanfiction since I was in sixth grade! I wrote what was basically a self-insert pokemon soulsilver fanfic, entirely by hand. It took up four full composition notebooks and then some. However, I've only been posting my writing publicly since 2016. Even after that, I had a nasty habit of making a sideblog for any fandoms I got really into, then deleting my blog and sometimes orphaning my works when I lost interest. I've since learned my lesson, though!

How long have you been drawing?

Ha, uh. I got a digital drawing tablet in May 2023, and started really drawing as a hobby for about... three months, and then the school year started again. Between then and June 2024 I drew like one or two things. So I've actually been practicing for only a few months. Constructive criticism on my art is welcome, especially as I learn!

May I send a fic/art request?

If my bio says they're open, you may, I think they're really fun! Depending on what does or doesn't inspire me, I won't take every single request, but I love requests because they give me excuses to try new things.

Do you write smut?

I've written a couple E-rated fics! My alternate pseud for fics of that caliber is remainderofreality. I don't write it very often, though.

What made you decide to start writing? What makes you decide to keep writing?

1. I had a creative bug I couldn't not itch. 2. Having creative hobbies and sticking to them has dramatically improved my life. I'm happier, I have so many friends it's connected me with, I get to see other people be inspired by things I make (?!), it keeps my mind active and playful, etc etc.

Do you have any suggestions for people looking to start writing?

Before you start worrying about the quality of your writing, the most important advice I can give you is to keep writing and have fun with it. Don't be afraid of being "cringe" or not getting the engagement numbers you're hoping for (in fact, it's better to not have any expectations about that at all!). Not everything you write is going to cater to everyone, and that's okay! But writing (especially fanfiction) is first and foremost for fun and even though it's difficult and you will struggle, it should be rewarding and fun. I've answered a few asks about writing advice and I can't find them all but here are the ones I can: 1 2 3 4

When do you expect to update your fic next?

Lmao god if I know but I'm working on my wips nearly every single day so I promise I haven't forgotten it. I'm a busy person! I'm a PhD student, teaching assistant, research assistant, and executive dysfunction haver.

Do you take commissions?

I don't, and I have no plans to as of now. I'm actually personally against writing fanfic for pay (copyright and ethical reasons), but for art I'm simply not experienced enough yet to be comfortable with that. However, I have TONS of friends who do take commissions so if you're looking for someone I can give you recs

May I draw fanart for you based on your fics?

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME I EXPLODE WITH JOY if you do please share it with me please please please. I will also likely ask for your permission to print it out and frame it (not a hyperbole, btw).

[kotaka-kun]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thank you for the tag, @missiemoosie, this was such a fun way to reflect on my work!!

How many works do you have on AO3?

284

What's your total AO3 word count?

395,574

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

 thank you for the food - ATLA | rated T | 2,378 words | Zuko/Sokka

Simple Happiness - ATLA | rated M | 3,126 words | Zuko/Sokka

Bucky has a belly kink, but Steve doesn’t mind in the least - Captain America, MCU | rated E | 1,739 words | Steve/Bucky

Surprise - Captain America, MCU | rated M | 2,597 words | Steve/Bucky

New Colors - One Piece | rated G | 1,881 words | Zoro/Sanji

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Always! If I don’t respond the moment I get the email notification, I usually get to it the next time I’m on AO3 to upload a new fic... I do make it a point to reply after I’ve hit post though, because it’s like a reward to get to respond. Sometimes with the really sweet and/or lengthy comments that make me smile or feel really proud of what I’ve written, I’ll literally hold off on replying so I can experience the high again, right after I’ve posted a new fic. 

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Probably overboard -- I wrote it based on my first impression of the ending of the LOTR trilogy, where I took Frodo’s leaving for Valinor as a metaphor for suicide. 

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I don’t know that I can pick a single fic for this. I generally write happy endings, because that’s what I like to read, so there’s just too many to choose from. 

Do you write crossovers?

Hell yeah, I do! Crackfic crossovers are my favorite kind of self-indulgent fic to write. I’ve also written crossovers in the sense that I take blorbos from one series and put them in the setting or roles from another series, but then I wonder if that isn’t just an AU... 

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don’t think so...?

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I definitely write more smut than I post, that’s for sure. I think it’s generally all omegaverse, praise kink, breeding/pregnancy kink, light d/s... that sort of thing :) 

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope! At least, not that I’m aware of, haha

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, New Colors was given a Chinese translation! 

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I’ve co-written with my friend that I’ve affectionately dubbed beta-san ever since we got into writing fic back in high school. Few fics have been finished and cleaned up enough to be posted though. 

What's your all-time favorite ship?

I think I’ll forever consider ZoSan (Zoro/Sanji) to be my OTP... I haven’t read or written anything about them in a long time, but they’ll always hold a special place in my heart for being my gateway to online fandom and shipping communities. 

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Bit of a deep cut for this one, but I’d have to say Zoro’s Promise. I started it so long ago that it’s still only on FF dot net. I do think about it often though, I won’t lie. 

What are your writing strengths?

I’m easily inspired, I use the intensity of my emotions as fuel, I find myself often wanting to write, I make time to write whenever I can -- on the commute to and from work, in bed, on a walk, etc. 

What are your writing weaknesses?

My brain only wants to write certain scenes of a fic, and has no interest in filling the gaps. I have a tendency to tell instead of show. I use too many commas. I don’t write consistently enough to make it a habit. I focus on the numbers social media has trained me to perceive as validation, instead of just being able to feel satisfaction from writing what I want to. And perhaps worst of all, I still care so much of what other people think of me, of my writing -- so much so that I overthink and overanalyze my words as I’m writing, forcing my brain to edit while I write, which is entirely counterproductive and also not what I’m here to do. 

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

As someone who speaks a language that too many people have Google Translated and then slapped into their fic for the vibes... hard pass. 

I don’t think I’ve ever written full lines of dialogue in another language. The worst I’ve done would probably be using nicknames, pet names, or endearments from canon, but honestly looking back, even that feels like I was pushing it. Unless it’s a fantasy language like Sindarin or Khuzdul or whatever else, I really feel like there’s no reason to be doing it. 

As a reader, it’s distracting at best when I can’t read it, because it takes me out of the moment and forces me to scroll down to the author’s notes to understand what it says -- or even just Google Translate it myself -- and at worst, I can read it, and it gives me a painful amount of secondhand embarrassment from how awkward and wrong it is. 

Just put the sentence in italics, imply that it was spoken in another language, and be done with it. 

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

My writing is at the mercy of my hyperfixations, so I don’t think I’ve not written for a fandom or ship that I wanted to yet... 

What's your favorite fic you've written?

I honestly don’t think I have a favorite. I’ve written so many fics at this point, and across so many fandoms, that I simply cannot choose one over the rest. 

Tagging: @lauralot89 @perplexedhedgehog @wheel-of-fish @backlitmademoiselle @flora-gray @from-aldebaran @intothemertensverse @textsfromthefifthbasement and anyone else that wants to use this as an opportunity to do some reflecting on your works!!

[remyfire]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

I was tagged by @quordleona03! Thank you so much for the tag I know lots of people have already been tagged, so consider this a formal request that if you have NOT been tagged, you please come play! But off the top of my head, @onekisstotakewithme @cuddleswinchester @dreamingofspring :D

How many works do you have on Ao3?

40.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

I think we might officially be leaving 2023 with 300,842 words. Not a bad count for only publishing since April! That's a novella a month right there.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

MASH. :D

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Scratching The Itch, Can't Take My Eyes Off You, To Have and To Hold, Anything You Say Can and Will Be Held Against You, and Tear Out All Your Tenderness. Good morning beejhawk nation I see you all hkdfds

5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! Sometimes they pile up and I get overwhelmed and just click that "Mark All As Read" button while hiding behind my hand. But I really try to circle through nowadays even just for a "Thanks for reading!!" because I really appreciate every single one!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I feel like ...With Too Many Miles Between Us was a pretty rough one. There's maybe optimism that you can read through the cracks, but it was a damn agonizing prompt fill (affectionate) all around. The Good Ones Always Seem to Break is another. Sorry that I keep putting you in situations, Beej.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oughhhh, just about anything that suggests they don't end here, so to speak. I think To Have and To Hold probably tops the list, but I Intend to Hold You For the Longest Time and Soft Place to Land also come in hot just by nature of being established postwar situations.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet! I've had a couple of people not understand what I was going for and who were not afraid of saying so, but it wasn't outright hate. They were probably just not the intended audience.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Ahh yes. 65% of my current fics are rated E for a reason, and the 5 M ones are flirting with that line.

I categorize myself as an erotic romance writer, meaning that typically if you remove my sex scenes from my fics, you are losing integral information or character/relationship development that would otherwise make the fic not stand on its own. I also have a handful that are just pure erotica—sex for titillation's sake rather than development. I adore writing smut!! It's a lot of fun, it's exciting when you know you've landed it exactly like you wanted to, and it's a way for me to reclaim all those years I spent being forcibly repressed due to my religious upbringing. I love every minute of it.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I do not!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

The Famous 4077 Dog Tag Party certainly counts! Many of us authors randomized a list of pairings for both eras of the show, and then we were responsible for picking a pairing, writing the characters going on a date (platonic or romantic), and seeing what happened. Extremely fun way to get some rare pairs we might not have expected. For example, I got to write Margie/Klinger for it!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hey now I am too fucking polyam to answer this and you know it. Mcpunnihawk probably tops the list, warring with margbeej and sidbeejhawk.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I am not taking this defeatist energy into 2024, how dare you. One day, my pretties, I'm coming back for all of you and we are crossing that finish line OR ELSE.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Smut, capturing character voices accurately, physicality, spinning relational scenarios on the fly.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Genres like mystery or sci-fi or horror, repetition of comfort words/phrases, putting my characters through significant levels of pain (I am too empathetic, I can and will cry over my own fics).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Things that I do not feel comfortable doing myself because I am not familiar enough with any other language to know I'm doing it accurately.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The kid wizard one.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

How dare you make me pick from my children. Scratching The Itch, Anything You Say Can and Will Be Held Against You, I'd Give Up Forever to Touch You, and Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures. Notably this could all change by this time tomorrow. I'm very fond of my fics.

[elle-thereafter]

Fanfic Tag Game

So @blorbologist tagged me in a thing where one goes to their current/main AO3 account and looks up various tags. This is somewhat less exciting for me with the AO3 account I use now because, well... there's only 3 fics in there, they're all for the same fandom and same pairing. It would make for quite a boring round of this game.

Because I've been in fandom of some sort since 1996, I have fic sort of all over the place. I have an OG and much older AO3 account which I don't post to anymore, but since my online fic publishing predates the existence of AO3 by, like, 13 years, some of my published fic is in standalone, fandom-specific archives, some of which (shockingly) still exist, while others have shut down.

So I'm going to honour the spirit of this challenge rather than the letter of it. I've consolidated all my published fic data and crunched the overall numbers. Just for funsies! The fics that feed into these stats were all published publicly somewhere, at some point, spanning from 1996 thru 2024. Also I'm playing fast and loose with the game rules because who needs rules.

What ratings do you write most of your fics under?

General: 8

Teen: 13

Mature: 0

Explicit: 3

Different archives have different rating systems, but they all map reasonably onto AO3's system so I've translated them across. Apparently I can't be bothered to write anything between T and E. And yeah, those 3 E's are all in the Critical Role fandom: I've been writing smut for years, but only recently started publishing it anywhere.

What are your top three fandoms?

Harry Potter: 10

Gargoyles: 4

Critical Role: 3

The West Wing: 3

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 2

Angel: 1

Leverage: 1

Screw top three, it's more fun to see the whole list! As you can see, even in all these years I am not what one would call "prolific". As with everyone, the published works are only the tip of the iceberg of the many, many, many unfinished bits and bobs I have floating around in my writing archive. But I'm also a pretty slow writer all things considered, and there was a good 10 years or so where I didn't publish anything. I kept reading a lot of fic and still occasionally wrote some for myself, but from something like 2012 thru 2022 I wasn't posting anywhere.

It’s kind of tragic I can’t add The Magnificent Seven (TV series) to this list. I wrote so much when I was in that fandom but never quite finished anything so nothing ever got published. I have one that's almost 20k words and probably 3/4 finished but I never got it over the line so there it sits in my archive, forever incomplete. Other fandoms in my "never published" bucket include Alias, X-Men and Star Wars.

What is the top character you write about?

Original Characters: 10

Remus Lupin: 5

Sirius Black: 5

Ensemble: 4

James Potter: 4

Lily Evans Potter: 4

Percy de Rolo: 3

Vex'ahlia: 3

Joshua Lyman: 3

Owen Burnett: 3

Peter Pettigrew: 3

Severus Snape: 2

Tom Riddle: 2

I narrowed the list to just folks who appeared in more than one fic. And, yeah... look: it turns out I've been writing lots of original characters in my fic for a long, long time, so really the OCs in Gate Building probably shouldn't come as a surprise really. But this time I wasn't planning on them, they just kind of happened!

Also, look at all those snarky brooding men with tragic/complicated pasts and questionable morals! If we expanded this to include my “never published, just for me” list we’d get to add notorious gents such as Jack Bristow, Ezra Standish, Brooklyn, Charles Xavier, and Rupert Giles to the list. I have a very clear type; I’m fine with it. 😄

What are your top three pairings?

Gen/Ensemble: 8

Joshua Lyman & Original Character: 3

Percy de Rolo/Vex'ahlia: 3

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter: 2

Owen Burnett/Original Character: 2

Remus Lupin & Sirius Black: 2

The list above isn't comprehensive, I just included the ships and friendship fic that pinged more than once. Historically I didn’t write a ton of romantic/ship fic. And often where there was a ship it wasn’t necessarily the focus so even what’s listed there is probably a little misleading. Like, the James/Lily stuff just inevitably kind of happens when you write Marauder fic whether you're going for it or not. 😄

I was notably quite fascinated with Remus and Sirius' friendship in a fandom that was convinced they were fucking. I'm not saying they weren't fucking, but I was personally more interested in how on earth they managed to repair their friendship after PoA. There is a lot more unfinished stuff relating to that friendship in my various archives.

The OC paired with Owen is 100% a Mary Sue: a pure, trope-defining, text book Mary Sue plucked from the depths of my teenage brain. The West Wing OC was a childhood friend of Josh's with no romantic intentions toward him that I used to prod at various character study themes.

What are the top three additional tags?

This one is tricky because A) the non-AO3 places where my fic was posted didn't have the robust tagging features AO3 has; and B) I wasn't historically a big user of tags in my original AO3 account beyond characters and pairings of note. But since that's not a terribly interesting answer, I went through the list of 24 fics and tried to at least throw a few tags on them that could be relevant, just to see what might shake out. The top "tags" that jumped out after the exercise were:

Before Canon: 11

Character Study: 8

Kid Fic: 4

Missing Moment: 3

None of those are particularly surprising. A lot of my Harry Potter stuff was Marauder Era fic, and I do have a fascination with going back to when characters were kids/teenagers to explore formative experiences in their lives. And after I got the Mary Sues out of my system for a long time I pivoted pretty hard into gen, friendship stories, and character studies.

I don't know why I like writing about kids. I just like the way their little unfinished brains work, and their POVs are such an interesting place to be as a writer. They tend to have interesting, unusual opinions and make choices an adult brain would never make. Also people kind of forget they're there sometimes, which means they bear witness to all kinds of things even if they can't quite fully understand them. There's something about a character study baked into a formative childhood experience that just gets me.

Does any of this surprise you?

Maybe the preponderance of OCs in my fanfic. I knew there were a bunch but seeing that no-contest dominance at the top of the list is pretty hilarious, ngl.

I am so, so tempted to repost some of my old Mary Sue stuff to Wattpad just to see how it would do in 2024. 😁

[prophecydungeon]

year in fic 2023

(crossposted from dreamwidth)

word count for posted works: 77,080 words word count for unposted works (incl. wips): 34,320 words total word count: 111,400 words

breakdown of works, meme, and goals below:

works posted to AO3 in 2023:

no quarter red vs blue, felix/locus, rated E 51,766 words — posted 4/23, finished 6/25

i wrote up a number of posts while working on this fic and idk if there's much left to say; this was one hell of an endeavor and i'm very proud of it.

exaptation (ficlet collection, ch. 7) bleach, grimmjow/ichigo, rated T (whole work) 2,416 words — posted 7/24

outside POV..... need i say more. this was a very Me™ fic to write and i'm really happy with how it turned out. here's to the next cour of TYBW also pulling fic out of me, whenever that happens.

neutron stars bleach, grimmjow/ichigo rated T 6,974 words — posted 8/29, finished 9/8

oh boy oh boy i love fics in the general roleswap/"X instead of Y"/"X but it happens to Y" category of canon divergence and it was SO much fun to write this one. the cool thing about this scenario is that it really wouldn't have changed much in the long run, which i think it precisely why it was so interesting to explore.

the blood of the covenant one piece, zoro/sanji, rated E 16,060 words — posted 11/9

i'm VERY happy with this fic, and it's also a victim of like, i started out wanting it to be lighthearted and uhhhh it is... not necessarily that. i also started this before reading the manga lmfao but shockingly, there wasn't much i got "wrong" or needed to change. still can't believe this was the year i got into one piece. lord.

—

unfinished/unposted works in 2023:

current wips + personal project: 20,573 words

deleted fragments from multiple works: 12,742 words

my unposted word count this year is higher than it's ever been since i started doing this -- this personal project thing was kind of a whim (and i'm losing steam on it) but it's been insightful and pretty fun.

—

end-of-year meme! trying a different one this year, nabbing from larissa.

Best title:

oooh that's tough... i did a good job with titles this year. let's go with the blood of the covenant since that evokes a lot of what the pov character's angst is about. (did you know that the whole thing about "actually, the full quote is [...]" is basically an unattributed asspull? not that it really matters; it's a great reinterpretation.)

Worst title:

cop-out answer, but the ficlet i added to exaptation didn't have a title, so that.

Best first line:

hmm. i don't think i had any standout banger opening lines, so let's go with the exaptation ficlet:

They’ve been around long enough to be us now and not me. 

Worst first line:

again, didn't have any standout misses, so i'm going with no quarter's since it... idk, isn't a killer hook or anything? but it wasn't supposed to be, so 🤷‍♂️

The head of the hospital meets them outside, wearing an armor undersuit beneath her scrubs. 

Best last line:

from neutron stars:

We have a score to settle, he reminds himself, and meets Kurosaki as he always has: hungry and ablaze, feeling the closest thing to alive since his death collapsed in on itself.

Worst last line:

another cop-out answer from exaptation, lol:

“Let’s get to it.”

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

a lot more! i originally thought that no quarter would be like, 20-30k or so? joke's on me, lol. i also very genuinely did not predict-- you know what, that's the next question, so:

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

good lord never in a million years did i think that 2023 was going to be the year i got into one piece. i'm still not sure how that happened. i started writing no quarter at the very end of last year, but i also could not have predicted that to happen to me.

What’s your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

bit of recency bias here but the blood of the covenant! it was really fun and satisfying to write, and it's much more plainly happy/uplifting than any of the others.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

in every category (kudos, hits, bookmarks) but comments, this goes to the blood of the covenant! i would say that this is unsurprising considering the fandom/ship, but it's more that everything else i've written is either for a relatively small fandom/ship or a dead one.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

definitely no quarter. it's a sequel fic for a different ship than the first entry and in a dead fandom, to boot. this thing was doomed from the start.

Story that could have been better?

idk if i have anything here! i'm happy with everything i wrote.

Sexiest story?

i guess the blood of the covenant; no quarter has smut in it too but it's kinda weird and tbotc's is there to actually be Sexy™ rather than like. weird.

Saddest story?

hmm. the blood of the covenant again, i guess; the pov character is not especially happy for most of the fic.

Most fun?

okay so i'm interpreting this as most fun For Me To Write and that has to go to no quarter -- sinking back into the halo zone to write was sooo fun and fulfilling. it's like coming home, every time.

Story with single sweetest moment?

the blood of the covenant got super sappy (by my standards, at least), which was the whole point of it.

Most fucked-up story?

no quarter, i guess? hard to not be at least kinda fucky when dealing with felix and locus, but i wouldn't say this is particularly or especially fucked-up.

Hardest story to write?

woof..... no quarter. it was really challenging in general to get through the first draft (lots of planning and changes and planning and changes etc etc) and i edited the chapters between posting them weekly; that got really difficult to keep up for a number of reasons.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

hmmm. i think the exaptation ficlet; it's really fun to write something short right as it comes to me.

Did any stories shift your perception of the characters?

not..... really? though i did have to spend a lot of time thinking about felix and locus for no quarter, which didn't so much shift my perception of the characters as it solidified my interpretation.

Most overdue story?

giving this to the blood of the covenant; i never read one piece in the early 2000s boom (though i was obviously into bleach and nart) so a lot of what i'm feeling about it is, like, "oh, finally; it feels like i've found the missing piece; i understand now; the world feels a little more full."

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

yes indeed! no quarter was a departure from the norm for me in a lot of ways, from planning to posting. it had been a really long time since i posted a multi-chapter fic, and i wrote this one with very specific chapter breaks in mind; that changed my planning and writing process a lot. overall, it was really good for me -- chapters are something i've avoided for a long time and i still have no clue where or how i got the idea that they're... idk, bad or amateurish somehow. chapters were perfect for no quarter. my posting schedule was 1 chapter per week, which left me a week to edit the coming chapter into shape and pick at future sections too, which worked REALLY well for me. on the flip side, i really struggled with this fic emotionally when i was posting it; not getting "attention" when posting a fic very, very rarely gets me down at this point in my life and i've worked hard on that, but it definitely got me with this fic. so it goes! in retrospect, now, several months down the line, i am so proud of this fic and all the new and different things i tried with it. multiple/alternating POVs, too! that was a change for me and i liked how it came out.

—

goals for next year:

1. write something humorous (preferably more than just one something)

my fics have humor in them, sure, but i want to write Comedy Fic without it veering irreversibly into Serious Fic like what's happened the past several times i've tried. this is one of my current wips and it's going pretty well so far.

2. try a different editing method

i've tried this kinda halfheartedly before, but i want to try editing something in a full side-by-side with the old draft in one window and the new draft in another. i might try this with an old fic of mine; not for posting or anything, just for The Exercise of it.

3. i've never had to set this as a goal but..... finish my wips!

i've still got that P vs NP re-re-edit cooking in the oven; i still feel kinda ??? about what i have written so far (it veered off into a completely different direction at one point) but i want to use the aforementioned editing method for this, probs after i finish a test run on something else. i've also got that b-side fic that's unfinished and i want to get that done first, since it's going to be a much shorter endeavor than rewriting close to 100k words.

[poppypopp]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

thanks to @fogsblue and @nyxianthe for the tag.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

70 works total

2. What's your total A03 word count?

889,291 (holy hell)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Horizon, mostly

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Flame and Shadow - (Nil/Aloy) - 368

All the World Aflame - (Nil/Aloy) - 280

Toward the Sun (Nil/Kotallo/Aloy) - 273

Glitter and Gore - (Nil/Kotallo/Aloy) - 170

Where the Wanderer Goes - (Nil/Kotallo/Aloy/Fashav) - 165

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I really try, but I'm horrible at it! I always forget to reply and then I always feel super awkward. But just know, I read every single one and love them all SO SO much!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Toward Them, the angst-heavy spinoff of Toward the Sun (an AU of that fic, if you will)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh man. Most of them have happy endings. I rarely write anything that doesn't have one. The happiest might be Toward the Sun and its sequel, No Shadows in the Sun.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not on the fics, no, but I'm well aware that my tastes skew toward the minority.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes, almost every fic is rated E for exactly that. I write a mixture, MF, MM, and MMF primarily.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I've written a couple. I don't know if they're crossovers or fusions, though. The craziest is probably the Nil/Kotallo How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days fic, Hearts and Diamonds.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of (and I hope it stays that way)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet, but Nyx and I dabbled in a co-universe with the AO Magazine fics.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Hmm, as engrossed as I've been in Horizon, my ALL-TIME ship would probably be Destiel. I've read sooo many of those fics over the years (although never written one).

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I stubbornly refuse to admit that there are any I won't ever finish, but it may take me a while. 😂

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hmm, I think dialogue comes fairly easily to me. Also smut's not too terribly difficult.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to struggle with remembering to add descriptors. I often have to go back in the editing process and add descriptions of people and things.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'm not opposed to it by any means, but since I don't know any other languages, I'd be worried about getting it wrong and taking readers who did know that language out of the story. For that reason I'll probably avoid doing it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Fallout 4

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

That's a tough one. Maybe G&G. It was incredibly fun to write.

I'm going to tag @wandereringray and @every-raindrop77 but no pressure!

[alectoperdita]

@luxielovesparkles's lovely art makes my neurons light up like a fireworks show! With her permission, I wrote a short ficlet inspired by demon!Jou and his flirty outfit. I just couldn't resist Jou in this outfit, and neither could Kaiba, hehe.

It's been a while since I really wrote or published anything, so I hope y'all find it entertaining if you give it a chance. <3

Set in the Two monsters walk into the club universe for expediency. Rated E, contains some smutty bits, rimming and light blood drinking may be of note.

Read the edited and expanded version on AO3

"Let me guess, you’re giving fetish modeling a go."

Seto had walked into many a peculiar sight since Katsuya started frequenting his penthouse. It usually happened after he was freshly awake post-sunset. For a creature without a domicile—or someone who treated Seto’s home as one, and nope, Seto wasn’t going to interrogate that right now—the incubus sported a bottomless wardrobe, figuratively. Seto couldn’t recall Katsuya wearing any articles of clothing, much less entire outfits, twice, and he had an exceedingly good memory.

But the sight of Katsuya in a woolen, pastel pink dress?—tube top?—something, bent forward at the waist and checking out his own reflection in the window, still raised an eyebrow. Because while the weather had taken a turn for the cold, lengthening nights much to Seto’s relief, a sweater of that make wouldn’t keep any creature, even a demon, particularly warm. It could’ve been a fever dream, but vampires didn’t dream so...

Less surprising was the large heart-shaped cutout in the garment exposing the creamy flesh of Katsuya’s lower back, through which his tail also poked through and swung lazily. No, that was par the course for Katsuya’s sartorial tastes.

Katsuya straightened with a snap of his waists and spun to greet him with a beaming smile.

"Okay, so I was going through social media looking for fit inspo for this party tonight—"

Party, translation: gangbang/orgy/mass hookup.

"—and figured I’d give it a try. Cute, right?"

Seto padded across his cavernous living room, making no noise as he moved. The only sound was the soft swish, as Katsuya’s tail flicked back and forth in eager anticipation. Seto never could decide if it resembled a cat’s or a dog’s tail more, but he supposed it depended on context. Similarly, the incubus rocked back and forth on his feet when Seto stopped in front of him to study the ridiculous get-up.

The pink complemented his smooth, sun-kissed skin. The dress was sleeveless, strapless, and hugged his body like a second skin, meaning the bodice wrapped tight around Katsuya’s bosom and cinched even tighter around his shapely waist. While it was, by no means, the shortest thing he’d seen Katsuya wear, the hem hit high on Katsuya’s legs and was barely long enough to cover his pert ass. It was obvious he wore no underwear underneath.

By now, Seto had caught onto the incubus’s shapeshifting abilities, and he often shaped his figure to accentuate an outfit’s strength. But he never deviated far from his preferred form: defined but lean and always pleasing to the eye.

Today was no different.

"Well?" Katsuya asked and canted forward, his palms resting flat over his thighs. The posture lent to an illusion of a slight cleavage peeked over the bodice. But as he next angled himself more to the side, it drew Seto’s gaze to the arch of his spine, the flex of his shoulder blades, the hint of his cleft poking though the heart’s tip, and his long, black swaying tail.

When Seto didn’t immediately reply, the incubus, armed with an impish grin, edged closer and threaded his arms around Seto’s neck. Seto fought a shiver as Katsuya carded his fingers through the hair near the base of his skull. The incubus threw off more heat than an overworked furnace—a balm on Seto’s chilled skin, a reminder of the warm glow that settled in his chest after feasting on his blood. The material, cashmere or whatever magical approximation of it Katsuya had conjured up, was surprisingly soft against Seto’s bare chest.

The truth was Katsuya could wear a burlap sack, and there’d be a line of people drooling to hop into bed with him. Seto had no intention of telling him, but Katsuya already knew such a fact.

"Cute’s not the exact word I’d use. But I doubt you’ll stay dressed long enough for anyone to notice," Seto drawled, a low scratch in his voice.

A husky laugh shook Katsuya’s naked shoulders. "Maybe. But check this out, doing this doesn’t tear the outfit to shreds," the incubus purred.

A sensual toss of his hair, a confident roll of his shoulders—dark, leathery wings materialized in a gusty whoosh of air that ruffled Seto’s bangs. Amber bled into his slitted irises, majestic horns sprouted from his golden mane, completing the transformation.

Now here was a vision to steal Seto’s vestigial breath away.

"Convenient, huh?"

Without thinking, Seto wound his arms around Katsuya’s waist, placing one palm low over the heart opening and the other bracing between his shoulder blades. Out of the corner of his eyes, Seto glanced at their tangled reflection in the window. As always, they presented the image of an odd couple: Katsuya in his slutty sweater dress and Seto in nothing but his pajamas pants.

Heat bled further into his body, flowing through his navel and pooling in his groin. It didn’t take long for his hands to wander, finding purchase in the ridge of Katsuya’s wings and enclosing around the base of his wagging tail. He didn’t tug on the appendage, no matter how much he wanted.

Instead, his index finger dipped into Katsuya’s cleft.

Katsuya wiggled closer, huffing hot air over Seto’s neck. "Oh, that too. Can’t argue with the easy access, either."

Seto took that as permission to slide his hand under the dress and cupped one buttock. In return, Katsuya lightly scratched the back of his neck and pressed his hot lips to Seto’s throat. Soon, Katsuya’s tail, always with a mind of its own, coiled around Seto’s wrist and up his forearm. The weight and pressure were far more comforting that he’d ever admit out loud.

With one arm already firmly caught in Katsuya’s clutch, Seto gripped the incubus’s hip and turned him toward the window, pushing him up against the glass. Their eyes locked through their reflections. The eye contact held, hot and heavy, as Seto tugged the dress down. Katsuya cooed as his pecs popped free of the bodice. Seto kept pulling until the base of the tail bumped against the border of the opening and the heart-shaped cutout perfectly framed the incubus’s round ass. His fingers followed, parting Katsuya’s cheeks to reach the petal soft hole in-between.

The grip around Seto’s forearm tightened.

Gently, he dropped an open-mouthed kiss on the back of the demon’s flushed neck. Hearing Katsuya’s excited hum and feeling him rock back against Seto brought a grin to his face. From this proximity, he smelled the ambrosia thrumming through Katsuya’s veins. He slowly kissed his way to Katsuya’s ear, catching the lobe between his fangs and gnawing briefly.

He didn’t draw far away as he whispered into his ear. "We should test how well your easy access works, then."

Katsuya’s wings fluttered and beat against Seto’s breast. He bore down on Seto’s fingers until his hungry rim parted and suckled on his fingertip.

"Ah—" A shudder. A wild clench. "—great idea. You’re a genius, ah!"

Further inspiration struck Seto. Katsuya’s hips wiggled desperately and tried to chase his extracted fingers. But Seto pinned him against the glass. Ignoring the stranglehold of Katsuya’s tail, he lowered himself to the floor, his knees thudding when they hit the wood.

"Seto!" Katsuya whined and tried to push away from the window.

Seto dug his nails into the incubus’s ass, then his fangs in further reprimand, leaving two puncture wounds in their wake. Crimson droplets welled to the surface, but he swiftly cleaned it with his tongue. Above him, Katsuya moaned and finally quit fighting. Seto fought a similar groan with the sublime taste of his blood on his tongue.

The puncture healed immediately, so he redirected his attention to Katsuya’s pucker. The twitching muscle was softer than cashmere and pinker than his dress. Without hesitation, he lapped at the entrance. The skin was thin here, dense with capillaries and nerve endings. Katsuya’s pulse beat against his tongue.

Seto started drooling in no time.

He threw himself into his self-appointed task, shoving the length of his tongue as far as possible into Katsuya’s fluttering hole and scrapping his fangs around its outside. Of course, Katsuya bled for him. Bled sweetly and divinely to paint Seto’s lips and whet his hunger. The sanguine nectar coated the inside of his throat.

He was ravenous. Not just for Katsuya’s blood, but for the taste of his skin and the warmth of his insides.

Katsuya sang his praises, loud and unabashed. The not-so-ethereal flaps of his wings mussed Seto’s hair. Seto believed in no higher powers, but this could be his altar for now.

Later, as Seto slid his cock into Katsuya’s well-stretched hole, blood and spit easing the way, he wagered the party was the last thing on the demon’s mind.

Saw an art with this dress so, I wanted to draw it on demon!Jou

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

even as a shadow, even as a dream pt.6

Pairing: Vamp!Eddie Munson/Fem Reader; Vamp!Eddie Munson/You

Summary: The long-awaited smutty finale. With a good deal of angst thrown in. (Eddie's POV)

Rating: E(xplicit) Minors DNI

WC: 17k

Warnings: smoking pot, descriptions of blood and violence, out of body experience, brief self-harm mention, smut, oral sex (f receiving), vaginal sex, rough sex, possessive sex, unprotected sex (kinda), creampie, blood kink, pain kink, virgin!eddie munson, loss of virginity, and monster fucking (technically)

A/N: sorry this took so long! life just got in the way for awhile. also, since i already wrote a tender lovemaking scene in tell me we'll never get used to it, i wanted to do something... different for this one. as you can see from the above warnings. so read at your own risk lol.

but thank you to everyone who’s read, commented, and/or reblogged! ❤️ it really meant a lot to me. and i hope you enjoy this last installment. :)

Ao3 Link: Here | Pt. 1: Here | Pt. 2: Here | Pt. 3 : Here | Pt. 4 : Here | Pt. 5 : Here

Taglist: @sushihousebread @localdepressedvampire @alienthewolf @frozenhuntress67 @honeycovered-bandaids @sashaphantomhive @sidthedollface2 @harrys-tittie

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated! 🙏🏼

“Are you done yet?” Eddie asked with his eyes glued to your mouth.

Instead of responding right away, you took another slow hit off the joint he’d rolled, and Eddie was pretty sure you were doing this shit on purpose now.

The two of you were stretched out on the bed in the master bedroom, which was dim and shadowed, and as you inhaled, the end of the joint flared orange, casting your face in sharp relief.

“No,” you finally said, your voice strained while you held the smoke in your lungs. When you exhaled, your lips curled into a lazy smirk. “Are you pouting?”

“No,” Eddie pouted, causing you to snort. After a long moment, he ripped his gaze away from your teasing grin and looked into your hooded, bloodshot eyes instead. “You’ve just been nursing that thing for like, ever, Obi.”

“I lit up less than five minutes ago,” you scoffed and gestured to the clock on the nightstand, which read 10pm. Ash fluttered off the joint between your lax fingers, and you grumbled, brushing it away before you settled more comfortably onto the pillows propped against the headboard. “You’re just impatient, Munson.”

“You would be, too, if you had to wait,” Eddie groaned, and he would have flopped dramatically onto his back to pout at the ceiling if it weren’t for the giant leather wings growing out of his spine. As it was, he settled for propping himself up on his elbow while he tried to guess how many hits you had left.

Given his many years of expertise, he would say three, unless you let it burn. Like you were doing right now as you smiled at him with amusement.

“Well, I’m sorry your delicate sensibilities won’t let you partake in the Devil’s Lettuce,” you teased, but you didn’t look sorry at all, raising the rolled paper to your mouth and sucking in another lungful of smoke.

A week ago, the subtle, joking dig at Eddie’s “delicate sensibilities”— namely the fact that he was a goddamn knock off vampire— would have never crossed your lips, but you both had grown more comfortable with the state of things in the intervening days. In fact, living with you in the house your mother abandoned felt strangely… normal. At least Eddie thought so, but he’d never really had a “normal” life, so he couldn’t truly compare it to anything. Still, he’d been… happy here, with you. Every morning, he woke up with you cuddled against his chest, and then he would sit at the kitchen table with you and Wayne while he watched the two of you eat breakfast. At some point, Henderson and some of the other rugrats would come over, or Harrington and Buckley, and then the days were spent watching movies, trying to get everyone to agree to a DnD campaign, or even testing out Eddie’s new abilities.

You didn’t like that last activity. In fact, you’d banned all future experiments two evenings ago after Eddie let Dustin and Wheeler Jr. coax him up into the tallest tree in the backyard while Lucas was distracting you and Harrington. Eddie knew you wouldn’t like it, but you’d said no roofs, not no trees, and he just really wanted to see how well his wings worked. Turned out, not very well, because he’d flailed through twenty feet of air before he crashed into the dirt, but he did learn that his new vamp body was pretty sturdy, which, hey, that was cool.

All this to say, Eddie was mostly okay with how things were right now. He didn’t even mind the blood drinking very much, because, well, he got to put his mouth on you, and even if it was objectively kinda gross, he had to admit your blood tasted divine. It was so damn good he didn’t even miss food for the most part. He’d had other blood, too, after Dustin pointed out that feeding only from you could make you anemic, which Eddie wouldn’t stand for. He would eat fucking rats or starve before he hurt you. Before it could come to that, though, the whole gang had gotten together and made some kind of crazy damn pact— and even crazier schedule— so they could all donate blood “to the cause.” The cause being Eddie’s perpetual hunger. He’d tried to refuse at first, but Henderson would not take no for a goddamn answer, and the butthead just bought over a small jar of his blood one morning, brandishing his bandaged palm and demanding his own jar of Magic Spit in repayment.

The kid’s blood was good, and so was Harrington’s, and Buckley’s, but Eddie still preferred yours by a large margin. And fuck if he wouldn’t kill for the ability to drink a beer or smoke a joint. He’d tried, of course. The beer had tasted like rancid piss— much more than usual anyway—and the joint wasn’t half bad, but Eddie quickly realized he couldn’t actually get high.

Unlessss he drank from you after you had smoked. He’d discovered this by accident, after you’d gotten some Purple Palm Tree Delight from the older Byers boy. It wasn’t exactly the same, but your infused blood did make Eddie feel more calm and almost sleepy. Which he definitely needed right now. A mild headache had set up camp behind his eyes all afternoon, probably because he hadn’t “eaten” since this morning, but he could admit he was also jonesing for a high.

Speaking of…

“Okay, that’s it, I’m calling it,” Eddie said as he sat up, plucked the roach from your fingers, and leaned over your body to stub out the embers in the nightstand ashtray.

“Hey,” you tried to grumble, but it turned into a giggle as his long hair brushed over your face and neck. Then your hands came up, coaxing through his curls until you found the tips of his pointed ears. You stroked them tenderly, giggling again as they twitched under your fingertips, and Eddie suppressed a shiver when he realized how close you were. Since he was shirtless, the hot line of your body was pressed into his side, your chest rising and falling calmly beneath his with only the thin shirt you wore as separation.

Pulling back, he looked down to see you smiling lazily at him, your fingers trailing from his ears and ghosting over his jawline until they settled against his lips. You tapped at them until they parted, and then you poked gently at one of his fangs, enough that the tip pressed into your skin but didn’t draw blood.

“You’re pretty, Munson,” you murmured as your bloodshot eyes roved over his face.

Eddie blushed, or at least he thought he did, but the feeling was slow and cold instead of quick and hot. Your lips always got a little loose when you were high, but ever since the two of you had confessed sharing… mutual affections, your filter burned to ash anytime a joint touched your mouth. You were always complimenting him— saying how handsome he was, pretty, beautiful— and at first he thought it was a joke, because he’d always been an awkward, gangly motherfucker, and the goddamn bat wings didn’t help matters. But the look in your eyes was sincere every time, like they were right now, which felt even stranger.

Since Eddie didn’t know how to accept praise in any form, he deflected with a joke, like he always did.

“Pretty fucking weird, you mean,” he scoffed and flared out his wings a little for emphasis. You frowned, like you always did when he was self-deprecating, but he swooped down and pressed a chaste kiss to your lips as a distraction.

And because he could. It still blew his mind that he could just… kiss you now, whenever he wanted. So he did it often.

You sighed as his mouth brushed over yours, and your hands came up to curl around his neck. Eddie tilted his head to deepen the kiss, but you pulled back, pressing your head into the pillows until your glassy eyes could find his.

“I happen to like your weirdness,” you said, and Eddie realized he hadn’t successfully distracted you after all.

“Well, sweetheart, hate to break it to you, but that’s because you’re a bit of a freak, too.” He smirked, still going for the joke, but his heart skipped a beat when you grinned back at him, wild and elated.

“Good. We’re two freaks in a pod. Two birds sticking together because we have matching, fucked up feathers. Or however that saying goes. Whatever. Your weirdness matches mine, Munson. And that makes me happy.”

As far as grand, romantic speeches went, yours wasn’t winning any Oscars, but Eddie felt his throat tighten all the same. Fuck, he loved you. He loved you so goddamn much. And the fact that you apparently felt the same way still seemed like a dream.

One he never wanted to wake up from.

“Just don’t get too matchy-matchy with me, Obi,” Eddie said as he leaned down and nuzzled his nose against your jaw. “We can’t both be growing wings because we definitely won’t fit in this bed anymore.”

“And that would totally be the worst part, because this bed is awesome,” you laughed, your fingers finding their way into his hair again. “So I’ll do my best to not grow wings.”

“Constant vigilance is key,” Eddie muttered, but he was somewhat distracted as he nosed under your chin, inhaling your sweet scent. “They can really sneak up on you. Sneaky little fuckers.”

“Mmmm,” you sighed, obviously not listening, and you tipped your head back to give him more room.

Now, Eddie’s face was tucked into the crook of your neck, and instantly the hunger he’d tried to suppress jumped to the forefront of his mind. His teeth started to itch, saliva building in his mouth, and the thud of your pulse beneath his lips was like a siren song.

His hands clenched involuntarily into fists on either side of your head, claws catching on and tearing the pillows, and he heard your heart skip a beat as your fingers stilled in his curls.

“Hungry?” you asked.

Eddie wanted to refuse, wanted to say he had more self-control, but couldn’t. It would be a lie, and you had made him promise to never lie about this stuff.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly, but the word came out half growl, and he quickly cleared his throat.

He didn’t want to scare you, never wanted that, but you just stroked your fingers through his hair and smiled up at him when he pulled back. Your expression was easy, unafraid, trusting, your calm scent only confirming your emotions. Eddie didn’t know what he ever did to deserve your trust, but he vowed he would die before he betrayed it.

“I guess I have been teasing you. I was maybeee taking my time with that joint. Sorry.” Your smiled turned a little contrite, and you bit your lip apologetically, which made Eddie’s teeth and cock throb in time.

Fuck, you drove him crazy in so many ways.

Eddie opened his mouth to say he didn’t think you were all that sorry, actually, but a line of drool suddenly dripped from his fangs, splattering against your collarbone. Your breath hitched along with your pulse, and Eddie would have apologized if your scent didn’t abruptly grow a little deeper, warmer. His dick twitched again when he recognized the scent of your arousal, but then again, it wasn’t entirely foreign to him.

In the last week, the two of you had engaged in a fair share of heated makeout sessions, and you did have that wet dream three nights ago. That had nearly killed him, waking up in the early hours of the morning to you whimpering and writhing in the circle of his arms. Eddie almost fucking came in his pants when you’d gasped out his name, and he had wanted nothing more than to wake you up, roll you onto your back, and pick up where your dream left off.

But he couldn’t. Not like this. With his claws and his fangs and his animal hunger. Eddie had imagined his first time with you— hell, his first time in general— a thousand different ways, each more romantic and ridiculous than the last. But none of them had included him being a goddamn monster. And he was afraid that if he gave in to one base desire, the others would seize upon the opportunity, and he’d already awoken from several nightmares where he had gone too far and hurt you, even killed you.

He refused to make that a reality.

The hazy dream-memory of your gaping throat and betrayed eyes tempered the edge of his hunger— and his cock. With this new found clarity, Eddie pried himself off you and moved to sit cross-legged at your side instead.

“Can I… have your arm?” he asked quietly, swallowing a mouthful of saliva.

Your teasing expression immediately grew serious but not frightened, and now you actually looked sorry. Possibly a little embarrassed, judging from the faint blush that spread across your cheeks.  

“Of course,” you said as you extended your left arm, which was cast free now.

It turned out, Eddie’s magic spit could heal broken bones, too, as long as he bit deep enough. He hadn’t wanted to test it at first, but between the pain he saw in your face every time you bumped your cast, and Dustin nagging him to test the limits of his new ability, Eddie had caved, sliced your cast off with his claws, and sank his fangs deep into the underside of your wrist. He’d hated the way you whimpered at the pain, hated that he was the cause of that sound, but it had been worth it, in the end. The bone in your wrist healed, and after, he did the same for your fractured ribs, but that was a tad more awkward, so Dustin had left the room. Still, the grateful smile you’d given Eddie was enough to chase away his lingering insecurities about being such a freak.

Now, he gently cradled your forearm between clawed fingers, feeling the saliva collect in his mouth as he watched the veins pulse beneath the thin skin of your wrist.

“It’s okay, Eddie,” you murmured, like you always did.

He didn’t realize he’d been subconsciously waiting for your permission, but he felt a knot of tension unravel in his chest as he bent over your arm. He feathered a kiss over your skin, just like he always did, but then his hunger reared its ugly head again, and a moment later he was sinking his fangs into your forearm.

Eddie heard you inhale sharply, but everything faded into white noise as your blood pulsed over his tongue. It was warm, borderline hot, but smooth and silky. He had the distant thought that it tasted… richer, deeper, than usual. Maybe it was the weed, or maybe he was just that hungry, but the observation floated away as he swallowed and swallowed and swallowed.

An eternity passed— or maybe it was only a few seconds— as he gorged himself on your blood, but all too soon, the fingers of your opposite hand brushed over his cheeks, his nose, pushing his bangs back so you could get to his brow.

“M’kay,” you sighed, voice airy and light. “That’s… probably enough, Ed.”

The familiar nickname was enough to draw Eddie back into his body. Previously, only Wayne had called— been allowed to call— him that. But ever since his uncle moved in, you’d picked up the habit of calling him ‘Ed’ now and then, the two letters falling from your lips so simply, like you’d been saying them all your life and would continue to for years to come. Eddie would be lying if he said it didn’t do something wicked to his heart every time.

Swallowing one last mouthful, Eddie detached from your arm, dragging his tongue over the holes he left behind until they shrank and disappeared altogether. When he was sure you weren’t bleeding anymore, he lifted his head and found you smiling at him sleepily.

“Better?” you asked, swiping your thumb over the corner of his mouth.

Eddie nodded, but the motion made his head spin a little. Your infused blood was already making him feel heavy, tired, and you seemed to realize this because you made yourself more comfortable against the pillows and opened your arms.

He went willingly, flopping forward onto his stomach but draping his left arm and wing over you. After a moment of finding the right position, he ended up with his head tucked into the curve of your shoulder while you lied on your back, his legs tangled with yours atop the covers because he got too hot underneath them. Your fingers idly traced over his tattoos before stroking the edge of his wing, and Eddie sighed as he relaxed further into the mattress.

“G’night, Munson,” you murmured into the shadowed room. There was still a faint light coming in through the ajar door to the attached bath, but neither you nor Eddie liked things fully dark. Not after everything that had happened.

“Night, Obi,” he yawned and pressed a kiss to the jut of your shoulder. His brain was sluggish, the cogs slowing turn by turn, so he didn’t even think twice when he added, “Love you.”

But he did hear how your heart stuttered, your breathing along with it, before your scent bloomed into something soft and happy.

“Love you, too.” It was no more than a whisper, followed by the ghost of a kiss against his brow, but Eddie smiled as sleep enclosed around him, feeling safe, loved, and at peace.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When he next opened his eyes, he didn’t feel any of those things anymore.

Eddie bolted upright with a gasp, his breathing ragged, eyes darting around wildly. Fear was like a living thing inside of him, skittering through his veins, sitting bitter on the back of his tongue.

At first, he didn’t even know why he was so afraid, but as his surroundings solidified, he realized his instincts had been correct.

He wasn’t in your bedroom anymore, wasn’t wrapped up in your arms. He was alone, sitting on hard-packed ground, and everything around him was awash in red. The sky was filled with crimson clouds, broken only by bolts of scarlet lightning. The dirt and rocks beneath him were varying shades of vermillion, and he could see puddles of an unidentifiable liquid glinting like rubies in the otherwise barren landscape. A thick fog swirled through the air, veiling everything beyond twenty feet from where he sat, and Eddie felt his throat close up.

Where the fuck was he? How did he get here? And why… did it seem somewhat familiar?

Eddieeeeee.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. He couldn’t tell if he was hearing it with his ears or just in his mind, but it reverberated through his bones, making him vibrate as he leapt to his feet, jittery.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Eddie spun around to try and pinpoint the voice, but there was nothing. No one. Even so, his wings defensively flared out to their full width, and he was heaving for breath now.

Why the hell did this place seem so familiar? Why… why did he recognize that voice?

You didn’t think you had actually escaped, did you, Eddie?

The voice was taunting now, amused. It felt like someone was whispering in his ear, but when Eddie whirled around again, there was nothing but red fog and red sky and red dirt as far as the eye could see.

“Who’s— who’s there?” he demanded, but his sentence cracked halfway through, making the disembodied voice laugh.

The laughter was deep, dark. Cruel. It sent a shiver down his spine, his wings trembling in unison, and the fear he felt coursing through his veins solidified into a stone that sank to the depths inside him.

You know the answer, Eddie, the voice said, its tone mocking.

And fuck. Eddie did, didn’t he?

“V-Vecna,” he breathed, wishing he was wrong but knowing he wasn’t.

No. This is not one of your make-believe games, Edward. What is my name?

The voice was still mocking, but it took on an edge of anger, and the air seemed to grow thicker, heavier.

“One,” Eddie said, heart in his throat. “Hen— Henry Creel.”

There we go. A little slow on the uptake, but I guess that’s to be expected from a three time senior. From a freak.

Towards the end, Vecna’s voice bled into Jason Carver’s, and a moment later, the blond jock stepped out of the swirling red mist. He was standing ten feet away from Eddie, wearing his signature letterman jacket. But he looked wrong somehow, in a way that Eddie couldn’t pinpoint, and yet it made his stomach churn all the same.

“Y-You’re dead,” Eddie couldn’t help but stutter as he took a step back.

Jason grinned and flashed too many teeth, more than was possible, his cheeks tearing along the corners of his mouth, blood spilling down his chin.

“We have that in common then, don’t we, freak?”

Suddenly, a red line bloomed to life in the center of his chest, but it wasn’t blood. The line glowed, bright as molten metal, and carved Jason in half. He didn’t cry out, didn’t even seem to notice. He just stared at Eddie with dead, cold eyes as his torso slumped to the ground, and he continued to glare even with his body in two pieces.

“This is your fault, Munson. You killed me. Just like you killed Chrissy. And yet, you get to live. How is that fucking fair?”

“I didn’t kill anyone!” Eddie shouted, desperate like he could make Jason believe him. “I-I didn’t hurt Chrissy, I was just trying to fucking help her. And fuck you, asshole, you got yourself killed! I told you it wasn’t me. I tried to warn you!”

“Your fault,” Jason droned like Eddie hadn’t spoken, and then the red mist descended upon him, blocking him from view momentarily.

When it lifted again, Chrissy’s broken body was sprawled in the dirt, sightless, awful, the bloody holes where her eyes used to be seeming to stare at Eddie in accusation.

“Why— why did you leave me, Eddie?” she gargled past her broken jaw. More scarlet tears spilled down her cheeks. “I— I was so scared. Why did you leave me all alone in that trailer? I was still alive. You could have saved me.”

“N-No.” Eddie vigorously shook his head, even though guilt and bile were burning a hole through the back of his throat. “No, you— you were already dead. There wasn’t… I couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t do anything but run, huh?” a new voice asked, cigarette-rough and dreadfully familiar.

Eddie spun around to find his father sneering at him, his expression hateful, his blue eyes so like his brother’s but infinitely colder than Wayne’s.

“You’ve always been a coward, boy,” his father spat. “Always too weak. Good for nothing. Useless. I should have smothered you the day you killed your mama.”

Eddie had heard all of these things a million times before, but the barbed words still struck true, stealing his breath away. All of the sudden, he was a ten-year-old cowering in front of his drunken father, body bracing for the blow, ready to repent once again for the sin of being born.

“I-I didn’t kill anyone,” Eddie said a second time, but this time it was a whimper, almost pleading.

His father grinned, but when his eyes flickered milky and white, Eddie suddenly remembered that this was Vecna. This was what the tentacled fucker did, using a person’s worst memories against them. The phantom before him wasn’t really his father, wasn’t…

“You’re not real!” Eddie clenched his eyes shut and whirled away, stumbling and then sprinting as he reopened his eyes.

“That’s right, run away, you sissy!” his father roared after him.

You freak, Jason’s voice slithered through his head.

You monster, Chrissy whimpered.

“Shut up!” Eddie yelled, slapping his hands over his ears as he staggered across the barren landscape. “Shut up, shut up, shutup!”

All four voices— Vecna, Jason, Chrissy, and his father— laughed in unison, the sound taunting, almost pitying.

Eddie tried not to panic, tried to think of solutions. Fuck. Fuck. Okay, what did Max say about the visions? How did she evade Vecna before? Besides running, which Eddie was already doing, already so goddamn good at.

“Think, you dumb son of a bitch!” Eddie cursed himself, nearly tripping over a rock in the process. He overcorrected, forgetting about his wings, and went down to one knee and one hand, fingers dragging through the red dirt.

Vecna laughed again, the noise grating against every one of Eddie’s flayed nerves and forcing him back onto his feet, but it also brought with it a revelation.

Laughter. Happy memories. That’s how Red hid last time.

Okay, happy memories, happy memories…

“Shit!” Eddie whined when all that came to mind was Chrissy’s broken body, Jason’s hateful face, Dustin sobbing over him as he bled out in the Upside Down—

Wait! Henderson, he could think about Henderson.

Desperately, Eddie summoned the image of the kid’s grinning face, framed by curls. Dustin wrestling with him in that field outside town. Dustin cheering over a win during Hellfire. Dustin being picked up at Hellfire by…

You.

All at once, your face flooded Eddie’s thoughts, forcing him to a halt, but that was fine. Because he was recalling your smile that day he walked out of Hellfire to find you waiting for him in the parking lot. Your smile when you stepped out of the woods at ten years old, with tear stains on your cheeks and mud on your knees. Your smile when he last saw you, sleepy and pliant in the bed he shared with you.

The tidal wave of memories drowned out the dread rising inside him, made him feel centered again, calm, if only for a moment.

But when Eddie opened his eyes, he was still standing in the red, rocky no man’s land, lightning splitting the crimson sky above him.

This… this wasn’t right. Max had said she’d been able to actually hide in the good memories, like she was physically in them again. So why was Eddie still here? Were the memories not happy enough?

No, that didn’t make sense. Eddie didn’t have a lot of happy memories, and almost all of them included either you or Hellfire. Was he not… remembering hard enough?

Clenching his eyes shut again, Eddie held his breath like that would help him concentrate. Or teleport. Or whatever needed to happen to get him the fuck out of here.

Seconds passed, then nearly a full minute, and finally Eddie was forced to exhale, raggedly drawing in uneven breaths as he opened his eyes and saw nothing had changed.

“What the fuck?” he panted. “Goddamn it, come on!”

“Were you actually expecting to get something right for once?”

The sound of your voice made him gasp and spin around, even before he processed the fact that he had never heard that snide tone from you.

Your expression was equally foreign once he faced you, lips pulled tight in a mocking sneer. The usual softness in your eyes was also gone, replaced by such disgust that it made his stomach roll over itself.

“Obi,” Eddie breathed because he couldn’t help himself. The small, logical portion of his brain was screaming at him that this wasn’t you, but it was still your beautiful face, and maybe he was pitiful, pathetic, but it was you.

“God, I’ve always hated that stupid fucking nickname,” you scoffed, and it felt like an arrow to the heart. “Star Wars, seriously? Did you really think I could love someone as weird as you? I pitied you, Munson. I pitied the little trailer trash poor boy whose daddy beat him so stupid he can’t even graduate high school. The virgin freak. But then again, who would want to touch you? I sure don’t. That’s why I was so relieved when you died, but then you had to go and fuck that up like you do everything else, huh?”

With the accuracy and sharpness of a Rouge wielding a dagger, you threw every silent fear and insecurity Eddie had right back in his face. And he was pathetic enough that it stole his breath for a moment, made him want to sink to his knees, but out of nowhere, the night you chased him, barefoot and half blind, through the woods sprang up in his thoughts.

I prayed to every god that I don’t believe in to bring you back, to give me just one more minute with you. Fuck, Eddie. I love you so goddamn much that it nearly killed me to lose you. So don’t tell me I’d be better off. Don’t you fucking dare.

That’s right. You loved him, really loved him, even though you shouldn’t, even though Eddie didn’t fucking deserve it.

But that didn’t matter. Because you loved him, and until he drew his last breath, he was going to try and be worthy of that love.

So, Eddie whirled away from Vecna-You, clenching his eyes shut one last time and throwing himself into recalling the sensation of falling asleep in your arms, willing himself to wake up.

Vecna’s laughter split the air again, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Oh, Edward. You are amusing. Did you really think Maxine’s parlor tricks would help you? They didn’t even save her in the end.

“Shut up,” Eddie gritted out as he snapped open his eyes. He was trying to come off as brave, fearless, but he knew he was failing miserably.

Besides, Vecna went on like Eddie hadn’t spoken, you’re not like Maxine. Not anymore.

Eddie knew he shouldn’t play into this twisted fucker’s game, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What… what do you mean?”

You know what I mean. Shall I remind you?

All at once, a dozen vines shot out of the mist around Eddie, latching onto his arms, his legs, his wings. He cried out as they pulled in opposite directions and hoisted him up into the air. He struggled, writhing and bucking and yelling profanities, but it was useless.

Helplessly, he watched as the vines positioned him over one of the glinting ruby puddles, flipping him so he was facing the viscous-looking fluid. Eddie tried to close his eyes, but tiny roots wound through his hair and down his forehead, wrenching his lids back open.

You can’t hide from the truth, Vecna’s voice crooned in his ear while the vines forced Eddie to look at his reflection.

To face the terrible truth.

The surface of the puddle was unnaturally still, so Eddie could see the image of himself, suspended by vines, crystal clearly. Could see his massive wings with their barbed talons, stretched painfully to their maximum. Could see the claws curving out of his starfished fingertips, each one wrapped in vines that pulled so tightly, all his joints were on the verge of popping.

But then Eddie’s gaze locked onto his parted, panting mouth. The fangs, beginning to drip with saliva. The black pits of his eyes, and the dark veins starting to spiderweb down his cheeks.

Hunger abruptly exploded to life in his gut, as if ignited by his monstrous reflection. The hunger Eddie had lived with the past week was perpetual, never ending, but he had found ways to control it, ignore it.

This hunger wouldn’t be ignored. It was all-consuming, overwhelming, like it had been the first night Eddie woke up. Came back to life. He was starving, burning, withering away. He needed. Needed something to soothe the pain, something to take it away, something to quench it.

And this is the truth, Vecna’s voice whispered as the vines moved Eddie again, lashing him to a pillar of stone like a witch tied to a pyre. You are not like Maxine, not like any of the other ants in your world. Not anymore. You are a spider, like me. And like me, you are tied to this hungry world, this ‘Upside Down,’ as you children called it. You cannot run from me, Edward, for one simple reason:

You cannot run from what’s inside you.

As the words reverberated through Eddie’s skull, ringing like church bells, like funeral bells, like the chiming of a clock, Vecna stepped out of the mist in front of him, approaching with his hand outstretched.

“No!” Eddie tried to snarl, but the word was gargled through the saliva filling his throat. His teeth burned, itched, throbbed in time with the still chiming clock, and he could barely move an inch as the vines pulled all his limbs just up to the point of tearing.

Vecna was in front of him now, smirking as his fingers brushed Eddie’s forehead, but for just the briefest instant, his face flickered like a glitching VHS, revealing a ruined mess of charred tentacles and teeth bared in a perpetual sneer through the gaping hole in his cheek.

It seemed Harrington’s team and Eleven had done a number on him, but Eddie couldn’t even feel the triumph of it, because Vecna’s claws were suddenly digging into his skull, drawing an agonized shout from deep within his chest.

Don’t fight it, Eddie.

Just give in. Give in to the hunger.

Feed.

And make us stronger.

Eddie’s eyes rolled back into his head, and Vecna’s laughter chased him into the darkness.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Hunger.

That was the first thing he was aware of. The only thing. It was sharp. It burned. It hurt. Everywhere, always, like needles in his skin. Like teeth.

Hunger, sharp as a blade. Overwhelming hunger. Hunger neverending.

The pain of it forced a snarl from his lips, but when he sucked in his next breath, all of his senses were assaulted at once.

Blood. Hot and pulsing so close, so very close, the sound of its slow glug blotting out all else. The smell of it was all-consuming. It riled up the animal pacing inside him, the wildfire turning into an inferno, the pain into agony. Saliva built on his tongue and dripped from his lips, and his fingers unconsciously clenched, claws tearing into soft flesh.

Feed. The word exploded through his head, reverberating, commanding.

That, plus the scent of freshly spilled blood, made him miss the soft sound of a gasp, but he didn’t miss the way his prey jerked in his arms. He tightened his grip even further, eliciting a whimper, and the aroma of blood was briefly masked by the sour stench of fear.

“E-Eddie?”

The sound of your voice was simultaneously like a bucket of cold water to the face and a hot brand searing across his brain.

Eddie suddenly snapped into consciousness but not back into his body. It was like he was floating over the bed, looking down at how his claws had dug into the meat of your hips, blood staining your sleep shorts and the sheets. You’d somehow ended up on your side, with your back pressed to his chest, and your wide, terrified eyes were staring over your shoulder.

Staring at him. At the monster he’d become, with black pits for eyes and a snarling, fang-filled maw… that was currently going for your neck.

No! Eddie struggled against his invisible bonds, trying to force himself back into his body, but then a very familiar laugh rang out.

Don’t fight it, Edward, Vecna said, just like he did in the Upside Down dreamworld. There’s nothing you can do. Just let go. It will be so much easier.

Fuck. You! Eddie spat and renewed his struggles, but the sound of your whimper drew him up short.

He was still hovering outside his body, so he was able to see the tears sliding down your cheeks as you tried to look back at him, but one of his hands left your hip and violently pushed your head to the side, revealing the soft skin of your throat.

You cried out and jerked again, but stilled when his claws dug into your scalp and waist.

“Ed, this isn’t you.” Your words were panted, made harsh by your ragged, fearful breathing. “I-I know you’re still in there. Come back to me. You don’t want to hurt me.”

I don’t! Eddie screamed desperately but silently, because as he stared at himself, his lips only parted to reveal saliva-coated fangs. Obi! Fuck, fight back!

Oh, but she won’t, Vecna crooned gleefully. We both know she loves you too much. She’ll let you drain her dry before she lifts a finger against you.

No! Eddie said again, but this time it was more of a sob than a snarl. He could do nothing but watch helplessly as his fangs continued to descend toward your neck, almost in slow motion, and he wondered if Vecna was dragging this out just to torture him.

Vecna laughed again, as if in confirmation.

Love, he mocked. Humanity’s greatest weakness. You loved this girl to the point of selfishness, served her up on a silver platter. Now you must suffer the consequences.

Eddie abruptly snapped back into his body. He could hear your pounding heart roaring in his ears, could smell the heavy cloak of your spilled blood, the sharp note of your fear tainting it slightly. You were hot and rigid in his arms, pressed tightly against him, and Eddie tried to rip himself away, but he still wasn’t in control.

His arms moved without his permission, shoving you onto your front. You gasped in surprise, but he was on you before you could move, straddling the backs of your thighs. One of his hands pinned your head down and shoved your face into the pillows, and the other hand ripped down the collar of your overly large sleepshirt. The curve of your throat and shoulder beckoned him, but when he leaned over you, with his breath fanning over the nape of your neck, you suddenly came alive, bucking and thrashing.

“Eddie, don’t!” You craned your head around, completely ignoring the way his claws tore into your scalp, spilling more blood. Your wild, begging eyes locked with his. “Don’t do this! This is Vecna, fight him!”

I’m trying! Eddie moaned, but his body didn’t listen, wrestling you back into submission.

Vecna laughed again.

Always trying and always failing, the bastard taunted. The Eddie Munson story. There is no other version, no other ending. Just submit to it, to your destiny.

“Don’t listen to whatever that ugly fuck is saying!” you shouted like you could hear Vecna. Your wrists were pinned to the small of your back, Eddie’s claws slicing your skin as you continued to struggle, but now the sour note of your fear was replaced with white-hot rage. “He’s lying! Whatever he’s spouting is bullshit! You’re not a monster, you’re Eddie Munson. My Eddie Munson. So tell that bastard to get fucked! Come back to me, Ed!”

A feisty one, isn’t she? Vecna remarked, his tone merely amused. If only she was the one who had turned. I could have used that ire. Oh, that’s an interesting idea. What do you say, Edward? Should I spare her life so you can bring her to me? So she can join us?

The sudden image of you with fangs and black, soulless eyes flashed across his mind. Then it was both you and Eddie, feral and wild, tearing through Dustin, Harrington, the rest of the party. Bathing the world in blood.

This way, you could keep her, Vecna whispered, and his voice was suddenly soft, enticing. She would be yours, unable to refuse you. Wouldn’t you like that, Edward? You can keep your precious Obi. All you have to do is say yes.

Abruptly, full sensation returned to Eddie’s body, and he twitched his fingers involuntarily, but he twitched them. He could move again. Vecna had given him back some control.

And for a brief, terrible instant that Eddie would feel guilty about forever… he was tempted. He was so goddamn tempted. He wanted to say yes, to stop fighting, to make the pain go away. To have you, and never have to let you go.

But Eddie would not condemn you to hell because of his own selfishness.

He would die first.

Before Vecna could realize his plan, before you could say another word or move another inch, Eddie suddenly ripped one of his hands off you and sliced his claws across his own throat.

NO! Vecna roared, but the sound was fainter, more removed, and Eddie found he had full control of himself again.

Get the fuck out of my head, Eddie spat, and with all his mental might, he shoved Vecna into a dark corner of his mind. He envisioned erecting stone walls and a metal gate to keep the bastard out, and it must have worked, because he could hear Vecna banging on the door, trying to get in.

But the wall held steady.

“Shit, Eddie!”

Your hands were suddenly on him, pressing into his throat, and Eddie distantly realized that he could feel the sluggish pump of his cold blood through your fingers.

“O— Obi,” he gargled. “It’s… me.”

“Yeah, I know it’s you, asshole!” you snapped, but you smelled scared again. He also couldn’t see your face through his blurry vision, but the air filled with the salty scent of your tears. “Fuck, why’d you go and do that, Ed? I said fight him, not— Jesus Christ. You cut so deep, and you’re healing too slow. Is this— can this kill you? Shit, Munson. You need blood. You need to feed—”

“N-No!” Eddie coughed out, air wheezing out of the holes in his throat. He could still faintly hear Vecna, could feel him trying to break in again. Trying to find the flaw in Eddie’s defenses, the poor weld, just a little crack to slip on through. “No… blood. Not… safe.”

“Because of Vecna?” you asked, and Eddie managed the barest hint of a nod as your fingers clamped around his neck, trying to stem the flow of blood. “That’s— that doesn’t matter. You pushed him out once, right? You can do it again. We’ll… we’ll figure it out, but fuck, Munson, I can’t— I’m not letting you goddamn die! Not again. You hear me?”

Eddie tried to come up with a response, but his brain was going fuzzy, his vision tunneling. Darkness crept in along the edges, but before it could envelop him entirely, something red-hot and delicious dripped into his mouth.

Blood.

He reacted on instinct, lips latching onto skin, teeth digging in to find more of that sweet nectar. The world revolved around him, and he heard you gasp, but it was all so very far away. All that mattered was your blood washing down his throat, soothing the burn and ache within every inch of him. With every pull, he felt a little stronger, a little more coherent, but Vecna’s voice also grew louder.

Yes, drink her dry. Drain her. Kill her. Kill, kill, kill.

The chiming of a clock filled Eddie’s ears again, but he tried to ignore it. Because even though Vecna was all but shouting in his goddamn head, Eddie was still inside his body. The walls in his mind were holding. He was in control. Not Vecna, and not this fucking hunger.

With one last swallow, Eddie was able to tear his mouth away. Blood scattered off his lips, and when he opened his eyes, your wide ones were staring back at him. Or rather up at him. He was hovering over you on the bed, with his palms planted on the mattress beside you, and his hips were pressed into the cradle of your pelvis. Both of your hands were tucked against your chest, slick and glinting with his saliva, not a drop of red to be found anywhere on your forearms even though he knew he had sliced up your wrists earlier.

Shit, how much of your blood did he drink?

There was still a lingering hint of fear in your gaze, in your scent beneath the iron aroma of your blood, and guilt sucker punched Eddie in the gut. Your face was pale except for the dried rivulets of blood on your brow, having dripped down when his claws scratched your scalp, and he tried to tear his eyes away but couldn’t.

Because, fuck, the hunger was still there, just below the surface, and no matter how hard he tried to shove it down, it lingered, scratching at his skin from the inside. It felt like a million ants were trying to rip their way out of him, eating away at his resolve, and Eddie could hear the distant echo of Vecna’s mocking laughter.

You can’t run from what’s inside you.

Yeah, well, I’m the champion of running, so you can fuck right off, Eddie mentally growled, but he was sure it came off as weak, no more than a whimper.

Shit, his mouth was so full of saliva, his tongue chasing the phantom taste of your  blood. That animal hunger inside him yowled, angry at being denied, charging at the cage of Eddie’s self-control, and the bars were already shaking, bending, moments from snapping.

He didn’t know how much longer he could hold it at bay.

“Obi,” he gasped out as his eyes locked with yours. Goddamn it, he wished Wayne was here, but the older Munson had left this afternoon with Hopper to stock up on weapons from a store in Indianapolis, and they wouldn’t be back until morning. Just Eddie’s fucking luck. “Shit, you need to— fuck, you need to go. Get out of here and barricade the door behind you. C-Call Harrington, tell him to bring that goddamn bat, a fucking flamethrower. I can… try and hold Vecna off until—”

“Until what?” you asked, the fear in your eyes suddenly replaced by stubbornness, frustration. “Until I bring Steve back here to barbecue you? I’m not letting him fucking kill you, Munson.”

“You have to,” Eddie snapped and subconsciously bared his fangs. But when your heartbeat stuttered, and your throat clicked around a dry, fearful swallow, he tucked his teeth away. He needed to get away from you, so he tried to push himself up, but your arms wrapped around his neck and kept him locked in place. “Obi, let go.”

“No,” you said. Your tone was even, calm, but your quickening pulse was anything but. It made Eddie’s teeth ache, made Vecna start pounding on the gate in his mind even harder. Made the animal beneath Eddie’s skin rocket to the surface, straining under his skin.

“Obi, I’m not fucking around,” he gritted out past his clenched jaw, and he glared down at you. “Vecna’s gonna break free any second now, and he wants me to kill you, tear you to pieces, or worse, and I-I might not be able to stop again. It… fuck, it hurts, just being so close to you. Please. Let go.”

“No,” you said a second time and frowned around the word. “Because the moment I let go, you’re going to book it out of here and try to kill yourself in the woods or some other stupid shit because you think it will protect me.”

Goddamn it. You knew him too well, could always read every thought that passed behind his eyes.

Eddie knew it was pointless arguing with you, but he also knew he was running out of time. His eyes were locked onto the hollow of your throat, watching as it fluttered with your pulse, and Vecna was still rambling at the back of his mind, telling him to feed, to kill, to bring you to him.

So, instead of asking again for you to release him, Eddie just shoved himself up, thinking he could break the hold you had around his neck.

But you were always so fucking stubborn, and your nails dug into the skin of his nape as your legs snaked around his waist and tightened. Now, Eddie was kneeling in the center of the bed with you clinging to him like a leech, and his wings flared out for balance as his hands subconsciously went to your thighs to support you.

In this position, your throat was inches away from his mouth, and he wanted to scream at you for being so stupid, for trusting him and his strength so blindly. But before he could say anything— before the animal inside him could lunge out and bury his fangs in your neck— you shifted ever so slightly, and your core rubbed right over his crotch.

The heat of you momentarily derailed his hunger, and Eddie couldn’t stop the small moan that slipped past his lips. He may be a monster, but he was also a twenty year old virgin, and fuck were you warm.

You froze at the sound of his moan, and then you leaned back a fraction, your eyes finding his. With your brow slightly furrowed in confusion, you shifted again and tightened your legs around his waist in the process.

Eddie involuntarily bucked his hips forward, startling a moan out of you this time.

The buzz of Vecna’s voice grew angrier yet fainter, receding to the back of Eddie’s head as he stared at your mouth, at the way you dragged your tongue across your lips.

“Is this… is this helping?” you asked, barely above a whisper, like you were afraid to startle Eddie.

Or just afraid of him in general.

But when he sucked in a deep breath, the acrid scent of your fear was fading, being replaced by something warmer, sweeter, familiar.

Shit, you couldn’t seriously be—

“Ed?” you murmured and drew his eyes to yours. Then you repeated yourself. “Is this helping?”

“No,” he said automatically. “Yes. Fuck, I dunno.”

“Well… do you still want to kill me?”

Yes, Vecna hissed from the shadowed recesses of Eddie’s mind.

“Not… as much,” Eddie said aloud, swallowing only half a mouthful of saliva this time. The hunger was still inside of him, but it felt like it was transforming into something else. The throbbing in his teeth didn’t vanish entirely, the majority of it merely migrating further south, and you inhaled sharply when you felt his cock twitch between your legs.

Shit. Fuck. This wasn’t happening.

But while Eddie internally started to panic— well, panic even more— your expression was calm, considering. Then you bucked your hips into his, clenching your legs around him, and a growl rippled out of Eddie’s chest.

“Obi, stop that,” he said as he ground his teeth.

“But you said it was helping,” you argued, stubborn as always.

And fuck if you weren’t right, as always.

Your scent, edged faintly with arousal, was turning his bloodthirst into something else. And as the hunger for your blood receded, so did Vecna’s voice, until it was nothing more than an inaudible whisper.

Eddie almost wanted to weep with relief, but he couldn’t because you suddenly leaned forward, brushed your mouth against his, and poked the tip of your tongue through the seam of his lips.

He moaned, your mouth like a hot brand, and a different hunger suddenly filled his veins like molten magma. It was just as wild, just as animal, and images of him pinning you to the bed and fucking you like a beast flashed across his thoughts. It scared the shit out of him, enough that he pulled away from you. But you wouldn’t let him go far, your fingers tangling in his curls, keeping his brow and nose pressed against your cheek.

“Obi—” he tried, but you cut him off. 

“It’s okay,” you murmured, shushing him as you stroked his hair. “I-I think I understand. You need something to distract you from the hunger, right? I can do that.”

“Christ, you’re not a fucking distraction,” Eddie groaned, but it was hard to string thoughts into sentences when you were warm and wrapped around him, smelling oh so sweet. “I’m not going to f-fuck you just to tune this bastard out. I… can’t.”

“But you could,” you whispered as you dragged your lips over his brow, pressing a chaste kiss to his temple. “I can tell he’s not talking to you anymore, so that means this is working.”

“Yeah,” Eddie breathed, his eyelashes fluttering closed as he dug his nose into your cheek and inhaled. Your softness, your scent, it was grounding him a little, but it was also driving him fucking crazy. God, his dick ached. “He’s… it’s like I built a wall and stuck Vecna behind it. Can barely hear him now.”

“Good,” you sighed. Your scent grew lighter, almost floral, with relief, and you feathered more kisses across his brow, the bridge of his nose. “That’s so good, Ed. You are so strong, I love you so much. Thank you for coming back to me.”

Eddie shivered, a whimper cowering in the back of his throat. Your praise made him want to cry, but at the same time, it tightened the coil of arousal in his gut, almost to the point of breaking.

“Fuck,” he rasped out as he clutched you to him, rolling his forehead against the line of your jaw. “Love you, too, love you so goddamn much. Which is why I can’t— I can’t—”

“But you’re still hurting,” you said, voice soft and pained, like you were the one who was suffering. “I can tell, Ed. Your eyes and the veins around them are still black, which means you’re hungry. But you’ve already had enough blood, so why not try something else?”

“Stopping offering yourself up like a goddamn bag of Doritos,” Eddie said, and he was going for angry, but his tone was just this side of pleading. He drummed up enough strength to pry his face away from yours, and he fixed your with his strongest glare, which was admittedly pretty weak since you didn’t even blink. “I’m not… I don’t want to hurt you.”

He’d said that so many times, and yet here you were, with blood drying all over your skin, drawn by his claws. It was pathetic, really, just like it was pathetic that he was still holding you against his abdomen, with your legs around his waist. He was strong, physically, so much stronger than you. He could have ripped you off, thrown you on the bed, and been out the door in seconds.

Yet here he was, with desire still burning away at his restraint, with his cock hard and pulsing and pressed between your legs.

“You stopped before.” Your words drew his attention back to your face. You were smiling, your eyes proud for some fucking reason, and you shifted one of your hands out of his hair so you could cup his cheek. “Eddie, you stopped before, even with Vecna physically controlling your body. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. I-I just don’t want you to hurt anymore. I want to help you. Please.”

You punctuated the last word with a kiss against the corner of Eddie’s mouth, and he whined, long and high, his claws digging into your thighs. He pressed harder than he intended, and the delicious scent of your blood washed over him again, faint, no more than pinpricks, but devastating for his self-control.

Still, he couldn’t help but throw one last Hail Mary.

“I-I don’t want our first time to be like this, Obi,” Eddie said, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling, praying to a god he didn’t believe in for strength. “We— I had it all planned out. For weeks, months, fuckin’ years. Was gonna take you on a nice date, Enzo’s probably, or a picnic at Lover’s Lake, maybe a daytrip to Indy if I could get the money. Pay for a delicious dinner, dance with you in the moonlight and all that romantic shit because y-you deserve it, you deserve everything and more. Then I would have taken you back to the trailer, which I would have cleaned top to bottom, and laid you out on fresh, brand-new sheets. I wanted to take my time, make it good for you, because I love you and I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I first learned how my dick worked. And this… this won’t be like that. I— shit, it already feels like I’m on fire, and there’s this animal inside me that just wants to pin you down and fuck you—”

Eddie cut himself off and sucked in a ragged breath, shame crawling through his veins and momentarily overriding the hunger and heat.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I—” he started, but before he could spiral any further, you placed your fingers over his lips. He glanced up at you through his bangs, bracing himself for your disgust, but he found you blushing, with your lower lip caught between your teeth.

Fucking Christ, you smelled delicious. His head felt like it was made of cotton by this point, and your voice was muffled and faint when you spoke again, so he tried his damndest to concentrate.

“I would love to go on a date with you, Munson, and do all that romantic shit.” Your lips quirked into a teasing smile, and one of your hands slipped over his shoulder to brush softly over the curve of his wing, making him shiver. “And we will have many other chances to take it slow, because I also want to take you apart piece by piece. Been dreaming about it myself for a while. But I’m definitely not opposed to you fucking me, either.”

The vulgar word falling from your mouth ignited Eddie all over again, especially when you bucked your hips, pulling sharply on his curls at the same time.

“Obi.” Your name came out half-snarl, half-whine, and Eddie felt like he was dangling over a precipice, his fingers losing purchase one by one.

“It’s okay, Ed,” you murmured as you stooped down, pausing with your lips just a hair’s breadth away. “I want this, want you. I trust you, and you’re not going to break me. So just take whatever you need.”

That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

With an almost audible snap, Eddie’s remaining tether of restraint disintegrated, and he smashed his mouth against yours.

You gasped in surprise at his sudden ferocity, but Eddie barely even heard it as he tipped you backwards and pinned you to the mattress again. A rushing, roaring noise filled his ears as he shoved his tongue past your parted lips, and a growl rumbled in the depths of his chest when you sucked on the invading muscle. Your legs were still wrapped around his waist, so he could feel you hot and pulsing against his abdomen, and the sensation burned away all his good sense.

Tearing his mouth from yours, he knelt back up and just ripped your shirt away like it was made of paper.

“Ed!” You started to cover your chest, a furious blush blooming across your clavicle, but Eddie snatched up both of your wrists and pinned them above your head. His wings aggressively flared out behind him, and he could see the reflection of them in your wide eyes.

“Mine,” he snarled mindlessly. Normally, he wasn’t so assertive unless he was DMing, but the animal inside him held the reins now, and he was just along for the ride.

Thankfully, your scent didn’t sour with fear. If anything, it grew deeper, richer, as your arousal heightened, and your eyes were dark with lust as you stared up at him.

“Yours, Ed,” you whispered, and your body went completely lax beneath him, the ultimate sign of trust. “All yours.”

At your declaration, Eddie’s dick kicked in his sweatpants, and he dove down and slanted his mouth over yours, kissing you with all the fiery passion he felt building in his gut. When he pulled away, your lips and chin were wet with his saliva, but his eyes quickly fell to your heaving, bare chest.

Fuck, he needed to taste you. Needed to mark you.

Even in his wild state, he knew he should avoid your neck, so Eddie quickly slid down your body until his face was hovering over your tits. They were beautiful, perfect, peaked with delectable looking nipples. He couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and dragging his tongue over one of the nubs, causing you to gasp as your fingers tangled in his hair.

“S-Shit, that feels good, Ed,” you breathed and arched your back, pressing your breasts further into his face. “Don’t stop.”

Your pleading tone, bordering on whimpering, spurred Eddie on, and he latched his lips around your left nipple, sucking harshly and groaning as he felt the blood rush to the area. It pulsed hot and heady beneath your skin, and Eddie sucked like he could get it to come out if he tried hard enough.

Then you jerked in his grasp, your hands pressing him down harder, and one of his fangs nicked the tip of your nipple.

The few drops of blood that coated his tongue drove him wild, overshadowing the twinge of guilt that twisted in his chest.

But the sounds you made shoved him off the damn edge.

“Ah! F-Fuck, just like that, Ed— ohhhh, shit!”

You broke off with a whine when Eddie switched to the other side, and he was barely even thinking anymore as he dragged his fangs over the swell of your right breast. Twin lines of blood marred your skin for an instant before his tongue lapped everything up, and by the time he wrapped his lips around your other nipple, his saliva had healed you.

All the while, your scent grew headier, fogging up his brain, and he wasn’t even aware that he had moved again until his lips brushed cotton instead of your warm skin. Then he lifted his head and realized he was lying between your thighs, and when he glanced up your body, he saw fading bite marks littered your saliva-slicked chest and belly. You were panting and staring down at him between your heaving breasts, and your pupils were blown with lust, not a trace of fear to be found.

“Gorgeous,” Eddie rumbled, two of his synapses connecting to form that single word, but then his brain shorted out again when you flushed from the face down. The smell of your pounding blood and burning arousal flooded his senses, and he growled as he latched onto the waistband of your shorts and panties, tearing them both right down the middle.

He flung the scraps of fabric away, and he didn’t waste any time in prying your legs apart, settling between them, and dragging his tongue through the folds of your pussy. He had to taste you, needed to devour you.

“Oh!” You bucked so sharply beneath him that your mound collided with his fangs, but before the pain could even register for you, his tongue was lapping up the blood.

In a distant part of his mind, Eddie was aware of the fact that he had no idea what he was doing. His sexual experience was limited to his hand, his active imagination, and the dirty magazines that used to be stuffed under his bed. But his body was operating on instinct, so when his nose nudged your clit and you spasmed, he immediately shifted up and wrapped his lips around the slick bud.

“Fuck, Eddie!” you gasped as your legs tried to close in around his head, but he slapped his hands against the inside of your thighs and pushed outward, giving himself some more space as he positively feasted on you.

Christ alive, your pussy was the best thing he had ever fucking tasted, even more so than your blood. Your arousal was hot and slick on his tongue, smeared across his chin as he alternated between sucking on your clit and slipping his tongue down through your folds. When he prodded at your entrance, a high-pitched whine echoed out of you, ringing in his ears. He wanted to hear that sound again and again, for the rest of his life. 

Eddie was seized with the sudden desire to feel you wrapped around his fingers. He pulled back, a line of saliva briefly connecting him to your slick cunt before it snapped, but then his eyes fell to his fingertips. His blackened talons were pressed into the meat of your inner thighs and had pricked the skin, and he absently swiped his tongue over the beads of blood, causing your breath to stutter. For a split second, he mourned the fact that he couldn’t slide his fingers inside you, but when you sighed his name and arched your hips, he decided it didn’t matter.

“You’re gonna cum on my tongue,” he muttered. He wasn’t even speaking to you necessarily, more to himself, but you moaned all the same.

“Please, Ed,” you panted, twining your fingers through his long hair. Then you gently pulled him forward, and he went oh so willingly.

A groan rattled in the back of his throat once he tasted you, and you whimpered when his tongue bullied its way past your folds, teasing at your entrance for a moment before pressing in. You cried out wordlessly, but Eddie dug his fingers into your thighs again so you couldn’t pull away. Then, with that roaring sound filling his ears, he proceeded to fuck his tongue as deep as it would go, and the walls of your pussy fluttered around the intruding muscle.

Eddie growled at the sensation, swirling his tongue around and distantly listening to you squeal. Fuck, you were so tight, so hot, nearly burning him, but he didn’t even care. He just dug his face further into your mound, nose pressed firmly to your clit, and he worked his jaw as he fucked his tongue into your cunt again and again.

Despite his hands pressing down on your inner thighs, your whole body started to spasm and buck with pleasure, causing his fangs to nick you every now and again. But the minor pain only seemed to rile you up more. Your hands were clutching his curls at the root, and through the roaring in his ears, Eddie could hear you babbling.

“O-Oh, fuck, right there, Ed, so good, I— shit! Don’t stop, don’t stop, I think I’m gonna— fuck! I’m gonna cum, oh god, I’m cumming! Eddie!”

Your back bowed dramatically as your hips thrashed, almost dislodging him, but Eddie bore you back down to the mattress as he continued to tongue fuck you through your orgasm. Your walls fluttered and clenched sporadically, and his whole face was practically coated in your juices when you finally sank back into the bed.

Then Eddie lifted his head, saw you sprawled against the sheets, panting, red-faced. The inside of your thighs was drenched in his saliva and your own arousal, and your pussy was puffy and swollen, still quivering with aftershocks.

He could almost hear the flick of a switch as his higher reasoning turned off, and a moment later, he was swept away on a tidal wave of burning lust.

The only thoughts in his head as he shoved down his sweatpants were inside, need to get inside, or maybe he was saying the words out loud, because you used your feet to help push the pants past his calves. Moments later, Eddie was pinning you to the mattress, mindlessly rutting his hips into yours as he seized your mouth in a rough kiss and shared the taste of your orgasm.

You whimpered around his tongue and kissed back just as fiercely, nicking yourself on his fangs and pushing the blood back into his mouth. Eddie snarled, his thoughts a whirlwind of take, take, take, and he dragged his hands down your body, latching onto the outside of your hips and tilting them upward. He rutted forward again, and when his cock slid through your wet folds, your groan nearly eclipsed his.

“Fuck,” Eddie hissed through gritted teeth.

Your pussy was so hot against his erection, nearly scalding. The sensation bordered on pain, but the sweet kind, and the whimper you made when he bumped against your clit was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

But when he shifted back and thrust forward again, the head of his cock caught on your entrance. Everything inside him was screaming to take you, to fuck you through the mattress until you were begging him to stop, and his whole body went rigid as he fought against it. His arms started to shake where they were propped on either side of your head, and he could barely meet your eyes because his own kept rolling into the back of his skull.

“S-Shit, tell me it’s okay, Obi,” he begged. “Tell— tell me you want this, please, fuck.”

His whole body was vibrating now, his control and sanity walking a tightrope above the endless abyss of his lust. The animal inside him wanted to just fuck you, claim you, but he loved you, loved you so fucking much, and as much as it felt like it might kill him, if you told him to stop right now, he would. He would have to nail his hands and feet to the floor, but he would stop himself, do whatever it took to keep you safe.

But you didn’t tell him to stop. Instead, your legs wound around his waist again, and one of your hands came up to cup his face. The brush of your thumb against his cheek centered him for a moment, and he was able to open his eyes and meet yours. There was no fear in your gaze, no hesitation or doubt. Just pure desire, love, and trust.

“It’s okay, Ed,” you murmured. “I want you inside me, want to feel you. Please. Take me.”

Take me.

The words exploded through his head, drowning out all else, and Eddie snapped his hips forward while staring deep into your eyes. He wanted to see the expression you made when he split you apart, and he wasn’t disappointed. As his dick pushed its way past your entrance, your face rippled, eyes widening before clenching shut. Your mouth hung open in a silent moan, but that wasn’t good enough. Eddie needed to hear you, needed to hear how good he was making you feel, so he pulled his hips back until just the head of his cock was stretching and tugging at your hole. Then he bucked forward again, and his pelvis met yours with a resounding clap as he bottomed out in your cunt.

“Fuck!” you shrieked, throwing your head back as your walls clamped down around him.

A distant part of Eddie was worried that he’d hurt you, but that part of him was not in control of his body, because he didn’t even pause before he started thrusting into you, rough and hard. 

A million curses tumbled through his head, but all that came out of his mouth were wordless growls. You were so hot and wet and tight around him, nearly strangling his dick, and every time he bottomed out, you somehow grew even tighter and wetter.

The roaring in his ears was deafening now, but he could faintly hear you beneath it, your voice cracking around every thrust.

“Oooh, Ed— f-fuck! Right there, right— ah!— there. God, you feel so good, baby, so deep, so— shittttt!— big.” Your nails raked down Eddie’s spine, catching on his wings, and your nipples were rubbing against his chest as you arched beneath him. “Fucking me so good, Eddie, love you s-so much, don’t— hnnnnng— don’t stop, please!”

Eddie had no intention of stopping now, didn’t know if he even could. Your pussy was like a black hole, sucking him right back in every time he pulled out. He was pounding into you so hard that you were jolting up the bed with every thrust, and he had to brace one of his hands against the headboard so you didn’t smash your skull open.

The sounds of the bed frame smacking into the wall, the wet sloshes from your cunt, and your continuing whimpers and babbling soon overrode the rushing noise in Eddie’s ears. It was like a symphony of pleasure, and he harmonized with his own grunts and growls.

Then he used one of his hands to drag your knee further up his ribcage, changing the angle, and his next thrust made you wail. Your whole body went taut, and Eddie watched as your eyes rolled back into your head. The walls of your pussy fluttered rapidly around his dick, and he knew you were close again.

Pulling out so the head of his cock stretched at your entrance, Eddie took a deep breath and found his voice again.

“Cum for me, Obi.” It came out as a growl, an order, and when he slammed forward again and buried himself to the hilt, you obeyed.

“Eddie!” you screamed as you came around his cock, and the way you thrashed, the way your pussy locked down around him, the tears glittering on your eyelashes, it all shattered him into pieces.

Eddie fucked you through your orgasm, fucked you like the animal inside him wanted, and he didn’t know where to look: your blissed out face, your bouncing tits, or the creamy ring you had made around the base of his dick. Then your heels suddenly dug into his ass cheeks, pulling him impossibly deeper, and Eddie collapsed on top of you. His claws shredded the pillow on either side of your head, but he barely noticed, rutting into you once, twice, before he was cumming deep inside your still quivering cunt.

Eddie groaned long and loud as he pumped you full, and you whined at the feeling, clenching around him. Your tight walls milked him for all he was worth, but it wasn’t enough, the ember of lust still smoldering at the base of his spine. He thrust against you helplessly, feeling his cum leak out around his cock, dripping into his pubes, but the sensations only fanned the flames in his belly.

“Fuck, Obi,” he gasped as he continued to rut into you. His mind felt a little clearer, but not by much, his thoughts slow and difficult, his speech even more so. “Christ, I— how do you feel so… f-fucking good? Can’t… get enough. Want you, want you so much it hurts, shit. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“S’okay, Eddie,” you panted, your breath hitching when you realized he wasn’t growing soft inside you. Your hands carded through his hair, tracing the points of his ears, and you leaned up to press a kiss to the edge of his mouth. “Love you so much, baby, you made me feel so good. You can keep going, it’s okay, just take want you need.”

“Fuck,” Eddie snarled and bowed his head. His long hair formed a curtain around your face and swayed back and forth as he started thrusting in earnest. The wet sounds coming from between your legs were lewd, filthy, and suddenly the desire to see his cum leaking out of you seized Eddie by the throat.

He gave you one more hard thrust, punching a weak moan from your lungs, before he pulled back. His still hard cock left your pussy with a slick slurp, and you whined at the emptiness, but the whine turned into a gasp when Eddie suddenly flipped you onto your stomach.

“Ed, what—” you started to ask as you glanced back over your shoulder, but Eddie wasn’t even listening, tugging you up onto your knees and spreading your thighs so he could look at you.

Your pussy was puffy and swollen, your inner thighs slick with your own arousal, but Eddie’s eyes were locked on your lips and the stream of his white cum that was leaking out between them.

He did that. He marked you so deep you won’t ever be able to get him out. Dark satisfaction purred through his chest, and the animal inside him was pleased but not satiated. His cock was still hard and throbbing, slick with Eddie’s cum and your own juices, and he needed to be inside you again, needed it like air.

So he knelt between your spread thighs, hiked up your hips so your ass was in the air while your chest was pressed to the mattress, and then he lined himself up and bottomed out in a single, brutal thrust.

“Fuck, Eddie!” you shouted in surprise, but that was the last coherent thing you said as Eddie started pounding into you from behind.

His mind was completely gone now, wiped clean by the tight clutch of your walls and the sight of you spread out below him like a buffet. Your ass jiggled every time his hips slammed into yours, and you were white-knuckling the sheets, muffling your screams of pleasure into the pillows.

Eddie’s hands were wrapped around your hips as he fucked you through the mattress, and blood bloomed around his claws, the scent heady and thick below the aroma of cum and sex. Without even thinking about it, he spat onto your lower back, using his fingers to smear the saliva into the cuts on your waist and watching as they healed.

You cried out at the sensation and shoved your ass back to meet him on his next thrust, and Eddie swore he hit the back of your throat.

“Shittttttt,” you sobbed as your body jolted with each vicious snap of Eddie’s hips. Then he yanked your waist up higher, and he must have hit that special spot inside you because you cried out again, a spasm running through your limbs as your pussy clamped down around him. “O-Oh, fuck, right there, right— ah! I think I’m— you’re gonna make me cum again, Ed. Oh, shit, you’re— I’m cumming, fuck!”

You started to thrash until Eddie flopped forward, pressing his chest into your spine and shoving you flat onto the mattress.

“That’s it, cum for me, Obi, cum on my cock. Fuck, you feel so good.” He continued to rut into you as you came, and you climaxed so hard you pushed his cock right out. He thrust blindly between your thighs a few times before his head caught on your entrance, and then he slotted himself home again, causing you to wail with sensitivity.

You tried to squirm away but couldn’t with his weight bearing down on you, and something about your vulnerability struck him low in the gut. Eddie felt his balls tighten as he pounded into your sopping wet pussy, and you whimpered as you finally went lax beneath him.

“Eddie,” you whined on a particularly deep thrust, and your fucked out voice made his cock throb deep in your cunt. “Ah! C-Cum inside me, baby, want to feel it again, please!”

“Yessss,” he hissed as he quickened his pace even further, digging his toes into the mattress and flapping his wings for more leverage. The tip of one of his wings knocked the lamp off the bedside table, but he didn’t even care as he felt your walls start to quiver again. “Gonna fill you up, Obi, gonna mark you as mine, mine, mine!”

He punctuated each “mine” with a brutal thrust, and when he felt your walls lock down around him again, the coil in his gut snapped. He snarled as he bottomed out inside your pussy, and you moaned and threw back your head, baring your neck to him. Mindlessly, Eddie lunged forward and sank his fangs into the curve atop your shoulder, and you screamed and abruptly orgasmed for the third time, dragging him along with you.

Eddie repaid every swallow of your blood with another pulse of his seed deep within your cunt, and his vision blacked out as pleasure overrode his senses.

In the black nothingness, Eddie suddenly heard Vecna’s voice again, slithering from the shadows.

Kill her, he whispered, and his ruined, fucked up face flashed through Eddie’s mind.

But Eddie felt stronger than he did before, stronger than he ever had, and it was so easy to shove Vecna back in his cage and slam the door closed.

You don’t control me, Eddie spat into the darkness. I won’t be your Kas the Bloody-Handed. In fact, once I figure out how, I’m going to kill you for hurting Chrissy and Max. And I’m going to make you suffer for every drop of Obi’s blood that you made me draw. So count your fucking days, you ugly, tentacled fuck.

Eddie could faintly feel Vecna’s rage at being denied, but he ignored it as he opened his eyes and came back to the present.

Where he was currently panting against your blood-slicked shoulder.

The all-consuming hunger inside him had finally been satiated, sinking back into the depths like a well-fed sea monster. This meant he could think again, really process what was going on around him, and as reality crashed back in around his ears, guilt and bile immediately rose up in his throat.

“Oh, s-shit, fuck,” Eddie stammered as he shoved himself off you. His cock slid from your pussy with a lewd, wet sound, and you whimpered as he knelt over the backs of your thighs. His cum was dripping out of you again, staining the sheets, but Eddie’s wide eyes were glued to your naked back, to the drying blood that had dripped between your shoulder blades, the patches around your hips. Instead of making him hungry, the sight of the blood made him sick, and he started to hyperventilate. “Fuck, I’m so— are you okay? God, Obi, I-I hurt you. I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I didn’t mean— I tried— fuck!”

His wings flared out as he scrambled off the bed, and he teetered, off-balance. Before he could get any further, though, you suddenly flipped over onto your back, catching his hand and tugging him back down until he was half kneeling on the edge of the mattress.

“Wait, don’t go!” you said, and Eddie noticed your voice was hoarse and raspy from screaming. Your lips were also red and swollen, specks of dried blood on your chin and brow, more evidence of how much he’d hurt you. You should be terrified, should be running for the hills screaming, but your scent was thick with satisfaction, edged faintly with the same worry that was in your eyes. “Don’t run, Eddie. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” he blurted out, unable to stop himself. He tried to tug his hand free from yours, but you merely tightened your grip, staring up at him with resolute stubbornness. “I— goddamn it, Obi, you’re fucking covered in blood. I tore you up—”

“But you healed me, too!” you argued, squeezing his hand. You wiggled up into a seated position, trying to hide a wince but failing. Eddie noticed, and you noticed that he noticed, because you immediately shook your head. “I’m fine, seriously. At worse, I’m just a little sore, which is probably mainly my fault, given how out of shape I am—”

“Don’t,” Eddie cut you off, his voice strangled. “Don’t make jokes. Not about this.”

A frown creased your eyebrows. “Okay, I won’t, sorry. But I need you to hear me when I say it’s okay. That I’m okay. You didn’t force yourself on me. You asked me multiple times, and I told you ‘yes’ multiple times. I wanted you, Ed. I-I love you. And I’m so happy that you came back to me again. The black veins are completely gone now, so you must have shut Vecna out, right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie muttered around the lump in his throat.

Your hand was still clutching his, and you squeezed it as you flashed him a blinding, radiant smile.

“That’s amazing, babe,” you praised, but then a blush suddenly stained your cheeks, and you averted your eyes. “Ahh, sorry. About the, um, pet names. They just kinda came out.”

Eddie blinked down at you, disbelief coating the ball of tangled, shitty emotions in his gut. “You’re… apologizing over pet names? After I just fucked you through your blood-stained sheets and nearly tore a chunk off your shoulder?”

“Well… yeah.” Your blushed only deepened, crawling down your throat and clavicle. “I’ve never called you ‘babe’ or ‘baby’ before, and you might not like it. But I, uh, definitely liked what, um, you just did. Really liked it. In case you missed the three screaming orgasms. Besides, I can get new sheets.”

Eddie stared down at you for an endless moment, his throat constricting around a million things he wanted to say. In the end, he bowed forward and rested his brow on the crown of your head, his wings curling around the two of you as phantom tears stung the backs of his eyes.

“You are insane, certifiable, and I love you so goddamn much, Obi,” he choked out. “I… really don’t fucking deserve you.”

“Hey, none of that,” you muttered as your hand squeezed his again, your other one coming up to cup his face. “I don’t take kindly to people talking shit about my boyfriend, Munson.”

A watery, broken laugh crawled up Eddie’s throat, and he pulled back enough to look down into your face again. You were smiling up at him softly, but the effect was ruined by the dried blood still caked to your forehead. He frowned at the sight, ghosting his thumb over a patch until it flaked off. Then he moved his hands to your shoulders and gently pushed you away.

“Lay back,” he said, and you obeyed instantly, no questions asked. A moment later, your naked body was stretched out over the rumpled sheets, and Eddie felt a phantom remnant of desire twist in his gut. He was still half-kneeling on the edge of the bed, and he dragged his eyes over your form, taking in the patches of skin that were still wet with blood, saliva, and cum.

Guilt and lust warred inside him, but he was apparently silent for too long, because your scent suddenly soured as you folded your arms over the soft swell of your belly. Eddie snapped his gaze to your face, confused by the discomfort and embarrassment he saw there as you stared at the ceiling.

“I, um, know I’m not much to look at outside the heat of the moment—” you started, curling further into yourself, and the dejection in your tone abruptly unfroze Eddie’s tongue.

“You’re beautiful,” he blurted out, and when your wide eyes met his, he couldn’t help but go on. “God, Obi, you’re the most gorgeous, incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Are you kidding? You’re so— you’re prettier than I ever dreamed, and I’ve dreamed about you naked a lot. I mean— Shit, fuck, forget I said that. What I mean is you’re like an ethereal Elven queen, and I’m a bumbling goblin. Or something with wings that I can’t remember right now. Like I seriously have fucking bat wings, and my face goes all veiny when I hulk out, and you were already so far out of my league to begin with—”

“Okay, okay,” you cut him off, but now you were laughing. Your eyes were bright, the shadows of insecurity receding, and your scent bloomed with floral happiness. “Why don’t we just agree that we are two super hot people who are both in the same league and are playing on the same team. Or… does that analogy work?”

“You know as much about sports as I do, sweetheart,” Eddie snorted, and he was smiling now, too. But then he shook his head and situated himself so he was sitting on the edge of the bed beside you. “Now stop distracting me with your charming wiles. I was trying to clean you up.”

“My charming wiles?” you giggled, but the sound was cut short by a soft inhale as Eddie leaned over you. “W-What are you doing?”

“Cleaning you up,” Eddie repeated, smirking softly before he opened his mouth and dragged his tongue over your forehead.

“Ed!” you squealed and halfheartedly tried to squirm away, but he chased after you.

“Stop running, Obi, and let me clean up my mess,” he huffed, his tone partially joking, but his eyes were serious when they met yours.

You stilled beneath him and swallowed, your scent warming slightly again. “Are you… will the blood be okay?”

“I’m pretty full right now,” Eddie scoffed, his tone only slightly self-loathing, but he flashed you a reassuring smile. “And I feel… good. In control. I won’t take anymore, I promise. I’ll just wipe off your skin and heal any still open cuts.”

“Okay, I trust you.” It was a simple declaration, but the sincerity in your voice and smile made Eddie’s throat constrict.

“Thank you,” he grunted, feeling undeserving, but he ignored it and flicked his tongue over your hairline.

True to his word, he didn’t bite you again, and even as he licked away your blood, he remained in control. He couldn’t hear Vecna anymore, but he could feel the bastard in the back of his head like a lingering itch. Eddie did his best to ignore the fucker as he cleaned you up.

He managed to wipe all the blood from your head, arms, and torso, but when he moved down to your hips, he suddenly froze above your splayed thighs. His gaze locked onto the cum that was leaking from your abused pussy, and realization slammed into him like a train.

“Oh, fuck, Obi,” Eddie gasped as his stomach bottomed out inside him, and not in a good way.

“What?” You snapped upright, your eyes wide, and he could hear your heart skipping a beat before it started to pound. “Is it Vecna? Is he coming back? Shit, what can I do?”

“No, no, it’s not… it’s not fucking Vecna.” Eddie shook his head, guilt bubbling up his throat again as he met your gaze. “It’s— I… came. Inside you.”

You blinked at him for a moment, and then some of the alarm faded from your expression, giving way to confusion. “Um… yes? Twice, in fact. I was there.”

“Shitttttt,” Eddie hissed as his hands came up to clutch at his hair. “Fuck, I-I’m so sorry, Obi. I wasn’t thinking, and I know that’s not an excuse, Uncle Wayne always said that was never a good excuse, and even if it was my first time, I should have remembered—”

“Wait!” Your jaw fell open, and Eddie could hear the breath hitch in your lungs. “That… was your first time? You were a virgin?”

“Obi, that’s so not important right now,” he groaned, burying his face into his hands and digging his claws into his skin. “I could have just gotten you p-pregnant. Fuck!”

Eddie recalled how Wayne had made a joke about a toddler with wings, and the possibility that it might happen now made him sick.

“Uh, first of all, it is important that this was your first time.” Your voice drew him out of his spiral, and he noticed that your scent saddened slightly. “And secondly, you can’t have gotten me pregnant because I’m on the pill. Well, I guess there is still a chance, but it’s like point five percent or something I think—”

“You’re on birth control?” Eddie snapped his head up.

“Yes,” you said with a nod, and a faint blush splashed across your cheeks. “For a couple years now. I, um, wanted to tell you, but I know you were trying to keep things PG-13 the last week.”

“Yeah, and see how well that went?” Eddie snorted with a hint of hysteria. The tension and guilt leeched from him body, though, and he leaned forward to rest his head against your shoulder. He was staring directly into your boobs from this angle, but he didn’t mention it.

“All things considered, I think tonight turned out pretty well,” you laughed as your fingers came up to stroke through his hair. Then you paused, and your scent grew hesitant, doubtful. “It was… amazing, really. Much better than my first time. At least for me. I— was it okay for you?”

Eddie blinked and lifted his head from your shoulder, staring at you with incredulity. “Obi, are you serious?”

You blushed and shrugged as you averted your gaze. “I dunno… you said it was your first time, and I know this wasn’t what you’d been envisioning. I don’t regret anything, not a thing, but… a part of me wishes I could have made it special for yo—”

Eddie couldn’t let you finish that thought, so he leaned forward and captured your mouth with his. This kiss was decidedly softer than any of his previous ones tonight, and when he pulled back, he sighed and rested his forehead against yours.

“Sweetheart, you literally just saved my life with your amazing, incredible pussy, I dunno how much more special it could get,” he muttered.

Then he laughed when you gasped and playfully slapped his shoulder.

“Don’t say it like that,” you chided, your cheeks bright red but your smile a mile wide. “You are seriously a perv, Munson, I’m surprised I didn’t notice it sooner.”

“Says the girl who got off on me biting her.” Eddie bared his fangs without thinking, and he didn’t miss how your scent deepened again before it turned embarrassed.

“See if I ever let you do that again,” you huffed, turning away from him and crawling across the bed, but Eddie chased after you.

“Wait, no, please, I was just kidding,” he said and wrapped his arms around you.

You wiggled but didn’t really struggle, and after a moment you relaxed back against his bare chest. Both of you were still naked, and all of your warm skin pressed against his finally unraveled the last knot of fear and unease in his gut. Eddie buried his nose in your hair, inhaling deeply so your scent burrowed into his lungs, and he softly ran his hand down the slope of your side, stopping at your hip.

“God, I love you, Obi,” he murmured into your ear, his throat feeling tight again. “Thank you.”

“For what?” you whispered as you snuggled back into him.

“For… everything. For making my first time as amazing as it could be, given the circumstances. For trusting me, for helping me. You said you were grateful I came back to you, but you were the one who brought be back. Who made me strong enough to fight off Vecna. You always center me, always bring me back when I think I’m too far gone. It’s you, Obi. Just you. Always you.”

Eddie squeezed you against him for emphasis, but you were suddenly squirming in his arms, so he loosened his grip and let you turn around until your face was inches away from his. There were tears in your eyes, the salty scent of them invading his nose, but your smile was soft and happy and loving.

“I’ll aways bring you back, Ed,” you whispered as you cupped his face between your hands. “So tell Vecna he can kiss my fucking ass. Because you’re mine. Just like I’m yours.”

Eddie felt his eyes burn with tears that would never fall, and he couldn’t help but lean forward and kiss you again. He tried to pour all his love into his lips, but he unfortunately got cut short because you suddenly jerked back with a gasp.

“Oh, shit!” you said. “I just realized we need to tell everyone Vecna’s back. Someone needs to check on Max, and fuck, Eleven and Will, too.”

You suddenly rolled away from Eddie, leaning over the edge of the bed to root around on the floor for, presumably, the walkie talkie.

“Uh, sweetheart?” Eddie spoke up as he tore his eyes from your naked back and looked to the alarm clock on the nightstand. “We should probably wait like an hour at least. It’s barely five in the morning, and I don’t think Vecna’s gonna make another move before the sun finishes rising.”

“Well, we didn’t think he was going to make a move in the middle of the night, either,” you said, popping back up with the walkie in hand. Then you settled against the headboard, and Eddie propped himself up on his elbow beside you.

“Alright, fair, but try Henderson first,” Eddie suggested as you reached up to turn on the walkie. “That kid never sleeps.”

You nodded, but you didn’t even have to hail Dustin, because the moment you flicked on the walkie, all hell broke loose.

“— repeat, I repeat, this is a code red!” Dustin’s squeaky voice screamed through the walkie. “Obi, Eddie, come in, goddamn it—”

“Language!” Steve shouted, followed by the squeal of tires and muffled cursing and yelling.

“Steve, can you keep your eyes on the damn road?” Dustin demanded.

“Not with you screaming in my ear, Henderson!”

“Please stop yelling,” Robin’s voice whined. “It’s too early for this!”

“Dustin, have you gotten ahold of Obi or Eddie yet?” Mike suddenly asked, but his voice was more staticky, like his walkie was further away.

“Would I still be screaming ‘code red’ if I had, Mike?” Dustin snipped. “Of course I haven’t!”

“Uhhh, actually,” Eddie finally interjected before someone could start shouting again. “Obi and I just hopped on. What, uh, did we miss?”

There was a beat of silence before everyone started yelling at once.

“Holy shit, I’ve been hailing you guys for almost an hour, where have you been?” Dustin screeched.

“Are you guys okay?” Mike asked at the same time. “El said—”

“Wait, you’ve spoken to Eleven?” you cut in, glancing over to meet Eddie’s eyes.

“Yeah—” Mike started to answer before Dustin cut him off.

“Why the hell do you think we’re all up at five in the morning?” the curly-haired boy demanded. “El and Will called and said they felt Vecna again, so we’ve been trying to round everyone up. Something’s happening!”

“Uhhh, yeah, about that,” Eddie said with a wince. “Something… already happened?”

“What do you mean?” Dustin asked before there was another squealing of tires. “Jesus, Steve, do you know the difference between the brake and the gas?”

“If you want to maneuver around the thousands of sinkholes to hell, then be my guest!”

“Guys, shut up,” Mike snapped, and Eddie could faintly hear Nancy chiding him in the background before he continued. “Eddie, what do you mean something already happened?”

“I mean that, um, Vecna… possessed me, maybe, a little,” he said as he bit his lip.

“What?” Dustin, Mike, and Steve shouted in unison.

“It’s okay,” you quickly cut in when Eddie looked at you for help. “Eddie managed to fight Vecna off, so we’re all okay.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dustin sighed, and Eddie could just picture the kid clutching at his head. “Okay, we obviously need to have a debrief. Steve, Robin, and I are on our way to your house, Obi. Mike and Nancy are picking up Will and El, and Lucas biked to the hospital to check on Max, but he’ll join us later. If Steve doesn’t drive us into a ditch, we should be there in a few minutes.”

“Everyone needs to stop complaining about my driving!” Steve huffed through the walkie. “It is five in the damn morning, I’m driving with no shoes on, and you woke me up screaming, Henderson! My heart’s about to leap out of my damn chest.”

“Excuses, excuses—” Dustin started to say before you suddenly cut him off.

“Alright, I’m signing off for now. We need to clean up, so we’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Wait… Obi, what are you cleaning—”

You turned off the walkie before the kid could finish his sentence, and then you turned to Eddie with wide eyes that trailed down his naked body. Eddie’s eyes did the same to you, and after a moment of silent stillness, you both were scrambling out of bed.

“Shit, shit, shit, I need clothes,” you muttered as you ran out of the master bedroom in your birthday suit.

Eddie just grabbed his sweatpants off the floor and tugged them up his legs. He didn’t feel like struggling with his wings to put a shirt on, but the kids had seen him shirtless before, so he didn’t think it mattered. Then he followed you down the hallway to your own bedroom, where you still kept all your clothes. You were frantically rifling through the dresser and digging through the laundry basket, and you shot a glare over your shoulder when Eddie chuckled.

“This is your fault, Munson,” you said, huffingly tugging a random t-shirt over your head. Your thighs were still slick with Eddie’s cum, but you apparently ignored it as you yanked a pair of panties and sweats up your legs.

“I may have ripped your clothes, but you were the one who told Henderson we needed to ‘clean up,” Eddie snickered.

“Shut up,” you muttered with a blush, and you tried to comb your fingers through your tangled hair. “Do I look… presentable at least?”

Eddie fought back his smile as you stared at him imploringly. “Yes, sweetheart. You look like you just rolled out of bed instead of being fucked through it less than ten minutes ago.”

Your scent immediately deepened with a flare of arousal, and Eddie saw your blush extend down your neck.

“Okay, you definitely can’t say shit like that when everyone gets here,” you grumbled, and Eddie didn’t miss the way you clenched your thighs together. But then you were shaking your head and leveling him with a serious, narrowed-eyed look. “We also need to get our stories straight. I think we can just say you woke up with Vecna possessing you, you bit me, and then regained control. That sounds plausible, right?”

“Very.” Eddie nodded seriously even though he didn’t think it was a big deal if everyone found out what really happened. They all probably assumed Eddie had sex with you nightly, but he didn’t mention that.

“Okay, this is good, good,” you muttered absently, casting your eyes around like you were looking for something. You drew your lower lip between your teeth and started chewing on it, and Eddie finally stepped forward, laid his hands on your shoulders, and pulled you into his chest.

“Take a deep breath, Obi,” he said as his wings curled around you in their own cool, leathery hug. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You say that like you didn’t just give me the scare of a lifetime,” you grumbled into his sternum.

Eddie winced, guilt cropping up inside him again. “I know, I’m so sorry. I never want to make you afraid of me.”

“I wasn’t afraid of you.” Pulling back, you frowned up at him, and you wound your arms around his waist when he tried to step away. “I was afraid for you, Ed. I didn’t want Vecna to take you away again. I… I don’t think I can handle that.”

Eddie swallowed around the lump in his throat and reeled you back in for a tight embrace.

“I know this doesn’t hold much weight given what just happened,” he murmured into your hair. “But I don’t think Vecna has the strength to attack me again. At least not right away. He’s not able to reach out like before, and I think he could only reach me because we have some shitty Upside Down connection. Still, he had to wait until I was asleep to strike, and he obviously wasn’t able to control me for long. Which means he’s weaker. Weaker than when he killed Chrissy and the others. I also saw him, the real him, for just a second. He’s all fucked up, burned, charred. Harrington’s team and El really got him good. I think that’s why he hasn’t come through the gates yet, why he attacked me in my dreams. He’s vulnerable. So, when Henderson and the rest of the Scooby Gang get here, we’ll come up with a plan of attack and take out that bastard for good.”

You sniffled as you rubbed your face against Eddie’s chest, but after a moment, you pulled away and looked up at him. Your eyes were red-rimmed with unshed tears, but your expression was determined, resolute.

“And we’ll figure out how to get you back to normal,” you added. “Don’t get me wrong, I, um, obviously don’t hate the fangs and claws, but you promised me a public date when this shit is all over, and I’m holding you to that, Munson.”

“You’re always keeping me honest, sweetheart,” Eddie said with a grin, and he couldn’t help but pull you back in for one last kiss.

In the distance, he could suddenly hear Harrington’s car turn onto your street, could hear Dustin and Steve faintly arguing, and he knew that in a few minutes, it would be all hands on deck.

But for right now, in this moment, it was just you and Eddie, and Eddie knew he could face all manners of hell as long as you were with him.

Just you. Always you.

(And damn it if he wasn’t taking you on the best date in the history of mankind once Vecna was six feet under.)

[n7punk]

I literally rush to Ao3 to see what was the name of the college AU where drunk kissing happens so I could ask if that's the one. Low and behold you've already made the TOHT series page to stop us from guessing.

i thought it might be obvious what i was working on with the tagline after the series title, but i also knew it was super random to be returning to a fic from two years ago.

the anniversary of toht starting is on the 29th, so I'm probably going to post the first chapter of 'silenced words & daydreams' then. i think its going to be like 3-4 chapters (since im already on chapter 3 and haven't hit everything yet, but im also not that far in).

toht is probably my fic i've returned to the second most, after ditm (and, incidentally, those are the ones ive done edits of, though the toht edit was a lot more minor than the ditm one, not adding anything and preserving the phrasing & styling that i now wouldn't use because its confusing at times but... thats part of the fic, and that fic is seared in my brain, so i don't want to change it). i did a reread while i was sick last month and it got me thinking about all the Thots i had for the verse that i never wrote so... here we are.

i've been working on novels lately (wrote one, revised an old one, and started a third one in the last three months) but i've been working on catradora fic a little here and there. i had the OotW fics i posted recently, i have three au addition fic wips, and ive... ahem... 'gathered research' for another (not to mention i still have like 4 new au ideas and a whole list of OotW ones). don't know when any of these wips will be done/ready (one dates back to last summer.....), but catradora definitely never left my mind, i've just had other projects on the forefront.

oh god please no XD for the past few months, ive been turning anon on for like, the week i post a fic and then turning it off to not get random ones. i also just turn it off whenever i'm fatigued because it greatly reduces the number of messages i get (not that i mind messages, they just take energy and i dont always answer). though i am fatigued right now, i turned it on to give people options to guess because i wanted to see how long it would take :P

i will say, one thing that has changed is i haven't really had interest in writing smut in... a long time. so its not likely to show up much for the time being. that's been seen in a lot of my fics this year, though. ive had more interest in writing stuff that is rated T or M rather than outright E, so the hornies are just gonna have to wait more. sometimes its part of a plot so it still shows up, but i just haven't been interested. that's also why i haven't returned to the Do It For Me series despite having a whole list of ideas for it, because most of them would definitely be rated e.

[anna-hawk]

Always on my mind

Pairing: Shane Walsh x F!Reader Rating: E WC: ~1,7K Warning: unhealthy coping mechanism – post ZA – Sad reader – angst – smut – porn with feelings

I honestly don't know what this is. I've been having smut on the brain for days, but this turned out to be sadder than I meant it to be. I guess I also have a lot of feelings running around my head and this happened. Eh, I wrote some reader insert again at least XD. Also, I wrote this in one sitting, so if you see typos? Oops?

AO3 link

You’re restless. The day had been long and one of the worst you’d had in a good while, which considering the times, should say enough. You toss and turn on your cot in one of the shared rooms in the Greenes’ house, unable to get the day’s images out of your head. You’d lost two of the five people who have travelled with you before you’d met Rick and Shane’s group. All of you had been strangers when everything had started falling apart, but after so long on the road together, you’d all become close. They, like you, had been aware of the risks, knew that death lies just around the corner if you let your guard down for even one second. You learn to deal with grief differently, moving on faster than anyone deserves, only because if you don’t, you’re next. Even if you sometimes think that it would be so much easier to just stop fighting. 

Contrary to the rest of your initial group, you hadn’t cried. You couldn't. Shane had stepped towards the bodies, but you’d pushed him away. You wanted to be the one to make sure that your friends wouldn’t turn, and fought down the tremor in your hand as you used your knife. You’d caught Shane watching you out of the corner of your eyes as Rick had come forward to speak kind words and squeezed your shoulder. You’d only vaguely nodded and helped to dig the graves, the labor stopping most thoughts. Hershel had said a few words afterwards, but you’d barely heard any of them, feeling physically and mentally drained. 

Despite your fatigue, hours later, you’re unable to sleep, and finally kick off the sheets to get up and leave the room. Carol sees you leave and gently grasps your hand as you pass by her. You look down at her and into her sorrowful eyes, her face illuminated by the moon coming through the curtains. She doesn’t say anything, but you understand her just fine. You can’t manage a smile, but return the gesture, and she lets go. 

You amble through the quiet house and exit through the main door. The cool air feels good on your skin, and you breathe in deeply. You absently stare at the tents sitting on Hershel’s land and are suddenly hit by an urge that you hope will help get your brain to stop working for a few hours of rest. You hop down the front steps and walk towards one specific tent. Dale is the only one still awake and sitting on the trailer, on watch. He’s not facing towards you, and you keep your steps light enough that he doesn’t hear you. You don’t really care if he does see you, but you also don’t want to deal with his misplaced disappointed look. You know too well what his opinion would be, and you couldn’t care less about hearing it. 

Kneeling in front of the tent, you unzip it as quietly as possible, but Shane is awake before you have it all the way open. He’s sitting up on his sleeping bag and greets you with his rifle aimed at your face. You stare at Shane over the barrel, face expressionless, as you wait for him to lower the gun. 

“Jesus fucking Christ. You got a death wish or somethin’?” He barks under his breath, mindful of the others, but levels you with a pissed off look while he puts the rifle away to the side. 

You roll your eyes, unsure if he can even see it since you have your back to the moon. You crawl forward on your hands and knees until your knees stop at each side of his thighs. You lift your upper body to fist both hands into Shane’s brown tee shirt and pull him into a kiss. 

“The fuck you’re doing?” Shane pushes you away with a palm over your chest, staring at you with a confused expression, his eyebrows lowering over his eyes. 

“What does it look like I’m doing?” You counter, pressing forward again, but Shane grabs you by the shoulders and holds you still. 

“Yeah, exactly. ‘s why I’m asking. Why 're you not going to Daryl? You two always look so chummy.” 

“Well, if you don’t want to, maybe I should,” you say with an exasperated sigh and pull back. 

You wouldn’t. You like Daryl a lot, but not like that. Shane obviously isn’t aware of that because he catches one of your wrists before you can move further away from him. 

“Didn’t say that,” he says gruffly and draws you back towards him with a hand over your nape. 

You let out a long exhale at the contact of his lips, opening your mouth for more, now. You deliberately turn the kiss into a filthy exchange, wanting nothing more than to get what you wanted across without speech. Shane understands well enough and moves the two of you until you’re sitting astride him and pulling at each other’s clothes. You break the kiss to remove your top, and the moment that your chest is bare in front of him, Shane surges forward to mouth over the skin between your breasts. Your breath catches once he turns his head to one side and sucks a nipple into his mouth. You roll your hips over his, feeling him swell under you and pushing up. Shane switches to your other nipple, making you groan when he lightly pulls on it with his teeth before sucking on it again. You fist the collar of his tee shirt and pull, getting desperate for more. Shane gets the hint and removes the tee shirt, angling his face to yours to kiss you a second later. You manage to push down your pants and kick them off while staying on top of him, reaching for the fastenings of his pants right after. 

“Come on,” you mutter angrily against his lips as Shane pushes your hands away once you’ve opened his fly. 

An instant later, Shane grabs you around the waist and throws you to the side, making you land on your back with a shocked gasp. Shane sits up between your legs, pants undone, but he doesn’t move for a beat, only staring at you. This time, he’s the one with his back to the moonlight, meaning that you can’t clearly see his expression. You’re about to complain about him stopping, when he lowers his upper half over you and kisses you silent, delving his tongue deep inside and licking over yours with intent. You moan and throw your arms around his shoulders, your thighs squeezing his sides. Holding himself up with an elbow next to your neck, his arm circling over your head, you feel his other hand slowly stroking down your body. He shuffles his knees forward until the back of your thighs rest over the top of his, moving your legs up and further apart. His fingers slide down your mound, two of them slipping between your folds.

You’re not ready for the way Shane breaches your wet entrance with those fingers, and you have to gasp sharply at the sudden pleasure of being filled. Shane leans up slightly, positioning himself to be able to look at you as his fingers start fucking you in earnest. Your chest bows up as you throw your head back and moan deeply, taken aback by Shane’s action. You’d intended for him to fuck you hard and fast to get your mind off the spiraling thoughts, playing into the fact that you know that the attraction is mutual. You hadn’t expected this, however. The way he’s watching you raptly as he works his hand quickly, to get you there as fast as possible. You want to turn your face away, push his hand away because it’s all becoming too much too soon. But you can’t. You have a hand gripping the top of the arm that’s fucking you, but you can’t do more than just keeping it there. It’s the fact that he’s observing you, though, that makes you unable to move. He’s looking for something, knowing that you came to him for a reason. To forget. 

Moan after moan leaves you, and you’re gritting your teeth as not to make too much noise. You have to bite your lower lip on a scream as Shane plunges another thick finger inside you. 

“Let go, Darlin’,” Shane rasps. “Come on.” 

And you do. Your brow creases as explosive bliss rocks through your entire body, making your legs quiver and tiny moans to leave through your lips. Shane guides you through it, shushing you and slowly kissing you. 

You barely register it when Shane hikes your thighs over his hips and lowers his whole body over you, until you feel his cock pushing inside you. You make a garbled sound as your tender walls are spread even further, on the brink of uncomfortable, but the pleasure wins once Shane starts moving and your voice goes higher. Shane clasps a palm over your mouth to stop you from getting louder, something you’re grateful for since you seem unable to hold back any longer. Definitely not once Shane pushes one of your legs up some more to give him a better angle, so that now, he can fuck into you deeper, hips snapping forward faster. In the half light, you can tell that his eyes never leave yours, his face only a few inches away from yours, over the hand still on your mouth. Your fingers dig into his shoulders and your heels into the back of his thighs as you start coming around him for the second time. You can feel your walls fluttering around his cock, and get an aborted few curses from Shane for it. He removes his hand from your mouth, and this time he catches any sound you make with his lips, sliding his tongue alongside yours and groaning deep in the back of his throat as he comes as well. 

Shane rests his forehead against yours, both of you breathing deeply for a while. As he slowly rolls to the side, you can actually feel how your body slowly unwinds, your mind going fuzzy with sleepiness. You know, in the far back of your head, that tomorrow you’ll have to deal with all of it. That you’ll probably have to talk about tonight with Shane. But as he helps your groggy body to move enough to put on a few clothes again and get you into a more comfortable position for sleep – because there’s no way that you’re going anywhere now – his barely audible I got you, darling, gives you hope that things could be okay. 

[wangxianficrecs]

Fic Finder

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1.  Hi, I'm looking for an Untamed fic, maybe you'll be able to help. It's a canon divergence AU in which WWX doesn't lose his core, Jiang Fengmian lives and it's implied that his core was transferred to JC (heavily implied; JFM retires as the Sect Leader after that). This is absolutely not the most important part of this fic but it's a paragraph that I've got stuck in my head and now I'm searching for the rest @_@ Thanks in advance! ~ @otemporaetmores

FOUND! by @notsobabblespace, who was reminded of  I’m aching and I know you are too by edenwolfie (part 3 in series, M, 23k, wangxian)

FOUND!  by @jim-is-spocks-thyla, who suggests ❤️ to arrive late is better than not to arrive at all by Moominmammashandbag (M, 35k, wangxian) [ETA:  Oops, not this one.  JFM has no core, but he didn’t give it to JC]

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2.  Hi Mojo! I’m in need of you/your followers help in finding a fic that I read a little while ago. It was a fic where Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi lived together in Cloud Recesses and their children were Sizhui and an OOC that was younger than him. I remember SiZhui faced a lot of criticism for not being the chief cultivator’s real child? And they were happy he had a younger sibling that would be sect leader in the future because he was blood. Come to think of it, this is probably an ABO fic too. Thanks for your time 💜

FOUND! @andidontmeanto believes this is Blue Blood by PotterheadAvengerDemigod (T, 91k, wangxian, my post)

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3.  Aksks it's like 3 am but I just remembered a fic and I can't find it?? I'd really, really appreciate your help. It was a wangxian fic, maybe a oneshot idk, and lwj was kind of a nerd and wwx a badboy? So basically lwj has a massive crush on him and dresses up like wwx etc. (i think he even got an undercut) and after a party they sleep with each other at lwj's place?

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4.  i’m looking for a fic set in the where lwj’s mother killed his father? i don’t think that was a main plot point but it did show up in his backstory - any idea what this might be? ~ @thehype

FOUND!  @rentslirott thinks this could be ❤️the best of you by sysrae (E, 42k, wangxian, my post)

FOUND!  @castaways-logbook offers  The Right to Care by travelingneuritis (E, 39k, wangxian, WIP)

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5.  ... same as #6 ...

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6.  Hello friend, sorry for the inconvenience but I wanted to see if you could please find me a fic that I lost but I only remember more or less the final part, it goes more or less like this, lan zhan and wei ying are kidnapped by jin guangyao and lock them up if not I'm wrong in some cells next to lan xichen after the fights jin guangyao dies but lan xichen did know how bad jin guangyao had done and he didn't care and then to get revenge he wants to kill wei ying but lan zhan kills him and sizhui gets scared It was more or less like that, please help me ~ @isa0123lol

FOUND!  by @wangxiansfics who says that tragically it’s no longer available, but @dulachodladh found it on WaybackMachine here: Thread and Needle by haysel (M, 86k, wangxian)

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7.  Hi, Mojo! I'm glad that you're back but I hope you enjoyed your time off tumblr! Can you and/or your followers help me find a fic? I think the summary was talking about wwx and somehow they were asking mingjue for help since he's the only one who can help. The summary was in italics and it's a dialogue from some guy? And a shorter summary below. Sadly this is the only thing I can remember but I hope you can still help me

FOUND!  @alwayswenning suggests love, in fire and blood by cicer (E, 360k, wangxian, has it’s own fanfic here, I just finished this last night!, my bookmark)

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8.  Sorry to bombard you as soon as you're back, but this one's driving me crazy--a modern AU where they met online. WWX thinks LWJ is an old man from how he talks. I don't remember much except the excerpt made it seem like he still was amused by/enjoyed talking to him, and Wen Qing was telling him it was a bad idea and to stop. It's not How to Fall In Love With a Catfish, tho that one is brilliant! (Also any top notch identity porn would be great) Hope your break was restful, you deserve it! Thanks

Here’s my #identity porn tag, but I’m not sure about this exact story.

I'm the anon for #8 on the fic finder. Though I'm excited to read it, the suggested fic isn't the one I was looking for. I swear I thought I saw it on here around a month ago or slightly more, but searches have failed me.

FOUND!  Rating: General Audiences by Mishaa (T, 18k, wangxian WIP) -  mysterious author LWJ (speculated to be an old man because of his formality) and infamous artist WWX paired up for an Untamed Big Bang (in an AU where JGY was the series’ antiheroic protagonist; this fic was written before the release of CQL.)

FOUND?  could you be looking for  Something Real by Latios (G, 5k, wangxian, my post) - wwx thinks lwj is an old man, but there’s no WQ.  There are many pictures of bunnies.

SIMILAR! @emilysidhe thought of ID Bro Saga by Bowandtie (T, 39k, wangxian)

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9.  Hey, how are you? Could you help me please? I've read 3 fanfics once, but I can't find them anymore. 1 - Nanny Problem, Wei is going to be the babysitter of A-Yuan, he is an omega and Lan is an alpha. 2 - Doctor Perfect, Yibo is an omega nurse and Xiao is an alpha doctor. 3 - The Baby of my Omega, Yibo is omega and Xiao is alpha, both of them are bodyguards, but Yibo has to protect Xiao in the beginning. I think they were at ao3, but I really can't find them. Can you help me please? Thank you!! ~ @weallmad

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10.  Hi! Im happy you’re back. I hope you had a good break. I missed your recommendations, but at the same time i got a break from fics and actually studied to my tests haha.  [Ah!  I’m glad to hear your time was spent productively!]  I’m looking for a fic like Linger in the Sun by etymologyplayground. In the fic im looking for wangxian slowly lose their senses instead of all of them at once. Like they lose their hearing, then touch, sight etc, They can’t see each other or hear each other. I’m sorry i can’t explain very well.

FOUND?  Could you be thinking of  ❤️shadows in the sun rise by Yuu_chi (E, 25k, wangxian)?  Only lwj losese his senses one by one in this one, though.

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11.  heyyy im trying to find this fic where wwx died the first time he was thrown in to the burial mounds then 10 years later he gets resurrected or something. I can't find it on AO3 and it's been bugging me for days. Thank you!

FOUND!  Well, @moku-youbi offers both of these as possibilities:

Did I Not Explain Why the Sunset Turns Red? by 3988Akasha (E, 100k, wangxian)

we're starting at the end by Miss_Enthusiasimal (M, 95k, wangxian)

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12.  Hi I am looking for a fic where wwx is a witch (/mage?) in a world where magic is being persecuted (especially in Gusu) except for Yunmeng/Lanling I think but they're still frowned upon nonetheless. Then after accidentally hurting Shijie, wwx runs away, and ends up hiding in Gusu pretending to be a servant to lwj (lwj is a prince, lxc is the emperor) but lwj actually knows of his identity and tries not-so-discreetly to protect him from being caught. Thanks!

FOUND! by @bibliobasilisk who gives us Witchfinder by misbehavingvigilante (E, 86k, wangxian)

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13.  Hi! Firstly, I'm glad to see you're back, and I hope your break was a good one! I'm trying to find a LWJ/WWX story that I had planned to read and ending up losing before I could. It was set in the immediate aftermath of the 33 lashes, LWJ is in the Jingshi recovering when a healer(?) discovers he's pregnant (by WWX). It may have been a/b/o verse, but I'm not 100% on that. Part of the story was a flashback to when WWX was still alive. Thank you!

FOUND!  by nonny themself.  It’s Unexpected Surprise by Glucose_Gremlin (E, 4k, wangxian)

SIMILAR! @mondelgel suggests my heart is kept as pure as ice in a jade vase/一片冰心在玉壶 by Daledesu (M, 21k, wangxian, WIP)

SIMILAR! from @impending-cuttlefish:  something new, something white, something blue by ariskamalt (E, 140k, wangxian, WIP)

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14.  I'm trying to find this one fic where Jin Ling finds this diary that Wei Ying wrote as the Yiling Patriarch that basically reveals everything, including the golden core reveal and it even has training tips that helps Jon Ling improve. When Wei Ying comes back, he tries everything to keep him there because he is THE best uncle now. I need to find it because it is a N E E D.

FOUND? by @theladypeartree who says, “The Truth (Untold) is jl reading jyl's journals, not wwx's though. And mordant is jl returning wwx's journals that he found, not grew up with. Neither fit #14 properly, but I seriously could not find anything closer after two solid days of searching. Good luck!“

The Truth (Untold) by anxiouswreck0_0 (g, 3k, wangxian, jin ling & wei wuxian)

or this one on ffn:

mordant by tennisnotensai (M, 18k, wangxian, here’s the link for mobile)

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15.  I have heard tell of a Sizhui/Jingyi fic where the boys end up going to Wangxian for advice about how to be intimate. Can you help me find it?

FOUND!  @manaika-chan says this one is On Advisement by LaMachina17 (M, 19k, wangxian, zhuiling, chengyi)

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16.  nm

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17.  Hi! Sorry, do you happen to know that nsfw fic where wwx is still studying in the cloud recesses and he’s reading a novel (im not sure if it was from nhs) that features a cultivator couple and there’s a scene in the book where the woman was pegging her husband? Basically wwx got curious about this and tried fingering himself. I remember he was hiding in the back mountains and then lwj eventually caught him

FOUND?  Could you be thinking of  Deep in the Woods by malkinmalkout (E, 5k, wangxian, my post)?

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18.  Ahhh I'm going crazy trying to think of a fic that I've read where Lan Zhan killed Wen Chao in a locker room and nie huaisang stood guard outside the door! Then lan zhan went to lan huan and said I killed someone and he said did they deserve it? Then it's fine. And I can't remember the name of the fic! Have you heard of it? ~ @uchihaautumn

FOUND! @artemisisdiana offers So Full Of Love (Wouldn't Know Where to Start) by witchupbitch (M, 54k, wangxian, WIP)

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19.  Hi, I was wondering if you could help me find a fic. I read it a while ago and I don't really remember all the details but it was a modern au where Lan Wangji was a police officer in this small town and Wei Wuxian comes back after years, having left the town due to some stuff. Thank you in advance.

Btw love your blog. I live for your fic recs.  [Thank you!]

FOUND?  Could you be looking for medium blues by dark_and_terrible (E,193k,  wangxian)?  It appears to be taken down atm, but it might come back (it’s done it before).

FOUND! by @grannyweatherwaxshat who offers When a Bird Flies, It Leaves Feathers by Bem_Kofi (not rated, 75k, wangxian)

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20.  Hi mojo!! First of all I luv your blog Thank you so much for all those ficrecs.  [You’re welcome!]  Actually I’m looking for a fic I read months ago. I probably found the fic from your blog. But I can’t seem to find it now 😢 it was a modern au wangxian fic (inspired by call me by ur name?) wwx was like 5 years older than lwj. (And lwj was like 16?) Wwx lives in another city but he spent around a year in cloud recesses with lwj in the past. And wwx yanli and jc visits cloud recesses again and wangxian gets 2gether

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[My ko-fi.]

[asoftervirge]

Say No To This

RATING: M

PAIRINGS: V. Sanders/J. Sanders (main); Re. Sanders./V. Sanders (platonic); E. Picani/V. Sanders (therapist-client relationship); other Virgil-centric relationships (mentioned)

CHAPTER WARNINGS/KINKS: Neopronouns galore, trans!Janus, enby!Virgil, genderqueer!Remus, Smoking (mainly cigarettes with mentions of weed), Exes wih Benefits relationship, Kissing/Making Out, implied Smut, mentions of Alcohol, Sensory Overload and Panic Attacks, Relationship status go brrr, Remus being Remus-- but its also a protective friend, Swearing, Open/Ambiguous Ending

SUMMARY: Virgil and Janus have been broken up for over a year now; it was amicable and they remained on friendly terms afterwards. However....neither one of them can stop seeing each other, which is why they’ve been having an Exes-With-Benefits sort of relationship....even if Virgil is planning on meeting others for potential dates, and he’s in therapy with Emile. Remus messages vem to make a decision about whether or not ve should get back together with Janus or not.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I wrote something...last Halloween to be exact. It’s been a long and difficult year for all of us, and I wasn’t really sure if I would ever write anything again...but here I am! This is my piece for the @sandersidesbigbang, and I just want to thank all the mods for letting me participate in this, it was truly an experience. <3 I haven’t written a one-shot like this in a very long time, it isn’t my longest one (that belongs to a fic for a different fandom), but I still hope you all enjoy it nonetheless. Artwork for this fic was created by @bisexualoftheblade, thank you very much for putting up with me and my shitty-ass mental health these past couple months. XD And remember, this fic has some pretty heavy themes in it, so please heed the tags at the top of this and on AO3! Thank you very much and I hope you all enjoy! xx Virge

AO3 || Buy Me A Ko-Fi!

Virgil stood by vir apartment window as the rain drizzled against vir building, seemingly tapping in a rhythmic beat of the music ve was listening to through vir headphones. As ve drifted along in another universe as ve placed a cigarette between his lips. The smell of mint wafted through vir nose as ve lit the butt, the flick of the lighter coincidentally matching the sound of thunder rolling in the distance.

Ve blew a long stream of smoke against the glass as ve fiddled with vir phone currently resting in vir pocket. Grey eyes staying focused on the various sights of the city in front of vem; whether it be the passing cars speeding by, the building lights switching between off and on, or the people sprinting along the sidewalk. Eventually, ve pulled out vir phone, turning it on as ve read the time on vir lock screen. Almost 8 o’clock at night. No one had called or texted vem about anything, which is good because ve was having a personal moment, not really in the mood to talk to anybody presently. Vir index finger scrolled and tapped aimlessly as ve inhaled a breath from vir cigarette; that is until ve found vemself staring intensely at vir contacts.

The nickname “Snakey” gazing back at vem, little snake and yellow heart emoji and all.

All noises ceased to exist as ve debated whether or not to send a message to vem. Truth be told, ve had been contemplating that idea for most of the evening, but it finally came to head. Ve thought a lot about vem, more so than usual lately; there was a lot that went into this particular relationship. Maybe it wasn’t as complex on their end as it was for Virgil, but this was mainly for the harbored feelings in regards to them, some ve had been dealing with for about six months or so.

READ THE REST ON AO3

[missjanjie]

Taste of a Poison Paradise | Chapter 8

Title: Taste of a Poison Paradise Summary: Life at Jackie Cox’s strip club, Poison Paradise, isn’t just lapdances and g-strings. There’s enough drama, lust, and heartache to rival any soap opera. None of the girls know what to expect on any given shift, especially while navigating their torrid, complicated relationships. Word Count: ~3k (this chapter) / ~24.2k (total) Relationship(s): Lemyanka (Lemon/Priyanka), Crygi (Crystal Methyd/Gigi Goode), Sportsdoll (Jan Sport/Nicky Doll), Jaidie (Jaida Essence Hall/Jackie Cox), BVK (Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo/Kameron Michaels), Rosnali (Rosé/Denali Foxx) Rating: E

Read on AO3 | Ko-Fi

Chapter Summary: Things seem to be going well for Lemon until they go really bad really fast. Things are actually going well for Jackie and Jaida.

-

For the next couple of weeks, it seemed like Lemon was on the mend. She had finished her finals, gotten through her senior year, and now it was time to celebrate. Hers and Gigi’s graduations were only a couple of days apart, so the group decided to combine their graduation party that weekend.

It was one of the rare times the club was closed on a Saturday, but Jackie wanted to make sure everyone could celebrate together and turned the main room into their party space. “Cheers,” she said, raising her glass, “to Lemon and Gigi, college graduates!”

The group clinked their glasses together and drank, everyone resuming their casual conversation, relaxed, and enjoying one another’s company. With the exception, of course, of Lemon and Priyanka, who were still trying to avoid each other like the plague.

“Look, I love those two as much as the rest of y’all, but I’ve stopped feeling sorry for them — at this point, it’s just annoying,” Kameron remarked as she watched the way they behaved with a grimace. “Not that it’s any of my business, but it kind of is considering how often I have to witness them, but how long were they hooking up for anyway?”

Vanessa furrowed her brows as she counted on her fingers. “Dunno, like four months?”

“Shit, that’s like a lesbian year,” she murmured, sipping her drink. “This isn’t gonna fix itself is it?”

“Not as long as Pri’s got that rock on her finger.”

“It could be worse,” Brooke Lynn chimed in, her lips pursed around the straw in her glass, “at least she doesn’t wear it to work, can you imagine the fit Lemon would throw if she had to stare down a diamond every day?”

The three of them looked at Lemon, who, at least for the moment, appeared to be enjoying herself, then at Priyanka, who was talking to Crystal and looking stressed.

“So, dress shopping is happening on Wednesday?” Crystal asked. “Does she know?”

“Of course she doesn’t know,” Priyanka scoffed and shook her head, “I have no idea how to keep her from knowing, no one can keep a secret in their family.”

Crystal winced but nodded. “Well, good luck,” she offered before Gigi made their way to her side and her attention immediately became divided.

“Thanks,” Priyanka mumbled, her gaze drifting to Lemon, who was talking animatedly to Jan and Rosé, “I’ll need it.”

------

By the time Wednesday rolled around, Priyanka’s nerves hadn’t quelled in the slightest. Lucky for her, at least, those with her — her mother, sister, and future mother-in-law wrote it off as pre-wedding jitters. Scarlett knew better, but there was no need to blow up her best friend’s spot like that.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a more traditional store?” The mother-in-law asked, “I know Mark doesn’t want your culture to be ignored.”

“It will be two separate ceremonies,” Priyanka’s mom cut in before she could speak for herself, “she will be wearing her grandmother’s sari for that.”

Priyanka had to fight off the pained expression that tried to twist its way onto her face. It was only when she had broken the news to her family that she remembered what a big event weddings were in her family. She wasn’t about to get off lightly with this. Instead, she let the assistant at the shop lead her to a rack of dresses and suggested a few. She agreed to them without giving them a proper look, figuring she would let a majority rule.

Once she was in the first dress, she returned to the main room and stepped up on the platform in front of the mirrors. Right away, the women began discussing and debating the pros and cons of the dress — where it fit right, where it’d need to be taken in. But she couldn’t bring herself to focus on anything, instead zoning out to the song playing through the store’s speakers.

I'm living for the only thing I know I'm running and not quite sure where to go And I don't know what I'm diving into Just hanging by a moment here with you

Normally, Priyanka would roll her eyes at this sort of song, at the cheesy love in the lyrics. But with her only alternative being actively participating in shopping for a wedding dress, she listened to the music and let it resonate.

Desperate for changing Starving for truth I'm closer to where I started I'm chasing after you

She winced but blamed it on accidentally being stuck with a pin. They didn’t have to play a song that hit so close to home, she thought. It made it that much harder to ignore the feelings that bubbled up inside her. It was only then that she realized someone was talking to her. “Huh?”

“I asked if you liked the dress,” Scarlett replied.

“Oh,” she cleared her throat. “Yeah, it’s fine.” She then realized she should have been more convincing because she found herself ushered back into the dressing room to try on dress number two, which she would then force enthusiasm for so the day would end as soon as possible.

“Are you okay?” her mother asked with sincere concern.

Priyanka nodded as she stepped off the platform. “Just a little lightheaded, I didn’t have breakfast.”

“Well, let’s get this dress taken care of, then we’ll go get something to eat.”

She nodded again as she went back to change into her regular clothes. Maybe she did just need to eat, she thought. Maybe some food or a nap would bring her back into reality. The reality where she was preparing to get married. The reality that Lemon could no longer be the main character in, no matter what some stupid song was trying to tell her. Or even worse, no matter how much she wanted her to be.

------

“You don’t normally ask me to make house calls,” Jaida remarked as Jackie let her into the apartment, “is everything okay?”

Jackie exhaled deeply. No matter how many times she had rehearsed what she was going to say, she still ended up tongue-tied the second she laid eyes on her. But she was determined to work her way through this and not let nerves get the best of her. “I watched the video you did with Denali. I… I watched it more times than I’d like to admit,” she confessed. “And I can’t get the image of you fucking her out of my mind. But more specifically… I can’t stop picturing myself in her place.”

Jaida had to put all of her mental energy into fighting off a smug grin. She wanted to choose her words carefully, not wanting to overwhelm an already anxious Jackie. “Since we’re being honest here, that’s kinda what I was aiming for,” at Jackie’s confused reaction, she continued, “you could have been less obvious with your username and how you talk online. Maybe it’s ‘cause I know you so well, but I could read all of your messages in your voice.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t want you to feel pressured to confront how you felt, considering your coming out was still fresh for you. I just wanted you to know that the option was there whenever you were ready.”

There was a silent beat before Jackie swallowed thickly and told her, “I’m ready.”

“Then tell me what you want, baby.”

“I want you to fuck me.” The words felt foreign for Jackie to say, the phrase has never left her lips with any sort of sincerity before. But at the same time, she had never been more certain in her life about what she wanted and how badly she wanted it.

Jaida moved to Jackie, wrapping her arms around her waist and kissing her deeply. “I’m gonna take good care of you, okay?” she promised as they made their way to the bedroom.

And Jackie trusted her, she trusted her more than she would have anyone else in this position. She let Jaida take her to bed, let her take her time undressing her and pressing kisses to every newly exposed inch of skin. She eagerly helped her clothes off as well, letting her hands roam her body in ways she had only fantasized about.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of being loud,” Jaida told her. “I wanna hear you, wanna know how good I’m making you feel.” As she spoke, her fingers glided down Jackie’s body, stopping between her thighs before starting to rub her clit in small, firm circles.

Jackie’s head tilted back into the pillows, soft moans spilling from her lips. Her body yielded to Jaida’s touch and her moans grew louder as the other woman eased one finger into her, thrusting and curling it before adding another and picking up a steady rhythm.

“Good girl,” she praised, trailing kisses down her body. She then slowly eased her fingers out and replaced them with her tongue, licking and thrusting at a similar pace while her fingers moved to rub her clit in tandem.

It wasn’t long before the sensation became overwhelming and Jackie’s hips started to jerk erratically. She barely managed to squeak out a warning before she came harder than she ever had before, her body trembling when she was spent. “Oh my god…”

Jaida came back up and laid beside her. “Are you okay?” she asked softly, pushing the hair out of her face.

“I’m good,” Jackie assured. “I just… I haven’t… it, um…”

“Jackie…” she furrowed her brows and sat up a bit, “have you ever been with a woman before?”

Jackie’s face turned a deep shade of red. “I have, kind of. It’s been hard to work through so many years of repression and internalized homophobia, you know? I’ve made out with girls, fooled around a bit. But I guess no, I’ve never properly had sex with another woman before. I wouldn’t have wanted to put that pressure on you anyway. Besides, I couldn’t have asked for a better first time.”

Jaida exhaled deeply, suddenly becoming aware of the weight that’d built upon her chest. “Then that’s all I needed to hear.”

------

“There’s a birthday party out there tonight,” Gigi remarked offhandedly as they and Lemon got ready in the quick-change room. “I know how much you love those,” they added with an overly exaggerated eye roll.

Lemon groaned. Birthdays and bachelor parties were tied for the worst groups of men to deal with as clients, the only exceptions being the ones that take it as an opportunity to go all out and tip well. “And you’re on the stage next?” she let out another disgruntled whine when they nodded, finishing off her cocktail. “Gonna get a refill, gonna need it for doing rounds.” Naturally, when she went to the bar, she went right to Crystal. The downside was Crystal knew to cut her off after three drinks and she had to flirt with men to keep the drinks coming.

“You’re getting your third one this early?” Crystal questioned as she mixed it for her. “Something on your mind?”

“Nope. Just got a birthday party that’s probably all gonna want lap dances,” she replied, taking a swig as soon as she got the drink in her hand. Sure, it didn’t help that she had seen Scarlett’s instagram post of Priyanka in her wedding dress earlier, but she wasn’t about to hash that out, especially not with the bride-to-be all of four feet away.

And Crystal wasn’t entirely convinced, but she knew there was no use in pushing further. “Well, good luck,” she offered.

Lemon set her empty glass on the counter before making her way through the crowd. It took a little while before she ended up in the vicinity of the group of men, and not long after that, they flagged her down. At first, it was business as usual, though she couldn’t shake the feeling that one of the men seemed familiar.

“Hey Mark,” the man celebrating his birthday remarked, “maybe we should come back here for your bachelor party. I bet Priyanka won’t mind!” he laughed.

That made Lemon freeze in her tracks as it all clicked. She saw red and her blood boiled with a wave of anger and loathing she had never felt before. Something inside of her took over, she hadn’t even realized she had thrown a drink in his face and screamed at him until Kameron was pulling her away and all eyes in the club were on her, including Priyanka’s, who had dropped everything to run over the second she heard Lemon scream.

“Who the hell are you?” Mark asked incredulously.

“I’m who your fianceé thinks about while you’re fucking her,” Lemon snarled while locked in Kameron’s grasp.

It was then that both Mark and Lemon realized Priyanka was right there. “What the fuck is she talking about, Pri?”

Priyanka felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach as she prayed for the floor to open up beneath her so the ground would swallow her whole. She knew she had been playing a dangerous game, but she could have never predicted that it would blow up in her face this badly. “I-”

“She’s never gonna love you,” Lemon continued with disdain in her voice. But then her tone softened to a calm, albeit distant one. “But don’t worry,” she looked towards Priyanka, their eyes meeting, “she’s never gonna love me either.”

Other than the music playing in the background, the room was silent as Lemon let Kameron take her upstairs to the common room. “How are you feeling?” she asked gently as she sat at the other end of the couch, resting her hand on the smaller girl’s leg. “You really caused a scene back there.”

“Whatever,” she mumbled. “He was gonna find out eventually. You can’t live a lie forever,” she hiccuped as she sprawled her barely-dressed body out. “I need another drink.”

“The only thing you’re drinking is water,” she said sternly, getting up and grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and bringing it back, propping Lemon up enough so she could drink. “I’m gonna call Rosé and have her take you home, I don’t think you should stick around tonight,” she told her as she fished her phone from her pocket.

Lemon nodded and pushed herself to sit up properly. She hung her head down, intentionally hiding her face from Kameron as she sniffled quietly. “Pri’s gonna hate me now, isn’t she?”

Kameron winced, unsure of how honest she should be with someone both drunk and emotionally unstable. “I think once the dust settles, you two are going to have to have a long talk. It’s not gonna be easy, but it’s gonna be the only way you two have a shot at healing.”

“I ruined her marriage.”

She shook her head. “She ruined her marriage the moment she said yes to someone she didn’t want to be with. She probably would’ve gotten cold feet and left him at the altar,” she mused, both out of her honest belief and the hope that she could get Lemon to crack a smile. And once she did, she felt comfortable getting back up and calling Rosé, warning her of exactly what happened.

“I got here as fast as I could,” Rosé announced once she made it upstairs. “Three different guys tried to buy lap dances off me on the way, sorry,” she added before rushing to her cousin’s side. “You’ve done it now, huh, Lem?” she shook her head as she helped her to her feet.

Vanessa emerged from the locker room with the rest of Lemon’s belongings. “Here, you might wanna get her changed before you take her back outta here.”

Kameron furrowed her brows. “You know her locker combination?”

“Um… yes?” she tucked a bobby pin into her back pocket. “This ain’t about me,” she was quick to change the subject and helped Lemon get changed.

Rosé effectively ignored the entire exchange, saying her goodbyes to the other women before driving Lemon back home and getting her changed again, this time into pajamas. “Mik isn’t home, you can sleep in her bed,” she offered.

Lemon chewed her lip for a moment, then shook her head. “Can I stay with you? I just… I don’t wanna be by myself.”

“Of course, baby,” she assured and tucked her into bed. “Do you need anything? Water? Something to eat?”

“Need to wake up in a world where none of this happened.”

Rosé sighed sadly. “Fresh out, unfortunately.” She changed as well before joining her in bed. “Just wake me if you need anything, okay?” When she got a nod of confirmation, she turned the lights off and called it a night.

But that wasn’t the case for Lemon. No, she wouldn’t be so lucky. Even though she had been drunk, the incident replayed in her mind in great detail no matter how many times she tried to shut it off. That, coupled with struggling to sort through the mix of emotions still swirling through her, kept her awake for another hour or so before exhaustion took over and she passed out.

And back at the club, everyone else was left to pick up the pieces of the explosive incident. But as much as the clientele was willing to move past what they’d witnessed, none of the employees could get themselves to carry on. So, with Jackie’s blessing, they called it an early night and nearly everyone went back home.

Priyanka hung back, seeking solace in Jackie’s office, knowing her boss might be the only one that could understand the gravity of the fallout. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now, Jackie? This is effectively outing me to everyone. And I look bad too, they’re gonna find out I’m gay and a cheater in one go. What should I do?”

Jackie sighed, her heart truly breaking for her. “I wish there was an easy answer for this. I think, for now, you just need to get through the night.”

And Priyanka would, though she was afraid to fall asleep, overwhelmed with the need to postpone tomorrow as long as she could, because she had run out of ways to hide or lie her way out of it.

[fandomlovingfreak]

You Can’t Marry a Malfoy (6/12)

George Weasley/Reader

Ch1. Ch2. Ch3. Ch.4 Ch5.

Rating: E for Everyone (no warnings)

Word Count: 1926

AO3 Link

Summary: When reader comes running to George Weasley because her parents have arranged a Pureblood marriage between her and Draco Malfoy, what will George do? He's been secretly in love with his best friend since their time at Hogwarts, and he knows he can't let her go. He definitely can't let Malfoy have her.

Notes: The funny little clause at the end is inspired by a fic I wrote (but never published) with an OC and Draco Malfoy like five years ago. I think it makes sense in Pureblood culture (mostly bc of how weird it seems to be in the HP universe aha). It probably won’t impact the rest of the story much:)

Enjoy

(y/n) comes into the shop more often than ever before. She likes to come around lunchtime to spend their lunch hour in his office. Oswald had been so surprised to see her the day after they got engaged, ring on her finger, and lunch in hand. He had congratulated both of them multiple times before leaving them alone in George’s office.

“So, how was your day?” she had asked as she sat down in the plush, purple chair across from him.

“It’s been good. The store has been pretty busy. Lots of students are coming in.”

“McGonagall’s gonna hunt you down, Weasley.” She laughs.

“I make it interesting even years after I graduate. I think McGonagall will thank me, honestly.”

(y/n) rolls her eyes, “Oh definitely.”

“How was your day? Busy at the office?” He asks, focused on the ring on her finger. It was so odd and pleasing to see the ring on her finger.

“Not too bad. Sort of slow, which is nice.” She takes a bite of her sandwich. (y/n) had worked within the department of International Magical Cooperation since graduation, and the wars end.

“How has the boss been recently?” He knew she had difficulties with her boss in the past. She had complained to him a thousand times about the woman who seemed to want to make (y/n)’s life hell. 

(y/n) purses her lips, “She’s impossible to deal with as usual.”

“You know you could always come work for me,” he suggests.

“As sweet as that is, I do like my job, George.” She laughs.

“Well, I’m just saying I would never ever piss you off like that woman does.”

(y/n) shakes her head, grinning, “I love you, but I’m not sure we’re compatible in a work sense.” He’s brought back to the many times (y/n) had studied with him. They’d get into massive fights over the answers they’d come up with and opinions on different subjects. Probably best to keep their relationship out of their jobs.

“You’re probably right,” he grins at her.

***

“Is (y/n) coming to dinner?” Molly asks when he arrives home.

“I didn’t ask when I saw her.” He shrugs off his coat.

“Well, Owl her, dear.”

“Mum…”

“The entire family will be over tonight. Your fiancee should be here.” The entire family included his brother Bill, his wife Fleur, his niece Victoire, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and of course, Percy.

“Fine.” He walks over to the window to write a short note to (y/n) inviting her over for their little family get together. 

***

(y/n) shows up around an hour later, a bouquet of yellow lilies in hand. Molly takes the fresh flowers from (y/n), thanking her for the thought. George pulls her into a corner before the entire family can pull his fiancee away.

“Hello,” he presses a kiss to her cheek. “I wanted to ask if we were telling everyone why we got engaged so quickly?”

“I don’t mind if they know,” (y/n) smiles sweetly, “whatever you want, dear.”

The term of endearment makes heat rise up his neck. It’s delicious to hear her talk to him in this way. “I don’t know if tonights the best time to get into everything. I just want them all to know we’re engaged and to get to know you better. Bill and Fleur will be here and my niece Victoire.” 

(y/n) grins, “I completely forgot you have a niece! Merlin that means I do too?”

George laughs, “I suppose you’re right.”

“That reminds me, if you have time tonight, I’d like to talk.” Talk? Talk about what?

“I always have time for you.”

“Perfect,” she presses a kiss to his lips, “c’mon. We’re being rather rude sitting in the corner while your mother slaves away in the kitchen.” He lets her drag him to the kitchen to help Molly, who has them set the table.

Once the entire extended Weasley clan is seated and the food set out, the talking really begins. They all have so many questions about the engagement. Hermione is confused about how everything happened so quickly. (y/n) smiles and tells her friend she’ll explain in better detail later. Most of his family, who’ve known (y/n) for ages now, continue to express their excitement at the idea she’d be one of them fairly soon. (y/n) fidgets in her seat when Charlie calls her (y/n) Weasley, saying it has a nice ring to it. His dad insists she extends an invitation to her parents for dinner sometime in the future. It’s all very overwhelming. But, (y/n) looks happy. She’s always fit in exceptionally well with the Weasleys, so he doesn’t feel too bad that they’re all so hyperfocused on her.

When dinner’s been thoroughly picked through, and the family has moved into the living room, (y/n) asks Molly if she can help clean up. Molly makes a fuss about guests not having to help, but (y/n) insists. Of course, she gives him a look, and he’s roped into washing the dishes with her and his mother. (y/n) removes the small ring placing it on the kitchen window sill before washing the dishes in the soapy water. She chats away happily with Molly, handing the freshly cleaned dishes to George to dry. It’s all very domestic.

“Have you done any planning yet?” Molly asks.

“Mum. It’s only been a day--” He starts.

“That’s what I was gonna talk to you about later,” she turns slightly towards him, “I--I don’t want to really get into it too much right now, but--”

“That’s fine, dear. I sort of know what you might be talking about.” Molly gives him a look that makes him feel out of the loop.

***

He makes some stupid joke about how he’s never been allowed to have a girl in his room before Molly insists they go talk alone. (y/n) shakes her head, pulling him up the staircase. He’s got her in his hold before his bedroom doors fully closed.

“George!” She laughs, swatting his chest as he tries to go in for a kiss.

“What?” 

“I didn’t come up here with you for this!” Somehow she gets away from him, plopping down on his small bed.

“Like that doesn’t tempt me more,” He smirks, coming nearer to the bed.

(y/n) rolls her eyes, “I really need to speak with you.”

He sits down next to her, “I’m listening.”

“I probably should’ve told you before about um--how these pureblood arranged marriages work before you agreed to take Malfoys spot--”

“Nonsense, this doesn’t really count as an arranged marriage anyway.”

(y/n) tilts her head, “George...it definitely still counts. There was already a contract in place, and when you decided to ask my parents to take... his place, you were basically uh-- signing it.”

George shrugs, “It doesn’t really change anything, honestly.”

“Well, the contract has parameters that are a bit...old.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. You can’t scare me off so easily.” He grins.

She shakes her head, “I suppose you aren’t easily scared off, but I didn’t mean to drag you into such a silly contract.”

He takes her hand in his, hoping it’s a little bit comforting at least, “I’m sure it’s fine. What’s the problem?”

(y/n) looks down at their fingers before looking back at him, “Well, for instance, we have to get married within a year of the proposal--”

“That’s it? You know I wasn’t going to wait more than a couple months anyways.”

(y/n) chuckles, “I wasn’t finished, George.”

“Go on then.”

“Ah, I hate this part so much, George…” She looks embarrassed, “Honestly, it’s almost barbaric to include these sorts of clauses in this age.” 

He frowns. What on earth could she be so flustered about? “What is it?” He’s curious about what thought could cause (y/n) to be so hesitant and awkward.

(y/n) scrunches her nose, like she’s eaten something incredibly sour before speaking rather quickly, so the words jumbled together, “There’s a clause to produce an heir.”

“Come again?” He’s not sure if he’s heard her correctly, because what he heard--

“There’s a stupid outdated clause in the contract to produce an heir…” Her face scrunches up in disgust.

“Am I that disgusting?” he laughs despite his whole body feeling like he’s been thrown into a blazing fire.

(y/n) rolls her eyes, “shut up. It’s obviously not you. I just don’t like how this clause was kept in instead of being omitted from the contract, as I requested.”

“Merlin. I saved you from carrying Malfoy’s spawn,” George jokes to diffuse the rage he can see in (y/n)’s eyes.

“Really, George? That’s all you’re getting from this? I’m being serious here.”

He drops the attempt at humoring her, “Sorry. I know that it’s serious. I promise I do, but I--”

“Don’t say you’re fine with this” (y/n) tries to hide her smile.

“Would you be mad if I did? If I were fine with this?”

“It’s not about you, George!” She huffs.

“I mean--it somewhat is. I feel like I’m at least microscopically a part of this exchange.” He smirks. Truthfully, he doesn’t feel upset by this new development. He always planned on a family someday. If Fred were here, he’d vouch for the fact that George had planned out a family with (y/n) by the time he was seventeen. It just made sense. Their kids would clearly be incredibly attractive. In fact, it would be a crime against humanity to not combine the gene pools.

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t be upset.” she fidgets with the edge of her shirt.

“If I’m being honest...I’m not sure why you’re so upset (y/n).”

“Two years is the time allotment written in the contract.”

“That’s it? I can do this in a third of that time.” He brags grinning. 

She laughs, nudging him with her shoulder, “that’s not the point you git.”

“C’mon,” he takes her hand in his again, “it’s not the worst thing. Imagine a little witch with your hair and my freckles.”

(y/n) laughs shakily, “But...I don’t know. I just don’t like the pressure. We’re so young--”

“My parents had Bill nearly right out of Hogwarts.” Nothing about their age seemed weird to him when speaking of the future. Sure, his parents were young when they were married, but also they survived a war. They have the right to just live their lives now.

“I suppose.”

“Let’s not worry about it right now. Let’s focus on us and getting married as soon as possible.” He caresses her cheek.

“Why are you so eager?” she laughs. The sound is like music to his ear.

George grins, “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting.”

“I’m fairly certain I’ve been waiting for the same amount of time as you.”

***

“Did you know about the clause?” he asks his mother later once (y/n) has left.

Molly smiles, “I had an idea. You’re still marrying (y/n), right?”

“Of course. Honestly, she’s the one who is upset about the contract.”

“She’s a very independent woman, George. You have to reassure her she’s going to get to do as she pleases in life. If she wants to continue to work at the Ministry, I would hope you’d be supportive.”

“Honestly, I thought she might want to work in the shop...but I want her to be happy. And her job does make her happy.” He shrugs. There was nothing wrong about (y/n) wanting to work. She worked hard in school for that job. She should get to continue what she worked for. He never intended to try to stop her anyways.