#it's actually my first time dipping my toes into full on horror... i wanted to make weirder art and now i am 😌

[bittersweetresilience]

the thing about writing horror is that the flesh is erotic. what disturbs you may excite you. fear and desire come from the same place. both are violations, voyeurisms, grotesque contortions of the human body. a form of possession by a feeling that is not entirely yours. a passionate feeding frenzy for the strange and unknown.

[spacelazarwolf]

I really hate how often neo ra/df/ems will go on and on about how trans fem's transitions are waaaaaay more difficult and they're waaaaaay less likely to pass, but if a trans masc dared to make any similar comparisons, they'd be fucking crucified.

There are a lot of feelings I have around sex-based discrimination and the difficulties of a masculinizing transition. On one hand, I don't think comparing struggles like that is useful (i.e. trans women have harder transitions).

On the other hand, I feel like the reality of the situation is actually quite the opposite for many people (everyone acknowledges that testosterone makes your voice drop and you grow hair, but nobody seems to want to acknowledge hysterectomy vs orchi, voice training is still often needed, electrolysis for phallo, the fact that bottom surgery is usually multi-staged [even metoidioplasty is sometimes 2 stages] with a lot of moving parts and far worse scarring, top surgery is almost a necessity for passing whereas not every trans fem wants top surgery + scars are easier to hide, face masculinization is far less common w/ fewer options, puberty begins earlier in perisex people AFAB and puberty blockers don't always allow for full height to be achieved bc they don't typically allow you to start testosterone until you're about 15 even IF you were a "classic" trans-since-3-years-old kinda case, the extreme body horror that is accidental pregnancy and abortion and menstruation when that's dysphoric vs not being able to carry a pregnancy just feels like an insulting comparison sometimes and I've had multiple trans women call me inconsiderate for expressing horror at getting my bodily rights taken away bc "that triggers my dysphoria", testosterone is a scheduled substance and has more difficult administration methods than simply a pill, etc.)

And so I bite my tongue and try to be the better person, because stooping to that low doesn't help anything. But at the same time it's so extremely frustrating to be told that you "have it better" when, considering the facts, it REALLY feels like the opposite. There's this level of bitterness around that that I am DESPERATELY trying to resolve within myself. I have a therapist. I know it's projection. I'm working on my own bullshit. But please tell me I'm not alone in feeling this way? I just wish they'd stop with that rhetoric and realize just how difficult the average trans masc transition truly is

yeah it's really frustrating for ppl to present Trans Women's Experiences and Trans Men's Experiences as diametrically opposed, with one experience being Eternal Pain And Inescapable Suffering and the other being Barely A Blip On The Life Radar. and while i understand it's coming from a place of pain, i've also experienced a lot of trans women shutting me down when i try to talk about how abortion rights affect me. back when i was first dipping my toe into trans spaces, i was friends with a trans woman who told me it was transmisogynistic of me to want to transition because "trans women would kill to have been born in your body." and while it absolutely comes from a different place than when cis men try to assert control over me and there's not the same power dynamic, it's still a complete stranger feeling entitled to tell me what to do with my body because of the sex i was assigned at birth. it's frustrating to have people i'm supposed to be in community with play into the same sexist bullshit that other people, regardless of gender, have been holding over my head my whole life, feeling like they own my body bc women and ppl who are forcibly assigned the role of women in society are seen as public property. our bodies aren't our own. everyone feels entitled to comment on them and touch them and make decisions about them. and it sucks when it comes from other people who should understand how that feels.

and like. obviously this idea that trans men's transition is so much easier than trans women's is unhelpful bc 1. there is no one particular way for trans men to transition, 2. not everyone who transitions in the way typically associated with trans men is a trans man, 3. it doesn't take into account how disability, race, ethnicity, etc. play into people's experiences before, during, and after transition, and 4. it's just not a fucking competition????? the fact that a disabled black trans man is going to be more systemically oppressed in society than a wealthy white trans woman doesn't mean trans men as a category are Objectively More Oppressed than trans women. bc gender is like. the worst possible way to try to gauge a group's place within the system. bc at this point, gender is not the most powerful system, race is. and i feel like a fuck ton of people really do not recognize that.

another thing that has bugged me for as long as i've been in trans spaces is this bizarre attitude that trans women are doomed to this miserable life of clockability and will never be able to pass as cis women thus they must accept that their life will be nothing but pain and suffering. and that's just very much not true! i know plenty of trans women who "pass" or who are happy with their bodies, who have jobs they love and friends and family who love them, who have a community that supports and celebrates them. and it has just always rubbed me the wrong way that people think they're helping trans women by presenting their existence as Inevitably Miserable when all it does is terrify closeted trans girls who think they're better off never coming out or transitioning, or better off dying. like. we have to understand that these narratives we create, the idea of the perpetually suffering trans woman and the lonely isolated trans man, are absolutely driving people to suicidal ideation. and if we give a shit about trans people, we should be changing these narratives.

[halsins-herbal-underpants]

15 Questions for 15 Friends

15 questions for 15 friends

Tagged by @stuffforthestash ty!

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I changed my name awhile ago and I suppose I will reject cringe and live free by admitting it's based on both my favorite X-Man character Gambit and the name of one of my decade's long OCs lmao.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Couple of nights ago actually when I was reading the latest chapter of the very excellent Halstarion fic Write to me. Highly recommend it.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Hahahaha omg lord no, my life is barely sustainable for the grown adults living in it, much less a poor kid

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED? Played baseball in a summer league as a kid but outside of that nah. I was in marching band thru all high school tho does that count?

DO YOU USE SARCASM? Never heard of her

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? I am incredibly unobservant and often so very tired, so honestly not much lmao...maybe eyes and hands? I do notice the differences between fake, nervous and genuine smiles a lot tho

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR? I got curious and looked up actual names for eyecolors and mine are apparently labeled Gemstone Green

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Depends on my mood, I think sometimes bittersweet or 'death' endings can be beautiful and cathartic - FFXVI comes to mind. But the older I get the more I want people to just be together and happy in the end.

ANY TALENTS? Even though it's more really hard work for a really long time, I guess I could say art and maybe writing? Art feels more like a natural talent to me, I've been drawing since my hands could hold a pencil properly, writing is much more difficult. It genuinely makes my brain hurt from the struggle lmao.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Won't get me, 3 secret answers needed to remake my password question!

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES? Drawing, writing, roleplaying/D&D, in-game photography (mostly FFXIV and dipping toes into BG3, I desperately want to learn how to pose ripped models in Blender), playing video games esp visual novels, and collecting/watching old made-for-TV movies (esp fantasy & horror based ones) from the 80s and 90s.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? 2 cats, our grumpy old ladies <3 We might be getting a third if he ends up liking the place, fingers crossed.

HOW TALL ARE YOU? just under 5'11'' (180 cm)

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? Art class, band class, English, ceramics.

DREAM JOB? I wanted to be an animator or comic artist for most of my life but that ship sailed, c'est la vie. Now I just want something I don't have to think too hard at, make it thru a full 40 hours without wanting to die lol and just do the things that make me happy like writing and spending time with friends and sleeping, etc.

I'm supposed to tag 15 people but I'm pretty sure everyone I could tag has been tagged ahaha so I'll just say if you're reading this consider yourself tagged & fill it out if u want!

[random-imagines-blog]

Shine {Tom Cruise x Reader One Shot}

Requested by: @beatlebabe1996​ Wordcount: 2236 Summary: Great food, great dancing, and a bit of jealousy - what more could a date need?

As early 2000s as this was about the sound - the club was popping. It wasn’t the usual sort of club filled with twenty years grinding on one another with barely distinguishable beats playing in the background. It was a Latin club, with food and dancing and drink. The spice of the food was rivaled by the spice of the band that was playing tonight. This was where you felt the most in your element, this was your place. And that was why you had brought your date here tonight. It was also relatively low-key, where most of the people were focused on the band and the chef rather than the patrons. Something that your date for the night, a Mr. Tom Cruise, appreciated. You recommended a dish for him and that was what he had ordered - a definitely win in your books. You liked a man who was adventurous and yet trusting. He knew that you knew what you were doing.

“So you come here often then?” Tom asked, leaning back in his chair. He had shed his leather jacket to show the red button up shirt that he was wearing. It was tight on the arms, showing off the muscles that his constant work-out routine had produced. The color was great too, it added a little Latin flair to him. Your own outfit matched almost perfectly.

“I’m a regular,” You admitted, leaning in, playing with the straw of your drink. “The staff all know me by name here. It’s how I knew that we would be safe. They don’t care about celebrities so they won’t be posting anything on social media about your visit.”

“Our visit,” Tom laughed, taking a drink of his beer. “You seem more like the celebrity here. Even the band has been looking at you.”

“It’s rare that I  sit down this long,” You admitted. Your eyes caught that of the waitress coming around, your food on her platter. You straightened up and licked your lips, more than ready for the meal.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked, straightening himself up as well. There was a smile, and then thank yous to the waitress, and forks were picked up.

“Oh, I hit the dance floor,” You grinned, a sparkle in your eye. “That’s one of the best reasons to come here. The music, the dancing, the atmosphere. You get a good coupe of people on that floor, the whole place will be moving. Are you up for the challenge after we eat?”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stand after all of this,” Tom laughed, digging into the food on his plate. You chuckled along with him, but remained hopeful. Dancing was one of your absolute favorite things to do, and not to toot your own horn, but you were good at it. No matter how handsome or famous this man was, he wasn’t going to be able to get into your heart without taking a few steps.

“Is that so?” He asked. You nodded, and watched as he took his first bite. You were waiting with bated breath to find out if he enjoyed it as much as you hoped that he would. He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, then took a sip of water. “Spicy,” He explained. You nodded again, and continued to look, waiting for an opinion and not a fact. “It’s really good.”

“I knew you would think so!” You stabbed your fork into your own food, cutting off a piece for your consumption. “The food here is the best too. It’s the most underrated restaurant in the city, but it’s kind of great that way. No lines to get in. Plenty of room for dancing. And the food never takes too long to get to the table.”

“My kinda place,” Tom said with a grin. You two ate in relative silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just two people enjoying a meal, and each others company. Every time that his foot bumped against yours under the table, though, you felt like you were going to start blushing. You thought about saying something about it but decided to just let the moment be that - a moment, without you ruining it. “Should we get dessert?” He asked after you two finished eating, picking up the small dessert menu that was on the table. You were about to recommend one of the items when you were interrupted.

“Y/N!” One of the waiters, Antonio said, coming up to your table. “I just noticed you were here. I got assigned to the left section tonight. How are you doing? You look amazing tonight.”

“Oh hey, thank you. I tried my best. Date and all,” You said with a grin, looking over at Tom. He chuckled, and looked back at the dessert menu. “How are you doing, Antonio?”

“Same old, same old. Just got on my break.” He said, looking between you and Tom with a grin. He raised his eyebrow at you as if to say, ‘Really? You bagged Tom Cruise?’ To which you just replied with a confident nod and a smirk in return. “I was going to ask if you wanted to dance, but since you’re busy, I’ll go and find Gabriella-”

“And get your toes trod on?” You asked in horror. You loved the bartender, she was a complete sweetheart and always full of laughs, but she was a horrible dancer. “Do you mind, Tom? At the very least, let me help save this guys feet.”

“Not at all,” Tom said, still perusing the menu, though it was rather short. He must be reading through the ingredients or something. “I’m excited to see your moves.”

“Better watch then,” You winked daringly at him, before allowing yourself to be lead to the dance floor. Normally you wouldn’t let even wild horses drag you from a date, especially from someone as good looking, kind and charming as Tom. But this was also a chance to show off for him.

Dancing had been an outlet for you all of your life. It gave you a sense of control over your body that you could feel good about, especially when you had been a teenager and it felt like you didn’t have control over anything. It brought on a confidence that you needed to get to where you were in life. And that confidence landed you a date with one of the best men that the city, perhaps even the world, had to offer. The fame wasn’t a bonus to you, the attention wasn’t something that you craved. It was just him as a person, and you felt so completely lucky that he even looked at you twice. You didn’t even know that he felt the same way about you.

The band started up a beat with a strong rhythm and a quick tempo. It was perfect for Salsa dancing, which was exactly what you wanted. You and Antonio both knew the moves like the back of your hand, which meant you didn’t have to waste time worrying about getting everything right. You could just relax and have some fun.

Your heels clicked against the hardwood floors of the restaurant as you danced with Antonio. You started apart, and then slowly came together, a familiarity between the two of you because you had been friends for so long. You had been dancing together since you started coming here as a teenager, when he had just been a bus boy. You shimmied your hips as you two spun around one another, under each other’s arms, him dipping you, back and forth. It was a very sexy way of dancing. A very sensual and fiery dance. But you kept things under control, making sure not to get too close. You did have your date watching after all.

Your eyes kept flickering over to him to see that he was watching very intently. In fact, there was a look on his face that was almost jealousy. He couldn’t stop looking at you. Even as you and Antonio separated for a small part of the song, he was following you, and not Antoni, who was probably a better dancer than even you. You shot him a smile, then got right back into it, ending it with a couple more twirls and then the song came to a finish. You were a little breathless but also exhilarated, a high that only exercise could bring.

“Always a pleasure,” Antonio said with a little bow. “And my toes thank you.”

“You’ve really got to get yourself a girlfriend,” You chuckled. You turned to go back to your table, only to find that it was empty because Tom was approaching you on the dance floor.

“Mind if I cut in?” He asked to Antonio, though his voice wasn’t nearly as pleasant as it was when you had been taking earlier. “Considering we’re on a date and all, I would think not.”

Ouch.

“All yours,” Antonio said, bowing his head towards Tom as well. He raised his eyebrows at you as he walked away backwards, holding his hands up in surrender. You just shook your head subtly then looked at Tom. He had his hand out to you, and you took it, feeling the warmth of his body heat against yours. You haven’t been this close to him before. You had to admit, it was pretty nice. He looked even more handsome up close than he did from across the table.

“Were you a little jealous?” You asked, as the next song started. “If you were, that’s actually kind of cute.”

“Maybe a little,” Tom admitted. The song was a slower one, so you tended to stay close. He spun you beneath his arm and you twirled expertly, then ended right back against his chest. “Was it that obvious?”

“Perhaps you’re not the amazing actor that you think you are,” You challenged.

“I don’t think that matters much to you, does it?” He asked. He had a point there, and you lightly shook your head. His arm dropped a little lower below your waist, going towards dangerous territory. He had a bit of a smug face, which was pretty adorable.

You did a quick spin out of his arms on that one, to make his face change. He had to know now that you had the upper hand - and that you had a sense of humor. And that you could throw in a little bit of spice into everything. When you went back into him, his arm was a little higher this time.

“A little handsy for a first date, Mr Cruise,” You said, amused.

“What can I say,” He grinned. “I perform my own stunts.”

You laughed at that, and swayed along with him to the music - up until the band started to heat it up, bringing back in the fun. You stayed on the dance floor, waiting to see what Tom was going to do. He went along with it, rather than drag you off. Slow dancing was easy, but many men were intimidated by the faster steps. Tom wasn’t the same way. He actually managed to keep up with you, his steps quick, his eyes on you, his smile on his face nonstop. Those hips didn’t lie.

“What a daredevil,” You teased. “What other stunts do you intend to do tonight?”

“Well, it all depends,” Tom said, looking into your eyes as you spun side by side.

“On?”

“Where this night is leading. I might dare to kiss you on your doorstep...”

“How bold,” You smirked, dancing around him, looking over your shoulder to keep up the eye contact.

“Or I can show you a couple of moves if you’re feeling this as much as I am.”

“Ballsy,” You laughed. The song came to a close and you and Tom clapped for the band. You leaned against him, back to his chest, and his arms went around you, holding you close. You liked that feeling. You liked him a lot. And you usually weren’t this sort of person but ... but you were interested in what sort of moves that Tom had off of the dance floor. “I like it. I suppose I could let you take me home - if you really think that your moves are that good.”

He seemed a little off-guard that you had agreed with the idea so quickly. But he covered it up by bringing you back to the table and quickly throwing down some money and putting his jacket back on. The dancing, the food - all of this was an amazing aphrodisiac, and you were feeling the mood with Tom right now. You hurried with your own jacket, and finished off your drink which you had left behind when you had gotten up to dance. You left together hand in hand, and he showed off his gentlemanly he could be by opening the passenger door for you, and waiting until you were settled in with your seatbelt on to close it.

If  he kept up this perfect combination of sweet and spicy, you were very excited to see what moves he was going to show you in the bedroom tonight.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Christmas Specials: Angel

CW: Implied past parental death, referenced past torture/noncon, memory loss and grief

"It, it should be an, um, a, a-a an angel," Chris says, gazing up at the star on top of the tree. It gleams a warm yellow to match the special lights that wind through the branches, the soft smell of pine and wood. The ornaments weigh it down, a multitude of old childhood things Nat brought with her twenty years ago, plus new ornaments added over time by every rescue who has lived here through Christmas and even a few who didn’t. 

Chris picked his out at Hallmark with Nat last week. He chose a little cardinal on a snowy tree branch with a scarf and earmuffs on. He doesn’t know why. But he runs one finger over the top of its little head in thought. 

Nat, crouching down by the bright red, gigantic rubbermaid with Christmas Ornaments + whatever else written on the lid in big black sharpie letters, looks up. “What?”

Chris keeps petting the little porcelain cardinal with one finger, staring up at the star. “Why isn't it, um, an, an angel, Nat?”

"Not sure exactly. I've always done a star," Nat replies, carefully choosing a small ornament shaped like a horse in mid-gallop, covered in elaborately carved and painted Western tack. She slips the little hook into the small metal ring on the horse’s back and hangs it in an empty spot on the tree, smiling.

She looks over to see an expression of something like upset on Chris's face, his eyebrows furrowed, bouncing uncertainly on his toes. "It, it should be an angel," He repeats, insistent. “It, it should be. Um, an… an angel. A star isn’t-... isn’t, isn’t right. It should be, be, be-be-be… should be-, an, an angel.”

His voice drops a little, and he picks at the hem of his oversized t-shirt with one hand, rocking a little until Nat puts a hand to his shoulder and he stops. 

"Chris, is this bothering you? That it’s a star?” Nat and Jake meet eyes where he's hanging garland along the mantle, knowing later Nat will go all-in on her Midwestern roots and pull out the Christmas-themed baskets to decorate it.

“It’s not right,” Chris says, even more firmly this time. He shakes his head, rocking again, forward and back. “It’s, it’s always supposed to be, to be angels.” He makes a soft sound of frustration, hands moving up to his hair, twisting into the copper, yanking hard. “Supposed, supposed to be-”

Nat takes his hands in hers and gently lowers them again, pressing his palms into his stomach. “Tap, Chris. Don’t pull your hair out, please. Let’s do the ones that don’t hurt, okay?”

He doesn’t answer her, but he starts up the familiar movements of his fingers, finger-twist-tap-tap-tap, and he doesn’t go for his hair again. “Angels,” He mumbles. “Should be a, um, angel on the, the, the tree. Didn’t have a tree the, the last time, we were-... gonna go, go get the tree after Thanksgiving, it, um, it was-...” 

The room is perfectly still as he falls silent, rocking harder. 

 "Did you-...” Nat is quiet for a moment, deciding where to take this line of questioning, what is the safest way to ask. “Are you… used to angels, Chris? Did you have an angel tree-topper as a kid?”

He’s still a kid.

He’s still so young. 

Chris isn’t looking at her, still rocking a little, looking up at the star, gnawing on a chapped spot of skin on his lower lip that he’s already managed to make bleed this week. He pinches his finger and thumb around a few pine needles, releasing their scent even more strongly into the air. "She, she always did angels,” He whispers.

Then he winces, cries out in pain, and the moment's gone, along with the memory. They hold him through the headache until it passes, through his tears, but he’s never able to explain.

Within a half an hour he’s forgotten he ever mentioned angels at all, forgotten anything but the awful spike of pain the headache brings on the heels of any thought or memory they aren’t allowed to have.

She refuses to be frustrated - this is a common part of memory recovery in rescues, how things seem to come and go, slipslide through their minds. It’ll come back, sooner or later. She has to believe that - and that even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter, they still deserve the new memories to be their own.

Every time he walks past the tree, though - as Nat’s presents for her rescues start to build up, and she takes each of them out to find gifts to give Jake and their fellow rescues, too - his eyes don’t linger on the somewhat haphazardly wrapped boxes. 

They go to the star.

She gives Jake a few twenties from her wallet and tells him to go shopping. He sheepishly pulls out the small red box he’d already bought, five steps ahead of her when it comes to Chris as usual.

They wrap the box together. 

On Christmas Eve, Nat insists on cooking, while Antoni hovers nervously around her and offers, time and time again, to do whatever he can to help. She refuses, but lets him set the table before having Jake take him outside to sit down with a drink and watch the Christmas lights. It seems to calm the part of Antoni that needs always to be serving, the part they are trying so hard to get him to drop. 

Chris wanders through the dining room on his way, getting himself some lemonade in the kitchen and giving her a hug. Krista is moving into her own place in the next month or so and she heads out onto the porch, too, making the most of her last few days in the house. Even Leila, quiet watchful thoughtful Leila, finds her way out there, too.

Which leaves Nat in the kitchen putting together everything she remembers from her own childhood. 

It’s a feast.

Beef tips out of the oven with gravy and thick, chewy noodles, little sausages in a crockpot with grape jelly and barbecue sauce, corn casserole more like savory pudding than anything else, scalloped potatoes that have as much cheese as they do actual potatoes, a salad to pretend anyone’s getting nutritional value out of this, queso dip that comes cheap out of a glass jar with tortilla chips, chopped fruit tossed with sugar… this one day each year, Nat lets herself indulge in what she grew up with, what she misses about home. 

Once it’s all ready, she calls them back in. She watches Chris’s eyes widen as he enters first, seeing how she’s pulled out the extra eaves to extend the table, the sheer weight of the food that has taken her three full days of work to put together, the seasonal plastic tablecloth and placemats under every single plate. 

“Chris, you’ll sit right here,” She says warmly, putting her hand against the back of one of the chairs. 

He moves immediately - then hesitates, going still, glancing over his shoulder back at Jake, who smiles back, reassuring. When his eyes go back to his seat, Nat watches him tapping on himself, soothing his sudden jangling nerves. Not grabbing at his hair or scratching himself. Good sign. “Nat, what’s-... what’s, what’s that?”

She moves away to give him space. “What’s what, honey?”

“The, um, the… the the, the box. On my plate. What, what is it for?” He’s trusting, her youngest rescue, like all of them and yet even more than most. He wasn’t meant to have thoughts or skills outside the horrors that he was held for, didn’t develop himself enough to run, he hadn’t gotten a sense that his world wasn’t right enough to develop his own sense of self. That started here, in this house, under Nat’s protection. 

She doesn’t take this responsibility, to help him mold himself into someone he will want to be, lightly. 

He’s trusting, but in this moment, he’s unsure. She wonders how many times he has been given gifts that hurt, that were designed to hurt.

“One last thing for the tree. Open up and find out.”

“But, but Christmas is, is um, is, is tomorrow.”

“Oh, honey.” He loves when she calls him that, every endearment - except sweetheart and darling, and those she has gathered were weapons, once, used against him - and he flushes, looking down and smiling a little, red hair drifting over his eyes. “I never take my tree down before New Year’s. One year I got it late and we kept that sucker up until Valentine’s Day. Go ahead and open the box.”

His fingers are so long and delicate, as he carefully works up the tape that keeps one end of the box closed. Slipping it open comes easily enough, working the styrofoam packing on the inside out is a little more difficult. The squeak of styrofoam against cardboard makes him grit his teeth and Nat herself winces.

But then it’s out, and he lays the square of crumbling white styrofoam down on the paper, carefully lifting the top half away to reveal what it was protecting inside. 

His eyes widen, and he reaches out, touching a rough-edged tinsel halo wrapped around a wire, running one finger down from the top of a porcelain forehead to the tip of a gently wrought nose, the cupid’s-bow lips, rounded hair. He looks up at Nat as his fingers find the stiff, scratchy fabric of the figurine’s cream-and-gold robes. “An, angel? Nat?”

“For the tree, Chris. You said you wanted an angel.” Nat moves back to lay a hand in the center of his back, and he leans to the side, his head tucking into the crook of her neck like always. “Jake and I figured opening one present on Christmas Eve wouldn’t be so bad. D’you want to put it up?”

“Yes,” He says, in a low soft voice. “She, um, she, she… she she… she always had angels, on the, um, the tree.”

“Chris, can I ask?” She rests her chin atop his head, his fine soft hair tickling her skin. “Who is she? Who are you talking about?”

He shakes his head a little, like shaking water out of his ears. “I, I don’t know.” It’s a confession, admission of guilt, more than an answer. “I don’t, don’t, don’t know who. But… but I know she had, had an angel, she said she bought it when, um, when when I was a, a, a a a a baby…”

Mother, then, most likely. She and Jake make eye contact, and he nods, stepping out of the room to go write it down. Every single memory, no matter how slight, could help them put enough together to find whoever might be looking for him out there. And it gives Dr. Berger a place to start delicately working out what is hidden under all the scar tissue in their minds. 

“She threw it, it, it away,” Chris mutters, eyes closed. “With, with everything else.”

“Your mom did?”

“No. Some... someone else.”

“Well, let’s get the angel up there, then,” Nat says gently, as Chris slides his arms around her waist. His voice is going ragged, and she needs to pull him back from the edge before he tips over into the light. “Then all you hungry people can eat.”

“Aren’t you, you hungry? You’ve been cooking all, all, all, all all day.”

“All days. But no, I’ve tasted a little of everything already. Come on, then-”

The door blows open in a bluster of wind and Kauri steps in, cheeks red from the hint of chill in the air, blue eyes warm and sparkling. He looks better today than he did last week - Nat wonders, briefly, if he’s been staying with someone, instead of trying to sleep in park bathrooms or the cold. “Am I late for dinner?”

“Not at all, Kauri. Will Keira be joining us?”

Keira does not consume, comes a muffled voice from inside Kauri’s backpack. He grins and drops it in the entryway, unzipping to take the Roomba out and set it on the coffee table where visual sensors can take in the tree. 

He glances back at the rest of them, and asks brightly, “What’s for dinner? Smells… huh.” He pauses, looks at the table. A strange look passes over his face, like a man seeing someone he knows but can’t quite place. “It smells really good in here.”

“I should hope so. Can you help Chris switch the star on the tree out for this? It’s brand new.” She picks the angel up out of the styrofoam and Chris grabs it from her, moving into the living room with it held in his hands like something infinitely precious and breakable.

Something so easily lost.

“Cool, an angel.” Kauri cocks his head to the side. “Why’d you get that?”

“Because,” Chris says, with earnest sincerity, and a little sadness. “It’s always, um, supposed to, to, to be an angel. It was always a, an angel before.”

Kauri - and Jake, who reappears shortly after to give his many inches of height to assist them - helps Chris get the angel light up on the tree, warm glow emanating from its robes, and Chris declares it better, now. 

He murmurs to himself, “She’d, she’d like it better with an angel.”

No one asks him what he said, or to elaborate.

By the time he’s on his second helping of dinner, he’s forgotten that the thought ever passed his mind.

But Nat hasn’t.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @slaintetowhump, @astrobly  @newandfiguringitout  , @doveotions  , @pretty-face-breaker, @boxboysandotherwhump  , @oops-its-whump  @moose-teeth  , @cubeswhump  , @cupcakes-and-pain  @whump-tr0pes  @whumpiary  @orchidscript, @itallcomesdowntopain

[secretsniper2]

Just a “Touch up”

You always wanted to do something outlandish, all the other girls had gotten something done and bragged about it non stop, it was driving you crazy! So you decided to get something done yourself, nothing major, just a touch up. So now you sit in the doctors office talking with the man who would be operating on you, you explain that your only looking for a light touch up to your face so your friends will notice instantly. The doctor explained that at 19 years of age “there wouldn't really be much they could do” but you were adamant that you get it done. Date set for 2 weeks away you cant wait!

Time flew past with more of the same, your friends bragging and you roll your eyes every time, your certain they will envy your face when your job is done. The date finally arrives and you head to the clinic to get started. Sitting in the waiting room your not alone, there is a creepy guy with a green hat, sitting in the corner, every time you look over at him he is staring at you. “can i help you?” you ask and he stands and walks to the counter, asks for something and is given a grey folder and a pen, taking both to his seat he begins to fill out a form. “bit late to fill that out” you think to yourself, oh well. A Nurse walks into the waiting room with a piece of paper, “Layla!” she calls and you stand and follow her into the room.

Walking through the single door you notice the main table in the middle of the room, and a few covered tables to the side, at the other end of the room is a wide double door your unsure why they need 2 doors for 1 side and a single door on this side.. “ehhh” you think to yourself as the Nurse gives you your gown to change into and as your the only 2 in here you strip down and put your light blue hospital gown on. it barely goes past your pussy! Tying it on securely your just in time for the surgeon to walk in with 2 folders, 1 blue and the other grey like the man in the waiting room. Flicking through both folders he leads you to the table to begin your surgery.

Laying down on the table it feels weird, like the table itself can be pulled apart due to how it shifts beneath you, its certainly not all in 1 piece. The surgeon begins drawing lines on your face where he will be doing his work, as you had discussed. Looking up to the ceiling you see a camera pointed right at you, clearly for medical reasons you feel more lines get drawn on you.  Taking a needle from a shelf he explains “this shot will feel weird and you may get confused, its to ensure you don't feel pain”. Holding out your arm your given the shot, it feels warm as you lower your arm back onto the table, the warmth spreading through your body, its pleasant at least, the warmth flowing up to your head and your hit with the confusion he mentioned. If you were standing you would fall over instantly, but your laying down so your head just rolls to a side, completely relaxed. As the warmth continues to roll down your body it hits your tight pussy and you start to feel a little aroused, at least your legs are closed but with this gowns length its only a matter of time before your lips start showing your arousal.

Continuing down your legs your toes go numb as the warmth hits them, it tickled at first but now you notice you cant move your arms either, you begin to breathe faster as you learn just how little you can move, its just your head! everything under your neck is completely still. Acting as if nothing is wrong the surgeon walks up and puts a headpiece on your face, bit weird as that's where your getting work done, and all you can see is darkness, nothing else. your body tingling all over from the shot earlier and with your vision limited your sense of touch has increased, your now acutely aware of the hairs on your arms standing up, it is cold in here though but your beginning to panic a little.

A sudden burst of light floods your eyes and after a few blinks you see yourself, from the camera hanging over your body, you see everything, almost the whole room! Worse still you see what the lines on your forehead are, he wasn't tracing out lines, he was writing “Fuckslut” on your forehead! examining your body from this perspective you can see your bald pussy peeking out of the gown, raising your arm for the shot must have pulled the gown up! your pussy is exposed! you can see the glistening from your arousal which has only gotten worse since it started, a hand reaches out and grabs your thigh. the surgeons unwanted touching makes you sick, but your pussy just cries out for more touches and you hate that your body is reacting positively.

Walking up beside your body he reaches out and grabs your breast “what the fuck” you think angrily! who does this guy think he is?! as he squeezes your perky C cup breast, moving to the other and repeating after a minute, leaving both your breasts a little sore but your nipples have reacted to the abuse and you can already see them poking against the gown. your head flooding with shame as you see them get harder and harder as his hand snakes its way up to your smooth neck and holds your throat. caressing your skin he loops his hand under the neck of the gown and to your horror, pulls hard and you feel the tight knots you did earlier come undone as the gown soars off your now completely naked body!

You cant believe what your seeing, your 19 year old body laying flat on the table with nothing covering you, your nipples reacting even more as they get even harder than they were seconds before, and your pussy is drooling with need, your humiliation has only begun and you know it. Watching in horror as the hand moves from your neck, sliding down your smooth skin to once again grasp your breast, your nipple being pinched hard this time, you hear him say “this size wont do, ill have to fill them out a bit” and worse still, you hear another unseen man say “you have the chart, make it happen” your eyes scanning the room as much as you can see, but you cant find the source of the second voice! Movement draws your eyes back to the hand as it slides easily over your smooth, flawless skin and glides over your pussy and fingers dip between your lips. Fluid now flowing out as he probes your most private area with his fingers, expertly drawing more and more fluid from you, clearly knowing what he is doing as he brushes across your clit forcing sharp sensations to stab your mind.

Pulling your legs open you see a separation in the table and sure enough the surgeon separates them, putting a brace on the inside section he opens them wider, catching your ankles in the process, and as the table continues to widen, so do your legs. Pussy now completely accessible now to even the most aimless of people, the surgeon brings a covered cart over to you and upon removing the cloth your witness to needles and a scalpel among other tools. Your terror reaching new heights as a needle is taken, full of a pink liquid it is moved straight for your clit, eyes almost bulging out of your head as the tip sinks into your precious bulb, but no pain, at least he was honest about that. Pushing the tip in further you see him injecting the fluid inside your clit and it actually begins to bulge, blood flooding to your nub forcing it to grow out, pushing its hood aside it now sitting out, you cant stop looking at it, its 3 times bigger than what it was!

A flash of steel and your eyes dart to the cause, the surgeon holding the scalpel now moves in on your engorged clit, slicing from the base and moving to the tip you see blood and you have no idea what he is doing to you.. placing a cup over your clit you see him attach a pump to the end, its a suction cup! you feel him pumping away your sensitive clit moving further away from your body, so sensitive the pumping continues will its 8cm out of your hood, then its bandaged to keep it out and exposed, “if she messes up you can grab her by her clit now and lead her anywhere you want” you look at your once adorable clit, you think “i could give my clit a fucking handjob now!” and its almost big enough too. pumped full of blood the sensitivity is through the roof, and because of the fluid he injected your clit with its completely rigid and standing straight out, not bending at all..

Taking 2 more needles from the cart he aims them for your exposed labia, penetrating them your injected with a blue liquid this time, and you feel a instant burning in your pussy as he injects you multiple times around your pussy and even your inner lips get 4 injections. Heat burning away as your arousal forced your pussy to clench and fresh juice squirts out, not a orgasm but it may as well have been, your so desperately horny now and there's nothing you can do! Watching in terror as he gets more needles and walks over to your breasts, 1 needle in the tip of your nipple and the orange fluid is injected followed by the burning sensation in your breasts, “experimental drugs are illegal but im sure you dont mind right” “not at all” the 2 men agree. both your breasts are burning from the inside as you feel them growing! you can almost see it happening right in front of your eyes, your C’s are growing to D’s!

Whatever the injections were they work fast and your not liking this at all! Taking a device from the table your pussy is opened up as he looks inside. “not a virgin” your surgeon says then a very long needle is inserted in your pussy. reaching far inside he hits the entrance to your womb and injects another drug, “what's going to happen to my poor womb?!” you think “there we go” he says, “she should be hypersensitive to touch now” not waiting for a invitation he touches your clit and you orgasm on the spot, from a simple touch! “now for her ass!” you hear him say as you come back down from the orgasm, a brown liquid filled needle is jabbed into your asshole and your filled once again with a burning sensation, likely being made hypersensitive like the rest of you. Looking to your breasts for a moment your stunned at the DD set your now carrying! your breasts are huge!

“Care to sample the goods?” your asshole of a surgeon says and you see him, a green hat moves into your sight, its that guy from the waiting room! You watch as he pulls his cock out and stands between your open legs and pushes into your soaked pussy! forcing 3 orgasms simultaneously from you as he thrusts in, pushing straight into your womb pulling a further 5 orgasms out of you! your mind is going numb already! you have never cum so many times so fast! your sure no woman has in history and yet here you are, a slave to the orgasmic hell these men have forced on you.. The man in the hat pulls out to your entrance again and thrusts once again straight to your womb, so many orgasms you only thought it “kill meee..” as even your voice in your head trails off in the pleasure. As he slams his length into you your clit gets rammed hard by his body and your rewarded with another 6 orgasms! “its not possiblee-ohmyfuckinggod!” you think as your mind melts through your gushing pussy!

After what seemed like a eternity of orgasmic hell, having well over 50 orgasms the man in the hat moves to your chest, hopping on you he slides his cock in between your DD breasts and begins thrusting hard, you have given a titjob before but it never feels this good! your already cumming just from having him fuck your tits! and he clearly enjoys his time as you feel a splash on your face and mouth as he cums on you. “can we make that more fun for the slave too?” he says, your mind stopping at the word “slave” what did he mean by that? your name is Layla for gods sake! you came in here for a touch up and your being transformed into a cum crazy slave?! you watch as a clear liquid filled needle is brought over to your face, your mouth is opened with no resistance, and your tongue is jabbed and filled with the fluid. “this will ensure the she enjoys giving you head as much as you enjoy receiving it” he said with a laugh!

Your mouth burning as the surgeon returns you your pussy and grabs your clit hard and begins playing with it, forcing you to cum instantly with each stroke, having a further 12 orgasms pulled from you in seconds and he is still going! your eyes roll back into your head as you cum wildly! your mouth still open from the injection some of the mans cum drips into your now open mouth and lands on your tongue, you never did like the taste of cum but this was different.. though you cant move it the cum just slides over your sensitive tongue and you can taste it, somehow you love it! it tastes amazing!, hearing something click your head drops backwards as your eyes look down at your body through the camera once more, the green hat man is lining up your throat for some fucking. Nothing you can do but watch this man fuck your throat, as his cock enters your mouth it pushes your tongue to the floor of your mouth, and you can taste his cock in detail. “s-so tasty!!” your mind screams as he begins pumping down your throat!

“i think were almost done here!” the surgeon says loudly and you hear a grunt of agreement from the man as you feel his hot load pump into your throat as he pulls out, raising your head back up and locking the table back in position, the surgeon stops pulling orgasms from you as he releases your hypersensitive and overstimulated clit, you couldn't count how many times you came if you wanted to.. Watching as the man in the green hat beings a bag over, he pulls some small devices out and places them beside you, “how long will she be paralyzed?” he asks as he does, “5 hours at least.” the surgeon replies, “5 hours of immobile hell?! fuck!” you think. Watching as the man places 2 devices on either side of your nipples and tapes them there you recognise them as vibrators.. “the sick fuck is going to keep making me cum?” you scream mentally.. a thick dildo is placed between your tits and turned on, it feels amazing already!

Watching in fear as a series of vibrators are stuck to your solid clit, covering it completely. A long dildo is pushed right into your pussy and into your womb, pulling more orgasms from you, and finally a scary long dildo is pushed inside your virgin ass, the sensation is incredible for your first time, you can feel it as it moves further and deeper inside you. a foot of rubber cock now fills your tight ass! you can see your pussy gaping open as the dildo doesn't even stick out a little, the man pulls a pair of panties from the bag. black and shiny you realize its a latex lined chastity belt. pushing your clit through the large hole in the front, the panties push completely against you, orgasming immediately as the latex hits your pussy, form fitting almost as it hugs your hips perfectly, metal on the outside you see him lock them on and lower a weird ring around the base of your clit and snapping it shut locking your clit in the belt. At the push of a button your whole body cums instantly as every vibrator activates at seemingly max power!

8, 20, 36, 53.. orgasms every few seconds as your clit visibly shakes as each vibration quakes your mind and body, your pussy and ass vibrating furiously as the tip of the cock in your womb wrenches more orgasms out of you. in the first 10 seconds you have already lost count of not only how many times you came, but also where you are! “my name……. is.. Laylaaaaaaahhhhhhh” your mind dribbles out, “fuuuck-ohmygodnooo!!” you would be screaming if you could. Your mask is removed and your eyes dart around looking at the man in the face clearly. you burn his face into your mind as the man who stole your life, but with his large beard you cant make out much! “FUCK! im cuuuuuuhhh..“ your mind trails off. countless orgasms pulled out of your body as the wheels on your table are unlocked and you learn why there are 2 doors on 1 side of the room, its to fit the table.. wheeled through the doors you see a carpark, and your new ride.. a car boot. Your body is folded up with the surgeons help and your bound into a doll almost, still cumming furiously as your placed in the boot of this mans car and locked inside.

Its dark inside, your body still cumming and you cant move even if you wanted to.. a life of sexual slavery at the hands of this man.. You wanted a Touch up, and now this man is going to touch you up any time he wants..

[tanoraqui]

okay I have to do this today because even I wouldn’t do it after the godforsaken finale airs, and it’s basically my specialty and I did spend like an hour thinking about it last night while washing dishes. Definitely partly inspired by @words-writ-in-starlight​‘s insightful post on everything Supernatural did wrong, and apologies in advance to all the characters for dragging them into anything related to Christian mythology:

Wei Wuxian’s parents die in a house fire when he’s 6(? I refuse to look anything up) months old

Jiangs are a hunter family I guess? That whole disaster of a family dynamic, except WWX dips out at some point to be idk an environmental activist bc at the time, that seems like the larger threat to the whole world. “Mom and Dad went on a hunting trip and they haven’t come back”, “bitch” “jerk”, 2 brothers in a beat-up old car, you know the drill

Jins are also an old hunting family, but more Men of Letters energy - they have a fancy bunker and do research and avoid getting their actual hands dirty. Jiang Yanli ducked out of the active hunting life a few years ago to be happily married to her peacock and settled down with a baby and she’s fine. We’re not going to bother Yanli. She’s safe and happy and doesn’t need to involved in any of this

so, WWX is the demon blood child developing exciting new abilities like telekinesis, mind control, exorcising demons by sheer force of will...etc, and Jiang Cheng is the Righteous Man. Lucifer, Michael, etc.

s1-3 probably proceeds more or less as spn canon...which I more or less remember...by the time they find their parents at the end of s1, Jiang Fengmian is...ugh, we probably shouldn’t kill him offscreen, I mean, we should probably meet him before he dies. I guess. Madam Yu lasts longer because I’m way more interested in her. But we do know that both Jiang parents are totally inclined to fling the boys into a metaphorical or literal escape boat and go hold the line for as long as possible, so...that’s spn energy...

Xue Yang is the one who’s like “fuck yeah, demon powers” and opens the gates of Hell, because I want him to have nice* things

*nice for Xue Yang

from characterization rather than memory, I’m 90% sure that Dean tried to hide his crossroads deal from Sam, but Jiang Cheng does it...better. I think it does come out, though. Right before the hellhounds do.

here’s where it starts to go farther off from spn canon. Jiang Cheng crawls his way out of the grave, gets stalked by a menacing presence that explodes windows for an episode, incidentally can’t find WWX...*Lan Wangji voice* “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition” (a baller line then and a baller line now)...and then the next episode starts with them all awkwardly standing around, and JC is like, “ok well let’s go find my brother then”, and you think there’s going to be an mdzs-riffing JC+LWJ Roadtrip To Find WWX...and they’re immediately attacked by like a dozen demons

in fact, the first time we see WWX in s4 is here, wherein he goes toe to toe with an angel and...holds his own. that’s new and terrifying! also is leading a squad of demons??

because here’s the thing: for the last 3(?) months, there’s been war in hell

because unlike Some People Mooses, upon finding out that his brother’s soul was legally nearly-owned by a crossroads demon, heir-apparent-to-Satan!WWX went, “actually fuck that” and kicked open the door of Hell (metaphorically, not loosing any demons this time) and was like, “who do I have to beat the shit out of to get a specific crossroads contract around here”

this did not work, obv. He didn’t know until it was too late, Lilith had already snapped up the contract, etc. etc.

obviously he also tried to offer himself instead, and got rejected for some reason

Since Jiang Cheng died, however, there’s been a war for control of Hell. Leading one side, Lilith, the Original Babe, who wants to break all 666(?) seals keeping Lucifer bound and in the meantime, break the Righteous Man so Heaven won’t even have Michael’s destined host ready for the Final Battle. Leading the other side, Wei Wuxian, infamous upstart, who wants to rescue the Righteous Man and restore him to life, tear Lilith’s guts out through her nose, and also stop her from doing the Lucifer thing because Wen Qing explained that yes, that’s a Thing, and it’s Bad.

Wen Qing! I’ve decided to combine Bela and Ruby’s roles and let WQ be both the cool badass example of how demon deals can go Bad and the demon deliberately leading our heroes astray for most of s3-4. Wen Qing is a very new demon; she used to be some sort of herbalist/witch but then she sold her soul in a crossroads deal to cure her brother of some lingering illness. 10 years of happiness and then boom, hellhounds. WQ is so obviously competent, though, that they (Lilith, I guess?) immediately offers her a job, with the promise threat that gee, that’s a nice brother you’ve got there, even with his Designated Chronic Health Condition getting all relapse-y. It’d be such a shame if something were to...happen to him...

we find this out at some point in last s3 I guess? some Monster of the Week case involves WN as a witness or something, or possible next victim, and WQ shows up to be A Normal Amount Of Invested In This, while desperately trying to avoid actually interacting with her brother (who thinks she’s dead). YES, the truth comes out; YES there’s a tearful reunion

now in s4, Wen Ning is fine actually, health-wise, bc he maybe made a crossroads deal with Wei Wuxian personally, and Wen Qing may or may not have admitted that she’s supposed to be working for Lilith to get WWX ready to host Lucifer? Or potentially that comes out later, idk. Either way, she’s 100% his top lieutenant in this exciting Hell War they’re waging

[insert whatever the hell (ha) happened plot-wise in s4 of supernatural]

we obviously mix up the relationships, too, bc it’s like, *LWJ internal monologue* I’m too young to remember my brother Lucifer as he was before he Fell, but surely Wei Wuxian is his Heir and Destined Vessel in truth, for he is Charismatic and Charming and Makes Me Feel Things, with his Clearly Feigned Righteous Drive and Compassion for All God’s Creatures and - why does heat keep pooling in the lower abdomen of my vessel when I look at his lips, which I am definitely doing a Normal and Not-Weird Amount - I’m just keeping an eye out for the famed Silver Tongue, and not in any way wondering how it would feel in my own mouth -

it’s actually DEFINITELY plausible for Lucifer to still be released even if our designated Heir Apparent is using his demon powers to his full potential and no one’s lying to each other about their motives. You just need to let Lilith be more scary too, and especially bc by “no one” I mostly mean Wen Qing; the angels are still totally hiding the fact that they, too, want to jumpstart the shit out of this apocalypse.  LWJ decides at the last minute that that’s a bad idea actually, gets himself discorporated to send JC to intercept WWX because he accidentally releases Lucifer, etc. etc. Oh yeah, the boys were def fighting before this, bc JC has actually fairly reasonable concerns about the sort of things WWX is getting up to in his quest to become King of Hell...

SO

...I neither know nor care what happens in s5

it does end with both Lucifer and Michael locked in the cage probably, bc I rather liked that solution. Fuck both of ‘em, basically.

I was toying with the idea that WWX also found Madam Yu in whatever hellish torment she was suffering after making a deal so her idiot son(s) would survive, and she was leading forces for him in the war against Lilith as well. If she came back to life somehow, body and all, it’d probably be compelling if she offered her own body to Michael - bc it’s her lineage! - and we’re all led to believe that she’s, uh, being a bitch and actually wants to risk destroying the world in order to destroy all demons...but then she seizes back control and flings herself/Michael and Lucifer into the Pit, because she’s just That Hardcore?

which means we’d actually have had her around and having characterization for most of s4-5, too, which would be fun

More importantly, it ends with newly crowned King of Hell Wei Wuxian appointing Wen Qing as Queen-Regent and ditching to go on an indefinite honeymoon with his new angel boyfriend (they’re going to fuck for like three weeks straight, then roll up their sleeves and go conquer Heaven in the name of free will), and Jiang Cheng gets to live out his hitherto-unknown-to-himself life’s ambition to be the sugar baby of the Queen of Hell. It’s very Hades/Persephone, except he goes back down to the underworld at least once a month. He gets his own demon squad whom he trains up in all the hunting techniques and it’s gr9. Wen Qing is reforming the crossroads deal process to make it more fair to the humans.

the end

Addenda:

it should go without saying but Jiang Yanli is definitely a recurring character, like, at least once a season there’s a filler episode where they go to Jiang Yanli’s for dinner and have to get along as a family, and also do the much easier job of defeating some sort of terrible demon that gets loose in the bunker and turns the evening into a horror movie. She’s their main research/emotional check-in person, a la Bobby, more often appearing in later seasons when there’s, uhhh, more to emotionally check in about.

Jin Zixuan is actually a perfectly competent hunter; he’s just a priss and we don’t Like him

we like Mianmian, though. Oh, I guess the official Hunter’s Guild or w/e tries to declare WWX a public enemy on account of the whole “King of Hell” thing and she’s like “actually what if you’re morons and assholes?” and joins hte team in s4 or 5? Yeah.

idk how the 3zun disaster happens in this ‘verse but I do encourage it to be happening in slow motion as a recurring subplot for several seasons. NMJ is a hunter, LXC is obv an angel, and JGY is...I wanna say one of the more human monsters, like a vampire? Or, you know, something that could be born from JGS sleeping with someone/something he shouldn’t have

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 5

 - more myth than man... or not? the mortality of tom riddle and the anatomy of a villain-

That leaves us with Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of adult Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort in movies 4-8.

I generally find adult Tom Riddle disappointing, even in the books, in terms of character depth. Instead of delving into his motivations and the inner psychology of a villain, we get... slight body horror? And in the movies, it’s even more egregious. 

If a story is as good as its villain, adult Tom Riddle is a bit of a let-down, especially on-screen.

“I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost . . . but still, I was alive.”

Perhaps the very first time I watched it, I found this scary, but I must confess that nowadays, Voldemort’s resurrection is more funny to me than anything else. The forked tongue and the nose slits, yes, are supposed to allude to Tom Riddle’s loss of humanity, but I don’t think it...worked out that way in practice.

I know that’s how it is in the books, but ugly equals evil (and vice versa) is a tired trope. not only that, but under the CGI, Lord Voldemort is so difficult to relate to, so inhuman, that it’s hard to (1) see his true depravity (2) connect with him emotionally (3) at least for me, not laugh at him flapping around the graveyard in GOF like an oversized crow. 

Now, the reason I’m going on about this is not (just) me being petty. Lord Voldemort is the Boggart for most of the characters in the HP universe, meaning their greatest fear is Lord Voldemort. He represents Fear; as such, he should be utterly terrifying. Now, I don’t mean horrifying in that sense, but Voldemort’s grand entrance should at least feel somewhat unsettling, have some sort of a Gothic atmosphere...

"But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron."

Visually, this looks great. But it’s not scary. And I’m not a purist by any means, but the words are scarier than the book. Darkness induces fear. 

“The lack of any kind of visual stimuli increases anxiety, uncertainty, and tension.”

So, having Voldemort’s pale body materialize isn’t as scary as it could be.

Furthermore, I think Fiennes’ overexaggerated expressions would actually come across as properly horrifying/threatening rather than funny if they just left his face alone. Yes, Fiennes does manage to emote the fear and the anger through the CGI, but it’s like he’s too alien to be scary, at least to me. The amount of memes with Voldemort suggest I’m not the only one this way inclined.

I think there’s probably a problem going on with the uncanny valley. (Images from the Mori essay linked).

[When things are still]

[Creepy things are creepier when moving]

Now, I assume Voldemort is meant to be zombie-creepy, or at least that how Harry describes him in the books.

"The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry...and Harry stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's but with slits for nostrils...."

Now, we can’t get Harry’s experience of being haunted by Voldemort in his dreams, because what I think makes Voldemort’s countenance so truly frightening to the other characters isn’t his snake-like nose or his red eyes, but the potential. Voldemort is, in essence, the Grim Reaper. You are at his mercy, and you’re probably going to be dead. 

“This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.“

And yes, Voldemort can be quite funny and witty, but..

“I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers will give their right hands to perform.” (To Peter Pettigrew)

...it’s still incredibly dark, sadistic humour. Whereas the teenage Tom Riddle we’ve been discussing has just barely dipped his toes into evil, Voldemort is, well... swimming in it. At this point, he think he undeniably enjoys causing pain.

And much of what makes Voldemort scary is subtle. 

For example, what I personally consider haunting is the fact that he’s got a cave full of Inferi. A cave full of reanimated dead bodies. 

Either he dug them up, which is unlikely... or perhaps, a twenty-seven-or-so-year-old Tom Riddle would lie in wait like a bird of prey, very quietly and patiently, perhaps reading a book, waiting for an unsuspecting Muggle to wander past. Maybe killing is a game to him at this point, when it’s not so personal as killing Harry Potter. Maybe it’s a whispered Avada Kedavra, and then he carries the dead body away to his cave. Maybe he Imperiuses them to walk off the cliff. Maybe he tortures them first.

Shudder.

And I don’t think you can show that kind of horror through any CGI or make-up, so...

You know what is terrifying? Revolting? True crime; real-life people who do unspeakably horrible things. And I think a lot was missed out on, in stripping Tom Riddle physically of his humanity. Yes, Riddle is a monster...

But, as we’ve seen, he’s a human monster, not some eldritch horror from the seventh level of hell or something.

I just think it would be interesting to have this perfectly normal-looking human do all the horrific things Voldemort does. I want to see that sick joy in a human face and feel disgusted. I want to see fear make his bottom lip tremble, and feel a misplaced sense of empathy. (Think President Snow from the Hunger Games -- now, that’s a sick, twisted villain who we can relate to as a human being, but still love to hate -- or what about The Joker?).

And out of everything they chose to CGI, why on earth did they not make his eyes scarlet? That might have made him look at least somewhat menacing, rather than a failed lab experiment.

(Don’t even get me started on his and Bellatrix’s death scenes in the movies-)

Here’s President Snow. He’s got a cute little granddaughter, he sends kiddies to kill each other Battle Royale-style every year, and he poisons all his political opponents. He’s also a master manipulator and has a penchant for white roses. They cover up the smell of the sores in his mouth from eating the poison too, to conceal his treachery.

Heath Ledger as the Joker in Dark Knight (2008), who is, according to NYT (which I totally agree with), the best Joker. Now this is a villain done right, with many Voldemort-like traits. On a scale of one-to-ten, he’s absolutely terrifying. Why? He’s (unlike Voldemort in the movies) incredibly intelligent, shows young-Tom-Riddle-like skills for charm and manipulation, plays with humans like they’re his own personal psychology experiment (and to hell with the Institutional Review Board), and has one, single, very clear goal -- chaos. Like Voldemort, he wears an inhuman mask that’s not horrifying in its own right; but unlike Voldemort, the human is all there -- terrifying, real, and with a bottomless, obsessive desire to destroy. His disordered thinking is all out there for the audience to see. The Joker’s motivation is to enjoy himself; whereas Voldemort seems to lack drive. Why does he want to take over the world -- who knows, with Voldemort? The Joker wants to see it burn.

Let’s try to do the same with Lord Voldemort:

[SLIGHT FLASH WARNING]

I had to go with this because Voldemort isn’t legitimately terrifying in many scenes. And yes, this unrefined anger somewhat speaks to Tom’s immaturity

By this point, seventy-one year old Tom Riddle is a hollowed-out shell of a human being. After decades of building his power, he was defeated by a one-year-old, and ended up slumming it as a spirit for a decade, got defeated again, was a shrivelled-up baby for a year, then finally got his body back.

He’s angry, okay! And Fiennes does a great job of portraying the sheer, destructive, unbridled rage of this character.

The body language. again, since his face is inhuman, this is super important. and Fiennes’ body language is great. Voldemort/Riddle commits to his actions. He is very emotionally-driven.

But yet, he doesn’t feel capable, in the way that the Joker or President Snow do. Yeah, we know anecdotally that he’s incredibly evil, sadistic, and second only to Dumbledore in terms of power, but he loses to a baby, and then that same baby as a teenager. So, we really could have done with seeing Voldemort’s power, cruelty, and evil firsthand a lot more often.

Voldemort is not well-characterized. I don’t understand his motives, and the ones that I do understand are not compelling.

Not to die? Well, he’s already made several Horcruxes. Why not sit back and relax? Why start a war and risk himself?

JKR said that Voldemort’s great desire was to become all-powerful and eternal. But that’s... boring! It does little to tell us about Voldemort, other than that he’s a villain and a wannabe dictator. 

Furthermore, the charm, manipulation, and cunning that are hallmarks of younger Tom Riddle’s personality are gone.

Is Voldemort (to return to Jungian terms) all shadow? An empty creature of simple creation and destruction, perhaps? We’ll discuss this further down...

And this isn’t a problem of having a fantastical world with magic and the like. Grindelwald’s quiet, self-possessed, almost coy “So you think you can hold me?” was infinitely scarier than anything that has ever come out of Voldemort’s mouth. It was chilling. 

OOTP is my favorite book, and the Ministry sequence is one of my favourite in the films. 

This scene where he psyches out Harry, talking so quietly that he could just be a little voice inside his head (and again, during the possession scene)? Absolute perfection. 

Why? Because this showcases what’s truly scary about him. Voldemort can get into your head. He can make you do things. And perhaps, if we had seen that more often, we’d understand how scary he is.

I wish this had been his grand entrance, and not whatever that scene in GOF was. Somehow, him screeching “I WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT LEAVE YOUR EYES!” is not menacing. At all. 

But, I can’t help but think how much greater the emotional affect would be if he had more human features (think the burned-and-blurred, waxy features from Dumbledore’s memory). 

Just imagine these scenes if Voldemort looked human, and spoke as quietly as he did in this one.

Because of the reason that I have little to go on in terms of characterization that I haven’t already covered, we’ll discuss the myth and legend of Lord Voldemort.

I can’t decide if the statue in the films is supposed to be the Angel of Death or the Grim Reaper. He has a skeleton and carries a scythe, but he also has wings. There are so many different interpretations, attitudes towards, and personifications of Death across the world that I don’t want to draw any one conclusion. But I must wonder if Lord Voldemort, with his yew-and-phoenix wand (which carries heavy symbolism of immortality and rebirth) and almost deified figure is meant to be a personification of Death himself? His name, Lord Voldemort, is a shade close to Lord Death.

For years, it has stumped me that wizards and witches are afraid to utter Voldemort’s name, especially since we only see the Taboo in the middle of the last book. It didn’t make sense just based on fear; in the real world, we don’t circumvent Hitler’s name, for example.

Perhaps this may have been obvious to others, but it wasn’t to me.

Here’s a counterargument to myself; why Voldemort shouldn’t look human.

Voldemort, in the Wizarding World, is seen as a literal deity.

I promised to attempt to answer this question in Part 3: 

And so, I can’t help but wonder if the opposite is true… if Tom Riddle creates Horcruxes, would that grant him additional magic powers?

In Part 3, I likened Tom Riddle to a sorcerer in Russian folklore, Koschei the Deathless, also famous for sequestering his soul in objects. This source suggests that Koschei was considered not an ordinary magician, but a representative of the ‘other’ world, the world of death.

So, what if... creating Horcruxes makes you... more than human? Now, I could definitely see god-like status being appealing to sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle. Perhaps, even appealing enough to kill for. Now, his proclivity for Avada Kedavra makes sense. We know it’s an incredibly sinister spell, but at the same time, it’s a very humane way to kill. Why might it be so horrifying?

Here’s a weird theory.

To the best of my knowledge, no one but Voldemort is seen using the Killing Curse more than once or twice. 

Perhaps, ordinary mortals can only cast Avada Kedavra a few times, but Tom, having split his soul and having become in some way a non-human instrument of Death, can cast it however many times as he likes, and that is part of what serves to make him so terrifying.

This makes the idea of Voldemort tossing around Avada Kedavras actually incredibly terrifying, if you take into account what that might mean.

The collective cultural fear of speaking Voldemort’s name supports this theory.

Take the chthonic (underworld) deities of Greek mythology; most notably, Hades and Persephone, the king and queen of the underworld.

Hades, the god of the dead, was feared. 

So feared that the word ‘Hades’ (”the unseen one”) was so frightening, that people came up with all sorts of euphemisms to circumvent actually saying it and he was rarely even depicted in art. For example, they would refer to him as Pluto (”the rich one”), Clymenus ("notorious"), Polydegmon ("who receives many"), and perhaps Eubuleus ("good counsel" or "well-intentioned"), amongst many other names. 

However, he was not seen as evil; just stern, cruel, and fair. Like most Greek gods, he had an associated cult (the Death Eaters, anyone?)

Another interesting connection between Hades and Voldemort is that Hades was associated with snakes.

Persephone (suggested to have a pre-Greek origin and probably pre-dates Hades), who was also a vegetation/fertility/spring goddess, similarly, was referred to as Despoina (”the mistress”), Kore (”the maiden”), etc, because as the terrible Queen of the Dead, it was considered unsafe to speak her name aloud. In mythology and literature, she is sometimes referred to as ‘dread Persephone.’

--Just like how Lord Voldemort is referred to as The Dark Lord, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, You-Know-Who... (and if you’re Dumbledore, ‘Tom’.)

Her central myth served as the context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis (which was basically a mystery cult devoted to her and her mother, Demeter), which promised immortality to initiates.

We don’t know for certain what exactly went on, because, mystery cult -- the members were sworn to secrecy -- but it revolved around immortality and rebirth and possibly psychoactive drugs. 

Perhaps ironically, in comparison to the Death Eaters, anyone could join, as long as they could speak Greek and had never committed murder.

And that concludes my assessment!

[pallasperilous]

Occursus

Castiel/Dean Winchester Gen/Teen, 4341 words 15x20 coda  AO3 version “The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” Cas says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.” 

Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two. “Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes. “It was a poor analogy. I apologize.” “So what’s a better one?” Castiel drums his fingers for a second. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.” “Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

It’s half past midnight by the time Dean gets another run at Cas.

Granted, what the fuck does half past midnight even mean here, where time is as free as tap water? Why does anybody even bother? For all it matters, Dean could set his watch to eleventy minutes past twenty o’ nope and still never miss last call.

Then again, somebody felt it necessary to invent the idea of Tuesday in the first place, and Dean’s not gonna volunteer himself for the task of replacing it with something better. What’s important is that he’s survived (or rather, he hasn’t survived) a battery of poignant moments and tearful reunions. He and Sam hugged out burdens registering in the triple digits. They even had a little fight, pretty much for the fun of it, while Ellen fucking Harvelle watched them over the bar with her eyes shining. She still charged them, though.

Right at the beginning of the party Dean and Castiel had their eyes-across-the-room thing, followed by the same magnetic, exhausted embrace they’ve shared on just about every plane of reality now. Dean supposes he could ask Cas for a nickel tour of the Empty just so they could hit for the cycle, but he’d really rather not. Sam let them eke out a few gruff, tear-choked monosyllables before diving in, sweeping Cas up in a bear hug and laughing like a fucking kid. Dean doesn’t push it, because it’s been longer for Sam, after all. Or something.

 And now it’s quiet, just the jukebox and the clink of glasses back in the kitchen, a few folks murmuring in booths. It might be dark outside, it might not; it’s waiting on Dean’s opinion before it commits to anything. And so is Cas, who is standing in the warm glow of the jukebox, hands in his pockets.

 Dean walks up, leans against it, bottle still dangling from one hand.

“C’mon, sunshine. I’ll show you yours, you show me mine.”

Cas looks up and into Dean’s eyes with the wary, elegant patience of a deer. “What is it that you would be showing me, Dean?”

Dean gives him a long, languid blink and bites his lip, and Castiel lags for half a second before rolling his own eyes. “I see death hasn’t refined your sense of humor.”

“Nope. Guess the billionth time aint the charm.”

Cas remains stonefaced, which means a corresponding you dumbass blush starts crawling up the sides of Dean’s neck. The jukebox switches records like it’s making a suggestion.

“I’m gonna sit down outside,” Dean says. “C’mon and sit down with me. There’s a patio somewhere, right? Ellen was always talking about adding one out back. No way she hasn’t bossed somebody into buildin’ it.”

“There’s a patio,” Cas says, taking his hands out of his pockets.

 Heaven’s patio is pretty nice; twenty square feet, some scattered picnic tables, fences covered in ivy and string lights. It still smells like fresh pine boards. There’s even a fire pit, which seems kinda bougie for the Roadhouse, but hell with it, it’s warm and pretty, and since when did pretentious people get to lay claim to “a hole with a fire in it”? There’s no moon overhead, and so the Milky Way is giving them the full monty — the runnelled spine of it, the ribcage packed with galaxies.

“Are they all alive?” Dean asks. The warmth from inside leaks out of his collar, wisps away.

“Who?”

Dean points up. “The stars. They always make a big deal about how most of the stars you can see from Earth have been dead for millions of years by the time we get the light from ‘em. That still true here? Or is everything on auto-renewal?”

“That’s a very complicated question,” Cas says, not looking up, only at Dean. He does that a lot, Dean knows, but it turns out to mean something different than what Dean had always assumed, which was ironically pretty similar to what it actually meant, but was reassuringly unactionable and therefore unfuckupable.

“I’m a very complicated guy,” Dean says.

Castiel smiles at that. “I don’t actually know the answer,” he admits. “And it would take an extremely long time to investigate. There are some other things I’d rather do first.”

“What, you can’t just call the kid for directory assistance?”

Castiel lets a good-humored sigh. “Like many young people these days, Jack prefers to avoid the phone.”

This is a solid riff, and Dean respects it. He picks the table closest to the fire and takes a bench and Cas sits next to him, instead of opposite. Dean thought he managed to break him of this habit a few years ago, but here all things are made whole again.

“So what,” Cas says, without a single molecule of playfulness or seduction, “is it that you want us to show each other?”

“Yeah, I was…it was a dumb joke. But I mean it, just not in a ‘playing doctor’ way.”

Castiel frowns, tightens his lips; the firelight throws a fluttering shadow across his face.

“I mean…Christ.” Dean takes a medicinal slug of his dwindling beer. “I don’t really look like this anymore either, right?” And he gestures at his usual shitshow personal presentation, which death has also noticeably failed to refine.

Castiel frowns, smoothes his hand across the surface of the table. “This is a corporeal world, Dean. It operates on a different set of rules, but your body here is no more of an illusion than it was on earth.”

“Seriously?” Dean ponders a second, squints through the dim light at his fingernails, at the high-resolution grime contained therein. “Jesus, that sounds like a lot of work. At least compared to Holodeck Heaven.”

“It is. But we didn’t build this place to be a...a…doorprize. It’s a real world,” Castiel enthuses, looming forward. “It’s the one that should have been created for all of you in the first place.” He pauses, glances down. “For all of us.”

Dean shrugs. “Okay, so no holograms. I’ll keep all that in mind next time Charlie tries to convince me to go skydiving.”

Castiel snorts, but not in pure aggravation, so Dean feels like he’s finally got a point on the board. “What I’m sayin’ is…physical or not, this place has different rules, right? So could I look at you without my eyeballs exploding? The…you know, the angel parts of you. Not just your vessel,” and Dean fwippies his hand at Cas to indicate that true beauty is contained within and Dean is completely indifferent to the fact this dork-ass alien managed to bodysnatch a guy who’s never dipped below an 8.5.

“It isn’t a vessel anymore. We can create our own bodies, now.”

“Peachy,” Dean clips, because that shit is a little late coming off the line.

Castiel sighs. “You could see me in that form without coming to harm. But you should know that I don’t consider it any more a reflection who I am than this form. Not anymore.”

Dean rolls the bottle towards him, nudges a knuckle. “You’re a real boy now, huh?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Castiel says, and smiles a smile so small that Dean would need a microscope to figure out if it’s pleased or pained.

So Dean thwacks the bottle down on the totally-real table and claps his totally-real hands. “Well then let’s go. Hit me with that angel weirdness. If we’re gonna do this, I gotta taste all thirty-one flavors.”

Castiel smiles a little more convincingly, but it still doesn’t reach his eyes. “There are really only the two,” he says, and holds his palms out to the warmth of the fire.

“Great, then we’ll be done in time to catch Letterman. Then if you’re good maybe you can help me shimmy out of this thing.”

Cas cocks his head. “Out of which thing?”

“This super real heavenly meat-suit, dude. It’s not fair if only one of us gets naked. Peep show has to go both ways. I see your angel-face, you see my soul.”

Cas looks stricken, like Dean is asking to suck on his toes next to a playground. “I mean, unless that’d fuck you up,” Dean adds.

“No,” Castiel replies, a little absently. “It wouldn’t fuck me up. But it…wouldn’t really accomplish anything, either.”

“What, no soul kink? That’s bullshit and you know it. You love this crap.”

Castiel replies, “Your soul is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” with the easy confidence of a regular latte order. With the same uncanny, 2 Blessed 2 B Stressed face he had when Dean plowed Ruby’s knife hilt-deep into Jimmy Novak’s sternum, that he had when the Empty collapsed him  like a carcass in an acid bath.

That face shuts Dean right the fuck up, because it sends him skipping backwards into that fucking basement, where his phone is buzzing and the gritty concrete chill of the floor is seeping through his jeans into the useless meat of his legs and leeching into the hot, wet channels of his piece of shit heart.

Turns out you can work up a good little panic attack in heaven, which seems like a significant oversight.

From a million miles away he feels Cas’s warm, dry palm slide over the back of his hand –– there’s a ring there now that Dean lost down a motel sink drain ages ago, is nobody spotting continuity errors here?—then Cas’s hand tightens on his and it feels like a Xanax kicking in. (The good kind, direct from the hot nurse with the little paper cup, not the kind you get in a from a shady burnout at a truckstop, that’s been ground up with baking soda or benadryl and carefully remolded, as if you could possibly give that much of a shit when you’re freaking out bad enough to buy Xanax at a truckstop.)

Point being, he calms the fuck down.

Cas has good hands. They can do a lot of impressive shit, and they look nice doing it. They don’t look like –– they’ve never looked like –– they belong to somebody whose main job is destroying people, places, or things. They’re hands that how to play the cello, or make tables from reclaimed wood, or give soapy, encompassing handjobs in the shower on cold evenings.

“It’s been years, though,” Dean rasps, not looking up yet. “I was a kid when you got me out of Hell, Cas. I’ve done a lot of shit since then. Maybe souls get stretch marks.”

Castiel’s hand tightens on his, clamps it down on the table. “I’ve always been able to see it.”

“Okay,” Dean mumbles, but Cas keeps on going –

“The only time I couldn’t see any part of your soul was when I was without grace, and I promise you that was one of the greatest deprivations imaginable.”

Dean snorts, looks away, but his hand is still on lockdown. “Worse than going hungry, huh?”

“Much.”

“Hey, what about Sam? Or, hell, fucking Donatello. They both were both walking around minus their creamy filling, and you didn’t say boo.”

Cas shrugs. “I can’t see their souls under ordinary circumstances.”

“So what, mine’s just extra loud, or day-glo, or what?”

“It’s both of those things, but that isn’t why,” Cas answers, and the boy is downright wry.

Dean tugs his hand out, raps his knuckles against the wood. “Okay, so stop bein’ coy and tell me before I get a complex. And if you say it’s because of love or some shit, I’m bailing to Rowena’s.”

“You infected me,” Cas says.

“Uh,” says Dean.

The fire pops and a log shifts; Cas glances over at the kerfuffle, absently lifts his fingers to his chin like he’s looking for an old scar. “In Hell, when I retrieved you…I had to grip your raw soul. I was meant to wear a gauntlet, so I wouldn’t be burned.”

Dean snickers. “You’re telling me you were supposed to be wearing a soul condom. What happened, you get too excited and forget to suit up? It’s okay, I know I’m a lot to take in.”

Castiel purses his lips. “No, I was properly armored. But my arm was torn off in combat shortly before I reached you.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch,” Cas agrees. “I didn’t have time to retrieve the arm or its protection from the pit, so I had to grow a new one very quickly.”

Dean really should’ve switched to whiskey before starting this. “What, you didn’t pack a spare?” He wheezes.

“Ordinarily, yes, I would have had the resources, but I was equipped very lightly for that mission. It was a raid, not a siege. You understand the difference.”

“Sure, yeah, you left your emergency arms in the trunk. So you just popped out a new one. No big.”

“It was a big. Your soul was close enough that it forced me to grow a human arm, instead of a much quicker and more powerful extensor.”

“Okay, uh,” Dean pinches at the bridge of his nose, “there’s a lot to unpack there.”

“What part of it confuses you?”

“I dunno, the bit where apparently angels are I guess heavenly octopuses,”

“The plural in the Greek is octopodes,” Cas interjects, not without pleasure.

Dean glowers. “Or the part where you can apparently swap in different drill bits,” Dean continues,

“Mm,” Cas notes, careful not to open his mouth,

“Or that I, like, accidentally bullied you into growing a person arm,” and Dean pauses for breath here, which Cas evidently takes as permission to dive in with more Planet Earth commentary.

“The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” he says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.” Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two.

“Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes.

“It was a poor analogy. I apologize.”

“So what’s a better one?”

Castiel drums his fingers for a second, listens to the fire pop in its little cage. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.”

“Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

“What I’m trying to avoid saying,” Castiel sighs, “is that you rubbed off on me.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. That’s fair. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to say that around me, either.”  He lays a couple little pats on Cas’s hand. “Lookit you, though, seeing around that corner. I’m proud of you, man. That would’ve totally flipped your breaker back in the day.”

“Just one of the many ways you have reshaped me, Dean,” Cas says, with warm sarcasm.

“Alright, so you rawdogged me, I whammied you. Chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter, chocolate.”

Cas’s forehead wrinkles in skepticism. “I still prefer the cockroach. But some part of your soul injected itself into one of my more exposed frequencies. Under different circumstances, I would’ve stopped and excised the affected area before it spread, but. I was being pursued, and the mission had taken much longer than any of us anticipated.”

“Us? Thought it was just you down there.”

Cas looks vaguely offended, straightens and folds his arms like he just remembered he’s giving a deposition. “No, of course not. Michael assigned sixty-six angels in eleven groups of six, each escorted to the field by a seraph. We struck simultaneously at six different areas in perdition. From there we dispersed to individual targets –– to cause as much chaos as possible in order to help obscure the object of our mission, and to increase the odds that one of us would actually find you.”

“And you were the lucky winner.” Dean pushes down a touch of sick shame at the thought of it — he’d been coiled up like a snake around somebody else’s torment, anesthetized by it. It was one of the random rags of infernal time where his own pain decreased in proportion to how much he dealt out, and that was the closest thing Hell had to a Friday night.

“I was,” Castiel nods. “I took some liberties with my assignment,” he adds, squinting. “I flattered myself that I shared a special affinity with The Righteous Man.”

“That guy always sounded like kind of a cunt to me,” Dean notes. “You know, not withstanding the fact that I’m him.”

Castiel shrugs. “I found you, and I did what was necessary to save you, and my siblings did what was necessary to save me.” A little falter enters his voice. “Only twelve of us returned from that mission.” Cas looks up, out, away. A dove coos somewhere nearby of the Roadhouse; did it have a run-in with the windshield of an eighteen wheeler one day and show up here, Dean wonders, or does heaven make its own birds from scratch? That’s gotta be a softball compared to whether Betelgeuse is still open for business.

Castiel waits until the bird shuts up, then says, “Of those twelve surviving angels, I personally murdered nine, in everything that followed.”

After a moment Dean says “Yeah,” with practiced neutrality. He’s got some similar tallies, written in Sharpie on the back of his eyelids.

Cas sighs and his attention comes back down to the table. “By the time I received the authority to restore your soul to your body, the infection had spread almost past the point of containment. That’s why I resisted taking a vessel at first. I worried that occupying a human form would speed up the process.”

“Hey now. I thought you showed up naked because you thought I’d be one of those special people,” Dean quips, “Who can handle angel stuff without going all kibbles ’n bits.”

“That was only a partial truth.”

Dean tips the beer bottle in salute. “You’re a real special flavor of asshole, Cas.”

“So I’ve been told. I was right, though. When I took Jimmy as a vessel, I contracted — condensed — myself very severely. The infection had a much shorter distance to travel to reach all of my extremities, and a human form was the most hospitable environment possible.”

“You got a raging case of the Deans.”

Cas’s head kicks back in a laugh that kinda surprises them both. “Yes,” he says, grinning. “I did. I was very displeased, and very concerned I’d be found out and judged unfit for duty. And I very much was. Unfit, that is. Though I was not found out.”

“C’mon, never? You went rogue on the company.”

“Uriel suspected. Naomi certainly detected it later, as did Metatron. But in the moment, no. The Host’s attention was focused on the Apocalypse ahead, not on debriefing a mission that was considered a success. After the Cage was closed, I had too much influence to come under that level of scrutiny.”

“Hmh.” Dean realizes he’s been systematically picking down the label on the beer bottle, so he sets it on the ground before he gets sticky little shreds everywhere. “So I gotta ask. My little souvenir, the handprint. That’s where you grabbed me, with your lil…Mister Potato Head human arm?”

“It is.”

“If I’m the one who infected you, how come I’m the one who got burned?”

“My hand didn’t burn you.”

“Well, it ain’t fingerpaint.”

“Your own soul burned it, as it flowed out of your flesh and into mine. It burned until the moment when I finally released you from my grip. My hand healed itself; your arm did not.” Castiel gives a thin scoff. “I hadn’t planned to leave you interred.”

“Oh, no? Well that’s nice to hear, you know, a decade after the fact. I still have nightmares about that shit.”

Castiel winces. “It’s no excuse, but I was in a great deal of…the equivalent of pain. It took an immense effort to break off the inflow of your soul, and when I did manage it, I was thrown quite a ways by the recoil. By the time I recovered enough to return, you were already looting a gas station,” He finishes, dryly.

“Yeah, well, Dad didn’t think much of leisure as a virtue. Also I was thirsty, because I’d just crawled out of my own grave.”

“And I was distracted, because I’d just fought my way out of the inferno while being digested by a demented human soul.”

“You wanna call it even?”

Cas lifts his brows. “If you don’t mind.”

 There is a long, dark breath, during which their little smiles fade. 

 “So, all that,” Dean says, because he’s a fucking coward.

“All that,” says Cas, because he isn’t.

 Dean clears his throat. “That means you can see my soul-stuff 24/7, huh?”

Castiel slides one leg up onto the bench, shifts to sit astride it, like he’s maybe about to deliver an after-school PSA on the Real Deal About Drugs. “I can always see myself, and extensions of my self. And since your soul made itself into an integral part of me…I can see you.”

“I take it that’s not exactly in the manual.”

“No. I didn’t entirely understand it at first — for a long time, I convinced myself it was because you were designed to be a celestial vessel, and that I had been destined to save you from Hell.”

That thin, acidic feelings starts to rise up in Dean’s chest again. “Do you…” A dry swallow reflex grabs his throat. “Hm. Fuck.”

“What?” Cas asks, scooting forward. An angel. Scooting. What a world. “You can ask me anything, Dean. I hope we’re both past being offended.”

“Have you ever thought that. This whole deal. Our…thing.” Dean lets out a breath. “The way you feel about me. The way I feel about you.”

“Do I worry that its only basis is our shared material?”

Dean licks his lips, works a jaw muscle, forces out a nod. 

Cas frowns, sets one elbow up against the table, then lets his head tip to the side. “Why do you love Sam?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I get it, he’s my brother. We got shared material, too. But we’re not talking genetics.”

“Genes were the initial basis of your love for Sam. But you share half as much material with Adam. Do you love him fifty percent as much as you do Sam?”

“One, love doesn’t work that way and you know it, and two, fucking of course not. I barely know the guy, and what I’ve seen didn’t exactly blow me away.” Not that the poor dumb kid ever really had a chance. “Sam’s Sam, he’s earned it a million times over just by bein’ him.”

“Then you understand.”

“But Cas, man…I…” Dean laughs, which is an abbreviated form of screaming, “I treated you like shit.”

Cas nods. “You did.”

“Okay, the rules say you’re not supposed to agree with me.”

“But the balance remains in your favor. Dean, are you genuinely afraid that you — care for me…”  and Dean can hear the FCC live-bleep in that one, like does his total cowardice have a special color Cas can see with his soul-o-vision? “Only out of some compulsion?”

“No,” Dean says, to the great surprise of his frontal cortex, which was busy kicking the shit out of itself. “No,” he says again, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, that that answer actually came out of him and entered the living air between them.

Then the wave is rolling towards him and he enters that slim moment of body-physics where you either take a lungful and commit to diving under the break, or you kick out against the undertow, arch your back to meet the blow, and let yourself be flown all the way up to the waiting shore––

“No,” Dean says, “I love you.” And he chokes up a little, first at the release of saying it, then at how much of exactly jack-shit it changes anything so what was he even scared of, and then at the look on Cas’s face: how he’s frozen. Like that dog from that video, the one that loved tennis balls so goddamn much that his owner bought him a thousand fucking tennis balls and dumps them out all at once and the dog absolutely stalls the fuck out, just seconds on end of underspecced dog-brain hang time before he finally snaps back to reality and loses his absolute shit scrabbling all over the porch.

Castiel comes back online with a little choking noise of his own, and a kind of awkward scrabble for Dean’s hand.

“I have for a long time,” Dean continues, because apparently he’s continuing, “I’ve loved you for fucking ages, Cas. In people years, anyway, I’m sure that mean’s fuckall to somebody who’s a zillion––”

“I don’t,” Cas says thickly, “really give a damn about the age difference, Dean,” and cracks into a chuckle.

“So how come you never knew it?” Dean asks, feeling freedom turn into a hunger or something like vertigo. “If you can see my soul, how could you not know?”

Cas shrugs, a bit helplessly.

“Seriously,” Dean laughs, “how did I manage to hide that shit so well? Sammy found every nudie mag I ever shoplifted.”

Cas shakes his head. “You’ve never actually been able to hide anything from me.”

Dean scoffs. “C’mon, man. I snowed you plenty, or else we woulda had this conversation dirtside a long time ago.”

“Whatever I missed, Dean…it wasn’t because you succeeded at hiding it,” Castiel says, softly. He takes a slow, shaky breath, and meets Dean’s eyes with a smile. He lifts a hand to Dean’s face, bone and flesh on flesh and bone. “I just loved you enough to look away.”

 It’s a long time before they go back inside. By any measure. {AO3}

[justanother-unluckysoul]

Working My Way Back To You 9/11

Killian gets captured. When Emma finally rescues him, he’s traumatized and nearly broken from the torture he endured. Angst and h/c galore as Emma helps him through it.

I tried to go easy on the whumpy side of it since it’s supposed to be for Comfortember, but it’s me so I probably failed lol

A/N: Oof this chapter got away from me a bit lol I strayed back into whumpy territory a little in this one, as Killian talks about some of his trauma, but he does get comfort in the present time.

Warnings for this chapter: a bit of smut (I probably don’t have to warn for that since this story is already M rated but it’s there, so) (also it’s my very first attempt at smut and I’ve rewritten that scene only like a bazillion times haha but I’m still so nervous to post it, I just hope you guys don’t hate it)

Unbetad as always so mistakes are all mine.

Tagging @cocohook38 as requested.

Read this chapter on AO3

Working My Way Back To You

Road Trip + Campfire

It had been Archie’s idea for Emma and Killian to get away for a while. Go down the coast, he’d said, find yourself. Reconnect with each other. Killian didn’t know how camping was supposed to help with any of that. But Emma had seemed excited about the prospect when he’d mentioned it to her, and he never could deny her wishes so here they were, sitting on a log in a forest in the middle of nowhere, where Killian could hear the ocean but not see it through the trees. The campfire crackles and pops and the heat against his front is a sharp contrast to the chill at his back, and perhaps they hadn’t thought this through very well because even through his layers Killian can still feel the cold now that the sun has gone down. Although it has been unseasonably warm lately, the night air still carries quite a bite. Emma’s tucked into his right side, a blanket around her shoulders. She seems happy despite the cold, her stomach full of the fish they’d caught from the sea earlier that day, and the ‘marshmallows’ she’d insisted on bringing along – yet another sticky, sugary treat Killian couldn’t quite stomach. He’d tried two, toasted over the fire until they were gooey on the inside, but they sat uncomfortably in his gut and he left the rest for Emma. He’s not sure if it was the problem was the marshmallows, or the fact that his anxiety is rising again just from being in a forest. Spending centuries on a jungle island, at the whim of a malicious demon, had ruined it for him. On a good day, he could shove it down, bury it deep where all his other vulnerabilities lived. But today is not a good day.

“What are you thinking about, Killian?” Emma asks, and he supposes he has been quiet for too long.

“Just… things.”

“Good things?”

He wishes.

“No.”

“Oh.”

She’s got her fingers on his chest, toying absently with the hairs at the unbuttoned top of his shirt. He wonders if she’ll ask for more of him. He wonders if he can give it this time. He thinks about her body pressed against his and her gentle hands removing his clothes, and maybe he wants to try it again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Emma asks.

Her unexpected question forces an alteration of Killian’s thoughts that is abrupt and unpleasant. Because that’s why they’re really out here, isn’t it? To talk about things. Reconnect, whatever the hell that meant. He doesn’t want to do this. He really, really doesn’t want to dip his toes back into those memories. It’s bad enough he has to bare his soul for the cricket on a regular basis.

“I…”

Where does he start? How can he tell her the true horrors he endured in the cellar? And does she even want to hear it – how they’d seemingly delighted in every strangled groan and grunt he couldn’t hold back under the torture, and how they’d laughed when they finally forced a scream from him? That his only comfort was the hallucination of her, kneeling at his side in the cell telling him everything would be okay as he struggled to breathe around the pain consuming his body? Bloody hell, he’s shaking again at the thought of saying any of that to her.

“We don’t have to do this,” Emma says, giving him a way out that he desperately wants to use.

But Killian Jones is not a coward.

“No, it’s… I can…”

“Breathe, Killian,” she coaches, sitting up straighter and her hand moves up to cradle his face, “Breathe. You’re okay.”

He takes a breath. And another. And slowly the tendrils of panic release him.

“I saw you there,” he blurts out before his mind can talk him out of it again, “In the cell with me. You brought me comfort amongst the torment…”

 “Killian, you have to be still. Just be still. It’ll only hurt more if you move.”

He blinks drowsily at her standing beside him, her hands gentle on his battered body as he hangs from the shackle. Perhaps he should listen to her advice. The pain of fighting to keep his feet under him is making it harder to breathe. Harder to think. And he needs to think. But…

“Emma, how are you here?” he gasps, and his eyes fill with tears of relief.

Her hand caresses his face as she smiles, and he wants to weep from how good it feels. Her love. Her kindness. How long has it been since anyone has touched him in such a way? How long has he been shackled in this cold cell?

“It’s okay,” she says with so much tenderness, “Everything’s going to be okay now. Go to sleep, Killian.”

His eyes flutter closed. He’s so cold. He’s so tired. Everything hurts but it’s okay because Emma’s here.

 “That’s why you didn’t know if I was real,” Emma says quietly, “when we found you. I thought… I thought I’d lost you. That they’d….”

She’s pressed tightly against his side again as he hesitantly shares the story with her.

“I was so scared, Killian.”

“Aye, love. Me too.”

He hadn’t meant to admit that, but he had been terrified. He’d kept it hidden from his captors as best he could but by the end, he knew he was failing. There’s only so much a man can take. And they’d known that, finding his weaknesses and pushing him past his breaking point. For two weeks, he suffered at their hands.

 “Focus on your breathing, Killian,” Emma says softly.

He’s shivering, naked against the cold floor, exhausted from the pain yet unable to sleep because of it. His ruined hand feels so unbearably hot that he envisions it may well burst into flames, every involuntary twitch of his broken fingers sending a blazing agony up his arm. And further down his body there’s still the terrible, terrible burning sensation from his captor’s latest game.

“I d-don’t want you to s-see me like this, Emma,” he whispers through chattering teeth, his eyes squeezed shut.

“It’s okay. You know I’m not really here.”

The reminder that he is alone is too much. It’s like a wave of emotion cresting, and crashing into him with immense force, making him want to howl his rage and despair until his lungs are empty. But he only allows a whimper. He won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing how utterly broken he is.

“Just breathe,” not-Emma murmurs, her imaginary fingers on his face close enough to the real thing that Killian feels himself melting into her touch, “Just keep breathing, Killian.”

 “It felt so real. I know it wasn’t, but… you helped me to stay sane. I would have lost myself if it weren’t for the image of you at my side.”

The fire is burning low now and the loss of its heat is making him shiver. Emma moves the blanket so it’s resting over both of them, and her hand settles on his left forearm as she burrows closer into his right side, like she can cuddle the fear right out of him. He appreciates the gesture, struggling with the mental distress of releasing the memories from that box in his mind. Of admitting his fears to Emma. And he has barely touched on what they did to him in that cellar. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to, not to Emma.

“I’m sorry it took us so long to find you,” Emma says.

“It’s alright.”

“No, it’s not. We were nearly… we were nearly too late, Killian, you were…”

“Almost gone,” he whispers, staring blankly into the campfire.

  When he swallows, he can taste blood, having bitten either his tongue or his lip – he doesn’t know which one – trying to hold back his cries during his last torture session. It hadn’t even helped, not for long enough. His strength is entirely depleted. The pain throughout his body has faded to a dull, miserable sort of ache, that he’s grateful for because it’s better than the fire that had consumed him before. And he realizes distantly that this is it, this is the end. It’s not how he thought he’d go – and he’s thought about it a lot over his too many lifetimes. A quiet, distraught sound escapes his parched throat at the thought that Emma will be too late to save him. He’s not afraid to die, his heart doesn’t ache for himself but for her, how terrible it will be for Emma to find his corpse. How long will it take? But wait, here’s Emma now, her hand gently rubbing at his curved back as he lies there helpless.

“Emma?” His lips move, but he doesn’t think he’s actually spoken aloud.

He doesn’t seem to have the strength for that anymore, but that doesn’t matter. Emma presses her lips against the back of his bare shoulder. He can feel her hair tickling his skin.

“Ssshhh,” she shushes him, “I’m here.”

But she’s not really, he knows that. It’s just his mind playing a trick on him again. But he might as well take the comfort it seems willing to provide in his final hours.

“Hold me, Emma. Please, I want to feel your embrace as I go.”

Not-Emma’s arms slip under him, lifting him effortlessly into her embrace. The motion hurts in a way in shouldn’t because this isn’t real, but he moans weakly anyway.

“It’s okay, Killian. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

It’s hard to breathe, but he knows that won’t matter for much longer. Emma’s fingers move lightly over his cheek, across his jawline, caressing his face as she holds him steady. He feels like he’s floating now, only her touch keeping him from disappearing into nothing. Killian feels immensely grateful for her comfort. He doesn’t bother to open his eyes, content to imagine how she looks, the smile on her face, the kindness in her eyes. The love she has for him is flowing into his body, easing his suffering in his final moments. But his captors come back for him, one more time and he just wants this to be over.

“Just bloody finish it,” he says, and he can tell he’s said it aloud this time by how feeble his voice sounds.

He floats away again and he doesn’t want to come down, but they pull him back, holding his right arm too tightly and he can’t take any more of this, can’t take the pain that he knows is going to overwhelm him in a moment when they aggravate his broken fingers again just for the fun of it. He shakes and writhes and implores for them to stop and he promised himself, he promised Emma they could not break him, but they have. By the gods, they have. But not-Emma is still here somehow, and her touch feels more real than it ever has. She’s never been there during his tortures, only afterwards in his cage, and Killian struggles to focus on her. She looks scared this time and Killian doesn’t like it. He wants desperately to let go, to escape this torment, but she looks so sad he can’t bear to leave her like this. But his body is giving up and he has no choice.

“I’m so sorry, Emma.”

Slowly, the world begins to disappear again. And not-Emma says she’s real now, and he almost believes it. He wants to believe it, that she has really found him, even if she’s come too late to save him. She tells him just to rest, her fingers curled tightly around his shoulder, soothing and steadying. Her permission is all he needs. Killian finally submits to the void that’s been beckoning to him so enticingly, and he doesn’t expect to wake up again.

 Emma’s sniffling jolts Killian out of the morbid tale he was telling, his voice monotonous as he tried to distance himself from the event, and he realizes he’s lost some time by the way the fire is only embers now.

“Emma? What’s wrong, love?” he asks with concern, giving his head a quick shake to remove what feels like cobwebs out of his brain.

“S-sorry,” she says weakly, her voice quivering, “I just… I didn’t know how close it actually was. Another few hours and… God, Killian.”

Oh. Oh.

“No, I’m sorry, truly. This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have told you all that.”

He tries to twist away slightly so he can see her face, but she’s holding onto him too tightly. And she’s weeping freely now, sobbing into his shirt. Curse the cricket for this suggestion, it’s only made things worse. And curse Killian too for going along with it.

“Hey, it’s okay, Emma. I’m with you. It’s okay.”

He repeats her own words back to her, the words she’s used for him so frequently of late, when he wakes panicked in the night or finds himself suddenly unable to catch his breath as the memories cloud his mind. His hand rubs at Emma’s back, trying to soothe her, and he wishes, gods, he wishes he had a second hand with which to wipe her tears away. Though he can’t move his left arm at all right now anyway, because she’s clinging onto it like she’ll float away if she doesn’t.

“Sshhh, love, be calm,” he continues, slipping in his own phrases now, folding himself around her as much as he’s able, sheltering her as she falls apart, “We’re okay now. We’re okay. Just breathe, there’s a good girl. Shh, it’s going to be alright, Emma.”

Slowly her body begins to relax in his arms, and after a while she takes a shuddering breath and sits up to scrub away her tears, and grabs a handkerchief from her pocket to blow her nose. Killian pulls the flask of rum from his pocket and pushes it gently into her trembling hands when she’s done.

“Drink up, Swan, and I’ll tend the fire.”

He needs a moment to calm himself as well and placing some more logs on the fire is a perfect excuse to get him the space he needs, and a simple task to ground himself firmly in the present. Emma stares at the flask in her hand with red-rimmed eyes as Killian carefully tends the fire, expertly poking at and blowing on the embers around the new wood he’s placed on it, until it flares back to life, driving away the chill.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” Emma says with a little, self-deprecating sort of laugh, “I’m supposed to be strong, for you. Because I’m fine, you’re the one that was…”

Tortured.

“Hey now, none of that,” Killian says firmly, dropping to one knee in front of her so he can lift her chin and look into her eyes, “You are strong, love, far stronger than I would be in your place. You figured out where I was and you saved me, Emma.”

He takes her hand in his and presses a kiss to the back of it while never breaking eye contact, his lips lingering on her skin as he makes certain she can see in his face how much he means what he’s saying.

“You saved me,” he repeats softly when he finally lifts his mouth again, “I owe you everything. You’re not a mess, Emma, you’re a bloody hero.”

She smiles, hesitant at first but growing wider and then she puts the unopened flask aside in favour of leaning forward to kiss him. He meets her halfway, surging upwards with a bit too much force that accidentally sends Emma toppling backwards off the log with a yelp and Killian falling with her, frantically trying to break their fall without hurting her. He must manage it, because when they make eye contact in this compromising position, Emma’s giggling and Killian can’t help the sound bubbling up his throat too because he’s experienced far too many emotions in such a sort time tonight and he’s feeling a little giddy.

“Sorry, love,” he says, trying to suppress his undignified giggling, “That was…”

But now he’s acutely aware of how close they are, how her hands are clinging to him, and how her thigh is conveniently pressing between his legs. His glee abates as it’s replaced by another feeling – he really, really wants to kiss her again, and deeper this time. And he can barely keep up with all these sensations and he doesn’t even care at this point, his head feeling a little dizzy at the intoxicating nearness of Emma, of her scent and her touch. He wonders if – he hopes – that Emma can feel the heat between them too.

“I’m fine, Killian, it’s fine. Are you-”                              

He gives in to his body’s urges despite his reservations and swallows the rest of her question, his lips capturing hers and his tongue seeking entrance to her mouth, and she immediately responds in kind, almost hungrier for it than he is. Thank the gods, Killian thinks, because if she hadn’t been in the mood, he would have felt stupid, though he most likely could get her into the mood without much effort. The passion between them builds even higher and Killian is desperate for more. He presumes his eyes possess the same dazed look that Emma’s do as they both take a moment to catch their breath.

“Emma, may I…” Emma waits patiently while he finds the words, find the courage to say what he wants, her hand stilling against his chest. “I want to… I want to make love to you.”

Emma laughs a little, like she always does when he uses that phrase (nobody calls it that anymore, Killian but he’s not quite comfortable using a more vulgar term, not to Emma, she’s too perfect and too good and it would be very bad form to say anything like that in her hearing) but she also blushes slightly, and he can see she’s just as eager for it as he is.

“Okay.”

With a wave of her hand, Emma extinguishes the campfire, and then they can hardly keep their hands off each other as they move to the privacy of their tent. The moment they are inside Killian is overcome with the burning desire to touch more of her skin right now.

“Less clothes,” Killian demands, and Emma grins, pulling her lower lip between her teeth before she starts taking her layers off.

She doesn’t ask him to take his own off, sticking to her promise that she won’t push him, but he wants to. He wants this. He’s tired of being a coward. His fingers hurry to remove his own clothing (and he’s never been more thankful to have the use of those five fingers again than at this precise moment), and in a moment Emma is more or less naked in front of him and he’s in a similar state, at least from the waist up. Now his mouth can explore her newly exposed flesh and he delights in the sounds he can pull from her by doing so. Emma’s hand rests against the back of his head, the other bracing herself, leaning back as he takes what he wants. It’s a slow and tender sort of lovemaking; hands drifting slowly across skin, mouths savouring the taste of the other, hushed words of reverent appreciation, and this is exactly what Killian needs. They take their time, neither in a hurry to go further yet, just enjoying getting lost in the sensations.

“Emma.” Killian is the one to break away, feeling the urgency, the need, beginning to override his uncertainties about what he intends to do.

“What is it?”

Killian’s looking up at Emma’s flushed face as he leans back on his elbows on the mattress, her lips slightly swollen from his earlier attentions, her hair a gloriously wild tangle and the colour bright in her cheeks. He’s taken off the brace and hook because they’re in such tight quarters right now, there’s a high chance his hook would rip the side of their shelter when they really get into it, and it would only take a moment of inattention, the briefest impulse to anchor himself to something, and the flimsy material would be rent right open. He doesn’t need one more thing to be concerned about tonight. Not with what he is about to do. Killian hesitates for a second before he grabs Emma’s hand in his and guides it to his belt buckle – his jeans the only thing he’s still wearing besides his socks and his rings and the charms around his neck.

“Are you sure?” Emma asks, her fingers curling into the waistband at the front of his jeans.

“Yes,” he murmurs, quickly, before he can lose his nerve again, “just… just go slow.”

Her eyes flick back up to his several times, checking on his wellbeing as she slowly releases him from the confines of his trousers. He can feel the memories clawing at the edge of his mind, but he keeps watching her, focuses on the feel of her soft fingers brushing against his skin as he lifts his hips and allows her to tug his jeans down and off. Then it’s over and now Emma’s moving back up his body, taking his face in her hands and gazing into his eyes.

“Still with me?” she asks quietly.

There’s no denying that his body is responding to their activities, but Emma just wants to be certain his mind is on board with it as well, after how badly he reacted last time. She’s good like that.

“Aye, keep going, love.”

And then her hand slips down and there, bloody finally. Killian allows himself to get lost in the sensations for a glorious interval. Emma could easily get him off just like this, she’s done it before, her talented hands and her mouth – oh gods, her mouth, a shudder runs through him at the thought – and he’s strongly tempted to allow her to continue, if he didn’t have another plan for tonight. He needs… He needs.

“Wait,” Killian chokes out, and she stops immediately, looking at him with concern.

“What’s wrong? Is this too much?”

“No. I mean, yes, but… Not for the reasons you think.” He breathes deeply, gathers his wits, and his fortitude. “I don’t want to finish like this, Emma, I want… I want you. I want to be… inside you.”

He’s seconds away from adding a pathetic please because she’s so close to him, but not close enough and his skin is tingling with desire. But before he has to, Emma leans forward and her mouth claims his again, scorching and demanding and keeping him firmly rooted in the present time. When she pulls back, his head spinning a little from how hard she’s kissed him, she slips her arm behind him – sit up, Killian, I want to hold you –and he follows her guidance willingly until he’s sitting on the edge of their camping bed, his heart pounding against his ribs because he knows, he knows how good she will make him feel. Then she’s on him and around him, astride his thighs as she settles onto him. His hand finds its way to the swell of her bare arse, drawing her down, coaxing her to take him in further.

“That’s it, love,” he murmurs, and there’s a shameless moan from the back of his throat as she wraps her legs around his waist, taking him deeper, “Gods, you feel so bloody good, Emma.” Because Emma loves it when he tells her how much he’s appreciating what she’s doing to him – and bloody hell, he is appreciating it. A lot. And she’s barely done anything yet.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Emma says quietly, her hot breath against his ear sending a shiver of eager anticipation down his spine, “Tell me if you need me to stop, at any time and I will. Okay?”

Killian nods his assent, and slowly she begins to move, murmurs words of praise to him as her fingers bury themselves in the hair at the nape of his neck, her other hand slipping behind his back to hold him close. This position is soft and intimate and wonderful as all his senses become completely immersed in everything Emma. There’s no room for any other feeling, or any other thought. She’s holding onto him as she sets the pace and he’s kissing whatever part of her he can reach, using lips and tongue and teeth the way she likes it and she tastes amazing and he can’t get enough and gods, she is going to drive him insane. He enjoys it rough, sometimes – most times – and Emma always obliges, but tonight she takes him gently, lovingly, carefully, all soft phrases and leisurely movements. And it’s exactly what Killian needs, his fears falling away, this tender coupling the complete opposite to the last time he was at someone’s mercy. And as well as he knows her to work her up, Emma knows how to do the same to him, and despite the slowness of it all Killian finds himself teetering on that edge far quicker than he’d expected. Emma’s quiet moans and gasps as she rides him lets him know she’s not far behind, and he desperately hopes she’s close enough that he won’t leave her unsatisfied.

“Emma… gods, Emma, I’m…” Killian groans, long and loud in the quiet of the forest, his jaw tight as he struggles to keep himself in check. “I’m going to…”

“It’s okay,” she says, strained and tremulous and breathless and still continuing the same steady, relentless pace, “It’s okay. Come for me, Killian.”

“You first, darling,” Killian grits out because damn it, he’s a gentleman.

But he’s too close, he can feel it, he’s not going to be able to hold out. His rhythm is beginning to stutter and he’s losing control. He is wrecked, his endurance is usually better than this and he has to take a moment to breathe, his forehead falling forwards onto Emma’s shoulder. Thankfully Emma seems to take pity on him, for she pauses her motion while he collects himself. Only a moment, but it’s enough. He can tell she’s close, if he could just-

“Right there, yes, oh god Killian,” Emma gasps, pulling harder at his hair, her fingernails scratching lightly against his back, “Don’t stop, please, please, Killian, I’m so close.”

His response is a growl, primal and desperate, her almost frenzied pleas sending him past the point of no return. He has no intention of stopping. Another panted yes and god and then she’s clenching tight around him, his actions bringing her to her peak and his name tumbles from her lips as she shatters and it’s too much and it’s perfect and – and – and he’s there and nothing else matters as they both fall apart.

-/-

No, actually they were ‘coming together’ in every sense of the phrase, is the first thought Killian’s brain has when he’s able to think anything at all again and he snickers into the juncture of Emma’s neck and shoulder as she remains in his arms, equally as blissed out as he is.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, still out of breath, and Killian’s hand slides up the smooth curve of her back.

“Just thinking.”

He lifts his mouth to hers and kisses her deeply, slowly, pouring all his devotion and gratitude into it, only stopping because he wants to be certain Emma knows how much she means to him.

“Emma, you’re a marvel and I love you.”

“Right back at you,” she says, smiling, sparkling eyes even in the dimness of their shelter, a bit of a flush to her cheeks, “That… that was okay, then?”

She looks unsure now, like she’s pushed him further than he was ready for, like she’s broken her promise, and this was what Killian was concerned about – Emma’s insecurities coming to the forefront. He wants those doubts banished from her mind immediately. He brushes some of her wayward hair behind her ear, his touch lingering against her skin, thumb drawing a path along her jawline on the way back.

“It was perfect, love,” he assures her, “You were perfect. You gave me everything I asked for. And… I hope my performance was satisfactory as well?”

A smirk punctuates his salacious question, a little lift of his left eyebrow and there, the uncertainty is gone from Emma’s face like it never existed, replaced with a rather coy smile that Killian much prefers.

“Very.”

They move, eventually, lying down side by side on the mattress and they remain like that, sharing gentle affections and whispered adoration, for quite some time, until the mood gradually changes to something needy once more. Killian moves over the top of her and smiles wickedly, enjoying the way Emma’s breathing has quickened already before he’s even begun, because now it’s his turn to be in control, and she knows very well what his intentions are. It’s time to repay his beautiful Swan for the pleasure she bestowed upon him.

to be continued...

[aylinaliens]

The Not So Scary Haunting of Sarawat Guntithanon— Chapter 1

Fandom: 2Gether

Pairings: Sarawat/Tine

Summary: Sarawat Gay Panics 24/7 over his new roommate (who, by the way, might be a ghost, which is weird on so many levels but whatever, if a man wants to thirst over the supernatural being haunting his apartment so be it!)

Word Count: 1621

Notes: i'm not even excited for 2gether the movie yet here i am, posting another sarawatine fic. basically our boy Sarawat gay panics every single minute of every single day because the ghost who is haunting his apartment is pretty. that's it. that's the plot. just sarawatine being dumb, mutually pining idiots.

Read the first chapter on Ao3 or down below!

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How was it possible that a disembodied voice could sound so... god damn enticing and lovely? At first, Sarawat found himself pressing his body deeper into his bed but after getting over to his initial shock and fear he allowed himself sometime to appreciate the sound of it. Although his heart was in his throat, Sarawat could not deny the wave of comfort that filled his veins, from his finger to his toes warm spread through his body.

Which was weird—and frankly crazy. Ghosts can possess people, right? Or kill them? Sarawat wished he paid more attention to all the horror movies Man and Boss dragged him to because maybe then he wouldn’t be laying in bed, already whipped, ready to drop down on knee. Hand in marriage sir, please give me your hand in marriage.

He should be terrified of this figure, not lowkey turned on.

Curse Sarawat and his inability to function around attractive boys. Curse this motherfucking hot as heck ghost and his stupid dimples.

Sarawat awakes to a blurry and translucent figure hovering mere inches from his face.

The next day he swears to Man and Boss that the reason he remains frozen was because of fear and not because he was having a full on gay panic attack... over a ghost. That’s what this person was, right? A ghost? He was a rationale adult but he had enough brain cells to connect all the dots.

Sarawat sucks in a deep inhale of breath, allowing his eyes to burn every line, curve, and dip of this mysterious figure's face.

The dim light of his bedroom combined with the near translucent nature of the figure meant that Sarawat never was able to get a clear idea of what this ghost looked like. Just the glimpses he did get left his throat dry and heart pounding rapidly.

The figure had a closed mouth smile etched across his features, all soft pink lips and crinkly eyes and dimples. Sarawat briefly thought of leaning forward to press his fingertips against those pink lips just to see if they were as soft as they looked. But then he realized that was insane and weird so instead he just beat that thought away with a stick. Gay thoughts: be gone! Don’t you dare become a simp over a motherfucking ghost.

The bottom half of his face was crystal clear which was both a blessing and curse while his top half looked as if it was about to flicker away at any moment. Sarawat was positive that this was abnormal, but then again this was his first encounter with a ghost so maybe it was, in fact, normal? It’s not as if he was given a manual or anything.

He couldn’t quite tell what shade of brown this mysterious figures eyes but he allowed his brain to imagine that it was probably vivid, just like the rest of his face. He was debating on the actual shade when he a disembodied voice spoke.

“Hello.”

How was it possible that a disembodied voice could sound so... god damn enticing and lovely? At first, Sarawat found himself pressing his body deeper into his bed but after getting over to his initial shock and fear he allowed himself sometime to appreciate the sound of it. Although his heart was in his throat, Sarawat could not deny the wave of comfort that filled his veins, from his finger to his toes warm spread through his body.

Which was weird—and frankly crazy. Ghosts can possess people, right? Or kill them? Sarawat wished he paid more attention to all the horror movies Man and Boss dragged him to because maybe then he wouldn’t be laying in bed, already whipped, ready to drop down on knee. Hand in marriage sir, please give me your hand in marriage.

He should be terrified of this figure, not lowkey turned on.

Curse Sarawat and his inability to function around attractive boys. Curse this motherfucking hot as heck ghost and his stupid dimples.

Sarawat was like ninety percent sure of his sexual identity but now he was having a crisis about the fact he was possibly crushing on a whole new species. Needless to say he was losing his mind!

He could just imagine the headline of the video Man would inevitably make him sit down to film and post on their jointed YouTube channel.

STORYTIME: I ALMOST MADE OUT WITH THE GHOST THAT'S HAUNTING MY APARTMENT!

Sarawat was positive that his best friend would insert various memes and jokes throughout his very honest and real existential-slash-moral-slash- philosophical crisis Sarawat was having.

It would probably rake in a lot of views but Sarawat did not want to be known as That One Guy Who Simped Over A Ghost for the rest of his life.

He was almost positive that if he told his friends the trust extent of how he felt, they would want to change their channel from music and vlogs to something more akin to Buzzfeed Unsolved.

They would buy a spirit box and Ouija board online and force Sarawat to try to communicate because of course they fucking would, those absolute menaces.

He could already see Boss glancing around like a conspiracy theorist, seriously asking the ghost are you DTF (that means down to fornicate in case you need clarification), Mr. Ghost? Just give us a sign, any sign. Man would most definitely feed into this or make the situation even worse.

Which is why he was not going to reveal what happened tonight. He would just play off as sleep paralysis. Yeah. That is the best way to prevent his best friends from blowing this situation out of proportion.

Sarawat wanted to say something but the words died in his throat. What would he even say? Hello. Please smash your face against mine! Uh, no way in hell. Maybe it was a good thing that he had trouble forming words right now. It would save him a lot of embarrassment.

The figure leaned down closer and— fuck fuck fuck gay thoughts go away— peering curiously down at Sarawat. “He definitely can see me so why isn’t he saying anything?”

Because you can’t verbally keysmash in real life you beautiful and vaguely threatening supernatural being.

The figure hummed, deep in thought, before leaning back (thank goodness) only to do something that made Sarawat let out a very unflattering shriek in surprise. Well there goes his reputation. He didn’t have one in the first place to begin with, especially not with this ghost, but still. There it goes.

Ghosts were unable to touch people right? Right? So why did a ghost...just touch him?

Sarawat raked his brain trying to remember the drama he watched a few months back with his brother (it was Phukong unsubtle way of being like, hey, bro, I like boys but I’m still scared of coming out so let’s just both pretend like I didn’t just cry at the scene where Ohm Pawat’s character comes out to his mother, I swear I’m emotional because of the acting not because I can relate to it).

Sarawat was positive that the ghost in that drama couldn’t actually touch anyone. He was like ninety-six percent sure that every time he tried his body would just go straight through the other characters.

He forgot how it was possible that the ghost could touch, and kiss, the human, though. He should have paid more attention but hey, he was also trying to think of an inconspicuous way to let it slip that he was also gay. Great (disaster gays) apparently think a lot alike.

Anyways, the figure poked his chest and Sarawat almost pissed his pants in shock. Clearly the ghost was just as surprised that he could actually touch Sarawat because he froze, making Sarawat happy that he decided to wear a shirt to bed tonight.

He assumed that the ghost must have thought he was dreaming to (wait can ghost dream?) so just to make sure he poked Sarawat three more times in the same spot and yup—Sarawat felt it. He felt it clear as day.

“Oh.” The figure tilted his head to the side. “This is weird. I shouldn’t be able to do that.”

Yeah, obviously.

Sarawat opened his mouth to finally speak (he swore he was going to play it cool and be all like: hi! i promise i’m not having gay thoughts right now!) but before he could a loud crash in the next room made him jolt in surprise.

After being rendered motionless for a few minutes, Sarawat finally gained control of his own body. He threw himself upright into a sitting position but in the process of doing so he accidentally slammed his forehead against the figure whose face was technically still in close proximity.

Cursing, Sarawat clutched his head as pain made white spots cloud his vision. “ Fuck .”

From next to him the figure cursed too. “ Shit.”

Eventually the pain subsided into a dull ache, allowing Sarawat to glance over at the boy—ghost, supernatural being, angel, whatever—next to him.

The top half of his face was no longer translucent anymore.

In fact, he wasn’t translucent at all.

Crimson blood began to trickle out from his nose, causing Sarawat to gape in horror.

Not because the image was a terrifying one. I mean, yeah, it was a bit weird but it has been established that Sarawat, that certifiable himbo, was in a constant state of ‘mark me down as scared and horny’ tonight, but because a ghost...was bleeding. From a wound that Sarawat gave him. Was that like, scientifically possible? Note to self: send a text to Earn so that she can ask her girlfriend about it.

Also? Sarawat was finally able to label the ghost's eyes as being a cross between honey and caramel. Obviously, his poor gay started chanting oh oh oh oh oh because yeah, read above, Sarawat Guntithanon? Himbo, Simp, Dumbass Extraordinaire. Either way he was a mess.

The possible brain injury and the shock of the entire night finally caught up to Sarawat, making his stomach churn with nausea and vision become blurry.

Without meaning to, Sarawat fainted—not even elegantly like one of those heroines in a romance novel but like a dead, fucking fish, limbs flopping every which way—right into the arms of the mysterious figure he was still dying ( yikes bad choice of words) to know the name of.

The last thing he registered before completely blacking out was that someone was cradling him to their chest, rambling away.

“Oh my god. Did I just kill him? No. No way. He’s still breathing. Shit. Sarawat! Hey, you saraleo, wake up!”

[for-a-muse-of-fire]

and it’s easy done

the wench and the witcher

“and it’s easy done”

Fandom: The Witcher (2019)

Paring: Geralt of Rivia x Fem!POC Reader.

Summary: Geralt is gone hunting. Reader is frustrated. 

Warnings: NSFW/18+ - this is dirty, but to be fair, so is the song that prompted it. Masturbation, voyeurism, oral (f receiving), praise kink, sweet!dom Geralt/gratuitous use of the phrase “good girl”, welcome to the sin bin, fam. (And somehow, they still got all soft on me.)

A/N:  Title and lyrics after the cut from “Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)” by Hozier. So, like. Hozier straight-up says this song is about oral sex. Full-stop. I didn’t believe it until I actually read the lyrics and went, “Oh damn, you right.” So, uh, here you go. There’s a part two coming - heh - because reciprocity is important. 

@coconutxraikage - @kingniazx - @onyour-right - @ly–canthrope - @kianya-loves - @c-s-stars - @gczanetti1 - @pantrashtic - @alwaysnatz​ - @agniavateira​

Like a heathen clung to the homily Let the reason come on the common tongue of your loving me

“Good girl.”

 Geralt’s voice is a growling rasp against your ribs. You feel it buzz through you, the vibration humming over your naked skin. His lips leave heat in their wake, licking tongues of fire that make you shudder and arch for him.

 He rumbles out a low chuckle, “That’s my good girl.”

 Teeth scrape over the tender skin of your thigh. You gasp. There’s a soft, sinister laugh before heat and wet presses over your throbbing center and you moan, chasing the pleasure that the Witcher is so generous to provide. You’re writhing, and crying, and you can feel the scorching knot in your belly twist itself tighter and tighter and tighter and –

And you snap awake, panting

Confused, and frustrated, and hot, dear gods, you stare at the dark ceiling above you, one hand pressed to your forehead. You can hear your own heartbeat thrumming behind your eardrums. Worst of all, you can feel it between your legs, so insistent that it hurts. With a ragged groan, you roll to your side, knees pressed tight together in a futile attempt to easy the wicked ache. The darkness behind your eyelids provides no comfort – your mind is hazy with flashes of Geralt’s lazy, seductive grin.

“Fuck,” you whine into your pillow.

It’s been almost two months. He didn’t tell you where he would be, and you didn’t ask, which is fine – it’s what works, it’s for the best you tell yourself. But it’s been the same brain-addling dream for three days straight and it’s starting to affect your fucking work. If your head isn’t off in the clouds, you find that you’re irritable – snappish and short. Your people aren’t idiots, either. The semi-significant glances you catch are enough; you know they can guess what’s eating you.

Or, well. Not eating you, to be direct.

You take in a slow breath, squirming against the prickling heat that refuses to be ignored before you swear at the ceiling. It’s a pity that the object of your torment isn’t present, but it’s not like you’ve never taken matters into your own hands before.

 Fuck it.

Shaking fingers pull at the cotton of your shift and ghost over your thighs. You hum – it’s enough to send gooseflesh skittering over your skin.  Your hands are smaller, more delicate than the strong, calloused ones you want but it’s something. As you find the syrupy, slick heat between your legs, you let yourself moan and roll onto your back once more. Your other hand creeps its way upward, skates up your ribs and over the smooth curve of your breast to find your nipple beaded and tender. You settle into the rhythm that you need, fingertips pressing at your clit, drawing wetness up from your soaking core to roll over the sensitive cluster of nerve endings.

Sweat sticks your curls to your forehead. You let your fingers dip, press in to where you ache – where you pulse. The shivering pleasure goes liquid, curls itself between your thighs and makes you arch from the mattress. Eyes shut tight, you conjure up the image of white hair, strong hands, and that devious fucking smile. The Witcher’s name is a breathy sigh over your lips.

“Now here’s a sight…”

A familiar rumbling voice throws you rudely out of your fantasy and headlong into horror – you curse with particular gusto as your eyes fly open. When you scramble up right, you find the object of that fantasy darkening your bedroom doorway and looking entirely too smug. Geralt watches you, and the pressure of his gaze feels like the warmth of a bonfire. You feel it trace over you from bed-wild hair to parted knees.

“Don’t stop on my account,” the Witcher rumbles. His voice is rough, a growl so low that it’s nearly subterranean. It makes your heart beat faster, sends a fresh shudder of heat through you.

He inhales, slow and deep, breathing out on a low hmm. You watch him step closer – as your eyes adjust to the dim, you’re able to see his face, meet honey-gold eyes that are nearly overtaken by the dark of his pupils. His battle-scarred hands pull at the buttons of his collar before pulling the fabric from his trousers. Your mouth goes bone-dry when he reveals the broad expanse of his chest. The shirt ends up on the floor somewhere.

“Take off your shift, sweetheart,” Geralt tells you.

For once, you don’t backtalk as you do what you’re told.  He chuckles darkly. “Lay back,” he says.

The mattress is wonderfully cool against your feverish skin. Your eyes stay locked on his face. Goosebumps prickle over your skin, makes you shiver as Geralt moves to light the single candle on your beside table. The amber-toned light throws shadows over his strong features and he is so fucking beautiful it makes your heart ache. His scars stand out, lines of pearl against his pale skin. With a slow, predatory grace, the Witcher settles himself on the edge of the bed at your feet before one strong hand grips your ankle; he pulls gently, until your leg drops off the side of the bed to leave you open and exposed to him.

Maybe you should be mortified, but you’ve never been more aroused in your life.  “Let me see, sweetheart,” he purrs. “Come on now.”

It’s hard to breathe. The air feels charged with electricity, thick and heavy – the moment before a lightning strike. Your fingers play slowly over your skin again as you pant softly, then moan when you pull at your nipple once more. Geralt traces his fingers up your leg, callouses rough, yet gentle as they drawl invisible sigils over the top of your calf, then along the inside of your knee. Once again, your hand finds its way to the aching slick between your legs. The first contact makes you suck in a low breath, almost shocked by the flood of wet that you’re greeted with; your eyes slip closed, but you don’t notice until you hear the Witcher purr down at you:

“Look at me.”

You groan as you pry your eyes open. Geralt’s gaze is has weight and heat, like a living thing – it’s enough to make your toes curl. “Good girl,” he breathes. “That’s my good girl.”

Gods. Those words send fire crackling through your bones - the heat scorches the air in your lungs as your voice catches on a whine. You writhe on the bed, gasp for breath, and somehow manage to keep your eyes locked on Geralt’s face. His soft mouth twists into a wicked smile.

“You missed me, didn’t you, sweet girl?” he asks you. His voice laps at your skin, warm like the ocean tide. “Missed me so much you had to try and make yourself come, is that it?”

“Yes,” you whimper. “I – fuck, Geralt – “

“Tell me what you were thinking about, sweetheart.”

He lowers his head. His lips are smooth and dry as he traces them up the quivering flesh of your thigh. You grit your teeth around a moan; the Witcher bites softly at your skin, lifts his eyes to meet your gaze. “Tell me,” he rumbles. “Tell me what makes you so fucking wet when I’m gone, hm? Be a good girl.”

“Geralt,” you whine. The fingers rolling over your clit press downwards, press into the desperate wet heat of your cunt until you cry out and start to babble. “I think about - about you, Geralt, I – I think about your – your hands, your fingers… fuck, I think about how you fuck me open with your tongue, about your cock – oh! Oh!”

The sharp bite of pain from his teeth on your hip sends you soaring. Stars collide behind your eyelids, rush through your veins with blinding heat; you press your hips into your own hand, chanting the Witcher’s name as you come. You’re left shaking, and as you find your breath, Geralt pulls your hand away from where it’s pressed to your sex.

When he presses his mouth there instead, you choke on a yell.

He devours you. Locks one arm over your hips to keep you still when you try to arch away as the pleasure edges toward pain. Your hand flies over your head, palm slapping against the solid wood of the headboard. The other finds the Witcher’s frost-colored hair, fingers gripping into a fist; you’re not sure if you want to shove him away or draw him closer, but you feel him snarl against your cunt, as if daring you to try the former. His tongue presses heavy and hot over your clit, lapping mercilessly while you strain against the pleasure.

The press of his fingers – one, then another, and then a third – into your pulsing heat drags a low gasp out of you. Geralt strokes the pads of his fingers into you in time to the rhythm of his tongue. Those clever fingers hook up, find the soft, sensitive spot deep inside you as he grazes his teeth lightly over your clit.

Everything goes white. You hear the high keen of your own voice as you come again, gushing over the Witcher’s tongue and fingers. His low moan hums against you, makes you shudder and sob.

“Good girl…”

His voice is sweet, soft, and filthy. Still gasping, you force your eyes open in time to watch Geralt wipe the shine of your slick from his chin. He makes his languid way up your body, chasing each shiver of your muscles with his lips until he’s settled over you, braced on his elbows. You arch up to kiss him, all desperate demanding, and taste yourself on his tongue as you swallow down his low, breathless groan. Despite their shaking, your fingers make quick work of his trousers with his help. There’s the sound of boots hitting the floor.

Geralt presses you onto your back, presses himself forward – you gasp, high and sharp as he blunt head of his cock splits you open. You feel him snarl against your mouth. He finds a slow, deep rhythm, one meant to be savored, and savor he does. The pair of you writhe together, coiled like adders in the glow of the candlelight.

“I missed you,” you gasp. “So much.”

Geralt snaps his hips forward, catching your moan on his tongue. “Missed you, too,” you hear him whisper. “I - gods - missed you, too.”  

The last orgasm startles you, a sharp jolt fizzing its way up your spine; you bow up and away from the mattress with a soft grunt when it happens and the Witcher gives a rasping chuckle against your shoulder that slides into a moan as he comes. He’s soft-focus in the candlelight when he lifts his head to look at you, and there’s a tenderness in his gaze that makes your breath catch short for a second. You bite your lip against a foolish smile.

“Hello,” you breathe.

The Witcher hmms at you. The smile on his face is lazy and satisfied; were he a cat, you’re certain he would be purring. “Hello,” he murmurs back.

[nalufever]

do you have any more nalu fic recs?

Sorry, not sorry - you’ve unleashed more than you could’ve guessed. ^^ Always happy to Recommend a List of Fics ~ And thank you for asking! Admittedly there’s a few Recs that aren’t Nalu - I got excited to share my favs. ;)

A Girl Worth Fighting For: Natsu navigates unspeakable horrors to win Lucy’s love or Natsu goes shopping, looking for the perfect white day gift. 

A Lesson: Natsu and Lucy can’t keep themselves from expressing their passions - and the results are bed breaking. Short but smutty - smexy in fact. ;P 

A Solidly Constructed Kiss: Erza strong-arms Lucy and Natsu into working the Kissing Booth to raise funds for a school trip. Lucy’s never been kissed and Natsu acts like he’s never entertained even the idea of kissing another person. Things naturally come to a head when Lucy and Natsu are given the task to build the actual booth; will they fight over construction or build themselves some kind of relationship? 

Fairy Tail Week: A collection of drabbles from tumblr prompts to celebrate Fairy Tail. Fairy, Ladies, Lads, Magic, Guild, Ultimate Team, Stronger, Mashima, Tail. Only rated teen to err on the side of caution, family friendly content featuring most of the Fairy Tail Guild! 

Feathers and Scales: Angel/Demon AU. Devils are more than they seem and Angels no less. Pitted against each other in a never-ending battle for souls, a single Angel and Devil trade mercies and fall in love. Warning: major character death(s). 

Full Moon Secret: Natsu had wanted to tell Lucy his secrets, to share his family history with the fey…it had just never been the right time. Tonight the truth was going to be revealed, one way or another. 

Okay, I could just keep hyping all of my own fics individually - but I won’t - other than to just put in a link to ALL OF THEM. ;) Fair warning, I have a few other fandoms works in all the Fairy Tail stories - from Brooklyn 99 to The Flash, Snow White with the Red Hair, RWBY, Blue Exorcist, Teen Titans and some Hakuouki. Yes, I’m a shameless self-promoter. Speaking of that - one more I need to rec!  Natsu’s Stars in Lucy’s Sky. I swear Imma finish this. 

I also have more than a few favourite authors who write for Fairy Tail (and other fandoms) ~ some have not contributed lately to Fairy Tail or chosen to concentrate on other fandoms - but I like them and their excellent writing. 

ObsessedwithNalu: One of my first fandom friends and pretty much any of her FT stories is gold. @obsessedwithnalu  

Christmas Treats: Admittedly a gift to me and very cherished for that fact - and - it’s frigging awesome. Lucy does a little holiday baking at home before Fairy Tail’s Christmas party. Natsu, as always, is there. One thing leads to another… 

Thanks, Krov: When Krov decided to relax at his favorite bar after work, he never imagined that he’d be seeing some of his old guild members, especially since he thought they had died long ago. Nalu fluff. 

Edo-Nalu love fest: Submissions for the Nalu love fest week of 2014. But instead of regular Nalu, these ones feature Edo-Nalu. Smut-tastic and delightfully mature. 

ImpracticalDemon: Another early fandom friend who’s still writing this, that and the other thing - and she’s just GREAT. Again, a link to all her works and a few that are special to me follow. XOXOX @impracticaldemon  

May the Best Man Survive: “Gray would never have in a million years thought he’d host Natsu’s bachelor party (Nalu pairing). Why is it his job to herd the bunch of rowdy mages from bar to bar, ending up at the guild where the real surprise party is? Oh yeah, the idiot had asked him to be the best man at his wedding. Hijinks, chaos and hilarity ensue.” ^^ A prompt supplied by me and I’m smirking so wide because the fic Imp came up with delivered more awesomeness than I could have hoped for! 

A Star At His Side: “Accidentally Fall Asleep Together” for Endragoneel on tumblr. Natsu and Lucy spend the day together at a festival in Magnolia. Natsu ends up watching more than just the stars when the festival is over… 

Christmas Gifts: When Erza walks Wendy home from the Guild’s Christmas Party, Wendy realizes how alone her friend and mentor is feeling. She sets out to recruit Lucy, Natsu and the rest to break Jellal out of prison for just one night, as a Christmas gift for Erza. Meanwhile, Natsu has accidentally burned some of Lucy’s writing. Will she forgive him? 

Dark Shining Light: One of the best and most welcoming writers I have ever interacted with! I’m still gobsmacked she’s a friend! She’s a legend and I don’t know what else I could add to any discourse about her writing - but the classics are classic for a reason, yeah? Here’s a few of my personal favourites of her works and just know there’s too many to list them all! AKA @ff-darkshininglight 

Mischievous Cat: Let’s just say there have been a few incidents where Happy has come in at a bad time. 

What Belongs to a Demon: Everyone knew she belonged to the great demon lord and she would prove that she deserved to stand by his side. 

The Truth Revealing Cards: Lucy should have known if there was a card that would reveal her secrets, Natsu would want it. 

Eliz1369: Got introduced to her for her Hakuoki fics but she’d dipped her toes into FT as well ~ and this is a great fic. ^^ @eliz1369 

The Light of Fairy Tail: The members of Fairy Tail may be their own brand of crazy, but their hearts are always in the right place. 

rougescribe: Shame on me for not reading more of this author’s works! @rougescribe  

Fire Sprite No 5: For him, Heaven wasn’t a place or a single moment in time. It was a feeling built on memories upon memories, past and present and a hope for future ones all tied down together. All sharing one common denominator: Her. Nalu. Tumblr Valentine’s Event. 

Fallen Ark Angel: Admittedly I only have interacted from afar with this writer. I mainly read Nalu fics but I love her take on Mira and Laxus and her next gen offspring characters. She’s got a lot to offer and it’s all superb. @fallen029

Loving Satan: Loving Satan is never easy. But when she loves you back, its twice as bad. 

Madartiste: Another one-sided love affair with someone else’s writing. And her stories are all wonderful and prolly appear on hundreds of Fic Rec Lists - but here’s one of my Favs! @madartiste  

Hoarding: Getting interrupted gets old fast. 

UranoMetria: I added her to my stable of fav authors 05-03-2014. Wow. Eons ago and even if I’m not sure she’s still active in the fandom, I salute her. Kudos. 

The Goddess Gate: With six years of partnership, Natsu and Lucy are torn apart by a mysterious visit from a secret magic council. Lucy is kidnapped and her memories suppressed. She fights her way back home to regain her life - with a startling secret revealed as she begins to remember. The lives of all Earthland hang in the balance. **Okay, this is a wicked old fic - but amazingly written and fuelled my own desires for writing. Last updated in 2018 but who knows? Some current attention may slay any demons on her back in regards to writing - and even if not - the hours of enjoyment reading this is worth giving a comment just to say, ‘thank you for writing.‘ 

Wild Rhov: Do I even need to say anything about this author? Famous, famous, famous. Excellent. Writes a lot of pairings and fleshes every relationship into something REAL. I Can’t Even. @wildrhov  

Beastly Possession: Something is murdering people in Magnolia. When Lucy is attacked, Natsu goes on a rampage to find the culprit, and everyone in Fairy Tail wants revenge. But could this bloodthirsty attacker be someone they know? Warning: High octane nightmare fuel! Do not read while eating, and beware of red eyes in the dark! 

Shell1331: Introduced via Imp. This writer is in a few fandoms and is worth reading. @shell-senji  

Juicy: Impulsivity and poorly chosen words get Natsu into more trouble than he’d expected, which is saying something for him. 

AbsentAngel: Everyone should know this writer. Been stalking her since 2014 so that says something. Tho, it’s prolly just that I’m creepy. ;) My suggested fic here is being re-written/has been? into something original and worth being purchased when it becomes available and re-read over and over. No, I am not being paid to shill but I am open to having senpai notice me. @absent-angel  

To the Flame: She stares, transfixed, as the blood runs down his fingers and begins to pool in his palm. He holds his hand up to her lips in offering, and she tears her eyes away from the blood to study his face. He is smiling softly. “Go on Luce, I didn’t cut them for nothing.” [Vamp AU] 

HawkofNavarre: Loved for awesome and delightful Gruvia content. Looks like there’s a tumblr but I can’t manage to link it. :(

You Stole the Rain: He just wanted to be friends; fine, she just needed to change his mind. Gray x Juvia 

Ricardian Scholar Clark-Weasley: Not sure I spelled that right even after checking three times! I usually short hand that to RS-CW in my head. And she’s prolific - has a tonne of fandoms and is a tower of talent. Is anyone reading all my fangirl gushing? 'Cause she follows one of my fics and comments (sorry I haven’t updated that fic in a while) and it’s a source of happiness that someone who writes so well happens to enjoy some of my content. Okay, bragging over - back to the Recs! 

Tales of Fairies: A collection of oneshots exploring different friendships, ideas, sad themes, comical scenarios, and lots and lots of pairings…but mainly Nalu. 

snogfairy: Another giant in the FT fandom. Impressive talent. @lineffability  

naughty nalus: smutty nalu oneshots B) ***Mature content!*** 

Rivendell101: Another giant in FT and other fandoms. This author would be considered required reading if I ran a fandom course in a University setting. Just sayin’ @rivendell101  

Crave: /krāv/ Verb. To feel a powerful desire for (something). They crave each other. And satiation doesn’t come easily. He growls against her again. “Beg for it,” he demands, lips ghosting against her. 

Lakerae aka @hidetheremote : Did you think I’d forgotten you? Ha! Gotcha good! You’re an inspiration to me because you’re working so hard to publish your children’s books. Kudos to you li'l sis! You’re busy but still make it a point to talk to me and I love you for that and everything.

The Gift of the Magi: A Gajevy Twist: A retelling of the classic Christmas story “The Gift of the Magi,” with your favorite Fairy Tail couple Gajeel and Levy! It’s Christmas time and Gajeel and Levy exchange gifts. They both are surprised what they receive and learn a lesson of the true meaning of Christmas. 

I could add more and more as I search my saved favs on FF.net ~ and I’m sorry to not include all of them - but this is crazy long as it is. If you read and like any of the recommended fics, please be sure to let the author know. To the authors of these and all fanfics, Thanks for everything.

[secretsniper3]

Just a “Touch up”

You always wanted to do something outlandish, all the other girls had gotten something done and bragged about it non stop, it was driving you crazy! So you decided to get something done yourself, nothing major, just a touch up. So now you sit in the doctors office talking with the man who would be operating on you, you explain that your only looking for a light touch up to your face so your friends will notice instantly. The doctor explained that at 19 years of age “there wouldn't really be much they could do” but you were adamant that you get it done. Date set for 2 weeks away you cant wait!

Time flew past with more of the same, your friends bragging and you roll your eyes every time, your certain they will envy your face when your job is done. The date finally arrives and you head to the clinic to get started. Sitting in the waiting room your not alone, there is a creepy guy with a green hat, sitting in the corner, every time you look over at him he is staring at you. “can i help you?” you ask and he stands and walks to the counter, asks for something and is given a grey folder and a pen, taking both to his seat he begins to fill out a form. “bit late to fill that out” you think to yourself, oh well. A Nurse walks into the waiting room with a piece of paper, “Layla!” she calls and you stand and follow her into the room.

Walking through the single door you notice the main table in the middle of the room, and a few covered tables to the side, at the other end of the room is a wide double door your unsure why they need 2 doors for 1 side and a single door on this side.. “ehhh” you think to yourself as the Nurse gives you your gown to change into and as your the only 2 in here you strip down and put your light blue hospital gown on. it barely goes past your pussy! Tying it on securely your just in time for the surgeon to walk in with 2 folders, 1 blue and the other grey like the man in the waiting room. Flicking through both folders he leads you to the table to begin your surgery.

Laying down on the table it feels weird, like the table itself can be pulled apart due to how it shifts beneath you, its certainly not all in 1 piece. The surgeon begins drawing lines on your face where he will be doing his work, as you had discussed. Looking up to the ceiling you see a camera pointed right at you, clearly for medical reasons you feel more lines get drawn on you.  Taking a needle from a shelf he explains “this shot will feel weird and you may get confused, its to ensure you don't feel pain”. Holding out your arm your given the shot, it feels warm as you lower your arm back onto the table, the warmth spreading through your body, its pleasant at least, the warmth flowing up to your head and your hit with the confusion he mentioned. If you were standing you would fall over instantly, but your laying down so your head just rolls to a side, completely relaxed. As the warmth continues to roll down your body it hits your tight pussy and you start to feel a little aroused, at least your legs are closed but with this gowns length its only a matter of time before your lips start showing your arousal.

Continuing down your legs your toes go numb as the warmth hits them, it tickled at first but now you notice you cant move your arms either, you begin to breathe faster as you learn just how little you can move, its just your head! everything under your neck is completely still. Acting as if nothing is wrong the surgeon walks up and puts a headpiece on your face, bit weird as that's where your getting work done, and all you can see is darkness, nothing else. your body tingling all over from the shot earlier and with your vision limited your sense of touch has increased, your now acutely aware of the hairs on your arms standing up, it is cold in here though but your beginning to panic a little.

A sudden burst of light floods your eyes and after a few blinks you see yourself, from the camera hanging over your body, you see everything, almost the whole room! Worse still you see what the lines on your forehead are, he wasn't tracing out lines, he was writing “Fuckslut” on your forehead! examining your body from this perspective you can see your bald pussy peeking out of the gown, raising your arm for the shot must have pulled the gown up! your pussy is exposed! you can see the glistening from your arousal which has only gotten worse since it started, a hand reaches out and grabs your thigh. the surgeons unwanted touching makes you sick, but your pussy just cries out for more touches and you hate that your body is reacting positively.

Walking up beside your body he reaches out and grabs your breast “what the fuck” you think angrily! who does this guy think he is?! as he squeezes your perky C cup breast, moving to the other and repeating after a minute, leaving both your breasts a little sore but your nipples have reacted to the abuse and you can already see them poking against the gown. your head flooding with shame as you see them get harder and harder as his hand snakes its way up to your smooth neck and holds your throat. caressing your skin he loops his hand under the neck of the gown and to your horror, pulls hard and you feel the tight knots you did earlier come undone as the gown soars off your now completely naked body!

You cant believe what your seeing, your 19 year old body laying flat on the table with nothing covering you, your nipples reacting even more as they get even harder than they were seconds before, and your pussy is drooling with need, your humiliation has only begun and you know it. Watching in horror as the hand moves from your neck, sliding down your smooth skin to once again grasp your breast, your nipple being pinched hard this time, you hear him say “this size wont do, ill have to fill them out a bit” and worse still, you hear another unseen man say “you have the chart, make it happen” your eyes scanning the room as much as you can see, but you cant find the source of the second voice! Movement draws your eyes back to the hand as it slides easily over your smooth, flawless skin and glides over your pussy and fingers dip between your lips. Fluid now flowing out as he probes your most private area with his fingers, expertly drawing more and more fluid from you, clearly knowing what he is doing as he brushes across your clit forcing sharp sensations to stab your mind.

Pulling your legs open you see a separation in the table and sure enough the surgeon separates them, putting a brace on the inside section he opens them wider, catching your ankles in the process, and as the table continues to widen, so do your legs. Pussy now completely accessible now to even the most aimless of people, the surgeon brings a covered cart over to you and upon removing the cloth your witness to needles and a scalpel among other tools. Your terror reaching new heights as a needle is taken, full of a pink liquid it is moved straight for your clit, eyes almost bulging out of your head as the tip sinks into your precious bulb, but no pain, at least he was honest about that. Pushing the tip in further you see him injecting the fluid inside your clit and it actually begins to bulge, blood flooding to your nub forcing it to grow out, pushing its hood aside it now sitting out, you cant stop looking at it, its 3 times bigger than what it was!

A flash of steel and your eyes dart to the cause, the surgeon holding the scalpel now moves in on your engorged clit, slicing from the base and moving to the tip you see blood and you have no idea what he is doing to you.. placing a cup over your clit you see him attach a pump to the end, its a suction cup! you feel him pumping away your sensitive clit moving further away from your body, so sensitive the pumping continues will its 8cm out of your hood, then its bandaged to keep it out and exposed, “if she messes up you can grab her by her clit now and lead her anywhere you want” you look at your once adorable clit, you think “i could give my clit a fucking handjob now!” and its almost big enough too. pumped full of blood the sensitivity is through the roof, and because of the fluid he injected your clit with its completely rigid and standing straight out, not bending at all..

Taking 2 more needles from the cart he aims them for your exposed labia, penetrating them your injected with a blue liquid this time, and you feel a instant burning in your pussy as he injects you multiple times around your pussy and even your inner lips get 4 injections. Heat burning away as your arousal forced your pussy to clench and fresh juice squirts out, not a orgasm but it may as well have been, your so desperately horny now and there's nothing you can do! Watching in terror as he gets more needles and walks over to your breasts, 1 needle in the tip of your nipple and the orange fluid is injected followed by the burning sensation in your breasts, “experimental drugs are illegal but im sure you dont mind right” “not at all” the 2 men agree. both your breasts are burning from the inside as you feel them growing! you can almost see it happening right in front of your eyes, your C’s are growing to D’s!

Whatever the injections were they work fast and your not liking this at all! Taking a device from the table your pussy is opened up as he looks inside. “not a virgin” your surgeon says then a very long needle is inserted in your pussy. reaching far inside he hits the entrance to your womb and injects another drug, “what's going to happen to my poor womb?!” you think “there we go” he says, “she should be hypersensitive to touch now” not waiting for a invitation he touches your clit and you orgasm on the spot, from a simple touch! “now for her ass!” you hear him say as you come back down from the orgasm, a brown liquid filled needle is jabbed into your asshole and your filled once again with a burning sensation, likely being made hypersensitive like the rest of you. Looking to your breasts for a moment your stunned at the DD set your now carrying! your breasts are huge!

“Care to sample the goods?” your asshole of a surgeon says and you see him, a green hat moves into your sight, its that guy from the waiting room! You watch as he pulls his cock out and stands between your open legs and pushes into your soaked pussy! forcing 3 orgasms simultaneously from you as he thrusts in, pushing straight into your womb pulling a further 5 orgasms out of you! your mind is going numb already! you have never cum so many times so fast! your sure no woman has in history and yet here you are, a slave to the orgasmic hell these men have forced on you.. The man in the hat pulls out to your entrance again and thrusts once again straight to your womb, so many orgasms you only thought it “kill meee..” as even your voice in your head trails off in the pleasure. As he slams his length into you your clit gets rammed hard by his body and your rewarded with another 6 orgasms! “its not possiblee-ohmyfuckinggod!” you think as your mind melts through your gushing pussy!

After what seemed like a eternity of orgasmic hell, having well over 50 orgasms the man in the hat moves to your chest, hopping on you he slides his cock in between your DD breasts and begins thrusting hard, you have given a titjob before but it never feels this good! your already cumming just from having him fuck your tits! and he clearly enjoys his time as you feel a splash on your face and mouth as he cums on you. “can we make that more fun for the slave too?” he says, your mind stopping at the word “slave” what did he mean by that? your name is Layla for gods sake! you came in here for a touch up and your being transformed into a cum crazy slave?! you watch as a clear liquid filled needle is brought over to your face, your mouth is opened with no resistance, and your tongue is jabbed and filled with the fluid. “this will ensure the she enjoys giving you head as much as you enjoy receiving it” he said with a laugh!

Your mouth burning as the surgeon returns you your pussy and grabs your clit hard and begins playing with it, forcing you to cum instantly with each stroke, having a further 12 orgasms pulled from you in seconds and he is still going! your eyes roll back into your head as you cum wildly! your mouth still open from the injection some of the mans cum drips into your now open mouth and lands on your tongue, you never did like the taste of cum but this was different.. though you cant move it the cum just slides over your sensitive tongue and you can taste it, somehow you love it! it tastes amazing!, hearing something click your head drops backwards as your eyes look down at your body through the camera once more, the green hat man is lining up your throat for some fucking. Nothing you can do but watch this man fuck your throat, as his cock enters your mouth it pushes your tongue to the floor of your mouth, and you can taste his cock in detail. “s-so tasty!!” your mind screams as he begins pumping down your throat!

“i think were almost done here!” the surgeon says loudly and you hear a grunt of agreement from the man as you feel his hot load pump into your throat as he pulls out, raising your head back up and locking the table back in position, the surgeon stops pulling orgasms from you as he releases your hypersensitive and overstimulated clit, you couldn't count how many times you came if you wanted to.. Watching as the man in the green hat beings a bag over, he pulls some small devices out and places them beside you, “how long will she be paralyzed?” he asks as he does, “5 hours at least.” the surgeon replies, “5 hours of immobile hell?! fuck!” you think. Watching as the man places 2 devices on either side of your nipples and tapes them there you recognise them as vibrators.. “the sick fuck is going to keep making me cum?” you scream mentally.. a thick dildo is placed between your tits and turned on, it feels amazing already!

Watching in fear as a series of vibrators are stuck to your solid clit, covering it completely. A long dildo is pushed right into your pussy and into your womb, pulling more orgasms from you, and finally a scary long dildo is pushed inside your virgin ass, the sensation is incredible for your first time, you can feel it as it moves further and deeper inside you. a foot of rubber cock now fills your tight ass! you can see your pussy gaping open as the dildo doesn't even stick out a little, the man pulls a pair of panties from the bag. black and shiny you realize its a latex lined chastity belt. pushing your clit through the large hole in the front, the panties push completely against you, orgasming immediately as the latex hits your pussy, form fitting almost as it hugs your hips perfectly, metal on the outside you see him lock them on and lower a weird ring around the base of your clit and snapping it shut locking your clit in the belt. At the push of a button your whole body cums instantly as every vibrator activates at seemingly max power!

8, 20, 36, 53.. orgasms every few seconds as your clit visibly shakes as each vibration quakes your mind and body, your pussy and ass vibrating furiously as the tip of the cock in your womb wrenches more orgasms out of you. in the first 10 seconds you have already lost count of not only how many times you came, but also where you are! “my name……. is.. Laylaaaaaaahhhhhhh” your mind dribbles out, “fuuuck-ohmygodnooo!!” you would be screaming if you could. Your mask is removed and your eyes dart around looking at the man in the face clearly. you burn his face into your mind as the man who stole your life, but with his large beard you cant make out much! “FUCK! im cuuuuuuhhh..“ your mind trails off. countless orgasms pulled out of your body as the wheels on your table are unlocked and you learn why there are 2 doors on 1 side of the room, its to fit the table.. wheeled through the doors you see a carpark, and your new ride.. a car boot. Your body is folded up with the surgeons help and your bound into a doll almost, still cumming furiously as your placed in the boot of this mans car and locked inside.

Its dark inside, your body still cumming and you cant move even if you wanted to.. a life of sexual slavery at the hands of this man.. You wanted a Touch up, and now this man is going to touch you up any time he wants..

[spacethatsinbetween]

Horror movies are sad.

So I have always been kind of a chicken when it comes to horror. I saw the exorcist when I was in 4th grade for a slumber party and at first we were laughing our asses off because this movie was so fucking weird. Girl acting crazy. Cussing at her mom. Bananas shit. Cut to the end of the movie, two priests both dead now have saved this girl from a legit nightmare, the credits roll, and NO ONE wants to even take the movie out of the VCR (hello aging myself probably).

Anyway it scarred me for life. I had nightmares for weeks. I also grew up catholic until I reached the age of reason, so that could have had a lot to do with it. But even to this day (15+ years later) the movie terrifies me and I’ve seen it a few times since then trying to get over it. Because of this I have avoided the horror genre in general.

Until recently. Recently I’ve dipped my toes back in, trying to see if I’m still the same chicken shit I’ve always been and I found out two things

One, I’m actually maybe not that much of a pussy. And two... horror movies are sad.

Like this might be an obvious thing to some people but everything I’ve watched recently has just been so fucking tragic (Us, Hereditary, The VVitch, Get Out, Babadook, Parasite, Midsommar, It Follows, Haunting of Hill House, The Lighthouse, even Junji Ito’s Uzumaki and the podcast The Magnus Archives). Like just...so much tragedy. I wonder if this is just a recent thing? All these were made fairly recently. Is this a product of our culture and society? I walk away from these films feeling so sad, not scared. Grief, trauma, anger, resentment, hurt...it’s just full of human suffering.

Are horror movies simply tragedies with jump scares and creepy imagery? Are we just sad right now as a culture? Are we assessing our trauma and it’s expressing itself in our tv/movies (family trauma seems to be huge in many of these) in a more frightening way??

Idk. I just keep waiting to be scared but after all this I’m mostly just sad.

[wolffupdates]

Alex Wolff on 'Castle in the Ground,' Producing a Movie with Nicolas Cage and His 'Jumanji' Future

The actor also reveals the text his friend Cage sent him about playing Joe Exotic.

[This story contains spoilers for Castle in the Ground.]

At 22, Alex Wolff has already had a full 16-year career in Hollywood. From his supernatural horror hit, Hereditary, to his expanding role in the Jumanji franchise, Wolff has even written and directed his own film, The Cat and the Moon. Wolff’s latest role as Henry in Castle in the Ground checks another box that is consistent with most acclaimed actors as his grieving, opioid-addicted character required dramatic weight loss. Since he was already quite lean, losing 30 pounds took its toll on the New York native.

“I only had a couple weeks before I started shooting. I know that [my diet] just didn’t turn out very well, and it turned out to be super unhealthy at the end of it,” Wolff tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I had a lot of problems, but I’ve now found out since then that there’s some totally better, more healthy ways that you can do it. And a can of tuna and an apple is not that.”

At the end of 2019, Wolff wrapped production on Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, and the experience went so well that he’s already collaborating with one of his co-stars on another project. That co-star happens to be one Nicolas Cage.

“I have a movie that I’m going to direct that I wrote and I’m really, really excited about it. And without spoiling too much, Nic is actually producing it with me,” Wolff shares. “I’m going to be starring in it… But yeah, I’d say it’s a character drama with elements of thriller. It’s definitely a psychological drama.”

In a conversation with THR, Wolff discusses Castle in the Ground’s impact on him, his Jumanji future and the text exchange he had with Cage regarding Cage’s new role as Joe Exotic.

You lost 30 pounds for Castle in the Ground. Did you subscribe to Christian Bale’s Machinist diet of one apple and one can of tuna per day?

Oh God. Yeah, I’ve heard of that. I’ve heard of a lot of different diets. I mean, mine was really interesting because I only had a couple weeks before I started shooting. It was like two or two-and-a-half weeks. I know that mine just didn’t turn out very well, and it turned out to be super unhealthy at the end of it. I had a lot of problems, but I’ve now found out since then that there’s some totally better, more healthy ways that you can do it. And a can of tuna and an apple is not that. (Laughs.)

Does a character like Henry ever frighten you to the point of being more cautious in your own life?

Interesting. I think more than anything, it really made me have empathy for people who make bad decisions. More than make me not make bad decisions, it makes me have more empathy for the people who make these kinds of decisions with addiction and everything. I see them more humanly.

As Henry showed, one wrong choice can create a ripple effect that has complete control over you.

Yeah, it just seems like this kind of thing happens so quickly. That’s the scariest part of the whole thing. This can happen so quickly once you start dipping your toe in this pool of these drugs and this kind of lifestyle. You just get completely sucked in, swept up, chewed up and spit out.

When your characters go through a difficult experience and you have to play those feelings and emotions that come with the territory, has that ever prepared you, to some degree, for a similar experience in real life?

I think it’s more the opposite. I mean, there are certain eerie times when life imitates art, but it’s more that my life experience becomes applicable to certain movies and characters. I can do some transference, but I don’t really think that anything that I’ve done in a movie has prepared me for anything in life. What I’ve done in movies has been a collection of my own experience.

I loved the voicemail scene between you and Imogen (Poots). Did you guys rehearse that scene since the timing is so precise and comedic?

I love that scene. We didn’t do much rehearsal in this movie at all. It was pretty guerilla warfare. (Laughs.) We could just go for it. So, we may have run through it a few times, but really, the rehearsal was us just kind of figuring it out as it goes along.

At first, I thought Henry was angling for a romantic relationship with Imogen’s character, Ana, but then I quickly realized that he wanted to transfer the caregiving of his mother (Neve Campbell) onto someone else who was sick in her own way. Do you also think he was dependent on caring for a sick person, as opposed to some romantic fixation?

Maybe he had a crush or something, but I think it’s kind of deeper. He needed anything. He needed anything from her — whether it was romantic or to just be around her, I think he just needed somebody in his life to fill the void of his mom. I don’t think it’s as simple and as clean-cut as her replacing his mom, but I think it’s just that he needs something. He needs some family.

[This next question contains spoilers for Castle in the Ground’s ending.]

The movie ends on an ambiguous, full-circle moment, but given the unforgiving and relentless nature of the opioid crisis, I think history repeated itself in Henry’s mom’s bedroom. Was that your interpretation as well?

Well, I almost want to keep the end a secret for people who haven’t seen it. So, I kind of want that to be one of these big surprises. But I think you’re right. I mean, I’m thinking about it, but I think you’re right. He kind of gives into it eventually. I think he protests, but he lets her do it. I think it’s this moment where, yeah, it’s like history repeating itself. It’s like a prophecy or premonition that he’s going to end up doing it. I kind of want people going in, thinking that it’s going to go a different direction or thinking that it’s going to all come up daisies. You think it’s going to go that way, and then, I think it’s important that it’s like “nope.” It should end super hopeless and punishing because that’s how this actually ends. This is how these drugs usually end.

I loved how aggressively blunt Henry could be at times. He was pretty reserved for the most part, but he did not hold back when it came to Ana’s friends. For example, Tom Cullen’s character said to him, “You seem like a good kid,” and Henry responded, “Thanks, I kind of thought you were a piece of shit...”

(Laughs.) Yeah, I think it’s his only way of survival. I think he is shy, and I love that too. That was really a good element in the script, and I think we worked on beefing that up a little bit. He’s like a little boy, and I think little boys are like that sometimes. They put on a front of toughing it out, hence “I kind of thought you were a piece of shit...” But I think it’s also his way of giving and receiving love. I think it’s how he and Ana bond. I think it’s just his way of connecting.

Henry’s girlfriend, Rachel (Star Slade), had her own life while he was taking care of his mother. She was also going off to school soon. Was Henry’s decision to break up with her partially inspired by the fact that she didn’t need him as much as his mother or Ana did?

That’s interesting. That’s a really good question, but I didn’t see it that way. Maybe to a certain degree, but I would say that instead of her being more independent, I think it was about the fact that she was almost too good for him at a time when he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle any kind of positive thing in his life. He wanted to be miserable. He wanted to follow the danger and follow his id, not what was healthy for him.

You started acting at six years old. Once you became old enough to make your own choices, did you ever sit down and assess whether you wanted to keep acting or not? Obviously, you made the right call, but sometimes, we hold on to things just because they’re all we’ve ever known.

I think about quitting acting every single day. I have a very love-hate relationship with it. The second I start a movie or when I’m not good in a scene, I’m like, “Fuck, I don’t want to do this anymore. This is hard.” You have to, in equal measure, be completely in love with it and need to do it. It feels like a need. It feels super deep and heartfelt.

Given the sad state of the world, have you done a screen test or chemistry read with another actor yet via Zoom?

Yeah, I’ve done a bunch of monologues and stuff with people, which has been really fun. I’ve been writing monologues and sending them to my friends, and I think that’s been really good. I’ve done some play readings on Zoom, but it’s not the same. It’s not great, but it’s okay. It’s better than nothing. The lag time is better than I actually expected, but it’s just still not perfect. It just isn’t.

You were an uncredited partygoer in Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds, and you just had a supporting role in his latest film, Bad Education, which is excellent. Clearly, Cory felt guilty over the size of your Thoroughbreds part, right?

(Laughs.) He better have! He better feel guilty. No, I was shooting Patriots Day like an hour away from where they were shooting Thoroughbreds, and I knew the producer. So, I came just to hang out, and they just threw me in there, which was fun. But yeah, he’d better feel guilty for not giving me a bigger part. (Laughs.)

In Bad Education, I was quite fond of your outburst after Geraldine Viswanathan’s character pressures your character to publish her exposé, but he’s torn because of his recommendation letter from Hugh Jackman’s character.

That was kind of a fun day because Cory doesn’t usually have people improvising, but I kind of just went for it.

Jumanji: The Next Level left things in a very tantalizing place as the Jumanji game world has returned to the real world a la the original Robin Williams movie. Are you intrigued by the possibility of your real-life characters acting alongside the avatar characters for a change?

Oh my God, yeah. That better happen. That would be so amazing. I want that. Yeah, I think it would be full circle. To come back to the real world.

I think you just came up with the title.

Jumanji: Full Circle? Yeah, it better be that. Jumanji: Full Circle, I like that. The idea of all the kids, The Rock, Danny DeVito, Danny Glover and everybody else in the real world makes me so unbelievably excited.

Recently, your name was on a very exciting list of actors in connection with a new movie from one of my favorite filmmakers, M. Night Shyamalan. Can you say anything about this?

(Wolff imitates static noise.) We’re going through a tunnel actually. Sorry, I’m going through a tunnel right now. There’s a tunnel in my house. Can you hear that? (Laughs.)

You’ve heard this quite a bit, but Hereditary’s car accident scene is one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen. Oftentimes, when the cast and crew know they have to shoot something dark like that, they find ways to keep the set as light as possible. Was that the case that day?

No, actually. That was not the case. For me, sometimes if they’re trying to make it too light, it’s kind of distracting. So, I sometimes have to just stay in the zone. I kind of just was wearing my headphones and trying to stay in the spirit of it. I think it’s sometimes too hard to completely jump in and out.

Did that scene mess with your head for a little while after shooting it? No pun intended.

(Laughs.) I think it did mess with my head in the moment. I think the whole movie was kind of difficult. It kind of stuck with me. I think that scene in particular definitely stuck with me at least for a few days. But I think that movie was like a constant attention-taker. I think it haunted me for a while.

This is a shameless question, but have you texted your friend Nic Cage about his brand-new role as Joe Exotic [of Tiger King fame]?

Of course, I have. Of course, I have. I said, “Are you playing Joe Exotic?” and he texted me back (Wolff imitates Cage.) “You bet your ass I am.”

It’s perfect casting.

When I first saw it, I said the only person who could possibly play him in a fictional world is Nic. I just feel like that guy is so larger than life, and anybody else would not be able to go there. Nic is the only person who can go there, I think.

Are you itching to direct again?

Yeah, man. I have a movie that I’m going to direct that I wrote and I’m really, really excited about it. And without spoiling too much, Nic is actually producing it with me. Yeah, I’m really excited about it.

Can you reveal the genre yet?

I would say it’s a character drama, and I’m going to be starring in it. I’m really excited about it. But yeah, I’d say it’s a character drama with elements of thriller. It’s definitely a psychological drama.

***

Castle in the Ground is now available on Digital HD and VOD.