#it's the cracks that let the light shine through. — full-of-mercy.

[eventheodds]

— @full-of-mercy continued from here.

“I didn’t get burned, by the way,” she says, her voice trailing as she hops to her room—which is really just behind a partition because there’s hardly any space in this apartment of hers, and fetches the shirt.

In truth, she panicked and shucked the shirt off before running it under cold water. And she’d not been honest about not getting burned, because she did, but Meryl took care of that right away. The coffee had been piping hot—as well as strong enough to strip paint. She’s got more coffee than blood in her, she thinks. Probably also not good to drink it so bitter and strong.

She doesn’t want to dwell on the matter as to why that is, though they both know.

While not with Bernardelli any longer, Meryl hasn’t fully burned all her bridges yet. She’s grateful that some of the people she’d been in contact with while still employed believed her, though she’s told them to keep their distance.

Regardless, she’s not thinking about that right now even if she is, and takes the shirt to the sink and lets the water run for a moment before placing the stain beneath the cool spray.

“…it’s not coming out,” she says, a little worry in her voice because she knows how difficult shirts are to come by—especially those made from linen. “And yes, I have my own clothes, but your shirt was right there.”

It’s a terrible excuse because it’s not an excuse at all. She likes the way the material feels on her skin. She knows he’s going to hold this over her and Meryl’s heart sinks a little more when the stain is still there.

Shit.

[eventheodds]

In hindsight, she knows her eagerness to get out of the roiling heat and dual suns played a major part in not being more vigilant in regards to looking out for notice and bulletin boards. In particular, wanted posters. The gust of cold air when she had entered made good sense and rationality fly the coop as she easily slid into the booth and picked up the menu that, despite it being protected by a plastic sheet, has some sort of cleaner residue smeared all over it from constant wiping and handling. 

The choices are good at least—some she recognizes and would probably order. Others…maybe not.

Meryl scoots closer to the window as Vash slides in beside her and Wolfwood sits across. She has yet to look up and see if people are staring, though with the din of noises filling in the background spaces, she suspects that their entrance might have caused a little break before everything resumed its natural course. 

She considers ordering a tall glass of ice water when she thinks of what the water looked like in Jeneora Rock. When she looks around, and she has to crane her neck to do so as Vash is beside her and blocking her side view, she spots a few glasses of water on tables that look fine enough.

The condensation on the glasses and making water rings on the table tops is enough to make her smack her lips and order as many as she can drink. No doubt Roberto found the first whiskey bottle he could get his hands on and has started his day off the way he intended to from the start.

She’s still fuming at the fact that he deliberately took a room for himself—and not that she minded, but feeling excluded in his plans, or not being told what was going to happen made her feel like she had been passed over.

It happened enough when she had been studying, no one ever taking her seriously when she told them about her ambitions. The same way her parents would often sigh with that hint of disappointment in her choice of career.

Vash’s exclamation about the choices of ice cream since she had been perusing the desserts menu brings her back as she looks down at the varieties offered here and there is a temptation to order one of everything—until Wolfwood’s comments make her look up at him with a scowl.

Her shoe comes into contact with the centre post of the table bolted to the floor and knows Wolfwood is using that to his advantage. The idea of breaking her toes does not sit well with her, so his shins are spared for the moment.

“Why? Is that a problem?” 

Though, despite not wanting to admit it, especially out loud, he’s right. Junk food will not tide them for long and it will be within the following hour that hunger will strike again. She hates the fact that he’s taking a similar approach to how she addresses Roberto’s drinking and smoking, though she’s a tad bit more aggressive when it comes to that.

She grabs another menu, letting Vash continue with the dessert options, and flips through the dishes they serve here. Sundaes are good and all, and she does intend to order one—her plan needs to work after all, but they have a supreme brunch menu that looks appetizing and Meryl has always been fond of crêpes.

“Fine, have it your way,” which is just shy of admitting he’s right and she grabs his cup for a sip of coffee. She pretends to not flinch at the bitterness and how hot it is as their waitress comes by their table to take their orders.

“I’ll have the ‘Brunch Supreme’ eggs over easy, and one banana sundae, please. Oh, and a glass of water with ice.”

When Meryl is motivated, even if (especially if) her motivation is misguided, precious little short of grabbing hold of her and hauling her in a different direction will stop her.

So, she decides.

And she chooses one of the few little eateries in the town that seems to defy the general degradation of the desert. Sure, the outside is a little worn from sand scouring, its corrugated metal exterior buffed to a satin sheen and its windows clouded and scratched, but the diner made out of a U-shape of transport buses welded together onto a stone foundation appears to be well-maintained.

The price of food and drink will probably reflect that, along with the sheer amount of Plant energy this place enjoys .

Maybe.

"Could be eatin' worm anyway, there, Princess. Doubtless have your whole life-"

"...c'mon, Wolfwood. Why?"

Vash interjects, and Nicholas does not need for him to continue his line of questioning before he grins unabashed, eyes crinkled behind his sunglasses. He knows why. They both do. It's been like this from jump, from the moment Meryl swerved and struck him with the van, and while they have come to something of an understanding, riling her and reaping the consequences is—

"Fun. Besides, you know I'm right."

The bells on the door jingle like a pair of spurs as the gunmen follow Meryl inside. While she has already found a likely place to sit and has already secured a menu, Wolfwood and Vash draw looks from the clientele at the shake bar and in the booths. The host waves them to wherever after a side-eye, though fortunately it seems they get all sorts here and there is no immediately visible bounty board.

It doesn't mean there isn't one somewhere.

They decide to join her, Vash beside with a grin and a little wave, Wolfwood across with the adroit flick of fingers to pass a cigarette from crumpled pack to chapped lips.

"—oooh, they have tea ice cream? And fried ice cream? That's amazing..."

The blond hovers, peering over Meryl's shoulder while Wolfwood pretends to vacillate on the offerings behind the counter, taking his sweet time to settle on a cup of coffee and something savory. They all do have to eat. Neither donuts nor sweet treats seem to enter his reckoning.

Cheaper that way. More calories. Something like that. Maybe he'll pilfer something from the others as a tithe.

He adjusts his legs to shield his shins with the table's center post.

"Junk again, huh?"

[reliving-elegy]

Anamorph

Byron, alone and in company, observes the results of his efforts with muted delight. He steps slowly through a clearing, a path of well-trodden grass and mud separating an ocean of red and sinew.

Gentle as he walks, Byron gazes to the distant sky. The moon half-full, the stars ever-present; washing over the piles of viscera and carved metal. As he passes, reflections of him distort, the gentle light of eventide becoming multitudes.

The Argent comes to a halt before the lowest point of the field; a patch of newly soaking mud. Within lies a slowly growing font of blood, still full of the life he'd sought. With a satisfied sigh, he kneels, bending forward to glimpse at his form.

His fur, once mottled and black, now shines bright as the stars themselves. Where his red, maddened eyes once resided had been replaced by spheres of viscous mercury; within which the Ichor ebbs and flows freely.

"...Unimaginable."

With a longing expression, Byron reaches his right hand toward his image. Cautious as to not allow himself to break the surface, a single claw makes contact.

"They cannot see themselves as I do. Truthfully. Without pity. Without mercy."

Byron takes his opposite hand, gliding it upon his knee and slowly across his breast. So precise are his movements that the blood remains undisturbed.

"Fools. Enthralled to the belief that the world is theirs. That they, together, share the gift of vision; that one amongst their ilk is capable..."

With a quieted growl, Byron's left hand continues- across his collarbone, then to his shoulder. As he speaks, the hand begins descending, sliding gracefully down his stilled arm.

"That one among them is worthy to understand the world. To speak their word as law. That one among them might cross the threshold."

Byron's left hand pauses at his wrist, glancing over to it. His ring finger extends, now alone as it travels down his right.

"But what of them...?"

Byron's right claw dips slightly into the pool, causing a single ripple.

"What of those who give their existence to these saviors? Saints and Gods and Prophets- what of the common name?"

He growls deeply, looking into his reflection and watching it distort with the presence of the single ripple.

"They are forgotten- as is deserved. But, they are led to believe that they will not be so. That, in service to what is 'good' and 'right', their death brings further meaning."

Byron snarls openly. As he does, his reflection begins to warp abnormally; with some remaining unfazed while others vanished entirely.

"That mortals are capable of such treachery- that they would leave another to writhe in abandon and continue to speak?!"

Byron's ring claw smoothly digs into his index finger, dragging it up to the center of his right hand before retracting his left. Split flesh lets ichor fall noiselessly, ebbing down his finger and into the pool.

"...No matter. To you, the foolish... I grant a pitying, passing glance. As is the right you were given- to be seen, in your final moment."

As the silver fluid sinks into the pool, a reaction takes place- almost instantly, the font and its many offshoot rivers of blood begin to crack and burn.

The wind ceases. The light of midnight fades. The field dries as the unknowable is fathomed. Metal bends in screaming angles. Bone and sinew from piling bodies wrong themselves.

Byron's reflection fades as roiling ichor and mortal blood burns away to mirror-smog, and all the world is unbecoming.

"...But no more."

The light returns. Byron kneels in a grassy field before a patch of mud. He grins widely.

[blzzrdstryr]

Reveries of the Past. Yandere!Childe x Fatui!gn!reader

Wordcount: 3875

CW: Dissociation, graphic depiction of violence, hallucinations, unhealthy relationship and unhealthy power dynamics.

A.N.: I used a lot of my experience with dissociations in this and if it makes you uncomfortable, I would advice not to read it. I also plan on writing continuation for this, as it’s set before the Rite of Descension. P.s. I am not a native English speaker, so could you notify me if there’s awkward wording.

[Next chapter]

There are plenty of times you find yourself reminiscing about the past and now, your mind slips back to your memories, as you look at the horribly mangled body of the treasure hoarder. The stench of blood stuffs up your nose, it’s sickly sweet metallic odor making your gut clench and nausea rise, as your limbs grow heavier and numb. You don’t feel  like you belong in your skin and bones and blood anymore - it’s cold, so cold, yet you don’t feel any of it. You are an outsider, an unwanted intruder in the house that is your body, an indifferent observer looking at the world through the thick glass.

The world around disfigures, shapes and colors changing in the constant whirlwind - they jump and dance around, small becoming large and large shrinking so much it’s barely visible, green shifts to red to blue and to yellow and to million of other colors, and sounds suddenly become muffled, losing their sharpness, but you don’t care about it: the part that is “you” fled to the daydreams of your childhood moments ago, leaving a clinically observing, yet unfeeling being behind. 

Adults would describe you as a perfect child: quiet, obedient and dutiful, you were a stark contrast to the other louder and more free spirited kids. You studied hard, cleaned the house, helped with dishes and cooking and never talked back. 

I can't upset mom and dad because they work so much. I can't play with other kids because if I do, they will make fun of me, I have to study hard and get good grades, because mom said I will have a good job and become rich and help them. 

These particular memories don't feel good to you: they're bleak and boring, yet full of silent shame - they make your throat clog and eyes water, as something burning starts to bloom deep underneath your skin. 

Childe stops beating the still alive treasure hoarder, a blood smeared on the cheek and a dangerous glint in his eyes, and turns his head to you. 

"Hey, how about lending me a helping hand?", there’s a hunger in his voice you recognize, he wants to teach a lesson to the debtors, then. You walk towards him, feeling your knees get weaker and weaker with each step for some reason. A dagger made of ice shines in your hand with cold light. 

"It's no wonder [First] received a vision! My [First] is always so good and smart, there are no children better" the exact words your mother says, as she brags to her friends, showing them the vision you were bestowed with. You left it to her, not caring what will happen to it - despite all the child's wonder you felt before receiving it, the glowing orb doesn’t look so amazing to you now. It feels foreign and ugly, a reminder of what happened seconds before you gained it. 

“You know, when I was a child”, he takes the weapon and focuses on the treasure hoarder’s leader again, “we made a special kind of promise”. It’s tip travels to the hoarder’s hand. “You make a pinkie promise, you keep it all your life”

The sweet voice he uses and the fact that you  know the nursery rhyme too would make you sick in the stomach the other day, but not now. 

You don’t exactly remember how you joined the Fatui - it happened shortly after you gained a vision, when you were still too numb and cold to the outside world after the Event. 

Mom will hate me, dad will hate me too. I can’t let them know.

Your parents say that officials just knocked on the front door one day and offered you an entry into the Fatui and a monthly salary, big enough to stop your parents from overworking themselves. You were terrified back then, Fatuis despite being known as a diplomatic organization are still a mystery to the ordinary Shezhnayan and a direct servants to Her will. The thought of disappointing Tsaritsa or letting down Snezhnaya was enough to paralyze you, but seeing the smiles on your parents faces was enough to make you swear to yourself, that you will work there no matter how scary it seems.

“You break a pinkie promise, I throw you on the ice.” The blade stops between phalanges of the little finger: “The cold will kill the pinkie that once betrayed your friend", he presses it, strong enough to detach the limb from the rest of the body in one swift slash. Treasure hoarder starts to cry and scream from the sudden pain, yet quickly chokes on it as Childe hits him in the solar plexus. The crack of bones feels deafening among the sea of muffled sounds.

Training was rigorous to say the least, you came back to your dorm room absolutely exhausted and after you fell on the bed you were practically dead to the world. Turns out, having a vision wasn’t enough to make you a fighter - you needed to know how to climb, swim, run with a weight to lift and wield a weapon. There were other children and teens with you, they eyed your vision with a mix of adoration and envy, you pretended not to catch it in turn.

“The frost will freeze your tongue off so you never lie again”, harbinger forces the victim's jaw apart by squeezing it with one hand, the other rapidly forcing a dagger inside the mouth. Treasure hoarder gasps and mumbles, fat tears forming in his eyes. A part of you expects a sound of parting flesh, but none comes: Tartaglia stands up and removes the blade, leaving a shivering and terrified man laying on the ground.

“Well,” Childe shrugs, as if he didn’t just dismember a person, voice back to his cheery tone : “You didn’t actually make a pinkie promise, so consider it a small mercy”. The treasure hoarder cowers even more, snuggling the injured hand close to the bruised chest. “But if you fail to repay your debt I will oversee that the frost”, he points in your direction, a treasure hoarder’s eyes going wide as he notices your vision, “will actually freeze your lying tongue off”, his voice descends again, back to it’s dangerous half-whisper.

You meet Ajax during the winter, he’s close to you in age and just arrived into Fatui grounds. He boasts and shows off to all of you, and you desperately want to retort something acidic to shut him up and rip off that arrogant bravado, yet say nothing, picturing how the tomorrow training session will have him laying flat on his back, too hurt and too tired to move even a single finger. 

He defeats the trainer in less than a minute.

Now, that the treasure hoarder fled, still snuggling disfigured limb, Childe turns attention back to you. “You seem a little bit disinterested here”, his hand on your cheek is so foreign, it’s burning and freezing at the same time, the shock from the unwanted touch almost strong enough to pull you back into reality. He notices your unintentional flinching and unfocused eyes “Ah, you hurt my feelings, [First]! And I thought we already became friends”. 

You say nothing, cold and unmoving, blind and deaf to the outside world, his words register a second too late, and there’s no cliche phrase for you to reply with. He looks a bit baffled and deflated for a second, but shrugs it off, just like he did during teen years, when you deliberately ignored all his attempts at catching your attention.

“Huh, even if you are so cold to me, I still forgive you”, he takes your hand, his touch still too overwhelming for you to process and pulls you back to Liyue harbor, your legs barely bending as you walk after him, like an obedient dog trailing it’s master.

“You know [First], I can beat you up so badly, that you will barely walk”, you put feather aside, stopping writing the letter to your parents as you glare at Ajax with barely masked indignation. He grins, satisfied to finally catch your attention after the whole day of pestering you. “I am aware of that” you reply in an absolutely flat tone, holding yourself from pouncing on him and trying to break the teeth out of that smug smile. He beams even wider, as if sensing your not-so-good intentions, revealing even more pearly whites as if taunting you.

“But I won’t, count yourself lucky”. And he leaves, this short interaction filling you with so much rage that you shake, handwritten letters noticeably becoming sharper and faster, your thoughts clouding around the idea of acquating his face with your boots. 

 Nonetheless, you indeed count yourself fortunate enough, when you see Ajax defeating grown men with bare hands. When you two, the only vision holders among your peers have to spar, he always goes easy on you, prefering to immobilize you rather than beating, making your defeat less painful yet even more humiliating. 

Almost at the end of your trail he suddenly stops and says something, but you don't catch it, words turning into separate vowels and then fusing together into one unintelligible gibberish mess. He leans in, close enough for his breath to burn your neck, and he continues to get closer, until his empty eyes look into yours glazed ones. He seems disappointed for a second and backs down, his breathing no longer fanning your skin. 

Distantly you think that you somehow angered him and he will slap you for it, and do nothing to dodge the hit - you barely feel pain in this condition anyway, but he doesn’t. The road to the Northland Bank is completed in absolute silence, Childe no longer trying to grab your attention, only when you enter Liyue Harbor does he whisper, that you two must look like a pair with all that hand holding. Judging by the volume and tone of his voice he says it more to himself than to you.

***

You come back to yourself in the safety of your room on the third room of the Northland bank. It feels like a rush of sensation, as everything becomes sharper and clearer again, like you just swam to the surface of water from the very depths of it. An invisible bubble around your head pops in one moment, and the world becomes real again, mind and body connecting for once more.

Eyes and ears focused you take in surroundings: the room is neat and lifelessly empty - just a bed and a working desk with a stack of written but unsent letters, along with a small bookcase near, no figurines, pictures or even plants to decorate living place, as you see no reason to adorn the area you use for sleeping only. Indiscernible wallpapers and a small window close to the middle of the bed finish the picture of austerity.

 Once, your memory catches up to you, you can't help groan from the shame and irritation, hiding your face in both hands. Afterwards  always feels both like a disgraceful escape and a warm blanket during the stormy night, a duality that you accepted long ago after joining the Fatui and today is no exception. You curse Harbinger when you remember why exactly you had an episode, and get up from the bed you threw yourself on minutes ago. You come to the desk, taking a clean form of a relocation request from the drawer and writing materials. 

Filling in the blank feels like commiting a felony to you for some reason - you stop several times when you hear footsteps in the corridor, focusing on the door,ready to hide the half written form and say some lie as an excuse. You don't list the Childe-related reasons, knowing that there's nothing that could make any of the Harbingers face the consequence for their actions, and instead you write completely normal and fake causes: health concerns, family matters and so on. Part of you doubts that this will work and you will have the fortune to get away from a certain harbinger as far as possible. Trying and failing is better than never attempting, you think, quickly writing the paper.

Once you finish it, you almost rush to Ekaterina, praying that you won't run into a certain ginger on the way. Sometime ago you caught Tartaglia checking your letters, for a secrecy he said back then, we can’t let anyone know about the coming operation. Childe then instilled that every sent and received letter should be checked, lest Qixing and other Liyuens learned what Fatui had in plan. It sounded logical and sensible, but the paranoid thought that he enforced this policy just to have a glimpse at your feelings never stopped eating at you. From that day on you sent your family the most basic and vague letters, just stating that you’re in good health and mind, still missing them and Snezhnaya, leaving the ones with more private sentiments in your room. 

Her eyes are completely obscured by the mask, but even with that you can’t miss the pointed glare she sends your way - Tartaglia never shied away from showing off, be it his strength, money or his twisted obsession that he calls love. With the amount of time and finances he spends on you and the way he acts like a kicked lovesick puppy in your vicinity, you are pretty sure that at least half of the bank workers see you as a cunning and cruel seducer, so keen and devious in the art of temptation that you managed to lure in Eleventh Harbinger.

As if archons decided to laugh at you, Childe descends from the second floor too, catching the sight of you near the receptionist. He looks unusually somber for a moment, but then he sees you, a smile appearing on his face as he takes the form from Ekaterina's hands. You can just feel how Ekaterina rolls her eyes under the mask, as if muttering complaints about the lovers’ spat and insubordination, having been working with her for some time, enough to have a clue of the inner workings of her mind.

You have to give him that he plays the confusion and regret very persuasively. He asks how he can fix this, says what a valuable team member you are to him and how much you are needed in the Northland bank. You agree to his suggestion - if years of training with Ajax and then work with Childe taught you anything, it is that Ajax is the chaos incarnate and Tartaglia is Ajax’s less tolerable and more unpredictable version, so it’s better not to anger him.

***

In the end he invites you to dine with him at Wanmin restaurant, a place Childe heard from some “xiansheng” as he called them. A bustling Liyue street is open before you two, tall midday sun painting the whole street into bright orange, so unlike the pristine white landscapes of Snezhnaya. He orders two Black Back Perch Stews on the chef's recommendations, and hands a bouquet of local flowers in a parody of a normal boyfriend. Any random observer would really see it as a date.

You take the flowers, pretending to pay more attention to  them than to a man sitting near you. Tartaglia is an unpredictability wrapped in human skin, there’s no privilege as being lax and carefree near him, as even Tsaritsa has no idea what he will do next. 

To your mutual confusion Xiangling presents the meal with two pairs of chopsticks. Utensils feel foreign in your palm, you having no idea how to handle them and Childe, by the looks of it too. Tartaglia specifically asks the chef for spoons, while you observe the other clients, noting how they use theirs. Holding one stick like a pen and then placing the bottom one in a fixed position under the thumb you manage to grasp the fish from the soup, albeit clumsily. You consider it a small win. 

The image of a mighty Harbinger struggling in a failing battle with chopsticks would look funny to you, if it wasn’t for the whole "date" you were having. After putting them aside, and seemingly admitting defeat, Childe starts from afar: "You know [First], you changed a lot since I first met you" .

You raise an eyebrow at the starter, it's vague and innocent enough, but experience tells you that he will or at least try to stir the conversation into your relationship with him again. Straightening a bit and finally turning your eyes to him, you pause for a second, picking the least offensive reply you can muster - there’s a swarm of insults buzzing at the tip of your tongue prepared just for him, growing and sprouting since your pubescent years.

“Yes, I got taller”, he laughs it off, like you said some funny joke, his giggles not stopping for some time. "No, I mean as a person. Remember how you used to glare at me for joking? And now you act so unfazed ”

Joking. Is this what he calls it? Shivers creep up your spine when your memory oh so conveniently conjures the images of the aftermath of his jokes.

“Your jokes weren’t funny to anyone but you”. Breathe, you think, there’s no need to anger him. There are pictures of broken bones and bruised bodies and a cacophony of somebody else’s pained screams flashing and rattling in your head, Adults never did anything. Why would they? They had a golden boy Ajax, why would they help the others when they had him? Why would they help you? Bitterness and anger you thought you swallowed long ago rise up to the surface again, and you decide to bite down on the stew - Tartaglia always found a way to turn your words against you and hurt you, no need to give him more weapons now.

“I changed a lot too. I know I was insufferable as a teen”, he must have taken your silence as a free pass to continue whatever nonsense he’s sprouting, “I am sorry”.

The last three words catch you off guard, a piece of fish almost stuck in the throat from the jolt. Ajax takes you by surprise once again, for him to finally acknowledge and apologize for all the pain he caused and years he tormented you?

You blink and look at him intently, his facial expression changing into an unusually somber one. It seems authentic enough.

“Let’s start from the scratch?

You contemplate unsure what to say.

Was he lying?

Looking back, you in a sense are luckier than most of Childe's victims, witnessing his youth, familiarizing and distinguishing the tells of him lying and scheming, observing the way he bloomed into the manipulator he is today firsthand. You see a familiarity in his face and voice, something that helps you from falling to his charms. There's also the added fact that you were and still are an involuntary witness to the way how carnal and bloodthirsty usually friendly Ajax can become. 

When did you catch his attention?

You remember his smile when he first approached you, less teeth and more sincerity that is thereafter,a hand outstretched to you. It happens on the next day after his arrival, almost as cold and unpleasant as the previous one. You brush the limb away like a noisy fly, secretly angry at his arrogant attitude and how effortlessly he endured training. His smiling doesn’t stop, yet you feel a sudden change in the air around you.

Would your fate be different if you took his hand?

You can't forget how your mind disconnected from your body for the second time. It was Ajax again vying for your attention akin to a spoiled child, and like one he threw a tantrum when you refused to give him any. The poor recruit you were talking with was hospitalized the same day, as you helplessly watched the carnage before you. You didn't fight, you didn’t flee, you just froze, like a scared animal, paralyzed by fear, yet somehow too detached from feelings. That day was bizarre: once you felt reality, it was solid and undeniable and then you didn't. The realness of the current diffused, slipped through the fingers like sand, leaving nothing but unreliable and delusive reveries behind.

Will he let you go? 

“People do change and I see that you changed too. I don’t think of you as a teen you were” you carefully pick the words, Tartaglia visibly blooms, thinking that his apology worked, yet your next words snuff out his triumph: “but my memories stay the same. I don’t think we can start from scratch”

You bite the tongue, the second part still coming out too harsh for your liking. The moment of sincerity is interrupted, you see him, changing the masks, unsure what to do. It seems for the first time it was you who caught him off guard. You guess which one of the two standard facades he will decide to show to you, having spent years by his side to observe him masterfully wielding both, the friendly one with a vacant smile that never reaches his dead, dead eyes or the calculating one, distant and devoid of humanity?

In the end he uses none, a hurt still evident, dripping in his tone, face and moves - is it another mask you never got to see or is it real? - “So that is your answer”, he leans in closer, dull cerulean eyes looking right into yours.

You hold his stare, nodding, instead of saying anything and he hums, sitting back and wearing the cold mask, reserved for his enemies: “Just wanted to remind you that I am the Harbinger and you are just a position higher than an ordinary agent”. Despite seeing it so many times, it’s the first time he directs it at you and you have to suppress the shiver. The unsaid threat hangs heavy in the air, suffocating you.

You two are no longer solemn [First] and annoying Ajax, who trails your steps behind like a puppy, no, you are a special agent [Last] and Eleventh Fatui Harbinger Tartaglia, to whom you are personally assigned by Tsaritsa herself. Even possessing vision and delusion yourself you can’t match Childe’s power, and your loss would be easy to overlook if your harbinger wished for it. Honestly speaking, there are a lot of things he could do to you without anyone questioning it, the Harbingers being the second most powerful figures in the organization, right after Tsaritsa herself. You heard the stories of Krupp and other assistants who got missing under Il Dottore, you heard of horrible accidents happening to the people Scaramouche dislikes, you heard about the injuries Signora inflicts on the unfortunate recruits when she is in foul mood, yet you never thought that Tartaglia will abuse his power in the same way.

“Don’t worry” he seems to have taken mercy on you, “I won’t use my position like that, it’s cheating and I like to play the fair game”, despite the seemingly reassuring words , you don’t let yourself relax, knowing him for years.

“Don’t think I will back down though, I am not the type to give up”

[chatonne-rousse]

Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave

This is one akuma whose intentions are good. After all, who couldn't use an extra dose of courage to overcome fear?

A superhero whose identity will be immediately revealed in the process, for one.

When an akuma causes several secrets to come to light all at once, our heroes will need to drum up some courage to face their fears - and each other.

But what's waiting after that looks like it might be a dream come true. It'll just take a bit of bravery and a lot of heart. Piece of cake.

***

Only eight days late and several dollars short, I’m wishing @jennagrinsoverml a happy belated birthday with this gift, written just for her.  ILY, my friend!  

Read it on Ao3 here.

***

Ladybug has to give Courageous some credit: she's a rarity, an akuma born of selfless means. A teenager who hadn't mustered the courage to stand up for a younger student being bullied at school, she'd been so ashamed, so angry with herself, that Hawkmoth had found an easy target to ply with honeyed words and promises.

Her power isn't even a terrible one. The beam of light she shoots from her right hand simply causes the person it strikes to relive the last encounter they had when their bravery failed them, this time with courage aplenty. It's admirable, really.

Admirable, but terrifying nonethless.

(The fear of Chat Noir finding out her identity is deep and dark and often floats to the surface of her nightmares with blue eyes and white hair and a drowned, ruined world. He cannot know. The cost is too high.)

"Whatever you do," she calls to her partner, frantic and scared, "don't let her hit you! Please, Chat!"

She hears the desperation in her own voice, and the look on his face conveys that he certainly does. He nods solemnly.

"I'll do my best, My Lady."

She nods back, and off they go into the fray.

For well over an hour, they fight Courageous through parks and plazas, sidewalks and thoroughfares. All around them, the people of Paris have squared their shoulders, lifted their chins, and braved conversations big and small with people only they could see.

Ladybug has to smile as she hears a young man confidently ask for a raise and watches his eyes light up at the response.

That smile fades when she remembers once again that the last time her courage had failed her was just as they were dismissed for lunch break, when she'd tried to invite Adrien to a movie that weekend. His eyes had been so kind as he'd waited for her to gather her words properly, and somehow that had just made it harder.

Then Lila had "accidentally" tripped and knocked into her, sending her to the floor. The memory of Adrien's hand reaching out to her to help her up, those same kind, patient eyes locked on hers, makes Ladybug's cheeks heat even now. But after she was upright again, after Lila had stalked off because no one seemed to care that she "probably would need surgery now because her arthritis would flare", Nino had reminded Adrien about the gig he was DJing on Friday and Alya had led her away to show her something on her phone.

Just like that, her opportunity was gone.

And that would be fine, honestly. Marinette was used to moments of stuttering and botched declarations when it came to Adrien.

But if she's hit by Courageous, Chat Noir - plus the citizens of Paris, Hawkmoth, everyone - will hear Ladybug try to ask Adrien Agreste on a date, and that will be a disaster of epic proportions.

"Ladybug, look out!"

Chat's body slams into hers, sending them rolling on the sidewalk just as a beam of magical light zips over their heads. In a flash, Chat Noir bundles her in his arms and vaults them to the rooftop above, making sure she's steady on her feet once they land.

"Thank you, Ki-" The words die in her throat when she sees over her partner's shoulder that Courageous has followed them.

Chat turns, his baton at the ready, while Ladybug reaches for her yo-yo, but neither is quick enough to stop the akuma's beam from finally finding one of its main targets.

"I'm sorry, Bug," he murmurs as his eyes glaze over.

Using her yo-yo as a spinning shield, Ladybug drags her partner behind the nearest chimney stack just as he begins to speak.

Panic sets in as her mind screams at her over the hum of her yo-yo, the akuma's laughter, her partner's voice.

I can't just leave him!

"Father, may I come in?"

Oh no, oh no, oh no. I can't hear this!

"Yes, Nathalie said she penciled me into your schedule for noon."

Nathalie?

Ladybug's gaze snaps to her partner, yo-yo still spinning to deflect beams of light. She's surprised to find Chat Noir's head bowed in deference, though his eyes shine with a confident gleam.

"I requested this appointment to ask you again if I could attend the event with my friends tomorrow evening. I've already completed my assignments for school and the homework from my Mandarin tutor."

Mandarin tutor? What?!

"Yes, Father, I'm aware that you don't care for Nino, but..."

The panicked scream in her mind gives up any attempt at coherence; by this point, it's no more than a muddled loop of Nathalie, Mandarin, Nino, Father.

Ladybug feints to the left to avoid being hit by the akuma as a mix of terror and adrenaline floods her system. She leaps forward, leaving Chat behind the chimney in the hope that she can engage the akuma just long enough to get her partner back and finally, finally finish this off.

She knows too much already. The cat has bolted straight out of the bag and is running loose on this rooftop beneath her feet, a distraction she can't handle right now.

On hero autopilot, she hurdles one beam after another, then tucks and rolls and pops up to roundhouse kick Courageous in the chest, sending her flying.

She hears the akuma's "oof" just as Chat Noir's jubilant voice rings out from behind the chimney.

"Thank you, Father! Thank you so much!"

She can hear his grin in those simple words, the sheer joy in being given permission to leave the house. Everyone in their class knows what a tight leash Gabriel Agreste keeps on his son. It breaks her heart every time she thinks of it. In fact, she's successfully fought for his release from that marble prison on more than one occasion! So yes, she'd already known with all the clues in place, but there was truly no mistaking it now: that was Adrien talking to his father.

Because Adrien is Chat Noir.

Her heart cracks. Oh, Chaton.

Suddenly, the akuma's progress in clambering to her feet is impeded by the whoosh and subsequent metallic thunk of Chat's overhand swing with his baton.

Relief floods her heart at the return of her partner. No matter who he is, Chat Noir is her other half, and Ladybug is never quite herself without him.

"Maybe we could use a little extra luck, My Lady!" Chat winks at her over his shoulder before facing the akuma again.

"Yes! Right! You bet!"

Get it together, Marinette, she thinks. Her face heats and she scampers away to the safety of the chimney stack where Chat was hidden to call for her lucky charm.

A red and black spotted can opener drops into her hands and she looks at it in confusion. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she grumbles, looking around frantically but seeing nothing to help her decipher how to use the lucky charm.

She takes a deep breath, peeks out from behind the bricks, and promptly takes a light beam to the face.

No, no, no, no!

It feels vaguely like having a water balloon popped on her head, a chill of sensation dripping down her spine and rippling through her nerves. It's a small mercy that being hit by an akuma rarely hurts physically. Her vision swims like a mirage in the desert, the familiar courtyard at school coalescing from vapor around her.

The last thing she sees is her partner's stricken face.

The last thing she hears is the akuma cackling.

"Heylo! Who! I mean," she takes a deep breath, a rush of confidence tingling along her nerves. "Hey, Adrien!" She smiles and gives him a little wave.

His grin takes her breath away. "Hi, Marinette! How are you?"

"I'm great!"

You can do it, you can do it!, her heart sings, and miraculously, her brain listens. Her smile turns coy. She taps her lip with her index finger. Her pulse pounds a bolstering tattoo in her ears. Go for it, girl!

"But I could be better."

Adrien's smile drops a fraction. "Are you okay? Is there something I can do?"

With another deep breath, she squares her shoulders and looks him in the eyes, her very cells imbued with a courage unparalleled even when she's wearing spots. She could do anything, anything, right now, but she has her mind set on accomplishing one thing and one thing only.

"You could join me for a movie on Saturday."

"I could...?" His brows furrow, but his grin grows slowly, bright but incredulous. "Are you asking me....?" He blinks, takes two shallow breaths. "Do you mean just the two of us?"

She nods decisively. "A date."

You did it. You did it! A veritable party erupts in the back of her mind, radiant relief spreading to her fingertips. It feels so good to finally break through her anxiety and fear and ask him that simple question that felt like an impossible task just a few hours ago.

Thankfully, he doesn't keep her waiting. The answer is in his eyes, anyway. "I would love to," he breathes, cheeks pink and smile dazzling.

"Really?" Marinette squeaks, and now it's his turn to nod.

"I'll be there even if I have to sneak out." Adrien reaches for her hand and gives it a little squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods again, her chest so full of emotion she can barely breathe. Not only did she ask him, but he said yes!

Suddenly, blue sky fills her vision and she regains awareness to the sound of a scuffle on the other side of the chimney stack. Ladybug tentatively gets to her feet, reaching for her yo-yo and setting it spinning immediately. This time there's no peeking around the corner; she bursts from behind the bricks on the offensive, ready to finish the fight.

What she finds is Courageous struggling under Chat's baton, twisted up like a pretzel and unable to move for the steel-toed boot resting across her shoulders.

"Just in time, LB!" Chat crows triumphantly. He tosses her a bracelet emblazoned with the words Be Bold, Be Kind, Be Brave that currently pulses with Hawkmoth's dark energy.

In moments, the bracelet is broken, the akuma is freed and purified, and a confused teenager sits where Courageous was restrained a moment ago.

Chat docks his baton at his back and looks at his partner with the softest eyes she's ever seen, a tiny, equally soft smile playing at his lips.

Her heart sighs. Adrien. That's Adrien, and he knows.

The lucky charm sits heavy in her palm. Abject fear makes her hope against hope that she won't remember his identity when she casts her miraculous cure, just as her heart longs to hold on to the knowledge that her precious partner is the boy of her deepest desires, and maybe, maybe they really can have it all.

With a deep breath, she throws the unused can opener into the air, watching magical ladybugs and healing light burst forth and spread throughout the city. She waits, holding her breath, but when pink light swirls around them, the only affect it has is the healing of the twinge in her ankle from when she fell mid-fight.

She looks up, and her partner's eyes say it all.

He remembers, too.

Even as fear grips her heart, radiant joy shines from his face as his grin spreads. It scrunches his eyes behind the mask and pinkens his cheeks, delight seeming to glow from his pores. Ladybug has never seen her partner so happy. That elation is a balm to her soul, and she can't help but smile right along with him.

Ladybug turns to the akuma victim and holds out her hand, offering the bracelet back to her. "I really like that inscription" she says, pointing at the now-silver bracelet as the girl fixes it back on her wrist.

She smiles shyly at the two heroes. "I wish I had the courage to do more. I wish I was brave like you."

"We get scared sometimes, too. Everyone does," Ladybug starts, before her partner nudges her shoulder with his elbow.

"Speak for yourself, Bugaboo. This cat has no fear." Chat Noir throws her an exaggerated wink, and the girl laughs. "But real talk, anyone can be a hero in their own way. Little things, big stuff...you're stronger than you think, I promise. Cat's honor."

She nods. "Thank you for, you know, saving me and everything." Glancing at the street below, she gestures toward the edge of the roof. "Would it be too much trouble to get me back down there?"

"Not at all," Ladybug replies with a smile. Calling on her own courage, she looks at her partner and takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing, she thinks. "The usual spot in five? Or less, I guess, since it...doesn't matter now," she says with a shrug that she hopes looks nonchalant.

And there's that smile that shines like the summer sun. He gives her a jaunty salute. "I'll be there with bells on," he says, tapping the bell at his throat and making it jingle.

Ladybug just shakes her head and giggles.

A few minutes later, when she lands beside Chat Noir on their familiar rooftop, her earrings are beeping a frantic rhythm, signaling mere seconds before she detransforms. Instinct has her looking around the roof, ready to dart behind anything she can use to hide.

Before she can move, Chat steps toward her and quietly asks, "Marinette?"

Her transformation dissolves in a wave of pink light, and she hears him gasp as she catches Tikki gently in her palms. Marinette takes her time retrieving a macaron from her purse to feed her kwami, deliberately moving slowly in an attempt to get herself under control before she looks up at her partner. He knows, and he's thrilled, and that's amazing, but it feels like the entire world will change when their gazes finally meet, and she's just not ready yet.

"I, um...I didn't use my cataclysm, so I can stay transformed if you'd prefer, but..." he trails off.

There's something in his voice that finally makes her look at him. Just like when he talked to his father under the akuma's control, his head is bowed slightly, but instead of confidence, this time his eyes are bright with nervous hope.

Marinette understands both the nerves and the hope, and she'll joke with her partner until the end of time about who's in charge, but it feels wrong for either Chat or Adrien to look at her with uneasy deference.

And that's what she thinks of as courage wells in her chest. Her brave, steadfast partner, the other half of their unstoppable team, the boy with terrible timing who can still make her laugh, her best friend whom she loves so fiercely, should never feel he has to approach her in fear.

"Oh, Minou," she breathes. "Of course, go ahead. I...I already know."

He nods and stands a little straighter, and with a whisper and a flash of green, Chat's magical leather is replaced with denim and cotton poplin.

Predictably, her brain is short-circuiting, hollering in panic and terror, but even as her heart pounds wildly in her chest, it whispers quietly, gently, that this is her partner. Her silly kitty. Her dearest friend. He just happens to look like Adrien Agreste at the moment.

(Okay, this is going to take some getting used to.)

Tikki flies off to join Plagg nearby, while Marinette sits down on the roof with her knees pulled to her chest. She pats the space to her right and Adrien settles in cross-legged next to her.

He's the first to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Marinette. I shouldn't have gotten hit. I shouldn't have let you get hit. I know this wasn't what you wanted, and-"

"No, no, don't apologize," she interrupts, shaking her head. "It happens. It's...not the first time." Marinette sighs and closes her eyes, suddenly feeling a lot less courageous in the face of this world-bending change now that they're in their civilian clothes and it's Adrien apologizing to her. She presses her forehead to her knees and tries to imagine the boy beside her in magical leather and cat ears. It only helps a little, but it's enough. "We, um-" she pauses, licks her lips. "We have a lot to talk about. I just don't know if I'm ready for...all of it."

Adrien is silent for an uncomfortably long moment. "Yeah. We do." She hears him take a deep breath that shakes a bit on the exhale and turns her head a fraction to peek at him. His eyes are on the distant horizon. "I...think I understand some things now."

Abruptly, he turns toward her, a little smile tilting the corners of his mouth when he his eyes meet hers. Fear tells her to look away, but she tamps it down and holds his gaze. His smile widens.

"May I ask you something, Marinette?"

She nods.

"When you came up to me at lunch today, were you...planning to ask me on a date?"

Her pulse pounds in her ears. She could give in to fear, say no and brush it off like Chat had misheard her when she was under the akuma's spell. But suddenly her heartbeat seems to drum, "be bold, be kind, be brave," over and over again, and just as the smile begins to slip from his face, she finds the nerve to nod again.

Just like on the other rooftop a few minutes ago, his face lights up like the first rays of sun after a week of rain, shining splendid even in the early afternoon light.

"Am I--" he whispers, his breath hitching though his joy never dims, "Am I the boy?"

Be bold, be kind, be brave.

She calls on her Ladybug courage and nods once more.

His breath catches again and his eyes fill with tears that he brushes away quickly.

Clarity dawns all of a sudden, sweeping her fears to the corners of her mind to be dealt with later. She understood Chat Noir being happy to know his partner's identity, his excitement in finding out his Lady was his friend, too. But this is so much more. Beside her sits Adrien, wiping tears of joy from his eyes at the knowledge that Marinette is in love with him. This might just be a dream coming true on a random rooftop on a random Thursday afternoon.

"Chaton," she breathes, stretching her legs in front of her and placing a hand on his knee.

His hand covers hers, and she meets his gaze, words caught in her throat at the intensity in his eyes.

"I have a confession to make." He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand and takes a deep breath. "I think everyone in Paris knows that Chat Noir is in love with Ladybug. I...know you know." He shrugs as his smile turns a little helpless. "But no one knows that I might have a little tiny bit of a huge crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng, too."

"Kid, don't lie to your girlfriend. You know very well that I knew, because I've been telling you forever!" Plagg calls from somewhere behind them. Tikki hushes him loudly.

"Okay, he's not wrong," Adrien says, huffing out a combination of a laugh and a sigh. I'm just very stupid, apparently."

"Hey, don't talk that way about my partner." Marinette bumps his shoulder with hers. "I have a teeny, tiny, huge crush on him, too, you know, and I don't appreciate your tone."

Adrien's surprised laugh rings out across the rooftop, filling her heart with so much love she can barely breathe with the force of it. She could listen to that laugh for the rest of her life. She hopes she'll have that chance.

He brushes tears from his eyes again as his laughter subsides, his grin still shining bright. "I'm so happy it's you, Marinette. Beyond happy." He turns her hand beneath his and threads his fingers through hers. "Honestly, there's no one else I would rather have as my partner."

"Me too, Minou," she murmurs, squeezing his hand lightly as incredulous joy sings through her veins.

Tikki's little voice pipes up nearby. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's almost time to go back to class."

Adrien lets go of her hand to fish for his phone and curses under his breath when he sees the time. "She's right, My Lady. Could we meet up this evening? I know we have, um...a lot of things to talk about."

Marinette nods. It feels like she's done a lot of that in the last few minutes.

When Adrien stands, he offers his hand to help her up. Just like in the courtyard at lunch, his eyes are patient and kind, but now they shine with something more. She lets him pull her to her feet, then wraps her arms around his waist in a tight hug.

His soft exhale at her ear as he melts against her makes her smile, scrunching up his white overshirt under her cheek. Her senses are filled with him, and she's surprised to realize that it's a feeling of comfort and safety instead of the usual panic.

Maybe loving Adrien and being loved in return will be easier than it seemed all this time. Her fears seem so silly when his arms are wrapped around her shoulders and his head rests on top of hers - a perfect fit.

Even the nightmarish terror of Chat Blanc is diminished. Adrien never told anyone her identity; he knew because he himself was Chat Noir, and there's no way in the world that Chat would hurt his Lady, nor would Adrien ever harm Marinette on purpose. She must have misunderstood. He must have misunderstood. He was an akuma, after all. She sighs into Adrien's shirt. She can never allow that terrible timeline to occur, but whatever happens after this, they'll face it together. Stronger. She'll make sure of it.

"Do you think my father will let me go to Nino's gig in real life?" he asks quietly.

The sad note in his voice breaks her heart. She squeezes him tighter.

"I don't know, Kitty. Do you think we'll be having a movie date on Saturday?"

He leans back abruptly, though his hands still grip her shoulders. "Of course! I'll be there if I have to sneak out!"

Marinette boops his nose, laughing when his eyes cross. "I think that's your answer for Friday night, too."

Suddenly she's in his arms again, this time lifted off the ground and spinning. She can't help but giggle.

"I knew I was in love with a genius!" he cries, jubilant. He sets her down and plants a kiss in the middle of her forehead before calling for Plagg to transform him.

When he turns his masked face back to her, it's like the world is different. She can easily see the brilliant green of Adrien's eyes in Chat's glowing sclerae. The blending of two of her favorite people into one extraordinary boy who - oh my goodness - just said he loves her gives her a shot of courage even before she suits up again.

"You missed, beau gosse."

His eyes widen comically. "I....what?"

Marinette smiles and calls for her transformation, then taps her lips with her gloved fingers. "You kissed me, but you missed."

The sly gleam in his eyes makes her breathing speed up.

"First of all, I would ask before I did that," Chat says, sticking out his thumb before raising his clawed index finger. "Second, I thought I'd save our first kiss for Saturday. Seems like a great way to end our first date, doesn't it?"

Our first date. A tingle runs down her spine. She likes the sound of that.

"I guess I can wait." Her smile turns cheeky. "But it'll be our third--"

"Ah, ah, ah," Chat cuts her off with a grin. He extends his thumb again. "First of all, I don't remember either of those."

Ladybug rolls her eyes, still smiling.

"And second," he says, his voice pitching lower and making her heart skip a beat, "it will be Marinette and Adrien's first kiss."

Oh, this boy, she thinks as her heart soars.

She bites her lip to keep from giggling. "I suppose you're right, even though we both know we're the same people."

Chat gives her a deadpan look. "Just let me have this, Bug."

She bursts into laughter and reaches for her yo-yo, delighting in watching a grin light her partner's face.

"I really am looking forward to Saturday," he says, unhooking his baton from his back. He reaches for her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "We'll talk about it later today, okay?"

She nods and watches him vault off toward home.

The wind against her face is exhilarating as she swings back to the bakery. It's amazing how one revelation seems to have changed everything. Even the zip of her yo-yo through the air sounds different to her ears now that she knows, now that he knows.

Marinette detransforms as she touches down on the terrace and sinks into her pink-striped chair while Tikki phases through the hatch into her room in search of food. A quick check of her phone tells her that she has ten minutes before she has to go back to school.

School. One more thing that's going to be different.

Before nerves can creep in, she thinks of Chat Noir and his beaming joy at learning the identity of his beloved partner. That was Adrien. She thinks of the comfort of being wrapped in Adrien's arms, his scent, his warmth. That was Chat Noir.

And when she sits down in class behind him in a few short minutes, that boy with the soft smile and shining eyes will look like Adrien, but now he's so much more.

Marinette stands up from her chair with a lighter heart than she can remember having in a long, long time. She's suddenly looking forward to the second half of the day, even more excited for Nino's event tomorrow night, and positively thrilled that she has a date with Adrien - who is Chat Noir! - on Saturday.

There's so much to experience, so many memories to be made. It feels a bit like a dream. It feels more than a bit scary. But it's going to be great.

It's just going to take a little courage.

She's got this.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

if you’re still doing the ask game, I’d kill to see number five for either Jake, Jameson, or Jax. you know how I love my drug whump

I have so many prompts sitting in my inbox that are numbers to ask games that I can't remember what the prompts were... but I remember this one. This is as good a time as any...

CW: Pet whump, dehumanization, drugged whumpee, beating, described body/bones, brief emeto ref, restrained, sadistic whumper, collared, chained up

Direct Sequel to Deep Breath / I'm Ready. Part of the Jameson's Backstory mini-series.

-

"I have a system, dog. I have a method. I have a way these things are done."

Robert punctuates each sentence with another kick to his ribs, and the pet grunts with the impact, telling himself to let some of the pain bleed out into the man's boot. With his hands tied behind his back, a short rope linking them to his ankles, he's forced into an arch that leaves his most vulnerable places entirely unprotected.

Open.

On display.

Inviting the next blow.

At least whatever was forced down his throat dulls things a little bit. It's a mercy, he thinks, because Robert isn't done with him yet. The world roils and spins around him like the ocean on a stormy day. The pet is a white-capped wave when the next kick comes and something snaps inside him.

Watch it rain, a soft voice says somewhere inside him. A small hand grabs his own. Watch the rain fall, Johnny. Don't you love rain?

He whimpers, sweating into the blindfold, shivering reflexively as cool air hits the sheen of wet over his skin. He doesn't know who Johnny is.

"Please... please..." His pleading is weak, voice cracked and breaking.

But he just wanted to do the only thing he could to help the young man in the bathtub. He just wanted to help.

Now he's helpless.

Robert's boot, pulled back for the next kick, pauses at the sound. "What's that? You not enjoying this?" He exhales, letting out a thready laugh, before he drops into a crouch, running his hands over the pet's hair. Robert watches him flinch back, unable to see it coming. His thumb finds a spot rubbed bald by the straps of the muzzle and he runs over it, humming, finding the scarred places where the muzzle has cut in enough to make him bleed, over and over. The pad of his thumb is rough, calloused from his job. "You don't like taking your punishment, hm? Is that it?"

The pet holds as still as he can, panting, trying to push past the throbbing ache on his left side. Broken rib, maybe, or just bruised. He'll find out if it heals right or doesn't.

"Please-... please stop," He whispers.

That only gets him another laugh, meaner this time. "That boy had two more weeks of life left in him," Robert says, in a tone of perfect rationality. "I chose him special, and you got it in your head to ruin everything. I just don't see how I'm the bad guy here."

He sighs, and rips the blindfold off over the pet's head.

The pet looks up, struggling to focus, only to take a fist to the face as soon as he does. Knuckles crack into his jaw, but nothing breaks. It's a miracle he hasn't lost any teeth.

His head bounces off the floor, a flash of white behind his eyes. He hears a rough voice cry out in pain and realizes it's his own. The world, already a seasick cruise ship, bobs even more dangerously around him.

He's being blown around in circles, saltwater coming in too fast to bail out. He's going to be sick. He's going to throw up on the floor and drown.

Just like he drowned the man in the bathtub who begged him to do it, who said I'm ready, who held his hand, who struggled at the end and then stopped, and then-

And then...

The air had gone briefly cold after the man had stopped moving and the pet had felt a breeze through his hair, as if something in the man was leaving and moved past him on its way somewhere else.

He starts to cry, unwillingly.

His sobs comes out through gritted teeth, tears forced out of eyes he's closed as tightly as he can to try and keep them hidden. His body shakes.

"Two weeks you've robbed me of," Robert says, standing back up. He groans, and the pet can hear him moving around the room. He doesn't dare look up to watch him, not now. "Two weeks, and now it's all wrong. Now nothing happened the right way, it's all fucked up now. I have a system. I have a method, I have a routine, and you fucked it all up!"

The last words come out a deafening scream, and the pet cries out again, trying as hard as he can to duck his head and hunch his shoulders, wanting only to protect himself in whatever meager way he can. The sound of Robert's voice bounces around inside his fucked-up skull. The water is pulling him under now.

The waves lurch and break against him as Robert grabs him by the arms and drags him. Hog-tied, he can do little more than squirm as he's pulled back into the hallway, to the grimy bathroom.

The young man isn't in there anymore.

"I should kill you," Robert snaps, depositing him back on the cold tile, wet now with water splashed out from when Robert found what he had done and had dragged the body out, trying to revive it so he could hurt the young man more. "I should fucking kill you, you stupid dog. You ruined everything!"

The pet tips his head back until it touches the floor, looks up at Robert looming over him, all malevolence and rage. Beyond his fear, the pet finds a core of something that burns bright and hot, stronger than the smell from the basement. Something sharper than the knives he is cut with, something stronger than Robert's shouting or his fists.

The pet makes an expression that could be a smile or could be a snarl. It could be appeasement or bared fangs. His lip busted at some point and he feels blood on his teeth, tastes it on his tongue.

It makes him think of Nanda.

He lets the blood shift into his mouth, lets it pool on his tongue. Tastes the copper-salt, the hint of sweet. The taste of love, of Nanda's mouth, of his low voice, hands in his hair or on his hips.

Once he has enough, the pet spits blood into Robert's stupid fucking face.

"I hope the next one goddamn kills you first!"

Robert goes still, and silent. His eyes are ringed in white, like a horse about to bolt. Then his hand comes up to slowly wipe away the smear of pink-tinged saliva on his cheekbone running down to his jaw, marked with a five o'clock shadow.

"Fucking dogs don't know how to stop their bark," He mutters to himself. Whatever his plan in the bathroom had been, it's clearly not enough. He pulls the pet up, then lets him fall again. Stares around, eyes bouncing over the still-full tub, the ring of grime around the tub where the water still sits.

Then he just shakes his head. "No, no, no," He mumbles. "No no. Calm it, Bobby. Calm it. Think think think."

The pet stares up at him. His body holds more disgust in that moment than he ever thought possible.

Robert disappears back into the hallway, leaving the pet where he is. Outside the barred bathroom window there's a soft birdsong and the faint hint of sunlight. What time even is it? The pet never knows. The bathroom is the only window that isn't covered with heavy blackout drapes almost all the time.

He focuses on breathing, keeping things shallow to hold the pain in his ribs at bay as best he can. His wrists hurt from the ropes rubbing them raw, his muscles are pulled painfully taut and stretched.

Robert returns with the gag-muzzle, forcing the plastic bit between his teeth. His tongue pushes against it uselessly, working to try and make it comfortable even as his jaw already protests what it knows is coming. The straps slide over the bald spots, buckle into place. The pet shudders at the familiarity of the feeling and tries instinctively to jerk his head to the side.

Robert grabs him by the hair and forces his head back, giving a humorless rictus grin at the pained grunt forced from the pet's throat. "Oh, you don't like that, huh? Shoulda thought of that before you fucking ruined my system. My method. My routine."

You said that already, the pet thinks, but it occurs to him Robert probably doesn't remember that. He's never sure what Robert actually knows about his own words, how much sinks in to memory. He's always repeating things like it's the first time he's ever said them.

The rope between his wrists and ankles is cut and Robert pulls him up to his feet, shoving him forward. The drugs keep the pet struggling to hold himself upright, stumbling to one side or the other. He can still feel the waves - inside him, battering, trying to pull him back under the cold dark water.

He goes willingly enough, shuffling with his hobbled ankles, until Robert has him at the basement door.

The pet rears back in a sudden panicked realization, a muffled, unintelligible babbled plea coming out around the bit, behind the leather muzzle already making his skin pour sweat. He shakes his head wildly back and forth, tries to yank himself free.

Robert's laugh is wild and crazed this time as he shoves the pet forwards and it's either go down the stairs or fall.

The pet's foot finds cool smooth old wood that creaks and he whimpers, the smell flooding his nose making his stomach twist and turn. The next step. A third. A fourth.

The light is on in the basement, a single bare bulb shining a thin circle of light over the disturbed earth on one side. The other side is untouched except for some boxes and the chemical barrels, wreathed in dark shadows that let nothing escape.

"You like 'em so much, you can spend the night with 'em, huh? Just have a little sleepover with my friends here, hm? How's that sound? How that fucking sound?!"

The pet whines as Robert screams in his ear, shaking his head again and again as he is forced step by step down into the basement where they die, where he buries them. His bare feet touch down onto the earthen floor, coolly dry down here, chilly compared to the upstairs. The pet is shivering but it isn't really from the cold.

Goosebumps burst all over his arms and legs, a thrill of terror down his spine as Robert pulls him over to the shadowed corner where the boxes are. There's a hinged metal collar with a chain that attaches to the wall, and the pet realizes that Robert must use it when they're down here just before Robert throws him down on the ground and closes the metal with a snnnnkt over his leather collar, around his neck.

There's thigh bones, he thinks, in a pile over underneath the lightbulb. Just a bunch of fucking goddamn femurs, like Robert comes down here to play fucking barbie dolls with dead people, taking them apart and putting them back together.

Welcome to Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse, he thinks, and a manic horrified laugh bubbles up his throat. John Wayne Gacy edition.

A padlock is hooked through the front of the collar, cold metal slapping down against the top of the pet's collarbone. He looks up at Robert, who is right in front of the light bulb from his perspective, his face black and unreadable.

Please, he tries to say. I'm sorry. Please. All that comes out is muffled animal whines.

"You love them so fucking much, you can be best friends." Robert ruffles his hair. He grins, and the yellowy white of his teeth is all the pet can see of his face. "Enjoy your sleepover, dog."

He turns and leaves, ignoring the pleading whines of the pet as he climbs up the stairs, the creaking like a chorus, a harmony to the pet's cries for this to not be real.

The light seems to shimmer around its edges - it's just the drugs, he tells himself, it's just whatever was in those pills - and shift. Dead people could hide down here in the dark places, with their bony fingers reaching out to grab him.

He whimpers again, softer this time.

He manages to shuffle himself on his ass backwards until he hits the basement wall, smooth stone older than the house itself. His hands are still tied behind him and his ankles are still hobbled. Tears run from his eyes, drift along the edge of the muzzle, drip down from his jaw into the dirt. He sobs around the bit gag, whining until he can't remember if he even is human at all any longer.

Then he sees a face and gives a full-body shudder.

At first he thinks it's the drugs, but it's not. The young man who begged him for help, the reason he's down here at all, isn't buried yet. He's just lying on the ground under a worktable on the other side of the basement. His hands are still tied together in front of him, his soaking wet hair has begun to dry, frizzy and tangled.

Something about the face, though, gives him pause.

He's seen them dead before, their faces etched in horrified screaming, empty eyes wide and terrified. He's seen them trapped in their final agonies long after they're gone.

But the young man across the basement looks like he's gone to sleep there on the floor, that's all. His color's all wrong but the dim light keeps that from being too obvious.

He looks like he's sleeping.

He didn't die screaming under Robert's knife, or begging for it to stop as the blows kept raining down. He isn't tied to Robert's bed, he isn't anything like that at all.

The pet's fear is still in him, heart beating jackrabbit-fast against the inside of his chest, but he stares and stares at the young man's body and begins to understand that... he doesn't need to be afraid of them.

He doesn't need to be afraid.

He needs to be angry that they die like this, not afraid of them.

Anger is what keeps him breathing, what keeps him thinking, what keeps him alive.

He made Robert furious, but more importantly he took a victory from him, he took power from him. He took away control. He made it so Robert can't feel like he owns the young man in his death, like the body is his because he made it.

No.

As long as he isn't dead, that means he isn't out of time. As long as he keeps breathing, as long as he keeps thinking, as long as there are parts of him that Robert doesn't know, doesn't own, that he can't control.

As long as he stays angry.

As long as he has hope.

I'm going to get out of here, he promises the young man's body, the pile of bones, the rest of them under the soil. I'm going to escape. I'm going to do something, someday, when he gives me the chance.

I'm not like him.

I'm not like any of them.

I want to be like you, instead, but alive. I want to live.

I'm going to live.

For a second he smells water, he hears a voice he can't understand and tastes the young man's voice on his tongue, the taste of sage tea with milk.

The pet swallows and closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose, holding the air, breathing out again. The air shifts around him, touches his face just above the muzzle.

In the perfectly still basement, a breeze shifts along his skin, rustles his hair just a little.

Something moving past him on its way to somewhere else.

-

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @whump-tr0pes @raigash @eatyourdamnpears @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @boxboysandotherwhump @outofangband @whumptywhumpdump @thehopelessopus @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @butwhatifyouwrite @newandfiguringitout @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump @oops-its-whump @endless-whump @cubeswhump @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @whumpiary @burtlederp

[tales-unique]

FAITH, LOST  IV

Oh honey she starts off so spicy! Hence why it's all under a Read More since I don't wanna get done for showing the nasty straight out the gate. Minors better beware! ;3

Tagging the boos, for obvs reasons @chelseareferenced @buckysbaby1 hope you all like it! 😘😘

Chapter 4

It begins as soon as your eyes flutter open. The darkness, familiar, like an old friend, coerces your senses into a heightened state. Exposed, your skin prickles at the coolness of the room, writhing against soft sheets. You exhale in exhilaration; you know what’s to come. It starts small, a low thrum of electricity in the air that tickles your bare flesh. Then it builds, tantalizingly slow, a measured surge of power that has you twisting yourself in knots. You want more. Only He can give you more. His arrival is heralded by the scent of oil and whiskey, leather and smoke. It caresses you, embraces you, and sends you into overdrive. It’s instinctual, a primal desire. It corrupts your mind, the sequence disjointing in its take over. Thick boots echo on a wooden floor, your mouth falling open with a heated breath. Your back arches when you feel his weight dip the bed, heat radiating from him. The contrast has you trembling, body wired. His hands, strong and calloused, grip the backs of your thighs easily. A simple tug and you’re at his mercy, legs parting easily in his strong grip. You moan, he growls. He likes what he can see, those beast eyes glowing a dangerous red in the blackness. Sharp indents form against delicate skin, his claws marking your inner thighs. His little lamb, so sweet and so ready for the slaughter. Then there’s movement, the shuffle of fabric, the chink of a belt buckle. You tense, but you’re ready. The air surges with the oncoming crescendo, the room spinning, or maybe it’s you? You’re not sure, preoccupied with the molten heat that pools suddenly between your legs. You feel his grin, all teeth and tongue helping to blot out the sharp stab of pain.      Forgive me Father, for I have sinned—

The sudden chaos of a burst steam pipe in the hallway outside your room abruptly shocks you from your slumber, a cacophony of sounds assaulting your sleep-hazed senses. You hear Heisenberg shouting, the scraping of metal being reshaped at will, the harsh hissing of escaping steam. Groaning at the rude awakening you flop back against the lumpy couch cushions, kicking off your blanket in protest. A light sheen of sweat covers your body, making your nightclothes stick to you in an uncomfortable way. As you stare up at the ceiling you try to decode the meaning behind your dream. You recall with an embarrassing amount of clarity just what it was you were doing and who you were enjoying it with. Humiliation blooms within you, coloring your cheeks a shade of scarlet. It wasn’t as though you hadn’t indulged in the past, you just never had desires so blatant before. Especially for someone who was your superior in every way. “Hey, you awake in there?” Heisenberg’s voice cuts your thoughts short. All the racket has stopped, there’s just the usual hum of the Factory. “Y-yes!” You squeak, stomach clenching uncharacteristically as you sit up, “I’m awake!” “Well get your ass up, we have work to do!” He claps his hands hard to exaggerate his point and you lament your new found torture as his footfalls recede down the corridor. Oh merciful Mother Miranda how were you supposed to face him anymore?

Heisenberg is, for lack of a better word, pissed. It surges through him and it shows in the haphazard, volatile approach he takes with his work. It isn’t rational, this level of response on his part, but he can’t help it. You’ve barely spoken a full sentence to him all day. Now, he’s under no illusions that you were going to become the best of friends. After all, you had been sent to him by Mother Bitch herself to be his servant and he knew that you were three sheets to the wind over this religious bullshit, but he’d thought that you’d been showing progress in becoming your own person. At least, you were , until that little incident where he had you pinned against his desk and decided to take his teasing to the next level. It isn’t often that Heisenberg considers that he may have gone too far with something, or someone , but he’s definitely considering the possibility now that you seem to be avoiding him wherever possible. You’d even brushed off his blatant last ditch attempt, an offer to accompany him to see his forge and the projects he’d been working on, in favour of praying to Mother Miranda. It’s the exact opposite of what he wanted to happen. You’d been so close to opening up, to no longer being a tool, but instead you’re become even more the meek little lamb of Miranda’s flock. Frustration bubbles within and his temper, short-fused as it already is, takes a critical hit. As a result everything he does has a sharp, volatile edge to it; even something as simple as opening a door is menacing in his current state. It serves to further deter you from him, giving you the space you so desperately desired. That is, until Heisenberg reaches his limit. “Just open up already! You can’t ignore me forever!” He thunders where he stands in the hallway, gritting his teeth in a vicious snarl. When he’s met with your persistent silence he howls in frustration, throwing his arms up in the air. The irony of him choosing to remain outside your door doesn’t go amiss, since it’s well known that he could easily rip the door from its hinges with the flick of his hand because of his nifty little ability to manipulate metal. Which, coincidentally, nearly everything in this Factory is made of in some form or another. But he doesn’t and you’re thankful for that, even if you still don’t want to face him. It continues on relentlessly, neither side backing down, and without realizing it, the whole thing becomes a game in its own right. One that pits you against one another to see who cracks first. So it’s a surprise when it’s Heisenberg that seeks you out first. It’s a situation of his own making, having followed you on the gritty live feed from his security cameras. With ease he catches you off guard on your way out of the elevator, taking your fright in his stride. “Easy now!” He exclaims, his hands raised in surrender. You’re cagey, looking for a way out. He isn’t going to give you one because he’s had about enough of you giving him the cold shoulder over a goddamn joke . You’ve pressed yourself tight against the wall, watching him like a hawk. He can hear the frantic flutter of your heart, the sharp intakes of breath, and his jaw tightens. He can’t get distracted now, he needs to focus — this was not the time to enjoy your distress. “Now I know that I can be a bit of a handful,” he starts, then falters, mouth working to try and word it just right, “but, really, hasn’t this gone on long enough? I didn’t mean any harm by it! Just a little teasing, you weren’t meant to get upset.” Oh, he thinks this is because of that time. You stare up at him in utter disbelief. You want to slap him. It’s the first time you’ve ever felt the innate burning desire to inflict bodily harm on anyone, but here you stand, about ready to knock those glasses right off his face. “You have literally no idea how you make me feel , do you?” You accuse him, incredulous, your posture straightening. Things might have slipped back to the way they were before all of this if he had just let you be, allowed you to warm back up to him, and maybe you might have been content with that. This was a turmoil of his own creation, after all, so why not let him stew in it a while. But now? Now you were at your limit. You’re tired of constantly tip-toeing around yourself because of him and his stupid games. If anything, you’re even more tentative to rekindle whatever this relationship is that you have with him, to throw in the towel and tell Mother Miranda she’d been wrong about you. It made you sour to think that what little progress you had made had been lost and it’s taken its toll on you. There’s a harsh look to you that has Heisenberg’s head spinning, apprehension gripping him. “H-Hold on a minute,” he attempts to defend himself, an uncomfortable blend of emotions sitting like a stone in his stomach. He’s conflicted over your new found confidence. You’re no longer the mild-mannered devotee that was wound around Mother Miranda’s finger, standing tall. You’re practically shining. It’s a good look on you, but he’s not exactly thrilled to be the one on the receiving end. “No!” You snap, squaring up to him. You see his brilliant eyes widen behind his circular glasses and for once in your life you feel powerful and in control . “I’ve done nothing but try my best here, trying to make something good out of this situation and you made me feel like a complete idiot !” The words feel heavy on your tongue, but you feel lighter now that they’re out in the open. Who knew that having your shame out in the open could feel so liberating. You take a deep breath when you feel the pinpricks of tears sting your eyes, trying to ground yourself. You wouldn’t forgive yourself if you cried in front of him. Not in this lifetime, or the next. Heisenberg stares down at you with a look of realization on his face, now fully aware that there was more to this than your feelings of inadequacy, that you were little more than a joke to him. It’s always been there, in the way your heart races when he gets just that little bit too close or how your eyes soften when he’s agonizing over his work. He goes to speak this revelation but you shake your head, lower lip trembling. “I was just trying to help .” The way your voice breaks has him in a tailspin, the look of pure anguish in your eyes cutting him deep. This is in no way what he had envisioned when he spotted the chance to clear the air with you. “Oh come on, don’t cry!” It’s a desperate plea, something you never thought you would hear from him. “You’re making me feel really shitty here!” “That’s because you are!” You sob, unable to hold it back anymore. You feel like such a pathetic idiot. That overwhelming monster of self-degradation looms, fueling your misery. If only a dark abyss could just swallow you up and save you from this embarrassment, but you know that’s not going to happen. There’s only this awkward moment, lingering between you. You whimper, trying desperately to wipe away your tears. They stream down your cheeks, burning against your already flushed skin as you sniffle. Suddenly his hands are encasing your own in a firm grip. With a surprisingly gentle touch he tugs them down, exposing you. The whites of your eyes are marred with tiny lines of red and your long lashes clump together from your tears. You’re a mess, but he doesn’t mind. In fact, he finds you oddly endearing in the moment. Swallowing, you try to understand what’s going on. Your hands are still held in his, the feel of soft leather almost comforting against your skin, and you wonder if you’re dreaming again. Something stirs in you, glowing embers kicking up from ashes, and you try to pull away. It’s an admirable attempt but Heisenberg easily catches you, holding you in a vice-like grip against him. You whine at the harshness of his grasp and he frowns, loosening his hold just enough to make it bearable. “I’m sorry, alright?” He mumbles, hesitating. It’s been so long, too long, since he’s been in such close proximity to someone who wasn’t prey. You aren’t fighting him, you aren’t trying your damnedest to get away. In fact, you look as though you’re captivated by him. It’s a side of him that no one has ever seen before, the dejection of a man twisted into being a monster. Something inside you breaks anew at how lost he looks, the last and most dangerous of the Lords at Mother Miranda’s disposal. He’s nothing more than a dog on a choke chain, to be used when it’s suited and then discarded afterwards. Just like you. “Heisenberg,” your voice is hushed, woeful. The words are so genuine and your heart isn’t yet made of stone to be immune to their plight. When you shift in his grasp there’s no resistance and you reach up to gently cup his cheeks in your hands. The stubble on his face tickles your palms and his skin is warm and smooth to the touch. You find you quite like it, the contrast of textures. He does little in the way to stop you. In fact, he encourages you. His hands find purchase on your hips, thumbs brushing the delicate spots just below your rib cage. It elicits a soft gasp from you, your body stiffening beneath him. Glistening eyes stare up at him, a swirling maelstrom threatening to drown him along with you. He’s curious whether or not you’re ready to commit to this. Heisenberg knows what you want, or better yet, what your body wants, but your mind eludes him. He waits with bated breath to see what path you will take, the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety creeping in his bones. It’s like poison, a crawling taint that threatens to take over him. What have you done to him? The exact same thing he did to you. It’s a disquieting notion, one that almost overtakes him, until it doesn’t. The doubts are suddenly banished and relief washes over him at the feel of your silken lips against his in a tender kiss. The chain breaks; you're both suddenly free, and it feels euphoric .

[unwanted-animal]

Matt/Frank : T E E T H

Explicit. M/M.

Tags/CW: Teeth, Mouth Likely, Consensual Torture, Blood, Tooth Trauma, Dark, Romance, Don/sub, Rutting, Coming In Pants, Bloody Kisses, Please Do Not Let Matt Murdock Perform Oral Surgery On You

My gifts for @lovetincture for this year’s @daredevilexchange :D The prompt I chose to roll with was “Romantic Teeth Trauma”, and it lit a spark inside me! Which is why my gift is two moodboards, a playlist, AND a fic lol

AO3 for the playlist and Alt Text (will be live when the collection opens!)

“Are you sure about this, Frank?”

Matt crouched in front of the chair, head tilted to the side as he listened for any changes in Frank. His breathing. His heart rate. His tone. If there was any sign he wasn’t confident about his request, Matt planned to stop. Frank liked pain, sure, but this? This was beyond normal pain.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure, Red. Only you. Anyone else I wouldn’t think about it, but you? You get me. I, I trust you. Y’know?”

“And you want no anesthesia?”

“None.”

No change. Even breathing. Steady heart rate. Frank was out of his goddamn mind, letting a blind man cut out one of his teeth. The thought brought a smile to Matt’s lips. Frank was mad, but that madness, that dedication to seeing things through, that only endeared him to him. He patted Frank’s leg gently and stood up.

“Okay. Can you reach the tools, push them toward me? Please?”

The rattle of metal filled his senses, making the room feel full and featureless. Matt groaned and shook his head to clear the cloud stifling his ‘sight’. Once the tray stopped, his access to the space returned. Deep shades of red, sparked by changes in the environment, that let him see - in a sense.

His world on fire.

Frank burned brightly in his special sense. Rugged, body made of valleys and hills and broken roads, sound made him shine. And Frank? Frank shone the loudest when he screamed.

Matt placed one hand on the handle of the cart. The other hovered over the tools.

“Scalpel,” he said softly.

“Four inches to your left. Blade facing away from you.”

He followed Frank’s instructions and lifted the surgical knife from the cloth. It was cool in his grasp, the handle weighted and the blade light and sharp enough to cut through muscle and tendon. Matt let out a slow breath. His hands were steady — no tremor. No fear.

Just a blind man performing intimate oral surgery.

“Once I’m in your mouth you won’t be able to instruct me, so if there’s anything you need to say to me, Frank? Now’s the time.”

Something about Frank’s gaze, Matt could always feel . He stared at him now , and from the way his pulse quickened he knew it was affectionate. Tender. He’d seen that look once, when the sirens lit the graveyard after the Irish. That hangdog, loving look in Frank’s sad eyes turned to him now, and he was certain there was a hint of madness to it. Of thrill. Frank wanted this. Hell, it’d been his idea.

“Yeah. Yeah, I got somethin’. Yeah. Matt?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t fuck it up,” Frank teased. “I love you.”

Matt smirked.

“I know. Open up for me.”

Frank opened his mouth, as wide as he could. His wrists tugged against the handcuffs holding them to the legs of the chair, the rattle reassuring. Frank wouldn’t get out if the pain was too great, which meant Matt wouldn’t wind up with a fist in his face when he dug into the root. It was a precaution, sure, but he had to admit he liked Frank tied up.

At his mercy .

Matt slipped two fingers inside his waiting mouth and slid them along his tongue. Frank shuddered, gagging slightly as he pressed down. Drool pooled around his hand and ran down, down the curve of his chin, spattering on his bare chest. Matt felt the wetness and smiled down at Frank.

“I bet you can do better than that.”

He lifted the scalpel and guided his fingers up. Picking a molar was the hard part. Humming, Matt tapped between three of them, whispering that familiar mantra.

“One batch. Two batch. Penny and dime — Ah. This one.”

The back molar. One Frank wouldn’t even know was missing.

“Here we go, Frank.”

All he got was a huff of a growl in response.

Matt pressed the blade into the soft meat of Frank’s gum. Blood welled from the wound, mixing with the drool, and Matt wished he could see it. The ecstatic look of agony carved into Frank’s Roman features, the mess he made, the wild rush burning in his eyes�� He cut again. Again. Tracing the tooth. Beneath him, Frank snarled and roared.

“That’s right. Like that. Make noise, nobody will hear you here. Nobody but me.”

His noise made it easier for Matt to see what he was doing. Vibrations traveled through his mouth, and the loose skin he sliced through swayed from side to side. Soon he had most of the tooth exposed, the gums cut and peeled back with careful - if amateur - care. Frank pulled against the cuffs and rocked the chair as his fingers touched the wound, but Matt didn’t stop.

Frank had had plenty of time to revoke consent before. He didn’t. His fingers weren’t tapping out his safeword on the wood. Frank loved being out of control, submitting to Matt in such a deep, intimate way. Pain, even the extreme kind, wasn’t foreign to their relationship nor their sex.

This, this was dedication. A declaration. One far more beautiful than any other words or gestures could be.

Matt used Frank’s moans to find the forceps. He traded out his scalpel for the pointed steel, clicking them together a few times as Frank simply sat there shaking. His lips trembled, but he kept his mouth open to the cool air.

A good dog. Loyal. Obedient.

He guided the new tool inside, easily finding his way back. The blood dripping on his knuckles couldn’t be missed. Matt’s forceps closed around the tooth and he began to pry. Grunting, he pumped his arm, moving the bone in its tight little socket. Frank roared in pain, hips coming up and rubbing against Matt’s thigh.

He was hard, hard enough that the brief touch sent a shiver down Frank’s spine. Matt grinned, his dimples deep as he pressed his thigh back in response.

“Rut. Like a dog. I wouldn’t want to leave you all worked up, not when you’re behaving for me. Go on. Consider it a reward. A treat, Frank.”

Frank didn’t hesitate. He started thrusting against Matt, breathing hard through his nose as his cock strained against his jeans. A low moan vibrated in his throat as Matt yanked again, pulling, fighting to get the tooth free of his jaw. Frank screamed around his hands, tears flowing down his cheeks, and Matt’s world burst with vivid red color. He could see Frank. See the blood. See the wide-eyed and hungry stare Frank fixed on him. He was a beacon at the center of Matt’s world, pulsing with every shuddering sob.

“Beautiful,” he said, voice low and soft. “You make the world so beautiful .”

A loud crack split the air. Another. Another, as Matt leveraged his strength to force it out. With one last tug it snapped free of Frank’s jaw, clutched firmly in the forceps. Frank slammed his hips forward as he came, eyes rolling back in his head as that final surge of pain pushed him over the edge. Matt stumbled backward and held the tooth up triumphantly. His prize. His token.

While Frank’s sounds grew quiet, Matt’s vision faded back to darkness. He couldn’t see the sloppy smile on Frank’s face as he drooled blood onto his bare chest.

“… That,” Frank slurred, barely able to move his jaw. His words were mumbled, accompanied by dribbling blood. “Is yours. Yeah. Gonna take it to, to, to your guy. Drill a hole, get a chain. Wear it. Always.”

Matt released the tooth into his hand and ran his bloody thumb over the bone.

Frank’s bone.

A piece of him, to keep forever.

“… I love you, Frank. You know that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I, I love you too.”

He slipped the tooth into his pocket and lowered himself down on Frank’s filthy lap. His hands were just as messy, bloodied up almost to the elbow from Frank’s coughing and screaming. He slid one through Frank’s curls and tugged him into a rough, heated kiss. Blood filled his mouth, and Matt let it. He savored the taste of Frank. It was no different from kissing him with a split lip.

Except this time he could swallow the mess.

[eventheodds]

tag drop

bonds:

you stun me with your smile and all you bring — angelictyphoon

it's the cracks that let the light shine through — full-of-mercy

well‚ if the sky can crack‚ there must be some way back to love and only love — angelictyphoon‚ full-of-mercy

i've never fallen from quite this high‚ fallin' into your ocean eyes — sixty-billion

feel the ache in my hands to hold onto you — wolfwoocl

rescue my heart‚ i'll drown without you — forgivenpunishment

'cause love will always heal our broken backs — typhoonvash

we could make the world a sweeter place — typhoonvash‚ forgivenpunishment

verses:

verse: love is a miracle (trimax)

verse: where the streets have no name (stampede)

verse: my cathedral is the badlands (outlaw)

verse: this too shall pass (horror)

verse: beyond entropia (ice planet)

verse: proximity to the inevitable (space horror)

verse: on an island in the sun (acnh)

verse: the darkness beyond the stars / the garden of everything (ffvii x trigun)

[eventheodds]

She has half a mind to reach up and grab hold of his chin in a silent gesture to get him to stop grinding his teeth, but the exhalation of breath does that for her as she considers what they will be doing next.

There is without a doubt that her and Wolfwood coming into that town, spotting him when they did, and convincing Vash to come with was the better option than anything else. Meryl had seen the wanted posters plastered all over bulletin boards and on the walls of saloons and inns. The money for capture would entice anyone to go looking to bring that bounty home.

She accepts the ruffling of her hair with as much grace as she’s willing to muster whenever he’s done it—which has been often because she’s predictable in ways that allows him to push her buttons. With her own put-upon sigh, like him moving from their position was such a chore and that she wanted to stay out here for a little while longer, Meryl stands up and brushes the few errant blades of grass from her backside.

The back of her clothes are slightly stained but since grass is such a novelty, she’s hardly bothered by it. She thinks Luida might find it amusing, Brad might comment about not helping her wash anything to get the stains out, but Meryl walks beside Wolfwood, catching up to him and his long strides.

“God, I really hope we don’t have to pull him out of anything,” she says as the automatic doors hiss open and the stark difference from within the dome met by the crisp and sharp corridor, one of many, that lead through the ship almost makes her stagger as they pass the threshold. 

“He’s probably going to talk his way out of us accompanying him when he decides to leave.”

She and Wolfwood had witnessed Julai themselves—seen what became of the city and the crater it left behind. 

“And if Vash survived…that probably means Knives did too.”

Two sets of footfalls become one as she stops mid step and stands in the centre of this corridor. She remembers the millions of blades coming at her, slicing through the air, ready to end her life just before Vash pulled her to safety, followed by the showdown, brother versus brother, as the sound of blades and bullets echoed throughout the chamber while she hid behind the control desk.

Perhaps the thing that scared her the most was when she was falling from the side of the roof, with nothing to hold onto as her body was prepared to plummet to the city below before Wolfwood caught her.

The bruises have long since healed but at times she’ll feel aches and pains in those same exact spots.

“Whatever comes next, he’s going after Knives.”

She’s looking at Wolfwood with a mixed expression of determination and fear before jogging to catch up so she’s right beside him.

Meryl touches on something that he has been chewing on all the way here, all during their stay on the ship. It has been a constant cadence back of mind. Plangent, despite the elation of finding Vash alive in spite of all of the what-ifs, in spite of everything stacked and arrayed against them.

Thinking has a way of putting a damper on just about any upbeat mood, Wolfwood finds, not that he has any right whatsoever to be thinking of any rosy outcome where he is involved. Even though he is here and ostensibly present in body, he stares off into the sunny middle distance, somewhere between the tree boughs and the sky beyond the dome.

And even if he holds Meryl to his side, he lapses silent, chewing on nothing. Grinding his teeth in simmering silence, he thinks about it.

Considers it.

And then after a few moments he draws a slow, expansive breath, glancing down and aside. As Meryl settles in, he keeps his arm extended and half-bent, a crook still offered in some semblance of comfort. Maybe it helps him too, not that he would admit it.

Probably.

"No, don't think he would've," Nicholas murmurs, and it sounds more like an admission than anything. They took Vash - Eriks - from a peaceful life, but surely they were not the only ones looking. The bounty on his head leapt from six million to sixty billion, astronomical, impossible. Only one organization could pull together that much capital if the bounty is even legitimate. Someone would have found him, and then what?

He knows what.

Exactly what happened. Shot while debasing himself before a false Vash the Stampede to save the family that took him in. They were there to help, at least, for all the good they did.

At least Brad and Luida have the facilities and the faculties to put him back together again.

"Might've been quiet for a minute, but he's the Humanoid Typhoon. 'Course something's gonna happen. Just need to make sure his ass stays alive."

Sure. That's it. That's all.

Distracting himself (and hopefully distracting her), he tilts his wrist to ruffle at her hair.

"C'mon. We should make sure he didn't fall in somewhere."

Whatever that means.

[plush-rabbit]

A Ruined Otaku

Warnings: Dom, Degradation (light), Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.9K

A/N: i wanna make Levi cry (also just one oro for him!! I forgot to add the second:(()

-

Leviathan is many things. The third born. The Avatar of Envy. An angel turned demon. A Grand Admiral. He can summon an old creature, scales embedded with everything lost to the sea and kill with a simple squeeze of his hand. He’s something old and powerful, a minimalist body to hold the power and horror that resides. Leviathan, is an old demon, scales and teeth, thirsty for blood and poisonous to the mind, and yet, with all the power and title that he carries, he still lays beneath you, legs spread and cock oozing with semen, a gag shoved in his mouth- a simple makeshift of your underwear that was stained with arousal- soaked with his own drool as tears form in his eyes like dew that forms under the bright moon of Devildom. His hands are clawed into the cheap fabric of the small bed- a futon, if he was to be more specific- the fabric ripped and stuffing fluffing out of the sheet. 

“You’re drooling,” you muse, the heels of your shoes clicking against the tile of his room. “You know how expensive those were, right?” He can only nod his head, feeling a thick sliver of drool slip down his chin. “Here I am, wasting money on you, getting all dolled up, and there you go. Drooling over my underwear like some fucking creep.” Your voice raises into a lilt at the end, a cruel smile stretching against your lips, your eyes narrowing as the fat of your cheeks push upwards. “Who’s going to get me a new outfit? Hm? Are you?” He remains silent, sniffling through the fabric, cock jerking, the spiraled head dotted with pearly white semen that drips down onto the bottom of his stomach, the scales that adorn him are coated in a slimy substance, glistening and heavy, lubricated due to his nature, aching and ready to be put to use. He can only nod his head at your question, he doesn’t do more than that, nodding until his purple hair is ruffled. You’re not stronger than him- you could never beat him in an actual fight, but he is at your mercy right now and with a slight work of spell, he can feel the pressure of your nails against his tight. “Answer me, Levi.” 

His words are muffled against the cloth. He’s heard you say his name plenty of times, but each and every time, it still stirs something within him. “Yes,” he says, the word muffled, a harsh “sh” sound at the end of the word and he wants you to pierce his skin; he’d give you his strength just to feel blood prick at his skin, to feel you have all the power and to put him at your mercy. He thinks with a bit more practice, you should be able to leave him bruises in the shape of your hands. He salivates at the thought of feeling an actual sensation coming from you and not from some type of toy.

His stomach aches, his erection almost painful, skin tingling and running over his body with pricks. He can’t seem to find his breath. He tries to peer at you, so desperate to call you by name and ask you to touch him just once more, to give pity to him. 

“And how are you going to do that? You waste every single grimm that you earn on figures and anything else you can get your hands on.” His legs are spread and he can feel your knee against the inside of his thigh. “So reckless and horrible. You’re a pathetic excuse for a demon.” His chest aches and his hands tighten around the sheets. “Worrying about standing in line, having me do all your dirty work just so you can jerk off to plastic.” He moans against the fabric when your hand wraps around his cock; you don’t cover him entirely but it’s more than enough for him to at least derive some pleasure. “Is that what gets you off? Fisting your cock over plastic, thinking about how the new waifu-” he can hear the distaste in your voice and he’s pleading in his mind for you to just hurry and jerk him off- “would bend over and ask you to fuck them.” Your laugh is harsh, piercing into his fragile self-esteem and he’s whining, a high-pitched and pathetic noise that makes you glower at him. “What do you think of when you jerk off over plastic?”

He refuses to answer. He’s a yucky otaku, something gross and perverted, a title given to him only because he had fallen along with his brothers. He is powerful but weak, cracking under pressure and having to beg for things. It’s already mortifying enough that you know of his perverted secret, humiliating, knowing that you’re using it against him in such a private and intimate moment. But he couldn’t help himself- he couldn’t ask you to help him, he was too nervous, shaking at the thought of telling you that he was aroused and none of the videos or hentai were doing it for him. It was his fault- he’s the one that bought the scantily clad figure, an ahegao expression printed onto it that was soon painted white.

The bed creaks, the metal groaning under the weight of both of you, the front of the bed knocking against the wall and his face burns. He knows that whatever happens will be echoed through the house, that he’ll be forced to endure even more teasing and having to go back to you and beg for you to take care of him. 

Your hands dance on his abdomen, fluttering hands that graze his sides and rest where a rib cage would be, curving over his breasts and the heel of your palm nudges against his pebbled nipples. He is still, breath hitched in his throat and eyes fluttering to a close. It’s the softest touch he’ll get from you right now, something so comforting that it sends the muscle in his chest beating harsh against the skin of his body. He wants something harsher, he wants to feel you grip on him and never let go, to be gasping for breath simply because you gave him what he wanted. He’d lie on the ground and bleed for you, choke against his own blood, grovel at your feet and kiss the ground you walk on if it meant that you would touch him in the way he wanted to be touched.

Your hands are curved against his chest, the pads of your fingertips pressed into him and he stares at amazement above you. His cock, a spiraled tip with bumps and ridges, the shaft is a soft curve is a heavy, dark color. It’s hard, the scales that etch onto him below the head are rigid and bumped, the arousal and state of mind that he is in makes him lose focus. He’s spilling, drenched in his own arousal. You sit bare on his thighs. He can smell your sex, aroused and leaking. He’d give up an entire season of anime if it meant he could see how pretty your cunt looked. 

“You’re a filthy, fucking whore, Levi.” With every inch that you sink onto his cock, he screams against your underwear. “A quick and easy fuck.” You’re so warm and soft, the puffiness of your walls enveloping in a sweet hug. “You should be lucky that even a human would want to touch you.” You spit the words out and his sobs against the cloth, jaw twitching and tear tearing through the fabric. Your hands grip at his face, turning him towards you and he looks at you with heavy eyes filled with tears. “Tell me your perverted fantasies, Leviathan.” The fabric spills from his mouth, dragging across his skin, leaving his lower half of the face in a thin layer of his own drool. You sneer at him and yank your hand away from his face, shaking it beside you as if to flick off any of his own secretion. 

Where could he even start? He’s breathless, shaking in his position, trembling bones as he raises his arms and covers his face with clammy hands. He can feel your gaze on him, his face burning and chest heaving with every intake of air, pressing his heels into his face. His body reacts, knees bending, trying to curl up in a ball, meeting your ack instead and he can hear the soft puff of air. 

He peeks between slender fingers, staring up at you and he can only lay and watch as you tilt your head. You raise your brows at him expectantly, and there’s a falling pit in his stomach. “I-” his voice cracks and his neck burns- “I think of you,” he says in a rushed voice. “I think of how good your mouth feels, how you always leave me pleased and completely drained.” He yelps when fingers twist at his nipple, the skin blooming in red and back arching, hands leaving his face to grasp at the bed. “I- I think of you- It’s always you. How you let such a poor excuse of a demon touch you.” His voice is steadily growing louder, choking through the words and staring up at you. “I’m gross and I’m touching you, a filthy, yucky otaku-” with each word his voice grows louder until it’s booming against the walls, the glass of his aquarium shaking, making the poor fish swim around anxiously- “who thinks of fucking you when I jerk off.” 

He’s pitiful. Messy, purple hair that sticks to his forehead with sweat, orange eyes tinted with blue shine under tears that have yet to be shed, few tear streaks wet at his face, falling down to the pillow under him, the dark gray pillowcase darkens under him. Your hand cradles his face and for the first time in the night, his chest feels light, he can breathe, staring at your parted lips and wanting to kiss them. He purses his lips and jerks his head towards your, eyes closing slowly- just one kiss, something so simple and innocent that he wants. 

He’s pulled back with a soft click of your tongue, your head shaking in a denial that you give him. “Tsk, tsk.” Your hand is still gentle and it’s intoxicating to have you touch him. His cock warms your insides, pulsing and aching, his entire control kept in check in order to not disobey and let himself ravage your weaker body. There’s a horrible thought in his head as you lay limp in his arms as he pushes inside your body, kissing at your wet lips and meeting the dazed look in your eyes. “Only good boys get to kiss me.” Your lips are so close to his and your free hand rests on the curve of his breast. “Are you a good boy, Levi?” The tip of your nose grazes at his and he’s never been so weak in his entire life, never so full of want and hunger to force himself to move so he can kiss your lips. 

“No,” he breathes out. His tongue peeks out, the soft, pink tip lapping at his lips. “I’m horrible.” He thinks he’d kill for just a simple kiss. “Make me a good boy, please.” He calls your name, he dares to utter the breath of his love in such a hopeless voice, wanting to reach above with curling hands. 

He gasps when your lips are pressed against his- slipping past, slick with something sour, tongue slipping past and entering his mouth. If it were any other day, he’d slip his tongue in your mouth and have you choke, but for now, he remains unable to, completely at your will. He’s certain now- he really would kill for just a simple kiss from you.

It’s shameful and he won’t live it down for the next odd years, but the kiss is enough to send him over the edge. He keeps his lips pressed to yours, bruising almost as he pushes himself against you, cock twitching and a soft rut of his hips as he spills his seed inside of you. It’s a thick, heavy flow, filling you and his hands are moving, flat against your back and curing against the back of your head, pushing you closer to him. His mouth opens and he whines, salivating as you let out a stifled moan. Filthy and wet, his slick sliding out of you, coating his cock with semen, the scales that line around him are lost under him. 

He’s delirious, humping you, his face dazed and eyes rolled to the back of his head, a heavy blush across his face as you let him do all the work. While endurance was never his strongest suit, he absolutely loses himself over you, his thrusts becoming sloppier- a lewd, wet shucking sound fills the room, your breasts bouncing and it’s humiliating at how riled he becomes. He pants like a bitch in heat, and he can hear just how pathetic he sounds, croaking and gasping for breath. 

You’re slick, your walls molded around him, the soft walls that envelop him in a warm hug, make him twitch. He’s whining, chest vibrating against yours, his stiff nipples pressed against your soft chest. Every pull of your body makes him murmur a slurred version of your name, mind hazy as he continues to rut inside of you, feeling the burning heat in his lower stomach return, aching and tightening, having him kick out his legs as his body starts to grow rigid and antsy. 

“Such a whore, Levi.” Your lips brush against the shell of his ear, lowering yourself on his cock, the base of it stretching your wet sex. The curve of his cock pushes against a spot, eliciting a strangled moan from you. You clench tighter around him, your plush walls squishing around him- silky and plush, against his cock. “Acting like you’ve never fucked a cunt before.” Your words low, lowering your head to kiss at his neck, wet spots that glisten against his skin.

“Not-” he’s interrupted by a moan, hands clawing against you, pressing you close to his flush body- “not as good as yours.” His hands release you and you immediately rise. Your smile is breathless and coy, chest rising and dropping as you stare down at him. Your eyes soften for just a moment, and his own hands come to pinch at his nipples, the soft tissue of his breast squished under his hands. He must look pitiful- a look akin to that of a hurt animal if your gaze on him is anything to go by. He knows how he must look. A flushed face tinted in a rosy red, eyes that shine with tears, lashes that catch the fallen drops and a tear-stained face, puffy, reddened lips that part with each gasp of air. He must look wretched. 

Your hand curves around his cheek and he leans into your touch. “How sweet-” your smile returns into a more stretched version, teeth hidden behind your lips- “my dear Leviathan.” He wonders if you can hear the way that his heart beats. His mouth parts and there’s a sick perversion where he wants you to spit on him, to treat him like the disgusting pervert that he truly is. “Are you close?” Your nails drag along his skin and he can only nod, eyes flickering to where your skin slaps against his. “You know that you’re only allowed to because of me, correct?” Your eyes glint with something that he cannot place. “No matter what anyone says,” your voice lowers and it’s erotic to him, something like a drug that he’s never taken and makes him all more weak to you, “you’re nothing more than a living toy.” He jerks inside of you and his stomach begins to ache. “A pretty, little demon that I get to fuck.” He so desperately wants to touch you. “You’re nothing more than a filthy, yucky otaku.” His nails pierce into the skin of his breasts, blood dotting along him. Your eyes dart to his chest before returning to his eyes, lowering until the tip of your nose brushes against his. “Don’t ruin yourself Levi, save that for me.” Your lips meet his and he does as he is told. 

His hands leave his chest and he pushes you onto him, spilling his seed into your cunt, feeling the way that your walls tighten and pulse, the heavy beating of your body and the heat that floods out. He’s moaning into you, muffled and drowning out your gasped version of his name that escapes your lips. 

His cock is wet as he lays beside you. He’s curled against your side, a softening cock that sticks against your thigh, body curved so his head rests on your chest. He lays above you, eyes wet as you pet his hair. “You had such a lovely look on you, Levi.” He can feel your lips kiss at the crown of his head. “It made you look so handsome.” He lets out a weak cry, nodding as tears slip past his closed eyes, nuzzling closer to your chest as your hand lowers to soothe against his back. You shush him gently as he begins to rut against your thigh.

[peterrparrkerr]

Oviposition - read on ao3

*-*

Tony waits until he's sure everyone is asleep before making his way to the lab. He's not been able to stop thinking about the arachnid since he'd arrived.

It had started out as curiosity -a boy more insect than human, with pitch black eyes and four extra legs sprouting from his spine. He was a character straight out of a comic book.

They were testing him -trying to see how it was he got to be what he is, and in that testing, Tony found things that only drew him in more.

Tony's team found out a lot in the few months they had him. His senses were all dialed to an eleven, so he could hear, smell and see things Tony couldn't. He could feel individual threads in almost every fabric offered to him, and could list every ingredient in his food with complete accuracy.

His eyes -though terrifying and demonic looking when the boy got upset- made him look almost cute when he tilted his head to the side.

Tony swiped his key card and pulled the door open when the little red light switched to green. The lab had an eery blue glow to it when the white florescent lights weren't on.

He makes his way on silent feet across the lab to the cell they had kept the boy in. He couldn't help it. There was no talking himself out of it.

He needed- he needed to see the boy.

They'd discovered something about their arachnid friend that had Tony aching for it. He hadn't herb able to sleep, too busy imagining it. Imagining his gut filled with the eggs the boy apparently carried instead of semen.

He stops at the cell door, peering inside. The ten by ten space is covered in webbing. Spun from the boy himself.

In the top right corner is a tunnel, big enough to crawl through and leading to what Tony can only assume is his nest.

They'd tested the webbing too, and Tony couldn't help but look at the webs in awe.

Tony takes a deep breath, then swipes his card.

There's a click, the red light flickers green, and then Tony's stepping inside. He makes sure to close it behind him, locking them both inside.

There's movement above him. Tony looks up, tracking the sounds as the boy moves from his spot in his webbed nest to the tunnel.

Tony barely makes out the shining eyes at the tunnel's entrance. They reflect the blue light terrifyingly.

"Hello, Peter," Tony greets softly, as to not spook the boy.

There's a second or two where the boy doesn't move, and then two spider legs emerge from the dark, gripping the wall and his webbing. Two more come out next, and then Peter is coming out, crawling across the wall like something out of the exorcist.

Tony had gotten used to it, but at night, it sets Tony's heart rate spiking and the hairs of his arms on end.

When Peter is close enough to the ground, he drops onto his feet. He's wearing nothing but a pair of black basketball shorts -they couldn't get him into anything else.

Peter's extra limbs tuck themselves behind him, nearly making him look like a regular teenager.

"Tony," Peter greets, voice an odd inflection of boy and not-quite-human. It sends a shiver through Tony. His cock twitches in interest.

Tony doesn't know how to start. He just knows he wants. He wants to see his stomach bulge with Peter's seed, and he'll do anything to get it.

"You want something," the boy hummed, head tilted to the side. Perceptive little thing.

"Yes," Tony said, sounding breathless.

Peter straightens his head, peering up at Tony, blinking as he tries to figure it out. "What?"

Tony doesn't know how to say it. Doesn't know if Peter's human enough to realize how inappropriate this is. But Tony can't back down now. If he does, it'll drive him crazy.

So, instead of answering, Tony pulls his tank top off over his head, dropping it with the key card down onto the floor, just outside the cage.

Peter watches silently. Calculating.

Tony hooks his thumbs into the striped pajama pants and drops them to his ankles.

It must be the thing that cues Peter in, because suddenly, the boy is moving for him. Its fast -inhumanly so- and Tony doesn't have any time to react beside gasping.

Bare chests press together, and Peter's arms wrap around Tony, lifting him off the ground as those extra limbs lift them into the air.

Tony suddenly pictures himself in a webbed cocoon, waiting to be Peter's meal. Theres a reason Peter stays behind metal bars, and Tony suddenly wishes he had thought more with his head than his cock.

But then they're on the ceiling -Tony laying on Peter's chest, the boy holding them parallel to the ceiling.

"You want to mate?" Peter asks, looking at Tony with blinking, curious black eyes. Tony's surprised those four limbs have the strength to hold them both up. He refuses to look anywhere but at Peter -even if it is only a ten foot drop, he'd rather not fall.

"Yes," is what Tony says before he can stop himself. Something filters through Peter's features, and just as suddenly as Tony blinks, the boy has him turned over, so his back is pressed into Peter's chest.

Tony's breath hitches, feeling Peter's growing cock between his cheeks already, through the fabric of his shorts.

Peter crawls across the ceiling towards the tunnel, the two of them disappearing inside.

Tony's so hard it hurts. He allows Peter to manhandle him into the position of his choosing.

The webbing -although slightly sticky- is surprisingly soft and pliant to Tony's weight as Peter settles him onto his stomach, crawling over top of him, with two extra legs on either side.

"My mate," Peter hums lowly, nosing at Tony's spine. Tony can't do anything but nod, lifting his ass until its pushing against Peter's clothed crotch.

He gets his knees under him, rubbing himself against Peter, trying to get Peter in motion.

It works. The boy shoves his shorts down and kicks them to the side, adapting arms around Tony's waist and rutting into Tony's crack.

"Mine," Peter murmured against the skin of Tony's shoulder.

"Yours," Tony confirmed on a groan. He needs to be filled. Its almost agony not having Peter buried deep inside him. "Mate me, Peter."

And that's all the direction Peter needs.

Tony's suddenly glad he fucked himself on his fingers before coming here. There's no preparation as Peter presses into Tony.

Tony chokes on a cry as the mushroom head of Peter's cock pops in past his rim. Peter doesn't stop there though, he presses in until he's buried at the hilt.

"Oh God," Tony groaned. Peter keeps both arms around Tony's middle, keeping his hips in the air.

His extra legs allow Peter to hover over him as he begins to thrust in and out of Tony, hips snapping and balls slapping against Tony.

Tony can't help the punched out moans from falling from his mouth. Peter's much bigger than Tony expected, and he can feel everything.

"My mate," Peter gasped lowly, hips pistoning into Tony in a toe curling pace. He fights the urge to let his eyes roll back into his head at the constant pounding of his prostate.

"You want to carry my offspring?" Peter asked, mouth at Tony's ear. "Want to see you so full with them."

Tony groans at the thought and clenches around Peter, driving his own hips back to meet Peter's.

"Yes, God yes, please, fill me up til I'm bursting," Tony nearly begged, neglected cock drooling pre-cum at the thought.

Peter picks up the pace, assaulting Tony's asshole and prostate without mercy.

Tony can't help the onslaught of moans and whimpers and unintelligible mumbles that fall past his lips, chest dropping to the webbed flooring, hips rolling up to allow Peter deeper.

His breath hitches when he feels Peter climax. Its so much different than any orgasm Tony's felt before.

He feels the first egg pass from Peter, then the second. Each significant in size. Tony feels his cock throb painfully at the feeling.

"Yes, fill me up, God please!" Tony sobbed, rocking back onto Peter's cock.

The boy grunts, panting as he thrusts into Tony, emptying himself.

Its not long before Tony begins to feel full, his stomach tight, but not yet extended. He reaches a hand down, palm flat against his abdomen.

"More, keep going," Tony breathed, clenching around Peter, trying desperately to squeeze every last egg from Peter's sack.

"Going to be so full," Peter moaned, more eggs filling Tony up.

Tony feels his orgasm fast approaching as his stomach begins to bulge. Peter keeps going, keeps emptying himself deep inside Tony.

Tony whimpers at the feeling, the hand on his stomach moving to stroke at his cock. It only takes three passes before he's cumming with a reedy mewl, stomach still extending impossibly far.

"Gonna carry my babies," Peter grunted. Tears gather in Tony's eyes at the stretch in his abdomen. He feels ready to burst. It feels so fucking good.

Its almost too much for Tony, the extention of his belly stretching at his skin. It feels like he's being ripped apart from the inside.

And then Peter stills, gasping for breath. Tony chokes on air, trying to even his own breathing.

Peter pulls out, and Tony feels like he's gaping, cool air hitting his exposed asshole and making him shiver.

Peter manhandles Tony onto his back, hovering over him with those extra limbs. Tony can't help but look down at his stomach, raised and rounded with Peter's eggs.

His hands move to it, smoothing over the bump. His cock twitches at the idea.

Peter seems to be thinking the same, because he leans over, nosing at Tony's neck, his own hands pressing into Tony's extended stomach.

"So full," he hums. Tony hums in agreement, removing one hand from his belly in order to grab Peter by the jaw.

He doesn't know if Peter knows what a kiss is, but the need to taste Peter's tongue is too great to wait and explain.

He guides Peter's face up, then connects their lips. Peter's frozen for a moment, not sure. Tony licks inside his mouth, hands still on his belly.

"My mate," Peter repeated between kisses.

"Your mate," Tony agreed.

Tony walks with a hand under the slight bulge of his stomach, back to his room. He clenches to keep the eggs inside -wanting to feel them for as long as he can.

Tony's already set his mind on going back the following night, and every night for as long as he can.

[pro-fangirls-unsocial-life]

Overload

A/N: Hello everyone! Look at me! Being productive! So this a fic inspired by THIS amazing art by @sorry-but-no-sorry of Hunter. I hope you guys enjoy! This one was a bit personal to write, cause I pulled some of the feeling described from my own experiences with panic attacks and sensory overload but I hope its still good all the same! And a big thanks to @captainrexisboo, my sword wife, for helping me out with one of the scenes!

Length: ~2200 words

Warnings: descriptions of panic attacks and sensory overload. Angst. Hurt/comfort.

“Hunter!”

  Though each and every clone valued their name more than life itself, Hunter wanted nothing more than to be nameless in this moment. Every time the syllables came tumbling from his brothers mouths and crashing into his ears, it was like thousands of shrieking whistles all began their assault on his senses at once.

  They all still smelled from their most recent mission. Hunter could make out every scent that they had brought back with them as they all mixed together and bombarded his nose. He could feel every single spec of grime that was caked onto his body. The way that it cracked as he moved felt like a million tiny blades all piercing his skin at once.

He was too hot and too cold all at once. The sweat slowly making its way down his forehead left a searing imprint on his mind as he tried to force himself to ignore it. He needed to keep being strong, to be the image of composure that his brothers needed him to be.

  He still had to deliver his report to Admiral Tarkin, a feat that was never easy. The admiral's cold gaze would always burn right through him and would send waves of pure panic coursing through his veins. Like a predator stalking its prey.

  Tarkin knew he had this effect on the Sergeant regardless of his desperate attempt to hide it, and he used it to his full advantage. The moment Hunter's image appeared in front of him, he would begin doing everything that he could to send him spiraling. This new clone force was far too successful, and he needed something to try and prove their inadequacy.

  Hunter knew what Tarkin was doing. He knew that if he let his panic slip through the cracks in his mask, things would only get worse for him and his brothers. So, he would not let himself break. He would not give Tarkin the satisfaction of seeing him fall apart. He became the perfect soldier, shoving everything down until he could be alone, pleading with his mind to show him even the slightest bit of mercy.

  The meetings would always be a blur in the moment but as they carried on, they would be forcefully engraving themselves into his mind, not granting him the small bit of solace he craved once they were finally over.

  He would always send the others to go relax while he finished the briefing, always thanking every God he could think of when they chose to go outside.

  He almost didn’t hear the sneering “very good Sergeant” that was spit out at him before the screen flashed to black over the panic that had broken through his defenses and had begun making its way back into the forefront of his mind.

  But the second the image of the admiral was no longer plastered across the screen and the hurricane of sounds and frequencies had finally stopped coming through the speakers, Hunter forced out the breath he had been holding, now gasping for air inside the empty ship as everything came rushing through his now broken barrier.

  He tore off his armor, letting each piece tumble to the metal floor with a loud clang. He rolls the sleeves of his blacks up to his elbows, not knowing if he feels comforted or completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the fabric on his skin.

  The light was blinding, shining brightly into his eyes like a star gone supernova.

  Everything is too much. Even though the ship is almost completely silent of everything but his shuddering breaths, every sound thunders against his eardrums, echoing throughout his mind and making him feel as if he is being hit upside the head with a brick with every new vibration.

  The steady hum of the ship’s machinery, a sound that is soothing to others, now roars in his mind with no end in sight. The rhythmic drip of a leak that they have been meaning to fix, once a welcomed background noise, now a piercing spear through his head. His own heartbeat, the only real thing he has to himself, the sound he finds solace in while he tries to will himself to sleep and while blocking out the darkness that threatens to consume him, now an endless assault that has risen in his ears, trying to drag him toward a never-ending expanse of torture.

  His hands didn’t feel like his own. They were heavy, weighted bags that dragged his spirit down. He felt his soul trying to leave through his throat.

  Shaking. Everything was shaking. His teeth, his fingers, his shoulders. As if he could reset, he tried to focus the energy; recalibrate his hands by flinging out his wrists.

  In that single movement, everything came crashing down, and a wave of emotion he’d been keeping at bay tore through him in a ripping shout. A shout that reverberated off the walls of the small space, coming back toward him to assault his ears once again.

  His ears were ringing. Every ripple of sound, every nauseating smell in the air, every feeling of every substance that was plastered to his skin was attacking him from every direction.

  He heard his name called from outside accompanied by far off footsteps and his hands flew up to his ears while his eyes screwed shut. He began pressing his palms up against the sides of his head so forcefully, that his whole body began to shake.

  He fell to his knees, each muffled call of his name rapping against his head, causing him to curl in on himself and making his forehead come to rest against the cold, grimy floor.

  He felt like he was drowning. With each gasping breath he took, it felt as though more and more weight was being cruelly added to the suffocating press on his chest. The feeling of tears beginning to roll down his face registered in his mind, adding to the uncontrollable spiral that he was being dragged down without mercy.

  More voices. More footsteps. More unbearable, ear-piercing noise.

  “Hunter? You ok?” Echo carefully walked up the steps of the ship, scanning the area just inside, looking for the origin of the shout he had heard. “Hunter? I, oof—”

  He toppled to the ground, turning to look at what had tripped him and finding Hunter's helmet at his feet. It was then he heard a tiny whimper come from across the ship. A whimper so soft that he almost didn’t hear it over the ships steady hum.

  He looked up, finding Hunter's trembling form curled up on the floor, his hands pressed to his ears and a sheen of sweat covering his body.

  “Hunter,” he asks, concern creeping its way into his voice. “Hunter?”

  Another small whimper falls from Hunter's lips, his body flinching each time Echo says his name.

  Echo scrambles over to Hunter, his hands hovering over Hunters back, not touching him. He stops, thinking back to when he would walk in on Hardcase in this same position, before lowering himself down so that he is lying on his stomach on the floor.

  “Hunter?”

  Hunter flinches again, his muscles straining as he presses his hands impossibly harder up against his head.

  “Hunter,” he whispers again, trying to get a look at his brother's face.

  “I-Its s-so loud,” Hunter chokes out. He gasps for breath, more tears falling from his face onto the floor. “I-I want it to s-stop. M-make it s-stop.”

  “I know. I know,” Echo softly says. “Let’s get you to your room. You’ve sound proofed it yeah?”

  Hunter takes a few heaving breaths before nodding his head.

  “Ok,” Echo says. “Now, I’m gonna have to touch you to help you get there. Is that alright?”

  Two more rasping breaths before another nod.

  “Ok. I’m going to get up and go turn off the lights before I come back and help you to your room. Ok?”

  Another nod.

  Echo quickly pushes himself up as quietly as he can before making his way over to the light panel. He flips a switch, turning off the main lights and leaving only that night cycle floor lights glowing. He gives his eyes a moment to adjust before making his way back over to Hunter.

  He crouches down, pressing himself to the floor again. “I’m going to touch you now so I can get you to your room. Ok?”

  Hunter nods, flinching slightly when he feels Echo’s hands gently touching his body.

  Echo slowly pulls him up off of the floor, not wanting to overwhelm Hunter more than he already is, before carefully guiding him down the hall toward his room.

  When they finally make it to the end of the hall, Echo presses the panel for Hunter's door and it whishes open, causing Hunter to flinch in pain at the sound. They make their way over to the bed and Echo sits him down on the edge, crouching down so that he is looking up at Hunter.

  “Do you want the boots off?”

  Hunter nods, cringing as he feels the movement against his skin and the sound of his boots and socks being set at the end of his bed.

  “The bandana?”

  Another nod.

  Echo reaches up and carefully pulls the fabric, now soaked in sweat, off of Hunter's head and places it on the shelf next to the bed.

  “Alright,” Echo whispers. “I need you to stay sitting up for just one second while I go get something to help you. Do you think you can do that for me?”

  Hunter gives a small nod, and Echo quickly exits the room.

  He hears water running and the sound of something being rung out. It is far away, but still rippling loudly in his mind. He reaches his hands back up to cover his ears and once again, screws his eyes shut. He hears Echo making his way back, being careful not to make any noise.

  Opening his eyes once he hears Echo step into the room, he sees him holding a washcloth and a glass of water.

  Echo comes back down to kneel in front of Hunter, offering him the glass. “Do you think you can drink some of this for me?”

  Hunter reaches out, grasping tightly at the glass being lightly pushed into his hand. “I’ll try,” he says, his voice soft and breaking.

  He shakily brings the water up to his mouth and presses the cold hard glass against his lips, taking a small sip.

  “Good,” Echo says with a small smile. “Very good.”

  Hunter hands the glass back to Echo, his hands still shaking. Echo takes it, and lightly sets it on the shelf next to Hunter's bandana.

  “I think you should lie down and try to get some rest now.”

  Hunter weakly nods, swinging his legs onto the bed and placing his head on the pillow.

  “Do you want the blanket?”

  Hunter shakes his head no.

  “Alright,” Echo says softly. “I have a wet washcloth here. Do you want it for your head?”

  He nods and closes his eyes, sighing as Echo gently moves his hair out of the way and places the cool washcloth on his forehead.

  “Alright. I’m going to go send the guys into town so that you’ll have some quiet. I’ll stay here and be just down the hall if you need me, ok?”

  Hunter nods, his breathing beginning to even out. He hears Echo take a breath before standing and quietly tiptoeing out of the room.

  “Echo,” Hunter gently says, opening his eyes slightly.

  Echo stops in the doorway, turning questioningly to Hunter.

  “Thank you.”

  Echo gives him a small, warm smile. “Get some rest vod’ika.”

  Hunter smiles and closes his eyes, laying his head back on the pillow.

  With that, Echo walks back out to the main area of the ship, leaving Hunter's door open so it won’t make any more noise as it closes. He goes outside and gives his three brothers some credits and tells them to spend the day in town.

  “Make sure you stay out of trouble,” he calls after them.

  Wrecker looks back over his shoulder and laughs. “When have we ever?”

  Echo shakes his head and chuckles, climbing back up into the ship, careful to avoid Hunter's armor on the floor. He could take care of it later when it wouldn’t make so much noise for Hunter.

  He walks down the hall quietly, peaking in to check on Hunter. His chest steadily rises and falls as he breathes in and out. His head is angled slightly toward the door and his mouth is hanging slightly open.

  Echo smiles and goes back out to the main area, sitting down in a chair. He picks up his data pad and opens up his copy of his favorite book.

  It was one that Fives had picked out when they were on leave after their first mission as ARC troopers. Nothing special. Just a typical hero’s journey fantasy adventure. But to Echo, it was the best book in the entire universe.

  He opens it up to the page he left off on and takes a deep breath, angling his head toward the ceiling. He smiles. “Just like old times, aye Fives?”

  He looks back down, taking another deep breath before diving back into the fantastic adventure that he and Fives always happily shared together, feeling his brother in every word as he peacefully read in silence.

[takesomet]

Abbie's Downfall NSFW m/f Tickling and Teasing

Abbie's Downfall

She was trembling, sweat had fromed and made her body glisten and shine. His own lust was cheering him on, desperate to show her how he had felt. He whispered again into her ear. 'Cootchie cootchie coo little pet.' Her nipples ached. They had never been this hard before, this teased before. Still he kept brushing and she kept laughing. When he finally relented she was breathing heavily. Surely he was done, he must be desperate for me. Again she was wrong. Standing, he was back st her feet. His cock throbbing in its own antcipation, inches away from her pussy. She wanted him. But he had plans. With his fingers he ripped her nylons exposing her bare feet. He applied the feathers again. She laughed.The feathers kissed every part of her feet, every winkle of her sole and every crevice on her toes. They showed no mercy in their assault. He cracked. He grabbed her right foot and started hungrily eating her toes. Sucking and licking her ticklish piggies they wriggled inside his mouth. He licked her sole from toe to heel. Lust over took him. Feathering one sole and licking another. A foot fetists dream. She wailed and screamed into her gag. Body shaking from this renewed assualt on her body. He scribbled now on her bare soles and began softly biting her toes. She gasped, she screamed, she laughed. And my God did she moan. Having her feet played with was her ultimate thrill. She loved having her toes sucked whilst she feathered his full balls. This was heaven and delicious hell. It was a good ten minutes of ticklish foot worship before he stopped and started to move onto the grand finale. She tried to plead into her gag but it was no use. He kneeled before her pouting pussy. He grabbed the deather duster. Then he waited. He twirled the feathers bewteen his fingers. Then he waited again. Her pussy began to move, to twitch in anticipation. The waiting was killing her. He started slow. He brushed the soft feathers of the of the duster, softly and lightly over her lips. She immeaditaley exploded into histerics. This was a spot she hated being tickled. So sensitive and so teasing. Up and down he lightly dusted her. 'You're so ticklish on your little pussy my dear.'

She was in trouble and she knew it. She had crossed a line, maybe a day ago. Now she was going to pay. Her love of teasing him, denying him, using his weaknesses to her advantage. She hadn't let him cum in 5 days. It had never been this long. She was testing her limits. Last night he had screamed deep into her pussy as she feathered his full balls. She had come pretty hard. 

That scream had sat with him all day. He had tried, and failed, to concentrate at work but she was in residence in his head. He couldn't go 5 minutes without seeing her tickle him, tease him, deny him. From dressing up as a French Maid and dusting his feet to the kinky nurse ‘ensuring’ his cock was OK, she had used every fantasy to bring him to his knees. And for five days she denied him. That would end tonight.

He had waited till she came home from work. She was a thing of beauty. 5” 3, auburn hair and busty with green eyes that made you go weak. He made her something delicious. Poured her a glass of wine and they ate together. They always tried to eat together. They did the dishes and just as the chore was done he grabbed her. Hands behind her back he gripped her tightly. She struggled but not enough to break the bond. Their trust was strong. Their love was stronger. She knew she had pushed him over the edge. She shivered. 

He had led her to the bedroom and undressed her. When he saw she was wearing stockings he realised she had planned to tease him again tonight. He left them on. He discarded the rest of her clothes. 

He threw her onto the bed and began to bind her. He dragged her butt towards the edge of the bed and using a lot of pillows propped her up so she was slightly sitting. He bound her hands to either end of the bed. Grabbing her ankles he raised them vertically and bound them to a beam suspended across their four poster bed. When he stood her feet was at neck height. Her legs were spread slightly, leaving her pussy exposed and vulnerable.

As he undressed she pleaded. 

‘Honey I'm sorry please, be nice. I didn't mean to tease you so much, I was going to let you come tonight I…’ she stopped as she saw him naked. His cock was huge and already leaking.

He silently went over to the chest of drawers that hid their toys. He pulled out a gag. Pleading wouldn't help her tonight. May as well stop it now. She protested as it wrapped around her mouth. He kissed her neck gently, once, she was his everything. Back to the toy drawer. He pulled out his weapons of choice. Two soft downy feathers, a feather duster and two bullet vibrators. He slowly laid them out on the bed. She started to squirm.

He picked up the feathers. Soft, so tickly. Without a word he began to slowly brush the feather over her soles. A muffled giggle emerged from his goddess. Deliberate and slow the feathers kissed every inch of her sole. He heard her scream. His cock lurched. He picked up the pace. The feathers lavishly licked her nylon soles. Her feet wiggled and danced for his delight.

‘Tickle tickle tickle’ he said almost whispering. ‘My poor helpless goddess is so ticklish here.’ 

She thrashed and she screamed. Occasionally she would moan. Her feet were a very sensitive zone. Light tickles turned her on so much but the line was so fine between pleasure and torture. He exploited this. Feathers on one nylon foot and his fingers on the other. Her clit felt a jolt and she laughed in anguish. He dug his fingers in between her toes. They tried to defend themselves and failed. 

‘Cootchie cootchie coo my ticklish pet.’ Another of their shared weaknesses, tickle talk. He spoke of her helpless wriggling feet, her ticklish tootsies and her bound predicament. It was fuel to a raging fire. 

He stopped. She panted and looked at him pleadingly. Maybe his arousal would be too much and that's all he had. Fuck me now and cum. She was wrong. He crawled beside on the bed. His cock bobbing as he moved. He leaned in close and whispered in her ear. 

‘I'm going to ruin you.’

He had brought the feathers. Looking lustily at her tits he began to trace circles around them with those damned feathers. They jiggled and bounced in protest. He persisted. The circles got smaller and smaller getting closer and closer to their goal. She let out a scream when the first feathery point brushed her very erect. nipples. He sawed the feathers back and forth on each one. They stiffened even harder in response and he heard a muffled long laugh. She tried twist her body away but it was pointless. 

‘I wonder how long I can feather these nipples before you pass out?’ He mused.

Each stroke sent a new shockwave through her body destined to reach her now throbbing clit. He was merciless. With one hand he flicked and pinched her exposed nipple whilst tickle the other. She started to whimper. He kissed her neck hungrily adding more fire, more lust to her shaking body. He played her like a fine instrument and she obligingly sang. It felt like hours had passed but it was mere minutes. 

She was trembling, sweat had formed and made her body glisten and shine. His own lust was cheering him on, desperate to show her how he had felt. He whispered again into her ear. 'Cootchie cootchie coo little pet.' Her nipples ached. They had never been this hard before, this teased before. Still he kept brushing and she kept laughing. When he finally relented she was breathing heavily. Surely he was done, he must be desperate for me. Again she was wrong. Standing, he was back at her feet. His cock throbbing in its own anticipation, inches away from her pussy. She wanted him. But he had plans. With his fingers he ripped her nylons exposing her bare feet. He applied the feathers again. She laughed.The feathers kissed every part of her feet, every wrinkle of her sole and every crevice on her toes. They showed no mercy in their assault. He cracked. He grabbed her right foot and started hungrily eating her toes. Sucking and licking her ticklish piggies they wriggled inside his mouth. He licked her sole from toe to heel. Lust overtook him. Feathering one sole and licking another. A foot fetish dream. She wailed and screamed into her gag. Body shaking from this renewed assault on her body. He scribbled now on her bare soles and began softly biting her toes. She gasped, she screamed, she laughed. And my God did she moan. Having her feet played with was her ultimate thrill. She loved having her toes sucked whilst she feathered his full balls. This was heaven and delicious hell. It was a good ten minutes of ticklish foot worship before he stopped and started to move onto the grand finale. She tried to plead into her gag but it was no use. He kneeled before her pouting pussy. He grabbed the feather duster. Then he waited. He twirled the feathers between his fingers. Then he waited again. Her pussy began to move, to twitch in anticipation. The waiting was killing her. He started slow. He brushed the soft feathers of the of the duster, softly and lightly over her lips. She immediately exploded into hysterics. This was a spot she hated being tickled. So sensitive and so teasing. Up and down he lightly dusted her. 'You're so ticklish on your little pussy my dear.'

A bit harder now the feathers began to seek out new ticklish flesh to tease. Eventually a couple found their way to her clit. They gently stroked its throbbing head up and down. She began to drool. With his free hand he reached up and he raked a helpless sole again. She snapped back to ticklish reality. Tickling and teasing her dripping pussy the feathers glided over the soft skin. Her clit continually brushed and assaulted. Her feet still being teased by wicked fingers. 

The duster was beginning to lose its fluffyness. She was soaking and the duster matched its victim. He tossed it to one side and grabbed the two feathers. Leaning in closer he parted her lips. Her clit stood erect and begging. He started to tickle it with both feathers. Side by side. Up and down. It was helpless to resist. He did it lightly as possible. She couldn't cum. Not enough pressure. She drooled again. She let out a deep grunt followed by an aguished moan. He had her completely. Up and down. Slowly and softly. Her pussy pouted in desperation, he saw the walls of her hole clench and release, needing to be filled. 

She couldn't resist bucking and moaning. She leaned into every stroke, she gasped as every touch. She never wanted anyone as much as she needed him. Right now. He sensed it too. He needed her. She needed to be taught a long lesson. But he also needed to cum. 

He stood up. She was covered in sweat. She eyed his cock. She wanted it so bad. To fill her completely. He untied her feet and spead her legs wide. Grabbing his cock he motioned towards her pussy and slid the tip of his member up and down her lips. Making sure to flick her clit lightly with his cock. She tried to force him in. Bucking her hips. She screamed in absolute frustration. He was done.

He grabbed her ankles and wrapped her feet around his cock. He had so much precum that he didn't need lube. Her soft silky feet glided over his cock. She pumped him out of hope. That maybe if he came she would be allowed the same. She was wrong for a third time. She giggled and laughed as his cock tickled her feet as it slid between her soles. He tickled her toes to make her giggle some more. He looked at her. She was perfection.

He came. 

All over her stomach. Big long bursts of pent up frustration. 5 days of want condensed into a few glorious seconds. He pumped harder and she willing milked ever drop out of him. He screamed. 

He cleaned up. She was still bound and hopeful. He smiled as he tied her feet up again. What was he doing? He grabbed the duster and tied it to the roof of the bed by attaching a rope. The duster dangled over her pussy. If she moved it would tickle her. With the bullet vibes he taped them onto her soles with bondage tape. She began to see her plight. Her muffled pleas fell on deaf ears as he turned on each vibe and set it to the highest setting. The sensations were incredible. Relentless, unbearable, merciless tickling. She bucked and thrashed, which in turn made the duster tickle and tease her clit. She was trapped.

‘The games on. I'm going to watch it. Then im coming back for you. You will be broken and do whatever I say.’

He left her bucking and screaming and laughing. He closed the door.

She loved him so very much.

The End.

[thosewickedlovelies]

AND THEY WERE WALLMATES: Brownies (part 4)

Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader

Rating: E for Explicit!!!

Summary: Javier reveals his knight-in-shining-armor side when Reader is in danger. Then Reader bakes brownies, and he reveals...something else ;)

Tags: Attempted mugging at knifepoint. Javi points his gun. Swearing. Inappropriate or maybe completely appropriate use of chocolate. Male masturbation. Exhibitionism if you squint.

Word Count: 4,634

A/N: Okay but consider: Javier has a competency kink.

Masterlist

--

The last three days had been exhausting. Long shifts at the hospital with your intensive-care patient had worn you out, but it was worth it to watch them steadily get better. Tomorrow somebody else was on duty in the morning, and you were greatly looking forward to sleeping in. Knowing that you wouldn’t want to leave your pajamas before your afternoon shift, you had plodded through the grocery store on your walk home tonight.

You breathe deeply, gratefully of the fresh night air as you turn into your building’s driveway. With the all-day shifts and your lack of motivation to do anything but sleep after them, you hadn’t been outside as much in the past few days. Idly you wonder if it’s too soon to ask Javier to take you to that bakery.

You glance reflexively up at his front window as you stop at the base of the steps outside. A light turns off as you rummage through your purse for your keys, but it’s far too early for him to be going to bed. Maybe he’s going out.

You set down a grocery bag, your keys evading your slightly constrained reach. With your head down and your vision narrowed to the inside of your purse, you don’t notice the man until it’s too late.

A rough grip where your neck meets your shoulder, thumb digging painfully into the muscle, and the cold press of steel against vulnerable skin- a knife blade, you register dimly. Every alarm in your body blares as a voice scratches in your ear: “Give me all of the money you have, and I will not use this.”

Adrenaline burns through you, and your hands tremble as it fights the fog of tiredness that had been smothering you. The man scrapes the blade of his weapon along your neck to make his point, then shoves you forward, into the metal bannister of the staircase. The breath whooshes painfully out of you.

Your skin flashes hot and cold with panic, but you force yourself to breathe through the pounding of your heart. You slowly turn around.

Your aggressor is a skinny, unassuming young man, like any other you’d pass on the street, but his eyes are hard, his hold on the knife unwavering as he points it at you. “Your wallet. Now,” he demands, eyes flashing, and you know he meant his threat.

The streetlight above gleams on the blade, a foot from your face. Your tongue feels thick and clumsy in your mouth. You can only nod, trying to communicate placation, that you’ll comply with his request. Your eyes never leave him as you gradually close your hand around your wallet.

Just then, the building door opens, and everything happens very quickly.

Light splashes on the man’s face. “What the- HEY!” Javier’s anger blasts over you, the sudden whip-crack sound of it the loudest you’d ever heard from him. He lets out a rattling stream of Spanish, but your mugger appears unconcerned until a second later, when you hear a sharp click above you. Alarm dashes the arrogance off his face as he flinches. Javi has a gun.

In his moment of distraction, you lift your foot and ram it into the man’s stomach, propelling him backward. He stumbles nearly onto his ass, wheezing, and in an instant Javi is in front of you, gun pointing at him. He shouts something else too fast for you to make out.

The man answers, cowering with his hands up, and Javier spits out one final statement before telling him to leave, jerking his gun in emphasis. Your would-be mugger doesn’t look back.

Javier holds his stance for another tense moment. You tentatively touch your fingertips to his shoulder blade, feeling the strength holding his muscles taut. He nearly shudders at the contact, bringing him back to himself.

He turns to face you, tucking his gun away against his back. “Hey, are you okay? Did he hurt you?” His voice urgent, his eyes still dark and tense with rage. He holds his hands palms out, showing you he’s safe, begging you to believe him.

Adrenaline still vibrates beneath your skin. You look at him with wild eyes, shake your head. Abruptly your knees wobble, and Javier springs forward. “Whoa, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay now, Vecinita.”

One arm encircles your waist while the other props you up along your spine, broad hand splaying, fingers pressing into you with desperate relief. His rough voice smooths your lingering tension, the closeness of his body new but comforting. You let his warmth erase the other man’s violation of your space. Your hands clutch at the lapels of his leather jacket, a sigh shuddering out of you.

“Vecinita. Let’s get you inside, okay?” Javi gently prompts you into moving, keeping one arm wrapped around you as he guides you up the stairs. He directs you to lean against the wall just inside the door.

“Here, put those down, all right? Stay here. I’ll get your other one.” He eases the remaining bags off your shoulder and onto the floor, then disappears out the door, only to return in a flash with your second grocery bag in hand. He sets it down by the others.

You watch him, your head resting against the wall as you battle the exhaustion that had returned full force, aided by the rush of adrenaline and the subsequent crash as it left your system.

Javi approaches you again, worry clear in his face at your limp posture. “Vecinita? You okay?” His hand comes up as if to brush a stray hair at your temple, but he doesn’t touch you. His arm drops.

But you reach out for it, sliding your hand down his wrist to entangle your fingers; the touch as much a comfort for you as it is for him.

Surprise flares in his eyes at your gesture; something indescribably like longing crosses his face. He squeezes your hand.

You smile faintly at him. “I’m fine, Javi. Just...shaken. And tired,” you admit. “I’ve had long shifts at work the past few days.” Your feet ache just remembering, but you make no move to leave.

“Oh yeah, Connie told me,” Javier says without thinking.

Well, that was news to you. You look at him with sudden, sly interest. “Oh yeah? You two ladies talk about me?” Giving his own words back to him, from the second time you went over to check on his leg. It could have been a lifetime ago for how different things are now.

Javi looks dumbfounded for a split second. A helpless chuckle spills out of him, unconsciously swaying forward as if only this, your familiar teasing, had convinced him that you were fine, that he could finally let go of his own tension.

His face is so unguarded; you’re delighted to see his eyes crinkle with laughter. They’re so brown, so beautiful this close up, a rich spiral of shades that you could stare into for hours and still not find the right words to describe.

You smile fondly up at him, not minding his nearness in the slightest. You’re conscious, suddenly, of how overwhelmingly glad you are that you got to know Javier. Of how grateful you are for his company, his protection just now.

For once, you are the conflicted one, a thoughtful expression puzzling your brow. Because it’s your turn to consider how you could possibly thank him for what he’s done. What could be enough to communicate the depth of your gratitude?

--

Javier knows that you are okay, really. That he should get you inside your own apartment, let you sleep off the past few days. But he is utterly captivated. Held in place like an animal caught in the wrong trap, at the mercy of the hunter to decide its fate. Would you put him out of his misery by telling him that you’re not interested? Or free him from the trap of his clumsy uncertainty, grant him the clarity of your feelings so that he may choose his own course?

The press of your hand in his gives him hope, intimate and promising in all the right ways. He doesn’t want to let go, but this is unquestionably the wrong time to make any kind of move. He’s already standing too close to you, unable to resist your draw in the relief of the moment.

Time seems to thicken as your smile fades. He wants to smooth the furrow in your brow, chase off what’s troubling you. Of course, it could be me, he thinks sardonically. Despite his best efforts, his eyes flick rapidly down to your lips.

And he watches your expression shift again, those lips parting, and if Javier didn’t know better he’d think you wanted him to kiss you- but that can’t be right, you’re just in shock. His moral compass gets him into trouble at the best of times, but it’s swinging wildly now, leaving him utterly spun.

His tongue pokes forward unconsciously, just wetting his lips...but before either of you can move you hear a crash from Steve and Connie’s apartment above.

The spell is broken. You start, your head automatically turning in the direction of the sound. Javi straightens, putting some air between you, but his gaze never leaves your face.

“Sounds like they’re fighting,” he says. “Come on, let’s get you inside before one of them storms out.” He lets go of your hand only to slide his arm around you again. You let him help carry your bags, your limbs revolting at the idea of further movement.

Javier guides you into your apartment as far as the kitchen. He’s reluctant to let you go, but darts anxious glances at the back hall, not wanting to overstep (despite what had just almost happened outside).

He unwinds himself from you once he’s sure you’re holding yourself upright. Before he can leave, however, you grab his arm again.

“Javi!” You seem...afraid, but like you’re furiously trying not to be. “...What did you say to him?”

He’s not convinced that was your original question, but he answers. “I asked him who he worked for. He said no one, he just needed some money...you were a random pick, Vecinita, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He won’t come back.” A bitter taste fills his mouth at the memory, the sight of that motherfucker pointing a knife at you. But his rage softens when he sees the anxiety haunting your face.

“Hey. You want me to stay here tonight? I’ll sleep on the couch. Guard the door.” His attempt at levity sounds half-hearted, but your lips twitch upward in response.

“I..can’t ask you to do that, Javier,” you mumble, gaze shifting- until you remember something. “You were going out.” You look back at him questioningly.

He barely remembers his original plans for this evening. Drinks with coworkers? Javier shrugs dismissively. “Nothing important. Don’t worry about it. Come on- I’ll stay here tonight and drive you to work tomorrow. Deal?”

You bite your lip. “I don’t work until the afternoon tomorrow.” Another feeble attempt at protesting. He waits.

Finally you concede. “Thank you, Javi”, you whisper, nearly inaudibly.

Instead of speaking, he takes your hand again. Bringing it to his mouth, he presses a soft kiss to your knuckles, without a trace of his suggestive intentions from the first time. “Que duermas bien, Vecinita.” Sleep well.

--

You wake naturally the next morning to sunlight streaming through your curtains. You forgot to set your alarm! Your first thought has you sitting bolt upright, heart pounding; then you remember that you have the morning off. Your heart rate slows only marginally as the events of the previous evening return to you, including- Javier slept on your sofa.

Your pulse rockets right back up, flushing your whole body with nervous energy. Damn it, it’s too early for this. Your sleep-clumsy thoughts are tumbling and manic as you try to decide on a course of action.

Right, first- check your clock. Ten a.m.?! You stifle a groan. Who knows how long Javi has been awake by now, just waiting in your living room? Assuming he stayed- you wouldn’t blame him if he’s gone to his own apartment for food by now.

Wait, speaking of food- you frown, lifting your nose toward the door. Is that coffee you smell?

So Javier’s awake, then.

Abruptly overcome with giggles, you cover your face with your hands, grinning like a fool. Javier had stayed, and made himself coffee in your kitchen.

Well you couldn’t just leave him out there. You take a deep breath, willing yourself calm. Time to stop acting like a giggling mess with a crush. The thought makes you pause, wide-eyed. Holy shit, did you have a crush on Javi?

I mean, he did save your ass last night, you reason. Very superhero of him. And you kept finding more attractive things about him, and you’d spent some real time together now, and he...he had kissed your hand last night. After definitely almost kissing you in the hall. Mierda. You giggle to yourself again. So much for being calm.

Well, there was nothing to be done for it. You throw a light robe over your pajamas and pad to the kitchen.

Butterflies burst in your chest at the sight that greets you. Javier is sitting at your dining room table, a mug in front of him. Chin in hand, lost in thought, hair still adorably mussed from sleep.

You only have a second to appreciate it before he hears you approach. He stands with a start, guilty eyes flitting from his coffee to the kitchen before settling on you, hands fidgeting like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He clears his throat. “Morning.”

His voice is even raspier this early in the day, like a match striking heat inside you. A reaction you will definitely have to process later.

“Morning,” you return, smiling sheepishly at him. You go to the sink to fill a glass of water, opting to stay at the counter to drink it. “How long have you been up?”

His gaze flits to the clock on the microwave. “About an hour. I, uh. Made coffee. Hope you don’t mind.” His hand flies to his head as if only just now remembering the state his hair could be in, hurriedly smoothing errant curls (to your disappointment).

Javi’s shirt is rumpled, and you feel guilty as you realize he would have slept in his clothes. You’d been so dead on your feet last night, you don’t even remember if you gave him a  blanket. “Not at all,” you reply. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep this late. I didn’t even offer you pajamas or anything last night...” You’re about to continue apologizing when he cuts you off.

“Don’t worry about it, Vecinita. I’m not sure yours would have fit me anyway.” A teasing grin uncurls as he eyes the short pajama shorts under your robe, in a way that’s wholly different from how he might have looked at you before you fixed his leg (a time designation you find yourself referencing more and more often lately: Before-Leg and After-Leg). Now he’s earned such familiarity, and although unexpected, it’s not unwelcome. You still nearly gape at the joke and his once-over, feeling decidedly warm.

Oblivious to your internal temperature rising, Javi continues. “I could do with a shower though. What time do you have work?”

Right, work. “Twelve,” you respond. “Um, I can make breakfast? While you run home and shower. If you want. How’s pancakes? And I think I have bacon.”

Javier looks relieved to have a plan. “You had me at bacon,” he confirms. “I won’t be long.” He starts for the door, scooping up his jacket as he goes.

“No hurry!” You call after him.

True to his word, Javi is barely gone fifteen minutes before he’s back at your dining room table, a fresh mug of coffee cradled in hand. Conversation doesn’t come as readily as it did during your movie night, but the silence in between feels...comfortable.

Javier hesitantly brings up the night before, but only to compliment the form of your kick to the man’s stomach. “Self-defense classes before traveling,” you explain, which led to a continued interest in fighting skills. Your neighbor looks impressed and...intrigued, maybe. Something speculative in his eyes, like he’s reassessing his idea of you.

He drives you to work later, and arranges for Steve to pick you up.

“Heard you had to kick some ass last night,” the blond drawls in greeting.

Well, it was nice of Javier to tell such a flattering version of the story. You roll your eyes, even as you preen the tiniest bit. “Yeah, that’s how it happened,” you grumble. “It wasn’t just Javier swooping in to save my ass like fucking Batman with a shiny gun.”

Steve guffaws at your description. But neither man makes light of the incident. Steve drives you to or from work at Javi’s request when he’s busy, until after a few days you insist that you’re fine, plenty confident that Javi scared off your attacker. Even so, he walks with you to the grocery store the next time you go, swearing up and down that the timing is just a coincidence, that he needs a few things too.

Secretly you’re grateful for that. You feel safe with Javier, and it’s a nice feeling, being protected. You’re just as capable of watching out for threats, but you could never replicate the swooping, shivery feeling low in your belly when his guiding hand brushes the small of your back. Ever since you took his hand that night, he’s been slowly getting bolder with small, casual touches. And every time you let him, his eyes brighten a little more, his breath loosening like he’s afraid you’ll reject each one. As if you’d reject proof of his affection, or the glow of pleasure that smolders in you with every glimpse of it.

At the store, you mentally flip through your cookbook, tilting your head thoughtfully at the cocoa powder.

--

Javier doesn’t remember inviting you over to bake in his kitchen, but he’s sure as hell not complaining. Watching you competently twirl about the room, sifting and stirring and tasting things in various bowls, is stirring in ways he hadn’t anticipated. The graceful lift of your arms, your eyes narrowed in concentration. He almost wants to interrupt, just to see how you’d react.

He drifts over to see if he can help, when his senses are powerfully overwhelmed by the smell of chocolate.

You stand in front of him, the source dripping suggestively from a spoon in your hand. “Want a taste, Javi?” You lick the spoon slowly, holding his gaze as you close your mouth around it, cheeks hollowing with the effort of sucking it clean.

Javier swallows hard at the dizzyingly tempting scene before him, all but floating toward you.

You smile coyly at him, meaningfully lifting a chocolate-tipped finger. He doesn’t dare move. His lips part as it nears, not knowing what you intend but knowing that he desperately wants it. His breaths come quick and shallow. You trace your finger lightly along his lower lip.

The touch sizzles through him, the taste of your skin far more vibrant than that of the chocolate. Javi can’t help but flick his tongue out to chase it, catching just the tip of your finger before it retreats, and suddenly you look as lost as he feels, staring at his mouth as he works to clean the silky sweetness from it.

As if in a trance, you lift your hand again, your own lips parting. “Want another?” Your voice breathy and uneven. A fingerprint smudging your lower lip, you lift your chin-

And Javier is on you, sucking your lip into his mouth, tasting the chocolate on your breath, wanting more. He groans as you arch into the kiss, devouring you, sliding his tongue against yours. You clutch at each other like this is everything you’d been waiting for.

Javier loses himself in you. Just the sounds you’re making have him harder than he’s ever been, he’d let you lick chocolate off whatever you damn well want-

He jolts awake.

Gasping and sweating and so painfully hard he instinctively presses a palm to his crotch, choking on a groan. What the hell?

He is completely disoriented. The smell of chocolate still pervades his senses. He registers the muted sound of- music? Your singing.

He’d fallen asleep on the couch; the scent in his dream was you baking again. Maybe you dropped something and it woke him up. He can’t focus on anything else right now besides his absolutely throbbing erection.

His breathing is harsh in his throat as he shoves at the zipper of his pants. He wraps a hand around himself, his head dropping back and his mouth open in a soundless moan. His hips buck upward, head still full of you, you-

He snaps in less than a minute.

His release spatters hot over his hand and shirt. He slumps back down into the cushions, panting, spent. As the haze clears, he has only a single thought.

Fuck.

--

The sunlight is too bright for Javier’s thoughts the next morning. It dazzles him on his way to work, making it even harder to focus when his mind is still full of you. The softness of your lips, your sighs of pleasure, all of it conjured up by his apparently lust-addled mind- whose desperation would only increase the more he longed for a taste in real life.

It’s an immense relief when he finally arrives to the familiar office smell of musty files and weak coffee.

He’s here before Steve today- a rare occurrence, but he had to get out of the house. There’s some fanfare going on when he finally does catch a glimpse of his partner’s blond hair across the floor.

Steve is- holding something? Handing out something? As he makes his way over, the sounds of appreciation from colleagues grow clearer, but it doesn’t sink in until he’s nearly reached the door.

“Man, Steve, you gotta bring this neighbor of yours to the next office party so we can show our appreciation!” The agent’s chortle dies as he catches sight of Javier, who makes no attempt to regulate his steadily souring expression. “Peña.” The man gives him a quick nod and says a last farewell to Steve.

His partner sets the tray he’s holding down on his desk and slowly turns to face Javier. Steve’s gaze lingers over the look on his face, the way he’s zeroed in on the dish, lips puckered like he can’t decide if he should speak.

“Well good mornin’ to you, Javi,” Steve drawls, in that too-knowing way he sometimes had. “Brownie?” He gestures to the tray.

The smell reaches him then. Chocolate. Thick and rich and- a chocolate-coated finger hovering before his mouth, your eyes twinkling innocently up at him- Javier’s jaw clenches.

“What,” he grits out, demanding an explanation with the single syllable.

“Neighbor-lady dropped ‘em off last night. Said they were for us to take to work today. Apparently she tried you first, but you weren’t home.”

Right. Because after staining his shirt with thoughts of you, he’d barely taken the time to throw on a clean one before stumbling out the door, sucking in deep breaths of fresh air as he walked to the nearest dive that served whiskey.

But- you had brought them to him first. Not Connie, or Steve, or anyone else. Him.

“Huh,” he replies distantly.

It’s all too much for Javier to process. He stands abruptly and stalks out of the office, making a beeline for the restroom.

His mind clears a bit after splashing some water on his face. He manages to be cordial once he returns to his desk, but it isn’t long before the emotional impact of his revelation fades, leaving him once more occupied by daydreams of the physical confirmation he craves.

It doesn’t help that apparently the entire fucking building was told about the brownies. Every time someone new comes in he gets a fresh whiff of chocolate, remembers dreaming of sucking the taste off your tongue and the needy noises you made when he did.

For the next several hours he glowers at the tray, perched innocuously on the corner of Steve’s desk. His skin feels hot and tight. It’s possible he smokes a few more cigarettes than usual in an effort to numb his tastebuds, or his olfactory sensors, or whatever the fuck keeps registering fucking chocolate.

Steve eyes him curiously. “You okay, man? You’ve snapped at nearly every person who’s come in here for a brownie. You allergic or somethin? I can move ‘em…”

Javier nearly snarls. “No, I am not allergic,” he says very calmly, the words clipped.

He manages to escape a little while before Steve, citing his early arrival as an excuse to head home. As he pulls into the drive, however, he passes your familiar figure on the corner.

His head thunks against the steering wheel. Steeling himself, he gets out of the car as you walk up.

“Hi Javi!” You beam at him, and his heart nearly beats right out of his fucking chest.

Tiredness lines your face from a long hospital shift, but it doesn’t stop you from looking all caring as you take him in. He doesn’t even want to imagine what you see: his shirt wrinkled from constantly shifting and tugging at it all day, his face pinched from scowling.

“Are you okay, Javi? You look flushed.” You bite your lip in a concerned frown.

It’s a struggle to hide his aggravation. “Long day at work,” he mutters, fumbling with the building keys, trying not to look like he’s hurrying.

Luckily you don’t seem to notice his temper. “God, me too. I’m gonna go take a nap. All I’ve been thinking about all day is getting back in bed.”

The mention of you and getting in bed and Javier about bursts into flame. He stutters out an excuse, all but bolting for his door. The lock clicks firmly behind him.

He stomps through the apartment to his bedroom, shedding clothing as he goes. His shoes and jacket dropped by the couch. His shirt yanked off and flung over a dining room chair. His jeans shoved down at the foot of his bed.

He stumbles to the wall you share, breathing ragged, resting one hand flat against it as the other finally wraps around the hard-on he’s been nursing for hours.

His lip nearly bleeds with the force he bites into it to stifle his groan. Every inch of his skin feels exquisitely sensitive, his blood racing hot in his veins from thinking of you all day. From thinking of you now, just on the other side of this wall. Shedding your scrubs, sliding amidst your bedsheets, unaware of the state you’ve put him in. Or maybe you are aware. Maybe you can hear him panting, strangling sighs of your name as he imagines your lips on his skin, your hand squeezing his cock. Encouraging him sweetly while he strokes himself higher and higher-

And comes harder than he ever has on his own. Shaking and gasping, there’s no way you don’t hear the sound which escapes him then. For a second he feels light-headed.

When his eyes open again, he grimaces at the mess on the wall. As his heart rate settles, his expression further contorts imagining the potential consequences for what he just did. For what you could have heard.

Maybe...he should do something about this.

--

Post A/N: Sorry for the negative implications about Steve and Connie’s marriage, I promise they’re fine! I’m just a simple writer in need of storytelling devices <3

Also someone pls tell me if I used the wrong form of the verb ‘to sleep’

Fic Taglist: @din-damn-djarin, @thirstworldproblemss, @remembertoreadthese, @knightowl247, @pamguini

[aquafolia]

Sokai Day Fic 2: Guardian, Angel

Okay! One more for today :)

This fic was inspired by phoenix-downer’s fic Lifeline. I’m also a huge Percabeth fan so I decided to remix another one of their famous moments, too. 

As I said, I only just found KH: I beat KH1 a few weeks ago and I’m about to beat KH2 for the first time! This one is for @phoenix-downer, whose amazing fics and insightful translations/analyses are a huge part of why I adore Sokai as much as I do. Their love and enthusiasm for the ship really is infectious! As I’m playing I appreciate the Sokai moments so much more because of phoenix-’s posts. Cheers :)

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Guardian, Angel

‘Looks like you’ve hit a dead end, Sora!’ Vanitas called out menacingly, his manic laughter echoing through the narrow canyon. Hemmed in on three sides by steep stone walls– and with Vanitas blocking the only exit route– Sora realized he had nowhere to run. He turned to face his pursuer, his back to the canyon wall.

‘For someone with a giant key for a weapon,’ the black-haired boy sneered, ‘you sure are hard to find. But it looks like it’s the end of the road for you at last, Sora. You will kneel before me in defeat,’ Vanitas continued, raising his palms skyward. ‘You will beg me for mercy, and I’ll watch the hope drain from your eyes when– are you listening to me?!’

Vanitas’s words weren’t having their intended effect: For someone being threatened by one of his greatest enemies, Sora’s demeanor was annoyingly calm and composed, relaxed even: He stood upright, not in his usual battle stance– he didn’t even have his Keyblade summoned. Instead, Sora was extremely preoccupied with patting down his many pockets, rooting around in each one.

‘Which one did I put it in?’ Sora muttered to himself.

‘What are you doing, you dolt?’ Vanitas asked icily.

‘No, no, go ahead,’ Sora said, his eyes looking up in concentration as he continued to rifle through his seemingly endless number of pants pockets. ‘Watching the hope drain from my eyes and all that.’

Vanitas’s eyes narrowed in irritation. He found his light-filled double vexing on a good day– but this was strange, even for Sora. ‘Um… Right.’ Vanitas said. Clearing his throat, he regained his villanly composure. ‘I’ve been your shadow for too long, Sora. I’ll snuff out your pathetic little light, brother, right here, right now– in the showdown that was always meant to be! And then nothing will stand between this world and the glorious reign of dark–’

‘Found it!’

‘–ness.’

Sora had retrieved Kairi’s good luck charm, and was holding it in his hand. He gazed down at it fondly, seeming to find it much more compelling than his arch enemy.

‘Hah! Is this some kind of a joke?’ Vanitas laughed. ‘Does the Keyblade’s Chosen Hero like to accessorize? You think a toy like that is going to help you now? Draw your Keyblade, fool, and let’s finish this!’

As Vanitas taunted him, Sora closed his eyes and brought the charm to his lips. After planting a soft kiss, he shot Vanitas a smug grin. Without breaking eye contact, Sora casually tossed the charm aside. The small star spun as it sailed through the air, shining with a faint golden light as it careened toward the cliff wall beside Sora. At the moment it should have hit the stone and shattered, it passed right through the rock face in a cloud of sparks.

‘Why did– what did you just do?’ Vanitas asked. After what he hoped was another intimidating laugh, he shot back, ‘Was that supposed to scare me?’

Sora lifted his arms up, cupping his hands behind his head, looking quite pleased with himself. ‘Oh, no reason. It’s nothing, really.’

Vanitas was growing impatient. ‘I don’t care what trick you’re trying to pull, Sora! You’re trapped here! There’s nowhere for you to run,’ he gloated. ‘It’s too bad “your friends are your power”,’ he said in a mockery of Sora’s mantra, ‘because you’re going to die here– alone.’

Even at Vanitas’s death threat, Sora remained totally unfazed. He just kept staring at Vanitas, that stupid grin still on his face. What was this kid’s deal? Deciding he’d had enough, Vanitas summoned his Keyblade and charged. Still Sora stayed exactly as he was, not even bothering to draw his own weapon. But Vanitas had stopped caring about his enemy’s strange behavior– running at full speed, with a gleeful laugh, he shouted, ‘Goodbye, So–’

The ground shook violently as a giant crack in the canyon floor opened up between Sora and Vanitas, the sound of the rending so loud, it seemed like the world was breaking. From the fissure, a column of golden light burst forth that sent Vanitas flying backward. Then, what looked like a spinning wheel of whirling colors came rocketing out of the light– some sort of object revolving at such an incredible speed, it looked like a solid glowing disk of golds, blues, pinks, and oranges. As it hurtled toward Vanitas, it left a tail of golden light like a comet crossing the night sky, and shed a flurry of white feathers. 

Vanitas, slowly attempting to stand up, was too dazed from his crash-landing to see it coming: just as he regained his footing, the projectile struck him square in the chest, slicing into him over and over again as the strange disk turned, a sickening sound echoing through the narrow canyon with each rapid-fire blow. The final slash sent Vanitas flying once more, and he face-planted into the stone wall of the ravine. His Keyblade clattered to the ground and disappeared in a puff of black smoke, a clear sign that he had been soundly defeated.

The column of light dissipated to reveal Kairi floating down to the ground, white feathers falling gently around her like snowflakes. Her Keyblade reappeared in her hand, returning from its trip to Vanitas’s face. After studying her enemy’s crumpled form with a satisfied smirk, she turned to Sora. She was holding his good luck charm in her hand.

‘You dropped this,’ she said with a sweet smile.

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