#kind of thing he's going through. and I wonder if that'd make him hate it or be kind of curious--

[dent-de-leon]

Forever thinking about Molly liking the book Holsters... what kind of reaction would he have had to the Xorhassian bandage gear????

asjsfjgkg since Molly liked the little book holsters so much I imagine he'd have something cute to say about that too, and probably think Caleb looked very good--

Though I feel like he'd also be very worried for Beau and Caleb walking into that; try to keep an eye on them and make sure no one gave them any trouble. He's used to being the one that stands out after all--people telling him to get out of their sight or calling him a devil--"I did my best every town I went to and every town I left, no matter how they treated me--and a lot of them treated me with deep disrespect." Lucien's testament that, "Not a lot of folks are really eager and kind--especially in Shadycreek Run, growing up--to those of infernal blood." And I think it'd make him very protective of Caleb and Beau if he thought they'd be treated the same.

I do really wish he could've been there for Xhorhas arc though, it could've been so fun ;; he definitely would've loved their house with the big tree and all the lights and the hot tub--and Jester's paintings!! ALSO,, THE PLACE HE PRETENDED TO BE ROYALTY IN WAS NOGVUROT, THE SAME TOWN WHERE KIDS WERE GOING MISSING BECAUSE THEY GOT THEIR MEMORIES BACK AND HEADED TO XHORHAS...could you imagine if someone there recognized Molly as the duke--

[sunsburns]

the great gig in the sky

pairing: eric (a quiet place: day one) x reader

summary: you had come to the library with only one thing in mind; to finish your final paper for class. but then there's this cute forgein lawyer asking you for help finding a book, and you think you're hitting it off with this guy but then the next thing you know, the world is ending.

—or: the world ends when you least expect it

word count: 2.3k+

contains: fluff (at first), angst, horror implications, alien invasion, the-end-of-the-world kind of scenario, blood, graphic gore & violence, mentions of death, death, a lot of angst lol

author’s note: one thing about me is that i love a good old angsty apocalyptic fic (this is coming from my wattpad days and my stranger things fics on there). i wanted to see if i still had the hang of writing horror and i think i've still got it! just a bit out of practice i guess. but anyway, this fic is for the small quiet place fandom! i see you guys! enjoyy

DAY ONE

The library is one of the few places in New York City where you can find a semblance of peace. In a city that never slept, with its constant cacophony of sounds and vibrant atmosphere, the library offers a stark contrast. It’s a sanctuary where time seems to slow, where the world is reduced to the soft rustling of pages, the gentle thuds of footsteps on hardwood floors, and the muted whispers between friends and peers, occasionally punctuated by the sharp "shh!" from the librarian.

You lean back in your chair, your laptop open in front of you with a half-finished report on the screen. Textbooks lay scattered across the table, pages open to the sections that cover your syllabus. You remove your glasses and rub your temples, tilting your head back to gaze at the grand ceiling of the library.

The smell of aged wood and parchment fills the air, a comforting scent that evokes a sense of calm. The high ceilings elevate the space, easing the claustrophobia you often feel in your cramped dorm room or crowded cafes.

Sunlight streams through the tall, arched Victorian-style windows, casting warm, golden beams that chase away the usual aura of stress associated with studying.

After about an hour with your earphones in, a movement in your peripheral vision catches your attention. You jump slightly and glance up from your book to meet a pair of warm, brown eyes. The man standing before you looks a bit anxious, shuffling his feet nervously.

You take out an earphone and look at him questioningly, recognizing him vaguely from one of your classes.

"Hi, uh, sorry," he whispers just loud enough for you to hear, "Do you know where the Crimes and Investigations section is? I tried asking the librarian, but I think she hates me."

His accent, foreign and charming, catches your ear, and you find his awkward smile endearing. He stands in front of your wooden desk, slouching slightly to your level. Up close, you notice the faint stubble on his face and the soft, dark brown of his eyes, reminiscent of oak bark.

"Yeah, it's in the west wing, I think," you whisper back, offering a friendly smile. His curly brown hair is slightly messy, likely tousled by the wind outside.

"Uh," he hesitates, "What wing are we at exactly?"

He looks genuinely clueless and anxious, his brown suit neatly pressed, and his blue tie impeccably straight, giving him a professional yet approachable appearance.

"We're actually at the center court, but I can show you where it is if you’d like?" you offer, feeling an unexpected blush creep up your cheeks. You silently chide yourself; you really need to go out more. You wonder briefly if your friends are still planning on heading to a club this weekend.

A look of relief washes over his face, making him grin. "That'd be really great."

You shut your laptop and stand up.

"Are you okay with leaving your things?" he asks, moving around the table to stand next to you.

You snort, "Please, I doubt there are people in the library with a knack for stealing things. One thing New Yorkers won't steal are books."

"I don't know, I heard college books are getting pretty expensive these days," he says, a hint of humour in his voice that makes you smile.

"Come on, I'll show you," you say, motioning for him to follow you.

As you lead the way toward the other side of the large library, you head toward the tall bookshelves that stand like dominoes. Through the muffling of the windows, you can hear the distant wail of sirens from ambulances and fire trucks, the honking of cars—sounds of the city that usually blend into the background but seem more persistent today.

"You're a lawyer?" you ask, making conversation as you walk.

"Working on it," he replies. "I'm still attending school. I think you're in one of my psych classes, though."

You beam, realizing that was where you remember him from. "Yes, I remember now. Are you taking it as an elective or something?"

"Yeah, sure, something like that."

"And how's American going for you?"

"Not what I imagined, honestly," he admits with a pout. "Don't get me wrong, the teachers are great and all but—"

"The students suck ass, right?" you interject with a smirk. "Yeah, we're pieces of shit here in the States."

He laughs, a rich sound that makes your stomach flutter. "No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, you seem pretty nice."

You feel your face heat up at the compliment, your heart racing. You want to smack yourself with a book; all this guy did was call you nice, and here you are blushing.

You slow down as you approach the section, walking between two bookshelves. There aren't many people in this area, but the sunlight glows into the space through the massive windows, illuminating the lined books. Some are old and dust-covered, inviting you to run your fingers along their spines, the dust clearing off and leaving a grey stain on your finger.

"Anyway, you have a specific book you're looking for?" you inquire.

He opens his mouth to answer, probably something smart and a book you've never heard of before, but your saving grace is the sudden rush of footsteps. People in the library are clamouring toward the windows, the usual calm shattered by a sense of urgency.

Someone runs between the both of you, knocking against your shoulder and making you stumble. You trip over your own feet until the guy in front of you reaches out, his hands steadying you. You thank him briefly before turning to the person who ran into you, "Hey, watch it—"

"Look!"

He's pointing at the window.

You both notice the uproar of people crowding closer, drawn by an unusual sight. From the window, you see that the world outside has nearly come to a halt. Cars are pulled over haphazardly, their doors flung open, and drivers and passengers alike are standing on the sidewalks, staring upwards. Street vendors have abandoned their carts, and pedestrians are frozen mid-stride, all eyes turned to the sky.

You rush to the window and press your hands against the cool glass, gazing out in disbelief. The sky is filled with what looks like falling stars, bright and burning, hundreds of them streaking through the atmosphere with alarming speed. Their fiery trails paint the sky with a chaotic tapestry of light and smoke, plummeting fast into the islands of New York.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, the vibration startling you. The piercing sound of the emergency broadcast alert follows, echoing through the library. Your heart sinks into your stomach as you see one of the falling stars crash into a building just blocks away.

The impact sends up a plume of fire and debris, leaving a fiery trail of destruction in its wake. You watch in horror as the building crumbles, a section collapsing in on itself, and the surrounding area is engulfed in flames.

You jump back from the window, stumbling as you try to process what you’re seeing. The people outside are no longer standing still. Panic has set in. They're running, shouting, seeking shelter wherever they can find it.

As you turn, you crash into the arms of the guy from earlier. His face is ashen, all colour drained as he stares out the window in terror. His eyes are wide, reflecting the fiery spectacle outside. You can see the muscles in his jaw clench as he struggles to comprehend the magnitude of what’s happening.

You move around him, your movements hurried and unsteady. Your mind races, a single thought cutting through the fog of fear: get the hell out of here and go home.

Your breaths come in short, panicked gasps. Around you, the library descends into chaos. People scream, their voices a cacophony of terror. The building is now a hive of frantic energy as others rush inside, seeking refuge from the outside.

The ground beneath your feet trembles violently, the walls groaning under the strain. The windows shatter with explosive force, glass shards spraying like deadly confetti.

You instinctively hold your hands over your head, ducking as one of the fiery objects crashes into the building with a deafening roar. The impact throws you off your feet, the world tilting crazily. Bookshelves topple like dominoes, their heavy wooden frames crashing to the ground and sending a shower of books and debris into the air.

You're thrown to the ground, landing hard. Pain explodes through your body, sharp and unrelenting. Your vision blurs, dark spots dancing at the edges of your sight. The air is thick with dust and smoke, choking you, making each breath a struggle. You cough violently, the acrid taste of ash filling your mouth.

You try to move, but every attempt sends a new wave of pain shooting through your limbs. The world around you starts to fade, the edges of your consciousness fraying as darkness creeps in. Just before you succumb, the last thing you hear is the distant, terrifying roar of something monstrous.

When you come to, the library is unrecognizable. The once grand ceiling is partially collapsed, with jagged pieces of wood and plaster hanging precariously above. The air is heavy with the smell of burning paper and wood, a thick, suffocating haze. Your head throbs with a relentless, pounding pain, and as you push yourself up, a horrifying sight meets your eyes.

Few mangled bodies lie around you, some partially buried under rubble, others sprawled in unnatural positions. Blood soaks into ash, coating whatever it touches. Panic surges through you, a cold, paralyzing fear that grips your heart and refuses to let go. Your breaths come in short, ragged gasps, the weight of the situation pressing down on you like a physical force.

You hear someone scream, a desperate cry for a name, a beloved perhaps. The voice cuts through the smoke and chaos, filled with raw agony and fear. He's shouting, coughing through the thick, acrid air, tripping over his own feet in his frantic search. There's an open wound on his head, a deep gash that dribbles blood down his face, mingling with the dirt and sweat.

"Amy," he sobs, "Amy," he spots you sitting in the rubble and hurries towards you. "Help me—help me find—"

It comes in fast, a blur in the shadows that moves with terrifying speed. Before he can finish his sentence, it's upon him, dragging him away with a ferocity that leaves you frozen in place.

You jump, a silent scream stuck in the back of your throat as you watch the horror unfold. You're trembling, unable to see the creature clearly but acutely aware of the sounds—bones snapping, the dreadful crunching, and the sickening drip of blood hitting the ground.

Tears well up in your eyes, and a cry almost escapes your lips before a hand suddenly clamps over your mouth, stifling your instinctive scream.

It's the guy from before, his face now smeared with dirt, his eyes wide with terror. He holds his finger to his lips, a silent plea for you to stay quiet.

You can feel his hand trembling against your skin, his heavy breaths and anxious pants betraying his own fear.

When you finally calm down, you can sense his fear is even greater than your own. He slowly removes his hand, his eyes searching yours for understanding. Despite the terror, you feel a surge of determination. You nod at him, too terrified to speak.

He helps you to your feet, his grip firm but gentle, and guides you underneath a heavy, wooden table similar to the one you were sitting on earlier. The table's legs are sturdy, and it offers some measure of protection

Your eyes, blurred with tears and the strain of fear, lock with his. The dim light from a nearby, flickering emergency lantern casts deep shadows across his face, revealing the sheer magnitude of his terror. His expression reflects a fear that seems almost palpable, magnifying your own sense of dread.

Despite his visible fear, there’s an unwavering loyalty in his gaze while he presses his hands to a wound on your leg you haven't noticed until then.

You open your mouth, a silent gasp escaping as you instinctively want to speak. However, you remember the perilous situation and close it again, forcing yourself to remain silent. Your trembling hands fumble in your pockets, retrieving your phone.

The screen is cracked and spiderwebbed, but it still lights up, its soft glow a stark contrast to the oppressive darkness of the library. With a shaky breath, you type a message, each keystroke feeling like a thunderclap in the stillness.

You press the phone towards him, the words “What’s your name?” barely visible through your shaking hands.

He takes the phone from you with deliberate slowness, his movements calculated to avoid making any noise that might betray your hiding spot. Every creak of the wooden floorboards and distant, muffled noises from the library only heighten your anxiety.

The silence around you is almost tangible, filled with the collective holding of breaths from other hidden survivors. They are scattered throughout the library, huddled in various corners, doing their utmost to stay hidden and silent.

The fear of being discovered is a constant, oppressive presence, and no one knows how long they will need to remain in hiding—whether until help arrives or until they are discovered by the monsters stalking within the shadows.

He studies the screen briefly, his eyes flicking between the shattered glass and the message, before handing the phone back to you. The single word “Eric” is typed in, but the simple introduction does little to ease the tension.

The sincerity in his eyes is clear, though his own are brimming with tears that begin to trail down his cheeks silently.

You type your own name quickly and show it to him, your fingers trembling as you tap out the letters.

The strained smile he offers is far from comforting, and his tears make yours burn at your skin. The library remains eerily quiet, punctuated only by the occasional rustle of shifting survivors and the distant, ominous sounds of the monsters prowling outside.

That's when you realized, you were going to die here.

[leonawriter]

Somehow a thought of "Kaito looks through Pandora but something weirdly cognitive happens instead of just it glowing red" sparked off "P4 crossover: just how fucked is Kaito if he wound up on the Midnight Channel?"

Like... Shinichi, if he was thrown in, would have the element of "most of the population would think that's sci-fi/fantasy, not real life, and laugh it off if they saw" but if even a handful of random people saw something that had Kuroba Kaito blatantly admitting to being Kid? His life would be SHAMBLES. It would be OVER for him.

Part of me thinks that'd be a fun thing to play with, but part of me's just... I'd want the concept of the dungeon maybe, but with not just the Investigation Team but also that if say, Hakuba and/or Aoko were there too, the IT wouldn't need to bother with hearing details, because that'd be sorted. They'd see one showing, if that, depending on the weather.

Heck, maybe Kaito would be particularly infuriating, spy on random people, see the killer saying or doing something he really shouldn't be, and he gets shoved in without any planning. Maybe the first show doesn't even give all that much away - but the moment anyone who's In The Know sees the silhouette of Kid, they start realising that this is potentially the worst case scenario and start moving really quickly.

I've always thought Kaito's persona would be something like an alternate read on Arsène Lupin, because of course it would, and would probably look closer to his dad in Kid's outfit than anything else. As for elements? Probably Bless.

And of course Shadows aren't the nice things you repress, so... it'd be everything Kaito keeps hidden under his Poker Face; the trauma of losing his dad, the fear of losing everyone he cares about to secrets, the fear of being arrested and killed, the fact that this is a vigilante revenge trip for him, so some part of him would want to make these people suffer for what they've done to his dad, and what they want to do to him, the way he doesn't trust detectives...

Shadow Kaito saying hurtful things like wait, you think I care about Aoko? She's just a useful means to an end, at this point, I wouldn't put up with her otherwise and I much prefer it when Hakuba's away because who wants someone like that coming after you? It's no wonder he doesn't have any friends if that's how he is but also I'm better off on my own, aren't I? So what if the detectives have all the connections - the more people who know who you are, the more can screw you over in the end.

Kaito refusing all of it and denying it and the others having to fight a terrifying monstrous Kid-a-like Shadow that makes them attack their teammates and puts them to sleep and hurts them, which is going to end up in Kaito's nightmares.

His Shadow being defeated and now... now it's not a scary and angry and spewing hate, it's just small and fully expecting to be pushed away, because that's what he does to other people, and... Kaito has to go up, and accept it.

Accept that yeah, he has used Aoko like that more than he should have. That yeah, he's let his fear of Hakuba just doing the detective thing and turning him in blind him to the fact that the guy is also just lonely and in need of friends. And... yeah, he hasn't been trying to connect with others as much as he could.

They go back to Ekoda and everyone's wondering what the heck even happened, because Kaito is different. Not a bad different - he seems kind of happier and more confident. But definitely changed.

[shepherds-of-haven]

I love the thought of the MC telling the RO's that they kissed Guard kun and offered to meet them later to gain entry into the city and Chase just going "Nice" while Blade on the other side of the spectrum just being absolutely appalled that the MC had to go through such lengths lol.

Blade: *immediately stewing on how he can use his power to get Guard-kun fired for corruption and abuse of power... ironically as he kind of abuses his power to do so LOL* *in other words seething with hate and jealousy and annoyance but channeling that into professional career-based murder*

Trouble: I don't think he would register right away that "MC offered to fuck a guy to get something out of it," his brain would just get stuck on "that guy was not nice to MC/put them in a position they shouldn't have to be in" and he'd just blankly looking over his shoulder while his brain went must put the beat down on that man now... Like his feet would automatically already be redirecting him back towards Guard-kun! MC: "waIT--"

Tallys: she's silent on the surface but inside she wants to tear Guard-kun to pieces with her teeth

Shery: I think she'd be quite shocked by this revelation, especially by MC's hypothetically-casual delivery of it! It'd make her wonder how often this sort of thing happens and it would make her feel very naive and sheltered about the way the world works... Overall she'd feel bad that MC was put in the position where they felt like they had to offer sex just to get into the city, but because they said it so lightly, she wouldn't be sure if she should remark on it or offer any sympathy or indignation and would just awkwardly let the moment pass without comment!

Riel: he wouldn't really give any outward reaction, like he'd just be like "oh. interesting." but he's probably getting that guy fired IMMEDIATELY lol what if he's doing the same thing to other people!! this cannot stand!! Also he'd be giving MC just a little bit of a side eye for so casually offering sex to a stranger, but also that'd be commingled with a little bit of respect for their resourcefulness and cunning!

Chase: "oh yeah the old 'I'll have sex with you if you give me what I want' trick. I am familiar"

Red: I think he wouldn't really know what to make of that information at first... I think he'd be mostly appalled that Guard-kun did that and would judge him for being an overall gross scumbag, but also he'd be like, yeah it's MC, realistically who wouldn't fall for that

Ayla: unfazed. "oh dang. so did you do it or... no? yeah, I don't blame you, you could do better. that mustache is fucked up"

Briony: she'd be righteously indignant on MC's behalf and would loudly be asking if she should go fight the guy. she'd also be a bit jealous, so her desire to fight him would partially be moral outrage because he tried to take advantage of MC and also "you bastard, why did MC offer to sleep with you and not with meee 😭 I'll kill you!!! 😭" (In a crushing stage!)

Lavinet: if they're just friends, Lavinet actually respects this as a baller move LOL but if they're on a romance route, Lavinet is simultaneously SHOOK that this happened, jealous, huffy, annoyed by her own jealousy and huffiness, and just generally would not take this very well! She'd be stewing but she'd try to let it pass, mostly just out of pride and desire to show that it didn't affect her!

[dootznbootz]

Hi, what do you think about epic the musical as an Odyssey fan? Just curious

As an Epic the musical fan, I LOVE IT! Everyone's so talented and I love the music style!!! It's super fun and creative and it's amazing that Jay basically writes it all himself!

As an Odyssey fan... It's INCREDIBLY different. To the point where it's more "Odyssey inspired" than the actual Odyssey. But that's the thing. I wouldn't say Jay WANTS it to be word for word Odyssey and I DO think that'd be...kind of hard to do? Especially for Modern day.

It still has most of the "spirit" of the Odyssey though I feel like which is SUPER important. I'm saddened that very few adaptations really "balance" Odysseus' assholery and "goodness". I love "shithead Odysseus" but personally, I'm happy as long as an adaptation keeps to a "family man who wants to go home" for the most part :D (I really fucking hate the whole "Odysseus! The clever, swashbuckling hero who gets all the babes! ...He has a family?!" bullshit. That's very much not him. (He likes shiny things, yes but that's it)

More personal rambles below :D

I think it's interesting that Polites in Epic is more "peaceful" when in the Odyssey, he's called "captain of armies". And the fact he's killed right away when he was one of the last men alive.

Also Odysseus' and Eurylochus' friendship! I think it's sweet in the musical while in the Odyssey, it's quite tense. It gets more and more tense in Epic later on obviously but in the odyssey, it's been tense for a WHILE. Also!

Shout out to Armando Julian! Eurylochus' actor! I see a lot of people talk about Polites, Poseidon, Circe, and Hermes and they get a lot of fanart and love with their songs (rightfully so, ofc!!!) but Armando is really talented and people really sleep on Luck Runs Out! I'm about to become a vocal nerd for a moment. He's got a wonderful vibrato! I really love how he sings "feed" during Full Speed Ahead and "Captain, please" during Remember Them for example. His voice really fits with "speaking on behalf of the crew".

I know most people have a lot of feelings with the Circe Saga but I think that Jay did a great job considering... everything. Book 10 and 12 of the Odyssey are very complicated and I don't blame Jay for not wanting to delve into EVERYTHING with that. Odyssey Odysseus gets SA'd twice and while "I'm Not Sorry for Loving You" makes me worry, I really do think Jay will pull through with how fucked up Calypso's situation while still not having the graphic scenes in the Odyssey. It would be very hard to not only have what was basically an exchange for his men to be turned back to humans but if he interprets it happening throughout the entire year like some readers do, then that's really hard. :'D To truly portray Odysseus' fear of Circe while still having her be morally gray. As she very likely didn't mean Odysseus harm after a certain point but he was still afraid regardless.

Not only trying to not have such disturbing stuff shown in his musical but also, I think Jay was possibly trying to be considerate of Madeline Miller's Circe fans while still trying to show Odysseus discomfort and distress???? 😅 Sounds weird but like, as soon as I heard Circe talking about the nymphs being like her daughters and that she protects them, I thought that. That book is HUGE and I'm sure that many fans of it don't necessarily want to see Circe's "I do whatever I want. I don't need a reason. Woe, Oink be upon ye." as the most likely reason they were turned into pigs in the Odyssey is that ODYSSEUS is associated with them (the boar scar, the metaphors when talking about him in the Iliad, his trusted Swineherd Eumeaus, BOAR TUSK HELMET. Like, that's kind of the animal that represents Odysseus. (even when a spear pierces through a boar's hide, it'll STILL charge as they're that ferocious and determined...Just like Odysseus, a man who should be dead but isn't because of his will to go home. Homer didn't write them being turned into pigs necessarily as a "Men are pigs" thing.

I think the modern shift in how the situation seen today and other media of the Odyssey is why he wrote the songs he did. And considering it all? He did a good job navigating it. I'm very happy with the results!

I have more thoughts probably but those have been stewing in my brain for a while :D I definitely look forward to the next sagas!

[your-divine-ribs]

Ice Cold Part 15

Words: 2.4k

Lyla finds out more about Van’s past 💙

Ice Cold Masterlist Main Masterlist

"I owe you my life Lyla."

Raj's voice was filled with an appreciative kind of awe that made me squirm in my seat. I was uncomfortable enough visiting him as it was, I hated hospitals, but the praise he kept heaping on me just made things worse.

"You'd have done the same for me, any of us would have," I replied. "I just wish I'd not been distracted. As soon as I saw those fake waiters I knew something was wrong. I shouldn't have hesitated."

My mind drifted back to that fateful night in Paris and the note from Van urging me to 'GET OUT NOW'. I was sure if I'd followed that instruction I would have been at Raj's graveside now rather than his hospital bed, but still it didn't seem good enough.

Raj shifted where he lay, groaning and screwing up his face, clutching his bandaged abdomen. "Shit... I think it's time for my pain meds again."

"I'll get a nurse," I offered, rising to my feet. "I should be getting back to the office anyway."

"No!" He said hurriedly. "Don't go yet!"

I hesitated, turned to him, watched an awkward little smile emerge on his lips as he struggled to hide his discomfort. "I was thinking... erm... maybe when I get out of this place... maybe we could... errr... go and grab a drink or something?"

My heart sank as I took in his hopeful expression and I just hoped the small smile that I painted on looked genuine. "Errr... yeah sure... that'd be nice... look I really do need to get back. I'll come and visit again soon."

"I'd like that," I heard him say as I hurriedly turned and made for the exit.

Of course I had no intention on taking Raj up on his offer. He was nice enough, a real gentleman, good-looking and sweet. Someone I was that sure Jen would call 'a real catch', but those qualities didn't interest me. They didn't make my heart race and my mind spin. They didn't make me feel the same way that Van did.

In truth, my visit to Raj wasn't just as a well-meaning friend or colleague, I'd also had an ulterior motive. I wanted to find out who'd he'd been working with on the psychological profiling team. I tried to tell myself that I wanted to delve into Van's past to assist me with bringing him down, but I couldn't lie to myself anymore. I was in so deep now all I could do was tread water and try and keep my head above the surface, the dangerous current threatening to completely sweep me away.

Andrea was a small bird-like woman with sharp features and a serious demeanour, and she looked at me with something between wonder and admiration as I asked her to walk me through Van's psychological profile report.

"We've all been talking about you in this office Lyla," she said, eyes bright. "No one else has spent so much time with Van before and got away with their life. What was he like?"

Exciting... Dangerous... Intoxicating...

I batted the words out of my mind and settled on a very different adjective.

"Terrifying."

I saw Andrea visibly shudder as she pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, picking up a thick file and starting to leaf through.

"You know, you're such a good agent," she said, pulling out sheets and photos. "Most field operatives don't care much about profiles and psych reports, they're straight in there all guns blazing, going for glory. They don't realise that getting inside someone's head and knowing how their mind works is key to catching them."

"Well, no matter what they've done, they're still people at the end of the day, right?" I answered.

Andrea narrowed her eyes. "Oh, we don't do this to humanise them. They're monsters... all of them... no matter what they've been through. No... we do this to find their weaknesses. That's how we bring them down."

"Oh..." I looked away quickly, taking a sip of my coffee.

Andrea carried on, a thoughtful look in her eyes. "Of course someone like Van... well that's easier said than done. He doesn't appear to have any weaknesses. Tell me... you've been the closest to him... what are your thoughts? Is there anything we can use to get to him?"

Her question caught me off guard and I froze for a moment. Of course Van had a weakness. A very obvious one. And unbeknownst to Andrea she was looking directly at it.

"Errr... no... I don't think he does have any weaknesses that I've seen... but he's just a man right? They're all weak in some way, hey?"

I nudged Andrea gently, grinning, trying for a joke to distract from the serious look on her face as she studied me intently, but it was quite obvious she wasn't the joking type. She simply sighed and turned her attention back to the files, picking up an old dog-eared crime report.

A photo slipped out of the pages and fell in front of me on the desk and I picked it up for a closer inspection. It was a small boy, he couldn't have been any older than five or six. His clothes were crumpled and torn and stained with what looked like dried blood. The pale skin of his face was streaked with it too. The haunted look in his eyes told me that he'd seen horrors no boy of his age should have seen.

"Is this... is this Van?" I stuttered.

I didn't really need to ask. I'd recognise those striking blue-green eyes anywhere. Andrea nodded.

"What happened to him?"

Andrea's expression was grim as she spoke. "This was taken when they found him, he was just six years old. His family were killed... all of them.... and he witnessed it. He'd been left in the house for five days with their bodies when they found him."

"Christ..." I breathed. "How were they killed?"

"Murdered."

The word cut through me like a knife to the heart and an image of my own dead father flashed through my mind's eye.

Andrea wasn't finished with her gruesome tale. "It was brutal, a machete attack apparently. The father was beheaded. It was a gangland style execution."

Nausea rose in me. "Who did it?"

"I'm sure you've heard of Tommy Chappell."

I nodded. Everybody had. An infamous criminal who was notorious for running all of the criminal activity in the North twenty years ago.

"Van's father was a bad man. Really bad. Rotten to the core. He used to work for Tommy, running the drug operations. He got greedy though, he was skimming money off the top, and then of course when he got found out Tommy had to make an example of him."

"What about his mum?"

Andrea had a look of distaste on her face. "She was no better. A junkie and an alcoholic. She should never have had children, those boys were neglected right from the moment they were born. They never really stood a chance."

"Boys?" I said, confused by the plural term.

She sifted through the files again, her fingers alighting on another photo. Van looked even younger here and he was with an older boy.

"Van has a brother?"

"Did," Andrea confirmed. "He was a lot older than Van. Chappell didn't spare him either."

I could picture the horrific scene in my mind, Van as a young child, forced to watch his family members meet their grisly ends. It didn't matter whether they were good or bad people, at that age family were all you had. I shook my head, trying to clear the emotion away that was threatening to surface. I had to be professional.

"So what happened to him... afterwards?"

Andrea pulled a sizeable stack of papers out of the file and placed them into my outstretched hands. "He got taken into care. He was young enough that there were plenty of families who were interested in fostering to start with... well, that was until the problems started."

I stopped sifting through the papers and looked up at Andrea, eager to hear more.

"It became apparent quite quickly that Van wasn't like other six year olds. Something was seriously wrong with him. He was... cruel, destructive, often violent. One family went so far as to say he was evil."

I scoffed disbelievingly. "That's ridiculous! He was six years old! After everything he'd been through it's not surprising he had issues!"

"Naturally," Andrea agreed. "Social care's come a long way in the last twenty years. Unfortunately Van was shipped around a lot at first. Families handed him back because they couldn't cope with him. Eventually they ran out of options, so he stayed in care homes... some of them shall we say... rather disreputable..."

She screwed up her face. She didn't need to elaborate, I'd heard enough horror stories of vulnerable children abused by those who had been trusted to care for them.

Andrea went on. "He became just another product of the system... damaged. It's a textbook classic example really. I mean, not all psychopathic behaviour stems from neglect and abuse, but the majority does. If an infant doesn't receive the love they need to form emotional bonds in the first few years of life they develop what's known as attachment disorder. Believe or not, humans have to be taught how to love!"

She allowed herself a laugh then, but I didn't find any humour in it. The ache in my heart was steadily getting stronger the more I heard.

"But his parents... they must have loved him in their own way!" My voice cracked with an emotion I wasn't expecting.

"The McCanns?" She snorted like I'd said something preposterous. "Like I said the mother was an addict and his father was a violent, abusive man. His brother was brought up in the family business and he was very much his father's son. Van was probably being taught how to load a gun when most little boys were getting their first train set. I don't think that boy ever saw anything even close to love... not even for one day of his life."

I wasn't prepared for the feelings that ripped through me, I almost felt physically winded and my unemotional facade slipped. Andrea's eyes narrowed at me.

"You look a little peaky. Do you want a glass of water?"

"No... errr no I'm fine, honestly. Carry on... please."

Andrea's eyes lingered on me just a fraction too long, and I could feel the guilt rising. I cleared my throat and let my head hang whilst I pretended to study the social services statement.

"There's not much more to tell really...." She lent forward, lowering her voice. "Don't go feeling sorry for him. He's good at what he does because he doesn't feel remorse."

"I don't feel sorry for him!" The words sprang from me forcefully, defensively. "I just know how it feels to lose a parent in such a brutal way... that's all."

"Yes I know all about that," Andrea said. "It's the age-old argument of nature versus nurture isn't it? Are people really born bad or does life just shape them that way? You can put two people through the same experience and they can react in totally different ways. Van chose this life. Your dad was murdered too but look how you turned out."

Yeah, a real upstanding and moral citizen...

"It's hardly the same is it?" I replied, knowing I sounded like I was defending him but not being able to stop myself. "He had nothing. At least I had family... my mum..."

"Like she was such a comfort to you when it happened!" Andrea's sharp and sarcastic tone cut me off and I looked at her, stunned. She looked shocked by the outburst herself, quickly back-tracking.

"Err... I didn't mean... I mean I shouldn't have said that..." She faltered, then put out a hand to rest on my arm which I hastily moved away. "I'm sorry but I read your file, your psych evaluations, your therapy sessions..."

I dropped the files on the desk, rising quickly to my feet, pushing the chair back forcefully across the floor with a screeching sound. "I suggest you do your job and read the criminals' reports, not the staff's!" I hissed.

"But... but I had to! When we had that data breach earlier in the year... all those files got accessed. It wasn't just the assignment files... they got into the personnel files too."

I'd already started to turn, but this statement stopped me in my tracks. I'd not heard of any data breach. "What are you talking about?"

Andrea's face looked stricken, like she'd said something she shouldn't have and had now been caught out. I glared at her, watched her squirm with unease.

"I'm guessing no one told you then..."

I took a step closer, my mind racing. "Told me what?"

She glanced around, uncomfortable, but I wasn't backing down. "Just tell me," I said sharply.

She sighed then, took a breath before the words tumbled out of her. "It was the worst breach we've had. Our network's supposed to have state of the art encryption too, it should be uncrackable, but somehow someone got in. They accessed all sorts, assignments, undercover agent information. It blew some of their covers wide open. Thankfully they managed to get them all out in time... but it could have cost lives. Remember that senior member of staff Eric suddenly leaving? Someone had to be made accountable. At least they didn't access too many of the personnel files..." she trailed off, eyes darting around before coming to rest on me again. "They got into your file though... they accessed the whole lot... everything. It was strange because none of the other agents were affected... it was only yours..."

I'd stopped listening at this point. Thoughts were thundering through my head as I stood motionless, mouth agape.

"Are you alright? I don't think Paul wanted to worry you..."

I ignored her, starting to back away before I quickly whirled around and made for the door, flinging it open. All I could picture in my head was Van, eyes burning into me with intensity whilst he spoke those three words.

"I know you..."

[arrivingonthescene]

most of dora's facts stemming from harry's dream version of her, or jean who's only ever heard harry shitting on her, makes it hard to figure out what she's like. i get that's the point but i'm so curious. would she really think he's a poverty-stricken fuck if they lived in that matchbox with fleeting electricity if she wrote that letter that's so full of infatuation? her parents paid for their life and harry's RCM training but for how long? was she still an arts academic? obviously at some point the last straw on the mountain of straws made it fizzle into nothingness but... idk i can't help but feel the letter & dream-dora stating she fell in love with harry at first sight from how Cool he was, being a form of worship on her part too, an innocent version. "I wanted you to be the rest of my life that day." and along the years that worship tipped over to a detrimental degree on harry's side. and even the dream version of her who spits back the things most likely said durimg arguments, goes from frustration to pity to wistfulness, but what made it sadder to me was how long the phone call can go on for. dream-dora says she moved on so bluntly and lists all the things she dislikes about him, but phone-dora's patience shined through even when harry's saying shitty stuff to her. she could have just hung up immediately and never pick up again the first time he rings her

so going off this, the following are personal headcanons

i imagine she dated harry in an act of rebellion, harry joined the RCM to increase his Cool Factor from high school gym teacher to badass superstar cop (i think the game says she pushed him towards it but i view this via harry-lens where she is a God who caused everything) and along the way as he deteriorated it brcame kind of sunk-cost. along the way she became pregnant, and maybe when the old harry shimmered through she thought they could make it work, but reality hit and she terminated it. i honestly feel like she'd do so alone. and now i wonder if she had any friends or if dating harry made her isolated. did anyone support her leaving him? i'd imagine her parents were thrilled to hear it.

from how open harry is about his thought processes, and how painful it is to him to hear dream-dora demean them, i felt that real-dora could have apreciated them during their good days. i imagine anyone harry knows that intimately who also supports all his voices and brain compartmentalization can easily become someone he worships because of how rare that'd be for him. because how else would he be with her for that long if she hated those parts of him right off the bat? like, all these acts of humanity made him raise her higher and higher until she reached a status she could never act out, she is not perfect, she's just a person, she is a person i'm suddenly so interested in. during harry's fledgeling RCM days i bet she asked tk hear how mr. law brought justice but it quickly became apparent that, not only were the tales depressing, he was throwing himself into work so hard. married to the job. dora having to sell her collected art pieces to get by. and one day harry asks to sell one that's extremely precious to her and that's when she put her foot down and asked her parents for assistance. maybe it was a figurine. time went on as RCM life consumed him, and harry forgot what made dora tick but he never forgets the fact that she loves figurines

more tame but, harry having art cop as one of his copotypes, what if he picked up that notion to impress her? i don't know if she'd teach him art critique herself but like. so much of harry's personality is bending himself every which way to impress someone. i mean i can kind of see how that'd be an addicting person to date knowing he and dora broke up and got back together before. tripping over himself a hundred million times to impress her or win her back. i know for a fact the 'i have a vast soul' thoughts harry can express are him internalizing things she said about him

it could have been easy for the writing to demonize her but it was so apparent that it's harry's twisted view. god the writing of this game. picking out parts of who dora is from inside harry's imprints in the world.

[6okuto]

Hi love! Do you open req? I just want to req main 3 last legacy (if you want to include rime idm) with assassin mc?

M3 WITH AN ASSASSIN!MC

gn!mc | meoww. will probs not be doing much more LL in the future unless it's. modern au? didn't realize how much my brain would struggle. woah. i forgot most of the plot ..lol.. if my characterization is awful Don't Look At Me. 😁🫥

anisa

this a Morally Complex Situation.

i imagine this pair would have the most to work through. like it'd have the most tension at the reveal of mc's job because of anisa's job, seeing herself in them, etc. etc. especially if they've built some sort of relationship/trust at this point .

^ because well now there's questions of why did they choose to stick with her rather than the others. what do they think of her, do they have ulterior motives, etc etc. and i'm Sure this will come up with the other two, but i see it the most emotionally hard-hitting in anisa's case :')

though as anisa's route continues and she's thrown into a position of really questioning loyalty, rules, etc. mc is probably one of the best people who can offer a thoughtful nuanced take.

Something Something, finding out the LoS is her father, choosing to believe in and support her, anisa opening up. something something joke about going after him for her while both knowing it'll be anisa's choice what happens something something

wow sorry but in a world where LL. was here. and anisa had the time to develop and accept(?) mc's career properly (Sorry.) i think she'd want to know more about it. maybe when she's looking for help and mc would be able to share not just advice but the story behind it

on a lighter note :) again,, in the Good timeline where we've gotten canon development for both of them,, i do think anisa doesn't let the whole "i'm / i was an assassin, i'm fine" thing slide if mc tries to brush off her concern. like sorry, are you not victim to basic needs and exhaustion be serious

also ! think of the strategies they could come up with ! both of these people bring knowledge and so many skills to the table. I'd trust them with an important mission🤷🏻‍♀️!

she knows they're perfectly capable of taking care of themself and vice versa, so it's heartwarming when both check on the other. so real

sage

under the assumption that mc would hide their career, the M3 treat them as an average person. but sage is perceptive, and would probably pick up on minute details that'd tip him off that mc is more skilled than they let on

externally internally says i knew it when he inevitably finds out. maybe not that they were an assassin, but someone definitely trained

just to make sure there's a little angst(??) for all three! sage is a smart guy! he is!! he'd be suspicious of mc if the m3 find out early on and they haven't developed a strong relationship.

mc and sage not trusting each other, not sharing info either to break that ice, sage wondering why they'd choose to stick with him, etc. he manages to make some kind of flirty joke the first... meeting? after the reveal, but they both know they're watching each other LOL.

anyways. hey guys. at some point when that trust is built,, no amount of deadly energy will stop this man from flirting. "are you my assassination target? because i really want to take you out." sage my brother in christ you would be the target

sage asks where they learned everything, why, when, etc. but he understands if they try to evade his questions. if/when mc does open up about it, he listens intently and tells them that hey,, it's not like he's going to just Hate/stop caring about them

there's always a base level of concern since sage, evidently, hates the idea of anything bad happening/losing them, but he's still aware and grateful that he can trust mc to take care of themelf !

god. assassin!mc giving sage a look when he tries his whole isolation, working alone thing. you and i are Both experienced with this so try again.

felix

being an assassin is a very different career path than a barista like lets be fr.

mc so easily lies about working and making coffee and awful customer experiences when they first meet that when they show they're capable of taking down an enemy,, felix is like ? have i greatly misunderstood the job expectations of a barista ?

being both trained as an assassin and in magic by felix is a stacked deck (theoretically if things go well.) and while the skill set isn't really the same, mc's ability to pick up on things, focus, etc. is definitely applicable in their lessons

necromancy and assassination go two opposing ways tbh if u think about it. but both end up with Complicated (nonexistent?) Relationships With Others, so he can sympathize in that way

but also it's still. different. felix does find himself wondering what kind of people they've been assigned, whether asking would be rude, whether that should Really Be His Main Concern considering his company, etc.

if they've spent enough time together, he trusts that they have no ill intentions toward him at least. and a guy's got to appreciate promised protection

and does he want to know the kinds of people they've assassinated ? maybe. yes. intrigue. he shares magic and stories from astraea for tidbits of mc's career. depending on who exactly their targets were, felix is about to become very knowledgeable on some of earth's politics and figures

also would mc's stealth and stratagem come in handy for ...pranks and evasion... Who's to say? felix might,, if the opportunity arises. probably after they use it against him. smth smth you and stella teaming up against me smth smth

[fizzingwizard]

weird (tmi warning)

so I often bitch about how much I hate shaving. well, when I was a teen, living at home with my parents, and didn't have a boyfriend, and wasn't going out, I used to go without shaving my legs whenever I could. usually thats because I was wearing long pants most of the time, but in the summer i might be wearing shorts only at home, where only family members would see me.

all I was trying to do was not shave because I hated it so much and got such awful razor burn, and also I was like still a kid and had a very limited income from my part time job, which I was saving to go to Japan. so i didn't spend on random products to help with shaving that I didn't even know whether or not they'd work. I just didn't want to be itchy all the time, and I thought my family, at least, wouldn't mind me being a little hairy. I mean my mom shaved but not everywhere >_> and my dad being a man of course didn't but also he very often walked around completely naked except for his briefs. was it really ridiculous of me to think that if my dad could strut around the house in his underwear no problemo, i could be a little hairy sometimes?

anyway on my last phone call with my dad, I don't remember how we got on the topic but I mentioned shaving and my dad was shocked to find out that I shave regularly. I was like yeah dad I've been doing it since I was thirteen. "but you didn't all the time" "no dad because shaving sucks and if no one was gonna see me i didn't do it" and he said "I thought you were doing that rebellious European feminist thing, you know, they like to go full body har"

9_9

I'm unreasonably annoyed by the this x'D for like twenty years my dad has thought I express my feminism through refusing to shave. (a position btw he doesn't respect) never did it occur to him to ask me. or that shaving just sucks. this is doubly funny bc when my mom taught me how to shave (remember I was 13) she told me to use my dad's razor. (which is probably pretty weird but thats what happened) and then I just... never had my own razor x'D until I went to college. so i was shaving with my dad's razor all through my teen years, and my dad still didn't think I was shaving??? he thought i was intentionally choosing to look like a yeti, at like fifteen, because I was such a radical feminist. that is hilarious because if anything describes me at fifteen, it'd be conservative. I was still pretty entrenched in evangelical christianity back then. and i'd been taught by church, and specifically by my dad, that feminism was just whiny and full of lies. if he said he thought i was being a European feminist lol when I was like twenty-five, that'd be different, but at fifteen? bahahaha.

and then more recently. i don't remember what it was but some video on youtube I think, someone was talking about rejecting make-up as a form of feminism, resisting the patriarchy and all that. and of course I know about that, same as I do know about women who choose not to shave for feminist reasons. but because of the conversation with my dad I'm now wondering. are people looking at me and thinking she doesn't wear makeup because she's an extreme feminist? she goes to protests and flashes her boobs while shrieking into a megaphone? looooool. I don't wear makeup because I hate the feeling of having stuff caked on my face, I hate having to take it off, I hate having to pay for it, I hate having to try a hundred different brands just to find something that kind of occasionally works on me. I'm fine with my face. It's not an amazingly beautiful face. but it's mine. i have no problems with it. other people might but i'm not being some super feminist by not caring about it, i just don't actually care.

that being said I am feminist and will defend anyone's right to shave or not shave, wear makeup or not wear makeup. just like maybe ask people before you leap to conclusions. its so weird that everything i do has to be some kind of statement. i just don't like wearing makeup or shaving, that is it, there's no deeper meaning to it lmao

[penname-artist]

Help I cannot stop thinking about various kinks and other such preferences that characters (canon and OC alike) have:

I'm pretty sure everyone who's found my content is aware that I will put both Dusty and Nick through literally anything. I don't even need to specify them, one of them is shamelessly horny and the other is both curious and too humble for his own good and that's a dangerous thing to be when you're that submissive and bree- ANYWAYS

I've always thought Blade is really good with - and preferring of - two things: personal control and endurance. He's a control freak as it were (this is not new information I'm sure) but he has a vibe that just screams show me what you're capable of. If going the extra mile with your stamina does that, I think that'd be right up his alley.

Windlifter is tricky because I think by default he probably stands on one of two sides of the line, either he's the most vanilla motherfucker you've ever seen, or you don't WANT to know the things that he gets up to. So why not both? Soft and lighthearted lover, until that one night every now and again when he breaks out the ginger roots (don't- don't look that up, I beg of thee)

Cabbie. Yeah he's a tough one but I'm gonna play it safe tonight and say he's probably...rough but casual. Vanilla, yes. A lot to handle, also yes. Could he kill you? Probably. Will he? The...the jury is out on that one until next Tuesday my guy. Jus don't piss him off, got it?

Dipper is one of our kind, so I feel like we all kind of know how that goes. Maybe. No? No takers, nobody? Y'all hate this bitch on purpose sometimes I swear, anyways, she's probably really kinky in a really ADHD "way" - like, leave room as a power move and forget your partner on the bed on occasion, kind of way. And you know she's probably pegged someone before

Maru is just like. A secret. The man of the secrets to be kept. Has he ever slept with another being? Who knows! Does he mention it? Not once! Do we still get an idea of his preferences with that lack of info? Yeah a bit, I think he's like Blade a little, he prefers that safety of control of his surroundings.

We're moving onto OCs now because I wanna, and TYKER is a very interesting lover. He's generally really into any/all power dynamics, even if it's really light, and even if he's not the one emitting the power too. And I won't lie he seems like a type of guy who would be into breeding. But in all facets he's really calm and relaxed, he rarely lets his freak show out. Well, it slips every now and again. But not often.

Clutch is definitely a power player, and down to clown with a lot of dynamics and things. She's on the list with Dusty and Nick in a way, she'll try anything, experimentation is fun.

Milo is so fucking adorable and he hates it but then because he hates it his face turns red and that makes him SO ADORABLE anyways he's very much into praise, as well as a little of pet-play. He's definitely had a collar and leash on before. But, he's red-faced and fanning himself about whatever he gets into because he's also a fucking dork. Tyker is so so gentle with him you have no idea.

Apollo - yes hello he still exists and he's nagging me about it - is really into passionate shit, romantic aesthetic shit, music playing over the sounds of. Copulating. *Ahem* and he's kinda into biting and hickies, he just hates actually having them because he's always gotta cover it up (no WONDER he's always in turtlenecks, guys I figured it out)

Saga is a feisty bitch, do NOT let her sweet green exterior fool you. She will twirl her boy-toy around like a stick and absolutely show him a good time. She's also into slow stuff, and music inclusion because it's only her second life, but after that she really likes fancy bondage and lingerie, anything pretty you can wear while you're doing it all (side note Apollo likes this as well but I didn't add it to his because, when handed the option for lacey underwear or getting bit by a potential vampire...yeah I'm saying he's weak for fantasy.)

[beholdthemem]

This is so absolutely correct that I had to write a pre-Freshman Year fic about it. Fantasy High AU be upon ye.

One of many annoying things about Fig Not-A-Faeth that Eddie's discovered since the day she showed up at Sullivan's- demanding, with an expression somewhere between a challenge and a plea, to learn bass- is that she picks shit up a lot faster than he ever has.

There is a very short list of things that Eddie can truthfully claim to be good at, but he can say with zero exaggeration that he's a damn good musician. That's just a fact.

Getting as good as he is now, though, took WORK. When it comes to shit he actually cares about, he's been blessed (or cursed. Which it is really seems to depend on the day) with the ability to do nothing but that for hours on end. He has more than one memory of trying to teach himself the solo from We're Not Gonna Take It as a kid, and only realizing how long he'd been at it when the sun had gone down and left his room dark. Every skill he has today has been earned through blood, sweat, and the kind of stubborn, single minded obsession that his fingertips still ache remembering.

And while Fig definitely takes learning seriously enough to put in the effort, it doesn't take her anywhere near as much time. He's watching her figure shit out in a week that he remembers taking him at least two.

He can't decide if that's impressive or infuriating.

At this point, their lessons involve a lot less teaching and a lot more practicing. Much as Eddie hates to admit it, in a year or so he's not sure there'll be anything left that he CAN teach her.

Then again, they both know that's not actually what this is about.

Not really.

"Those still bugging you?" Eddie asks as Fig walks in. She stops, momentarily confused, and Eddie jerks his chin up, indicating her horns.

It's a little hard to judge inflammation on fuck-off-red skin, but the base of the left one looks like it might still be kind of tender. That'd definitely track with what he remembers in his own experience, at least- they come in all at once and then spend the next several months hurting on and off like a bitch.

Fig's expression tightens a little, the way it still tends to whenever some reminder that she's very much not the wood elf she'd apparently always thought she was comes up. She shrugs.

"It's fine. The painkillers help."

"Go easy on those, they'll fuck up your stomach," Eddie advises, then hears himself and spends a minute wondering just who the fuck he is now. Zarael's star-spangled cosmic titties, he's WAY too young to be sounding this much like Wayne.

"Yes, DAD," Fig drawls, seeming to come to the same conclusion, and rolls her eyes. Scowling, Eddie reaches over the counter and flicks the horn that looks less sore.

"Ow! That's assault on a minor, I could sue-"

"Like any lawyer in Solace would take you as a client," Eddie retorts. "Get your bass and sit your ass down."

Fig's eyes light up as she spots her favorite of the displayed instruments, all complaints forgotten as she practically bounces over to grab it. It's not her bass, really, but it's the one she always picks to practice with. Eddie's probably not supposed to be letting her use actual merchandise, but he figures what Seth doesn't know won't kill him. She treats the thing with more reverence than half of the paying customers do, anyway.

"Hello, gorgeous," she croons, pulling the strap over her shoulder and cradling the bass to her torso. "Did you miss me?"

The mark of a true bard, Eddie thinks, amused and unexpectedly nostalgic for the first time he'd laid hands on his guitar, is the instinct to treat your instrument with more love than some people treat their actual partners. He's starting to debate hiding that bass during normal store hours, because at this point if he had to sell it to someone else he'd feel like a homewrecker.

"You two need a minute?" He calls, because relatable or not, this cannot go unmocked. "Some mood music, or something?"

Fig makes a gesture in his direction that he would've sworn she didn't know two months ago.

Eddie snorts, moving around the counter to grab a practice bass of his own, and then wanders over to the corner where he and Fig usually set up. They sit, and simultaneously begin tuning.

(She didn't even need the reminder this time. Excellent.)

Eddie moves slower than usual, giving Fig just enough time to get well and truly absorbed in her instrument before looking up to give her a proper once over without her getting defensive.

She seems... okay. That's good.

The colors she wears are a lot more muted than the brief example he got of her pre-horns days. The first couple of weeks afterwards, she'd dressed way more plain and conservatively than he would've expected from a kid with her personality. Probably trying- to the extent it was now possible- to draw less attention to herself.

He'd never bothered- but then, pre world-shattering-revelation Eddie had probably been pretty different from pre world-shattering-revelation Figueroth.

See, the thing is, there's not a lot of tieflings in Elmville. And Eddie would know, because he'd looked.

There's Johnny Spells, who he'd idolized for all of three days back in ninth grade before it had occurred to him that a man approaching thirty who exclusively dated high schoolers was kind of pathetic, that one tenth grader in the theater department who'd transferred over from Mumple in the hopes of a better drama program...

And that's pretty much it.

Eddie's old enough now to find Johnny's taste less something to laugh at, and more something to punch him for. It's been almost a year since he last saw the guy cruising around Basrar's on his stupid fucking bike, and with any luck, it'll stay that way. Cary, meanwhile, seems decent enough, if a touch too willing to buy into the concept of school spirit for Eddie's tolerance. They nod to each other in the hallway on occasion, but they don't really talk. Eddie's got nothing in common with him, and Cary's not desperate enough for companionship to befriend somebody based on nothing more than 'We're both part demon!' It was probably just as well that by the time they'd met, Eddie was well out of that phase.

For better or for worse, he'd ended up figuring shit out on his own.

So when he'd first seen Fig come into Sullivan's, roughly two weeks out from her horns coming through and apparently completely oblivious, despite every instinct screaming at him not to make whatever the fuck was going on here his problem he'd been unable to NOT reach out, handing over his contact info with some bullshit about being available for music lessons or... advice.

He'd spent the next three days praying to any deity unlikely to smite him that there was literally any other explanation for her parents seemingly trying to pass off her skin changing color as sunburn than the obvious one, and that he wouldn't end up having to get involved after all. 

As usual, he'd been ignored.

“Oh!” Fig jolts upwards suddenly, startling Eddie out of his train of thought. “I totally forgot, I wanted to show you something I've been working on!”

“Is it Longview?” 

“Better. Check this shit out…” Fig furrows her brow in concentration, tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, and then casts what Eddie wagers might be her first Disguise Self.

It's not bad. She's cheated a little by going fire genasi, so she won't have to change her skin tone- it takes practice to do that convincingly when you're starting from a noticeable shade like red- but the result is convincing nevertheless. She's added several inches of height and at least six years of age, and bears a distinct resemblance to the singer on one of the framed posters Seth’s left to gather dust by the break room.

(Well, it's easier to do if you've got a starting point. Eddie's not going to pretend he has enough patience to design a brand new face every time he needs a disguise either.)

“Not bad,” he says with a grin as the genasi gives a haughty nod at his applause and turns back into Fig. “Not bad at all!”

“So, now that I can look like I belong,” Fig says triumphantly, looking enormously pleased with herself. “When’re you gonna take me to the Dune Fort?”

“How bout on the fifth of Still-Not-Fucking-Happening?” Eddie offers generously.

“Oh, come ON!” If Fig was standing, he thinks she'd have stomped her foot to accompany the look of outraged frustration she's giving him now. He'd categorize it as roughly two degrees more indignant than the one she'd given him the week before last, when they'd had this exact same fucking discussion. “Did you not just see that Disguise Self? Nobody's even gonna ASK to see my ID, I've been practicing-”

“Practicing doing what?”

“I won't even bother you while I'm there, all I need is a ride and then I can do my own thing while you guys do yours-”

“I'm rescheduling to the twenty first of Not-A-Goddamn-Chance.”

“Ugh!” Fig drags her hands down her face, bass still nestled in her lap. “How am I supposed to learn if I can't watch the professionals?”

“The fuck do you think I am?” Eddie gestures at the bass he's holding with his free hand, now feeling a little indignant himself.

“Do you actually get paid to play?” Fig asks with a shrewdness that Eddie frankly does not appreciate. “Or are you just getting paid to sell merch?”

Figueroth Faeth has no idea how lucky she is that he's choosing to pretend he didn't hear that. Somewhere in town, Eddie's sheepies- who would've been falling over each other in a panic to apologize for such presumption long before this point- have undoubtedly just been struck by an unexplained sense of distinct unfairness.

“A real bard plays just to play. It's supposed to be about MUSIC, not money,” he says instead, and can hear the phantom screech Jeff and the guys would be giving if they were around to hear this abrupt hypocrisy.

“It can't be about both?” Fig asks, raising an eyebrow, and Eddie has no counter for that.

“All right, look,” he says finally. “Compromise. I'm not driving you out to Bastion City- do not fucking argue with me, let me FINISH- I'm not making that kinda commitment, BUT, if you quit getting on my ass about this, what I will do… is get you into the Black Pit for a Battle of the Bands next month.”

Fig freezes, staring at him suspiciously while she tries to work out whether or not this is a trick.

“There's gonna be rules,” Eddie continues, realizing to internal embarrassment that he's actually copying Wayne's Don't-Argue-With-Me inflection and vowing that Wayne and Fig will never meet. “You stay where I can see you at all times. You wander off, and I will hunt you down and lock your ass in the van until it's time to go. If anybody asks why you're there, you tell them you're helping me play roadie for The Banished, if someone tries to buy you a drink you say no, if you try that Disguise Self crap to buy yourself a drink, I'm not just locking you in the van, I'm straight up driving you home. AND you're gonna pay me back for what I spent on a show I didn't get to see. We clear?”

“...I want that all in writing,” Fig says finally, eyes glinting hungrily at a previously impossible goal coming just within her reach. “Every single word, right now, “I, Eddie Munson, do solemnly swear to take Fig-”

“I, Figueroth, do solemnly swear to do everything Eddie tells me while NOT being a huge pain in his ass-” Eddie snarks back, unhooking the bass from around his neck and going to find some paper. Seth's gotta have something *somewhere…*

“To the Black Pit for her first show, and help her sneak back home so Mo- so no one can bitch at her about being out on a school night-”

“I am NOT promising that, that's your problem.” There's a pile of crumpled receipts in the line filing cabinet for reasons Eddie can't decipher, but no blank paper. He shuts the drawer and moves on to the counter. “I'll get you there and I'll take you back, but getting in and out is on you. I don't need anybody giving me shit about you falling asleep in class the next day.”

“Barely a deal then, huh?” Fig retorts so cheerfully that he knows she's just arguing on principle. Eddie probably doesn't even need to find a paper for their terms, she's already agreed. He keeps looking, anyway.

He wonders, deep down, if this is the right thing to be doing. Yeah, smuggling Fig into a club she'd never normally be allowed in for her first live show will make her happy- deliriously happy, based on her pleased humming as she noodles away to Green Day- but at the same time, he knows it's not exactly… responsible.

That's never mattered to him before, but he wonders if it should, now. He's no stranger to having someone look up to him (Though he knows Fig would loudly tell him that this is in NO WAY what's happening here) but he's uncomfortably aware that this is different from mentoring his freshmen. With those four, he's just trying to get them through high school with both souls and sanity intact. He doesn't want the next generation carving away everything that makes them remotely interesting just to satisfy people who hate them anyway. The only example he's trying to provide is that they don't have to.

With Fig, though, the stakes go beyond fighting high school’s brand of forced conformity. They're not alike because of shared interests (Although he has noticed Fig’s purchases of bubblegum pop slowly but surely turning to bands a little rougher and more rebellious, suggesting a slight convergence of tastes) they're alike because they share the same fucked up genetic circumstances. The example he's trying to set, the reason they both know she keeps coming here- bass or no bass- is to prove that being like them doesn't have to fuck up her life.

No pressure.

“How IS school, anyway?” Eddie asks, now actively trying to think about what Wayne would ask in this scenario. He still can't bring himself to actually make eye contact as he does, though, busying himself with unearthing a stack of ads.

The music stops. “...fine,” Fig says after a moment. Her tone indicates she doesn't appreciate him asking. Eddie can't blame her.

“Cool,” he says, turning his attention to finding a pen. There. He did the Wayne thing. He asked. He hears the music start again, and figures he's probably good to turn around. 

“I quit the cheer squad," Fig says, still hunched over the bass she's practicing on.

"Attagirl," Eddie says for probably the first time in his life, because fuck uniforms, fuck forced conformity, and fuck anything related to team sports in general.

It's not until he notices how Fig's knuckles have gone pale-pink-burgeoning-on-white from how hard she's clenching the bass's neck that he realizes that might not have been the right response.

"Uh," he says, knowing that it's a minute too late but trying anyway. "Why, though?"

"Because it's stupid," Fig scoffs with far, far too much artistically applied contempt to be real, and Eddie gets that familiar sinking feeling in his stomach that he's starting to recognize might be guilt when he realizes how much her inflection sounds like his.

This is how he'd respond, and it's fine when he does it, but hearing it from an eighth grader who very clearly doesn't actually feel that way and who is burying herself in the same bad habits he does more and more by the day to try and avoid shit doesn't feel great.

'You're fucking her up,' a voice hisses in the back of his head, and Eddie does his best to ignore it.

"What's stupid about it?" He asks, and feels gratified when Fig looks up for the first time to stare at him in disbelief.

"Uh, I dunno," she scoffs again. She's cultivated a very good scoff in the time he's known her, and he's pretty sure THAT isn't from him because hers is a lot better. "Maybe just, uh, everything?"

"Yeah?" He asks, more as a subtle prompt for her to continue than anything else. He's got no clue how to ask what's wrong in a way she'll actually respond to, but she likes to talk. He can relate to that. With any luck, another habit she's either absorbed or has always had is that if left uninterrupted long enough, she'll accidentally admit more than she intends.

"First of all, they've got us all wearing these dumb little outfits in WHITE, which means from the second you put them on you gotta worry about accidentally getting them dirty. Cuz if you get them smudged even a little, everyone will see it, and coach will lose her goddamn mind because even though you're sweating your ass off trying to get each cheer right you can't let people know you're sweating for it because everything's supposed to look PRETTY and EFFORTLESS," Fig spits the words like they personally offend her, turning back down to focus her attention on the chord she's attacking. "And then there's the whole stupid matchy-matchy thing, where you and your cheer sisters all have to look exactly the same, right down to the hairstyles-"

Eddie thinks back to the matching pigtails Fig and the other Oakshield Middle girls had been wearing the first day they'd met. She hadn't looked like she'd minded then.

"It's so stupid, they want us to look like cute little cheer clones or something. As if we don't have any personalities of our own! And then there's the whole deal about how we're all supposed to get along and trust each other, because if we're not all on the same wavelength 'It all falls apart'-" she takes one hand off her bass to add air quotes, but refuses to release the neck from the death grip she has it in with the other. "Like Ananiel and Caitlyn aren't constantly bitching at each other for getting too close to that aracokra guy they both like but are too chickenshit to end their stupid cold war over and make an actual move on, or Lisa and Raquel aren't refusing to speak to each other for weeks on end before making up and then refusing to be separated for even a damn minute, or some people aren't suddenly too scared to look at someone else-"

Oh.

"Which kind of makes it hard to get through an actual routine, considering that if someone's supposed to get thrown up in the air, you kind of need to make eye contact with her before she comes back down so she knows you're ready to catch her,-”

Oh.

"Which would be bad enough on its own even if your flyer WASN'T trying to work with new people that she doesn't have an established dynamic with, because she's spent three years working with Kendall and Kyla but they suddenly don't want to touch her."

Eddie feels his eyebrows hit his hairline.

"Like they're worried she'll... she'll rub off on them, or whatever." Fig's hands are shaking, but her voice is steady. "That if they touch her one time too many, they could wake up looking like she does, now, too."

The ad Eddie was holding is crushed as he reflexively balls his hands into fists.

People said a lot of shitty things when his horns had first grown in. More than one neighbor had insisted they'd known all along That Boy Wasn't Right- and after years of saying so, now there was proof. The religious freaks who took turns using the non-denominational building a few blocks from the trailer park had begun stuffing pamphlets in the mailbox, all containing quotes from varying holy books about casting out evil. Mrs. Peterson, who had never approved of Wayne taking Eddie in to begin with, had started having her children actively cross the street to avoid him.

But all of those people had already hated him

Never once had it come from anyone he'd considered a friend.

"Shit," he says at last, with a half laugh as though what Fig just shared is ridiculous instead of soul shattering- because if there's one thing that he remembers always sent him flying off the handle back when he'd been in her shoes, it had been pity. "What are they, Helioics?"

"Church of Sol," Fig says quietly, plucking a string.

Fuck, he'd been joking.

“I was supposed to go to their confirmation next month," she continues, sounding far away as she plucks at it again. "We went shopping for the dresses together."

"They took back your invitation?" It slips out before he can stop it, the shock and anger on her behalf out in the open with nothing to disguise it. Fig's walls rise back up immediately.

"Like I'd even wanna go!" She snorts, rolling her eyes as though the mere suggestion is absurd. "I threw it out. Like hell I'm gonna waste my weekend standing around in some creepy old church with a bunch of people I don't know, watching Kyla and Kendall promise to devote their lives to some dumb god and uphold his will like they don't break at least three of his stupid rules every day. FUCK that. The dress was ugly, too- we were all supposed to wear green, cuz it's like, good luck in their religion or something. I'd look like a fucking Yulenear decoration.”

She probably would, but that's beside the point.

Pinned to the wall behind the register at the front is a faded cardboard sign with the words 'We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone' carefully printed on it in all caps. In the year and a half that Eddie's been working at Sullivan's, he's been sorely tempted invoke that right many times, but has never quite dared. He's fully aware that his resume was never looked at before he got hired- Seth heard him play a few times at the Black Pit and decided that between that and the times Eddie had sold him weed in the past, he'd be willing to give him a shot working at the store. It's worked out okay, but he'd rather not test the boundaries of what nepotism will allow.

If the dark haired twins that Fig had been joined at the hip with before... everything... show up again, though, Eddie will be refusing fucking service. If they want their boy band crap, then from now on they can go to the store across town, and he doesn't give a shit WHAT Seth says about it.

"Stupid," Fig says again, all spikes and devil-may-care attitude that Eddie knows from years of personal experience is HARD, and whether she means confirmations, or cheerleading, or her former friends, or even herself, he doesn't know.

She's got the act down pretty convincingly, but she hasn't had a tail long enough to know she needs to concentrate on controlling it. The slow, subconscious lashes across the floor as she easily adjusts her posture tell Eddie everything that her disinterested expression doesn't.

"Hey," he says, changing the subject abruptly. "Wanna see something cool?"

Fig looks up again, curiosity tempered by the desire to come off as aloof and detached. "...maybe."

"Check this out," Tossing the wadded up ad somewhere in the direction of the trash, Eddie sets his right hand down on the counter where Fig can see it, and pulls his lighter out of his jacket with his left. Fig watches, her expression unimpressed but her eyes intrigued as she waits to see where this is going.

Presenting the silver lighter with a slight flourish, (because any bard worth his salt knows that presentation matters) Eddie holds the body between the index and middle finger of his left hand, and begins to flip it first over, then under, each finger.

The metal catches the light coming in through the display window and flashes like lightning.

Eddie picks up the pace, sending the lighter spinning faster and faster until all that can be seen is a small silver blur in one hand while the other rests easily on the counter. Fig, for all her bluster, is still a kid, and has abandoned her posturing to watch with the same fascination Eddie'd had when Rick had first shown him. He feels himself grin.

The lighter spins even faster still, reaching top speed as Eddie approaches the finale.

In one swift movement he flicks it open, bringing it to his mouth just in time for the flame to spark to life beneath his extended tongue.

Fig gasps, scrambling towards him in a panic, then stops, eyes narrowing in confusion before widening in disbelief.

"No fucking way."

"Hellish Resistance, baby!" Unburned, Eddie snaps the lighter shut again and flings out his arms like the ringmaster of a one-tiefling-circus, grinning as Fig gapes. "Can't be burned! Perks of being like us."

"Teach me that!" Fig demands, shitty day and shitty friends forgotten at the realization that she can do this too.

"When you're fuckin' done," Eddie stuffs the lighter back in his pocket, and points with his free hand at the bass Fig slung over her back while trying to check on him.

"I am done!" She insists, indignant. "Lesson's over, dude. I've got this shit on lock, it's EASY."

"Yeah?" Eddie crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow at her. "Let's hear you play it, then. Show me."

And she does.

[beansnsoup]

Love at first sight

Eddie Munson x reader

Request: idk if ur still asking but if u are could you maybe do an eddie x 70's stevie Nick's, fleetwood mac style vibe fem reader ???? I think their vibe would be so cool,,, like opposing a little bit but they fit really well together and almost like a rocker and hippie vibe idk what it would be about maybe like her going up to him at lunch and hes with hellfire or smth and they are kinda like 'oh,,, guess that makes sense' like the vibes but they get so soft around

☆

Summary: Being a quiet yet out there person Eddie begins to obsess over you, and so do you.

He first saw you when he's putting his campaign folder back into his locker, he glances at you through the side of his eye but ends up staring. You're wearing a loose, half tucked in blouse, with a long brown skirt, a sachel type bag, and a Walkman playing in your ears.

He tears his eyes away fast before you can send a glare his way after feeling his stare. You never hated Eddie, he always found ways to surprise you during lunch times, how he'd jump on the table and have little speeches, which either riled people up or made them weirded out. Either way, you found him intriguing.

His rings, and the same Hellfire shirt he wore almost everyday, and his hair, oh my God his hair. But you tried not to get too caught up about it, you've never had the best luck with the boys at your school. You normally kept to yourself and since your style was different from all the preppy girls at the school you were mocked for it by the basketball team and sometimes the cheerleaders, but you never cared. It's not like it mattered.

But after that moment in the hallway you found yourself being more interested in him, you weren't a D&D person so it's not like you were about to ask questions about Hellfire just to spend more time with him. Then you had the brilliant idea to write him a note instead. That'd be the right thing to do right?

It's better than asking him out loud if he wanted to hang out with you then getting turned down, then being utterly humiliated for the rest of your life. Then you pull out a piece of paper and your pencil and start to write.

'Hey, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to hang out. You don't have to, I'm not going to do one of those cheesy ass 'yes' or 'no' type things, but if you wanted to, I'm going to that one table in the woods, if you don't want to you can stand me up. It's fine either way. -Y/N'

You thought that was good enough, you fold it up and wait for the bell to ring for next period so you don't have to walk infront of everybody in the cafeteria.

A good 5 minutes later the bell rings, you go to throw away your trash and then rush to his table where they all are starting to get up. You tap his shoulder to catch his attention, when he turns to look at you he doesn't say anything, just stares. His friends are staring at you too. You hand him the note, "Don't read it now, you have nosey ass friends." You chuckle under your breath and then walk away.

"Not going to lie, I saw this pairing coming." Mike says. Dustin smiles at him, "Honestly, I did too." Her replies to Mike. Both of them not daring to look at Eddie because he's most likely giving them a death stare.

—————————————

Your sitting on the top of the of the table, finishing up your book, when you finish the last couple pages you have left you check your watch. 'It's been like 15 minutes. He was probably just judging me, I took it in the wrong way.' You think, kind of upset about this outcome.

When you start to get up Eddie rushes into the secluded area, "Sorry I'm late, I got held up with my last class. You're lucky I don't have a campaign tonight." He says to while going to sit at the table. "You're fine." You tell him.

This is more awkward than you thought it'd be. He glances at you, "So..did you want to talk to me or something?" He asks you, sitting up from his laid back position. "I don't know, you've just peaked my interest lately." You respond, grinning at him. His cheeks flush a little but you pretend not to notice.

He gains a bit of confidence, "If it makes you feel better M'Lady, I've also taken quite a liking to you." He admits to you sliding closer to you, his arms crossed. You look at him smiling at his words. Not knowing what else to do, you pull him in for a kiss.

He's shocked a bit at first, but accepts it. Lips moving together perfectly. He pulls away so he can pepper kisses on your jaw and your forehead. He leans back to take you in for a minute, "How would you feel if I take you out on a proper date, princess?"

The request with the nick name makes you want to melt, "I think that's an amazing idea." You agree, putting your arms around his neck pulling him in for another kiss.

——————————————

You guys are now the new power couple at Hawkins High, second to Jason and Chrissy of course. You make him listen to your Fleetwood Mac records, he hated it at first because it obviously wasn't his type of genre but you eventually got him obsessed.

Making him crystal necklaces that he wear around his neck religiously. His friends love it, they've never told him that, but they think it alot when the two of you are hanging out.

You somehow match his aura perfectly, making him soft towards you. His uncle loves you. Knowing you were the just right thing that Eddie needed, what Eddie was missing.

And Eddie couldn't agree more.

The idea/request is from @lydiascottage !!

Tysm for this idea, I hope I did it a way you like, again thanks sm for the idea!

[desultory-novice]

I think Magolor would like kingdom management games, especially when his character is the ruler

Ahaha! Definitely! Magolor would love all the little micromanage-y aspects of them! I'm terrible at those games myself, but I've known people who get their kingdoms set up perfectly on the first go, without having to demolish or rebuild any structures (except the lower level ones they no longer want to keep!) 

That'd be Magolor for sure!

...I hate to say it, but I can also imagine him getting hooked on Rollercoaster Tycoon as well. I'm not saying he'd go THIS far, but he would definitely rub his hands together with glee as he exercised his theme park creator tendencies AND his overlord tendencies.

On the opposite end of things, he'd probably grumble his way through any kind of farming sim, wondering when the game gives you the option to actually DO stuff! But you catch him 20+ hours in and he's got a sprawling farm that automates as many mundane tasks as possible till he’s maxed out on even the rarest of items.

"...I'm supposed to befriend the villagers with these? That doesn’t make any sense. They should be giving me gifts for saving their backwoods-y little town!"

[wri0thesley]

omg wait no hold on I just requested overhaul but then I remembered your overhaul thirst post about him pulling a "curing hysteria~" as an excuse and thought I'd request something along that vibe (no oun intended). I think that'd fall under orgasm control, overstim? (hope this is okay!)

hysteria antidote - overhaul x fem!reader (4k)

seeing nothing but the same four walls every day of your life is playing havoc with your brain. overhaul thinks perhaps you're suffering from hysteria. he has the perfect cure for that.

cw: not sfw/minors dni. dark content!!! dubious/non-consent. captive reader. talk of death, blood, etc. medical kink, gloves, fingering, overstimulation, orgasm control. misogyny. mentions of pregnancy/breeding. afab reader, fem pronouns.

[a/n: idk the internet said the 28th of may was his birthday so consider this both a birthday fic and a fic to celebrate 6k followers, sorry that i am gross and horrible but tbh im having a great time <3]

You really don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to be going out of your mind.

Since the Boss was taken ill, and Kai – Overhaul, you remind yourself, though he’s always just a little less sharp with you when you trip over the new name than he is with anyone else – took over leadership of the Shie Hassaikai, you’ve been pretty much stuck indoors.

Considering that you’re pretty sure he only has fond feelings towards maybe three people in the entire world, including you, you guess you ought to feel special about it – but all it actually does is make you feel like a trapped bird, caged and restless. It doesn’t help that all of the other members of the organisation have started being weird around you; people who you’ve known most of your adult life, people who you’ve worked beside and killed beside and done other horrible things beside (for the good of the organisation, of course)--

But now, they look at you like you might break at any moment. They treat you like an invalid. Their brows crease when they see you out and about, quietly murmuring; “Shouldn’t you still be in your room?”, avoiding touching you at all costs. There’s a kind of fear in their eyes, that they’re going to be told off for even speaking to you, that they’re afraid of being caught close to you.

And you know exactly who’s to blame for that.

You’d tried to speak to him about it, once; you’d thought that perhaps he might be amenable to your desire to do something to help the Shie Hassaikai. He’s always wanted to restore them to their former glory, after all! But after you’d let out your little impassioned tirade, his eyebrows had creased over the bird-mask.

“You don’t sound well,” he’d said to you. “Go back to your room. I’ll talk to you about it later.”

You had missed, at the time, that he hadn’t said ‘we’ll talk about it later’. He’d just said ‘I’ll’. When he had come, that is how it had been; the reassurance that he was keeping you safe. That he didn’t want you to be tainted. That he was keeping you well.

Your quirklessness has never been an issue before, but it certainly hasn’t been a boon. Still, for Kai--

“It’s disgusting,” he’d said, agitated by the discussion. You’d stared at his hands, thinking about the destructive power he himself wielded. “Quirks are a curse, and you not having one is just proof you’re not infected.” He’d looked up, golden eyes piercing directly into yours. “I’m going to keep you perfect.”

Overhaul is not a doctor, for all of his talk about illness and disease and plague. You think he could have used his quirk for something meaningful, once; but you also know that his burning curiousity, his disgust of anyone who deems tainted, his utter lack of morality . . . those are all things that would not have been welcomed in the medical profession. So instead, he deals in needles and pills and altering drugs in the underground labyrinth of the compound.

Sterile rooms, with examination tables and scalpels and impersonal, silver-grey equipment. Pill boxes that rattle when he passes them to you and tells you to take three of those a day, one of those, that one has to be taken to with food--

The idea that you won’t take them doesn’t enter his head, and though he has never . . . overhauled someone in front of you, you have walked past other members of the organisation mopping and disinfecting blood and gristle from sterile flooring.

It is better to go along with him, so you take the supplements and the pills and submit to the way he grabs your chin in gloved hands on the doctor’s chair, tipping your face up to shine a light into your eyes and watch your pupils dilate. But inside, you are screaming.

You’re not made to be locked in one room, occasionally allowed out to pace the hallways of the upstairs – never the underground ones, not any more – with restless footsteps and your muscles fizzing with desire to taste fresh air. You’re not made to stare at the same walls and breathe the purified air and think about how empty the compound is, now that Overhaul is in charge of everything--

(Too many knick-knacks attract dust. Pollen allergies act up, if there are too many plants, and he hates hearing people sneeze. Furniture should be easily movable and barren, to assist in the twice-daily cleanings of every room that people walk through.)

But it’s getting too much for you. Suffocating. You feel like you’re choking on air all of the time; you take the pills, because the thought of what he could do to you is terrifying, but sometimes you wonder if perhaps it would be better if you didn’t.

You’d woken up that morning to the sound of rain hitting the high windows in your bedroom, and you had longed to go outside in your thin nightwear and spread your arms and taste the air, smell the rain, feel it hit your body in fat droplets. Your entire being had ached. You’d tried to distract yourself, with what little there was in the barren prison cell that you called a bedroom – but when the door opened at four thirty exactly, and Kai had stood there with his face as impassive as ever, you had not been able to stop yourself.

Hand fastening around his upper arm (you shouldn’t touch him, you know you shouldn’t, but the same four walls are getting to you), you’d begged him;

“I want to go outside.”

If anyone else had touched him like that, they would already be splattered against the walls and floor. But all you get is a furrow of his eyebrows, careful fingers (gloved, of course; the latex against your skin always makes you shudder) pinching at your hand to get you to let go of him.

“No,” he says. “You’ll catch a cold.”

“I don’t care,” you’re petulant, you know, frustration bubbling up in every cell of your body. “If I stay in here for one more day, I will tear myself into pieces.”

“You’re being over-dramatic.”

“Kai—”

“Don’t call me that.” His rebuttal is sharp. “You know I’m doing this for your own good.”

Your face twists into something ugly. Overhaul hates it when you do that; hates the way your brow wrinkles, your mouth moves, your normally lovely face (one of very few he can bear to look at unmasked and not feel as though he is going to get sick from merely breathing the same air of you) marred.

“You’re not,” you hiss at him. “You’re doing this because you’re fucked up! Because you’ve got some weird fucking ideas about what’s clean and what’s unclean, because you’re on a power trip, because you don’t care about other people--” Your voice is pitching and modulating, all of the things that you usually try and keep balled up inside of you spilling out that the floodgates of how unhappy you are is open.

You’re breathing heavy as Overhaul, clearly irked by what you’re saying, tugs at the wrist of one of his surgical gloves. If he’s going to kill you, good – at least it will be better than this, you think, your breath coming in short sharp pants after the outburst.

He lets go. His hands fall to his sides. His golden gaze on you is very level.

“You’re hysterical,” he tells you. An exasperated laugh falls from your mouth.

“Yeah?” You ask him. “Of course I am. Do you know the last time I breathed fresh air?”

“Seven months, two weeks, three days.” He says it without blinking. Your shoulders tense. Has it really been that long? “You haven’t been ill once in that time. The world out there is filthy.”

“It’s normal to get sick,” you try and tell him, but Overhaul is moving forward; past the doorway, and into your room. The door clicks shut behind him, the sound of a lock ominous. You don’t think you’ve ever been alone with Kai in your bedroom.

In the medical examination rooms, sure. In his office. In common areas, back when he was just the boss’ troubled protege and not the boss himself--

His eyebrows twitch in disgust as he notices the dust on your bookshelves. You’d stopped letting any of the cleaners in here a month ago; you’d refused to clean in the mean time, taking whatever small victory against your captor that you could.

“You’ll give yourself respiratory issues,” he says.

“Good,” your voice is cold, but you realise you’ve backed away from him. For all of your attempts to stand up to him, you’re terrified. Everyone knows what he can do. “Better dead than here--”

Gloved fingers around your wrist, so tight you can practically feel them bruising.

“You don’t mean that,” he says. His voice has gotten softer, cajoling. You’re trembling in his grip. “I told you. You’re hysterical.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” you say, but your words feel like you’re spitting them out around a mouthful of gravel. “I—I’m calm--”

Your knees knock against your bed, but Overhaul is still clinging to you; still too close. Your heart is beating so fast that you can hear it pounding in your ears.

“You’re not. You’re hysterical.” He repeats it, calmly. The hand not on your wrist reaches up and cups your face, a gloved thumb stroking across your cheek as if you’re the most delicate thing he’s ever touched. The scent of the latex is overwhelming. “But that’s alright. It’s not your fault.” He clicks his tongue behind the mask. “It’s mine. All of this checking for the physical sickness, and I didn’t think about checking your head.”

You fall onto the bed as his knees knock against yours, your back hitting the wall. It’s just a plain, single bed; rumpled sheets, because you’d fought against any attempt for someone to come in and collect your laundry, too. Overhaul looks silly in your room, you think dimly; like a huge black crow in the nest of a small, frightened wren.

“If you fight,” he tells you, “I’ll disassemble you. I’d rather not. I don’t want to taint you by using my quirk. But . . .” He’s sinking to his knees in front of you, those same methodical hands pushing up the skirt of your dress. “If I did, I’d get a blank mind to work with. I won’t hesitate. But I’d still rather simply fix you without having to break you into pieces first.”

You know him too well to think that he’s bluffing.

After all of the vitriol you’ve spat at him, he’s unwilling to kill you. Would it be worse, to be mindless and brainless under Kai’s quirk? You’ve heard some of his failed experiments before; babbling, drooling, broken things. He’s killed them sometimes just to put them out of their misery.

What if he did that, and your mind remained perfectly capable – just utterly unable to communicate with your body? A prisoner in your own skin. Worse than even now. You swallow back the lump of fear.

“H-how are you going to do that?” You ask him.

You start at how cold the gloved fingers are on your bare thighs, as Overhaul pushes them apart. Cold fear prickles down your spine. You’re too scared to fight back, but everything he’s doing is making you want to run.

“Did you know,” Overhaul says, those same hands sliding higher, to tug at the waistband of your underwear. “In the past, there were rumours that doctors would cure hysteria by genital massage and stimulation?”

His words are very clinical, but there’s a thickness to his voice behind the mask that fills you with revulsion.

“It might be nonsense, of course,” he says. Your underwear is being tugged down, pulled around your thighs, your knees, your ankle. “They theorised that the best cure was regular intercourse, male semen, pregnancy and childbirth--”

“Kai—” Your voice is a soft whine, fear-filled. This time, he doesn’t snap at you for calling him by the name he’s left behind. He simply says;

“Spread your legs.”

You don’t want to. But you want to risk what he’s threatening you with even less, so you tearfully open them as wide as you can go. He shifts forward, and the tip of the beaked mask digs into your inner thigh as he studies you like you’re nothing more than a diagram, not a living, breathing person--

“Next time I’ll have lubricant ready,” he says, under his breath, and your heart seizes up at the implication that whatever he’s going to do to you, there’ll be a next time.

You start at the sensation of gloved fingers gently parting the lips of your sex, Overhaul’s golden eyes drinking in the sight of you spread open and bare. You’re shaking, but for some reason the way he’s looking at you – the utter concentration in his eyes – makes a curl of heat flare deep inside of you.

“Don’t,” you breathe, trying not to squirm. “Please--”

“I don’t want to have to,” he says. His tone remains calm, unbothered. “I’m doing it for your own good, you know that. Just helping you along.” One finger slides through the slit; the sensation of the gloves against your most intimate, heated parts makes the muscles in your thighs clench. It’s . . . not exactly unpleasant, but neither it is pleasant. “Do you think I’m getting any pleasure out of this?”

He doesn’t like getting his hands dirty. You know this; everyone knows this. If this particular thought was so unpleasant to him, you don’t doubt he’d have found somebody else to do it (the thought of one of the other members of the Shie Hassaikai doing this to you fills you with even more revulsion than the idea of Overhaul himself). But you can’t say that out loud. Not after what he’s threatened. So you press your lips together and shake your head, gasp dying in your throat as one of Overhaul’s latex-covered fingers prods gently around your opening.

“You’re getting wet,” he tells you, as if you can’t feel the shameful slick beginning to leak from you. “That will make this easier. Good.”

You hate that the praise makes another jolt of arousal go through you. You don’t want to like the feeling of his gloves, rubbing at your heated cunt; the sensation of a fingertip circling around your entrance, brushing the bud of your clit and making you want to clamp your thighs around his hand.

He sinks the tip of one finger inside of you and you jerk, your hips out of your control as you try and sink away from the intrusion. Overhaul clicks his tongue again in annoyance at you. The hand holding the lips of your cunt open moves, to land on your hip and pin you between the bed and the wall so you can’t squirm again.

“I’ll sedate you next time, if I have to,” he says. “I’m not getting anything out of this. I’d prefer not to have to do it at all--”

He’s lying. You know he is. But you can’t call him out for it, so you press your trembling lips together and try to stop tears spilling out from your lash line as the finger inside of you sinks further and further inside, past his first knuckle, right down to the base.

He crooks it inside of you and your hands curl into the bedsheets, nails digging into your palms through cotton. His touch is curious, exploratory; has he ever actually done this to anybody before? He slides over a rough patch inside of you with the latex-tipped finger and a moan escapes your mouth against your will, your head falling back against the wall. Narrowed golden eyes look up at you as he repeats the motion; taking in the gloss of your lips, the widening of your eyes, the way your shoulders are shaking up and down.

You can feel yourself pumping more slick out; helping the glide of his finger inside of you, as he begins to carefully thrust it in and out of you. His touch is made all the more impersonal by the mask obscuring everything but his eyes and eyebrows; you can’t even hear him breathing.

Your cunt is fluttering around him, pleasure swarming you in breathless waves as he withdraws his finger entirely. He lifts the glove to his eyeline, looking only vaguely interested in how the white latex glimmers with your arousal.

“I’m going to use two now,” he tells you – and that is all the warning you get before two fingers beside one another are opening you up, scissoring your tight channel apart with an ache that you feel up to your hips. You bite back the whimper, but you’re unable to stop the choked breaths that are falling from you as he fucks you with them in steady, constant thrusts.

A covered thumb brushes your clit; swollen, now. Sensitive. Standing to attention. Your hips attempt to jerk in his hold once more, a strangled noise that’s neither pleasured nor pain falling from your throat. You’ve touched yourself, of course you have – even recently, just to try and assuage some of the boredom that fills your exactly-the-same days – but Overhaul’s fingers and thumbs and touch on you are so entirely different from that.

He continues his assault over your clit, those same eyes watching you with that same detached, clinical disposition that he’s had most of the time. There’s a cast to them that suggests there’s something more, but whatever emotion – if, indeed, he’s still capable of that – he’s feeling about having you at his mercy in this way has been pushed to the back of his mind as his thumb rolls and pinches at the bud.

Your body goes all-over heat, Overhaul’s fingers still pumping in and out of you, the slick noises of your shaming wetness echoing around the prison of the four walls you’ve spent seven months in. You’re teetering on the edge of something, hot and needy and wanting – and as Overhaul’s thumb sweeps over your poor aching clit again, you tilt your hips forward for as much stimulation as you can--

And he pulls his fingers out of you.

The heat fades into nothingness as you let out a noise of disappointment. Overhaul’s head tilts to one side, considering.

“What do you want?” He asks you. “Say it.”

No. You don’t ‘want’. He’s wrong. You keep your mouth pressed tight now that the damning noise has fallen out of it; you have managed to not let the tears trembling in your eyes spill forth. Your gaze meets his, defiant and tired and afraid all at once.

“Alright,” he sighs. “If you’re going to carry on being difficult.”

He does it again; his fingers plunging into you, scissoring you apart, rubbing against your folds with a practised agility now that he’s done it for the first time. He has always been a fast learner; always been observant. His thumb is back on your clit with ceaseless assault, and all over again you feel heat begin to build up; tension that crawls into every crevice of your being and worms its way deep inside you despite how badly you don’t want this.

The hand holding your hip loosens somewhat, allowing you to messily thrust your hips into Overhaul’s stimulation. You’re torn; you shouldn’t want to hump against the gloved fingers stimulating you, you should be wriggling and squirming away. But it feels so good; even with the skin-tight covering of rubbery latex, Overhaul’s fingers seem to find every one of your weak points and exploit them.

There it is again, building up on you; a ball of tension in your stomach being gradually wound tighter and tighter, threatening to snap at any moment. Your hips flex against his hand, your fingers clenching and unclenching on the bedsheet--

He denies you the peak of your orgasm for the second time.

And a third.

And a fourth.

“Kai--!” You’re too far gone to even think, after the pleasure has been pulled from you so cruelly, over and over again. The tears spill over your cheeks., rolling down in fat, shaming droplets. Overhaul’s eyes narrow.

“No,” he says, vehement – more emotion in his voice than you’ve heard all day. “You know what to call me.”

You know what he wants you to call him. You know that he wants to leave his old name behind, start again, be someone who can drag the Shie Hassaikai out of the shadows and into light and power once again – and he thinks that the name will help. You gurgle out a sobbing, strangled noise;

“O-Overhaul, please--”

Three fingers are plunged as deep inside of you as they can go, crooked to rub against your sweet spot; as Overhaul murmurs, detached but soft;

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

They thrust into you, his thumb rubbing your clit with firm, certain strokes – and this time, as the orgasm rushes up on you all at once, he doesn’t stop. He fucks you with his fingers through it, his thumb not ceasing the circling. Pleasure washes over you, finally, in great waves and crests. You feel yourself gush on his fingers, soaking him in your wetness (his eyebrows furrow again, at how close your fluid comes to spilling over his bared wrist; but you are too relieved to think about anything other than finally getting what you need).

Your hips flex, gasps falling from your mouth with every thrust of them – and you expect Overhaul to pull his fingers out of you. To stop touching you. Perhaps to strip off his gloves and put on a new pair – you know he always carries spares – and sneer at you as he walks out of the room.

But Overhaul’s fingers do not move from inside of you. The fierce rhythm of his fucking and petting and rubbing does not stop, even as the final aftershocks of your orgasm clench loosely about him and his constant stimulation becomes more of an annoyance than anything else on heated, sensitive skin.

You squirm, trying to push your thighs together to get him to stop touching you – but the hand not fucking you forces your thighs to stay parted with the curl of fingers into supple flesh, leaving you helpless to do anything but let him carry on touching you. Carry on fucking you.

A short, sharp shock of an orgasm rips through you as he swirls his thumb over your clit just so, and you realise that you’re drooling down yourself as well as panting; helpless and sloppy, utterly unable to do anything except lie there and take it until Overhaul decides he’s had enough of touching you.

You come, what? Twice more? Thrice? Until the pulsing of your channel is painful, your skin feeling red raw, your whimpers into the ceiling dry and broken. Only then does he pull his fingers out of you with a lewd pop.

A gush of your fluid that his fingers were stoppering soaks your bedsheets, and you watch, dazed, as Overhaul stands up. He looks down at you for just one moment, that stretches unbearably long in the heat-and-sex soaked atmosphere of the room.

He strips his gloves off of his hands, eyebrows twitching in disgust as he leaves the crumpled latex on your bedside table. He’s sliding on another pair as he speaks;

“Feel better?”

No. No, you don’t. You feel worse. You feel disgusted and violated and aching, your body over-stimulated and exhausted, sweat and drool and bodily fluids clinging to your skin. But if you tell Overhaul that--

“Yes,” you say, voice very soft and small and weak. You cannot see his mouth, but you see the way his eyes flash happily, the overall sensation of him smiling.

Why does Overhaul’s smile make you so scared, when Kai’s smile used to just make you feel warm?

“We’ll need to do it a few more times,” he tells you, as your blood runs to ice in your veins. “Such maladies aren’t cured in a day, after all. But . . .” He turns, rearranging himself carefully, his mask readjusted. You can’t see him as he speaks the next words. “I’d like to try some of the other suggested remedies, too.”

You think of his earlier words.

‘They theorised that the best cure was regular intercourse, male semen, pregnancy and childbirth.’

You’re never going to escape, are you? You’re going to be trapped in this compound until the day you die, and Overhaul is going to think that he’s keeping you safe--

“Take a shower,” he says to you, as he opens the door. It is not a suggestion. “And stop not letting the maids come in here to clean. I’m not having you get sick.”

You think he might be the sick one.

[beevean]

I don't hate it either. It's just that I feel that the manga tries to paint Hector as an edgy, angsty anti-hero, so flawed that the dude hesitates to save Rosaly's life which is fucked up, but it doesn't fully commit like it could

Hector constantly denigrates himself for who he is, a cursed creature that might or might not be human, and yes this is tragic and a symptom of the abuse and brainwashing he went through... but he doesn't really mention what he has done, even though he admits to himself that he used to be happy to serve Dracula. Dude has killed people to the point that he got sick of it, surely that would come up in his angst?

Rosaly can easily tell him "no, you're human, you're a wonderful person" if the issue is just Hector's self-perceived nature. Trying to reconcile the kind man she has known with his past as the Devil's servant, that'd be trickier and more interesting.

And the demons setting fire on his house makes Hector a more innocent victim than if he had done the deed himself, which IMO is unnecessary because I already feel bad for him, kid got told by his mom that he shouldn't be born 😭 let him commit one murder, as a treat 😭 (/jk but not too much)

It's not a writing flaw per se, the story and the character work perfectly fine, it's just my personal preference. Hector is meant to be an anti-hero in an ensemble of flawed but fully heroic protagonists. By all means, explore this cool concept!

Also it's funny that you mention the demons part because to me, that is one of the many, many things from Hector's story taken straight from Berserk lmao. A cursed child thought to bring bad luck and abused because of it? Demons being attracted to him and tormenting him? That's literally Guts.

And Guts did some fucked up shit alright. The Beast of Darkness was born because Guts, at his lowest point, resorted to killing children in his quest to kill one girl turned Apostle. He felt horrible about it, and the demons that want to eat him preyed on his self-loathing.

Now I'm perfectly alright with Hector not being as... a lot... as our Guts here, obviously he wouldn't go around slicing kids in half. But I guess this is why I'm so intrigued, in a way, to explore Hector's worst points of his life, what kind of atrocities he'd commit and how he'd regret them.

(and yeah, demons have been following Guts since he was branded for sacrifice, while apparently Hector was like this since birth. That's a different kind of being fucked up. Between this and Isaac being born from dark sorcerers, I'd also love if the series explored more how black magic works in its setting)

But yeah, what you said <3 I like the idea of Hector being perfectly fine with violent revenge as long as it's focused. And I also love how, despite being angry and emotional for everything that happens to him, he always has the necessary self-awareness to want to become a better person :) (unlike Isaac, who is similarly angry and emotional but lacks that self-awareness)

The only change NFCV made to canon that I like, dare I say even more than canon, is Hector killing his own parents rather than the fire apparently being caused by demons. It doesn't go anywhere in N!Hector's case (at the end of S3 he looks angrily into the fireplace, but sadly he doesn't set Carmilla and Lenore on fire, what a missed opportunity of poetic cinema), but this change would work splendidly in Hector's case.

Imagine. Baby Hector is tormented by demons day and night, who keep whispering in his ear that he doesn't deserve this treatment, and he should just kill everyone, because they should suffer the same pain they put him through, it's only fair. Hector is scared that one day he'll do something "bad", but he can't talk about anyone about these voices, everyone hates him enough and they think he's a weirdo when he stares into nothing, assaulted by vision and voices.

Then, one day, he returns home from his games with the animals… only to see that his mother killed his black kitten. His best friend in the world. "It's cursed, it brings us bad luck, as if you weren't enough." Father, of course, couldn't care less about anything: he never even noticed that his son went around with a cat in his arms, but even if it's dead, so what? It's only an animal. Nothing important, the kid should grow up already.

And Hector snaps. He agrees with the demons, for once. They do deserve to die for hating him so much. So he sets the house on fire, and enjoys his parents' screams, who don't sound too different from the demons screeching in his ear.

But then he returns to his senses, and he's horrified at what he has done, and he has no choice but to flee. He doesn't know where to go, so once again, he listens to the demons guiding him to Dracula's place. After all, he can't blame them for doing something horrible, can he? He was the one who killed his parents and enjoyed it. He really is a horrible creature. At least they care about him.

And there everyone, the demons, Dracula, Isaac, all tell him that he did the right thing, that it's alright to kill those who hurt you, and thanks to that action he saved himself and he found his true home.

And this is how Hector got desensitized to killing… but only those he believes deserve death 🙂 like the mob who executed Lisa, or Isaac when he orchestrated Rosaly's death. But not mankind as a whole.

[jovnie]

The devil's desire | Yoongi

Summary;

You fell in love with a man of many pasts, however he desired more than a relationship. He wanted your soul for eternity.

Words: 13k

Devil yoongi! Demon au! Human reader

Very Dark themes

Warnings: religious concepts, gore, porn without plot, death, big dick yoongi, clubbing, kidnapping, non-con touching, blood, cnc, prey ( y/n ), stalker yoongi, drugged, drugs, chains, cutting, rough sex,

"She's almost ready sir!" a winged creature announced. Nodding in his throne, he took the mirror and looked through it. There you were getting ready to meet a mysterious guy at a club or well hoping to once again. He smirked devilishly knowing you remembered to come back to this particular club.

He previously brought you to this nightclub in Korea, hidden through an alleyway in the darkest part of Busan. There was danger and a constant fear of being robbed, kidnapped. Even if Korea was a safe place, things like kidnapping and murder still happen and even more so at night.

He remembered that you kept a knife and a taser with you, he liked the vulnerability you had going to a place not meant for angels let alone humans at night. He found it charming how oblivious you are to your surroundings as well. He was a man of darkness and hell for sure, but one thing was for sure. He only craved humans who were pure and light energetically. 'Suppose you did know that the Club was own by the devil himself, would that really stop you' he thought.

He watched her put on clothes and noticed how delicate she was in his eyes. No, this wasn't the first time he'd watch her. Not the last either, it seemed like a generational curse in his eyes. He wasn't mad he placed it on the females to feel tempted by his actions, however, each one passed the test. you however failed it the first two times, making it the third time.

Sighing, he put the mirror down and stood up. Stretching, he allowed his black feather wings to elongate and move around before putting them away. Looking at his watch it was a quarter past 11 pm, he'd knew you want to be early and try and catch a good table. However the little worry of what if someone wanted to take you before him, hurt you before him. The thoughts riled him up, making him grab his keys and wait by the portal. Besides the gate doesn't open until 11:59, so his intrusiveness can calm for now.

While waiting, he took out the cute little human hand mirror you'd gifted him a while back. He looked at himself and the scar over his left eye, "maybe this is what attracts them" he chuckled softly.

As time fastened, he waited for the lock in the air to appear. He waited long and hard for that little red lock and once it appeared, he opened all the portals from his underworld to the human world and the other one which lead stright to his club.

Formally known as 666 plaza to hadians, the chosen humans only knew it as void 218. To you it was just another club on the holy day of Sunday. Although you were never brought up with Christianity, you had the basics that everyone knew, loved, and hated.

Waiting by the gates or humanly known as "doors" you pulled out your phone to realize there was no battery or charge. Confused as you could've sworn it was full when you left, you herd the doors open and the mini line began moving. Your eyes wandered the room to find the stairs that led to the upper level where you would meet and see Yoongi. You knew it was stupid to keep doing this, but with yours and his schedule it wasn't at all.

Passing by the few people, you found upstairs and walked up seeing there were already people inside which confused you, but you paid little attention to it. Waiting by the usual black velvet seats and area, you head a familiar voice.

"Is this your regular peach vodka with light ice?" yoongi asked loudly over the now loud music playing. Nodding, you sat up and greeted him before getting your drink. Little did u know about his plans with you or what tonight was gonna be.

Smiling softly, yoongi was gentle eyes admired your beauty as he get down with his own drink. He took a sip of his own drink that was laced with a sleeping drug, one that'd do nothing to him and more to you.

"So what are you doing here?" He asked knowingly.

"Well, it's a Sunday and I have nothing planned so I thought I come by" you lied, hoping the white lie would slip. Nodding, yoongi put his hand on your thighs and moved closer to talk to you about life and each other week. You mentioned something about the campus or school you were studying and he lied about his "forensics" job and how hard it was to see how people died. Continuing, he bought the two of you more drinks and when the timing was right offered one of his. Thanking him for the kind jester, you took a sip. He smiled and also took a sip after you, then placed it back down.

"Good isn't it?" he said, reaching over to his phone and at the time. Noticing he did so you hummed and snuck another sip. Then another. Whatever was in had you almost drinking his entire cup down.

"Omg what is this, what's making it so good. I can't put my finger on it" she said as her words slowed down and her eyes blinked slowly. He watched her body start to feel tired, then at the right moment whispered in her ear "apple, cherry, lime, it's a light alchcolic drink and right, drugs."

Soon as her eyes closed and body dropped, he mustered enough strength to pick her up and sling you over his shoulder. "Another one taken by the devils favorite drink, poison apple," he whispered knowing nobody cared to stop him not could. Well not if they wanted hells punishment if not worse death, even if they were immortal. Walking up the last set of stairs he opened the portal and handed the keys to his servant and told him to look after.

Noting the girl, the servant nodded and knew the king was gonna take his time and would be in a long "meeting." Taking charge of the place, yoongi walked up to his Castle surrounded by blue flames in the middle of nowhere and walked in. He demanded for total privacy, meaning nobody in or even near the castle or be banished for eternity and with that everyone wondered what that soul did to get his undivided attention. From there gossip spread about you from one to another creature and it traveled fast.

Meanwhile, he laid you on the bed and looked at his watch. The drug last about 30 minutes and about 20minuets have gone. From there he requested one trusted worker with a list. The list was :

The devils list

Body Chains and rope

Salt and a black cross

2 Robes

Wipes

Black paint

Sheep's blood

Lube any flavor

Nodding the worker flew off and yoongi allowed his wings to expand out his back and eyes to turn a dark blue color as his hair contained white strips. He watched your sleeping body, before checking the time and seeing he has 5 minutes left before you wake up. Taking that in he stretched his neck and before activating his speed and undressing you, cleaning the area around the bed, making sure the chain locks are stable and if not changing them, turning off lights and lighting candals all around the room and the whole castle and finally sitting down at the edge. Checking the time once again, he had 3 minutes left and so did the worker before he'd get pissed and with that thought the worker came to drop everything off before yoongi told him to get lost.

With the activation of speed he quickly undressed, sat the cup near the bed and filled it with sheeps blood, put salt near the edge without touching it as it stung him, put the cross around his neck and began drawing a ritual circle around the bed then finnaly the walls. To end everything he placed the chains on your hands and feet then connected to each end of the bed. The rest of the stuff he just put next to the bed and laid naked above you waiting for you to wake up.

He knew the drug was strong, but he didnt think it was that strong so he checked the time again and 10 minutes had passed by. Sighing, he began taking the knife and cut a slit on his wrist and placed the wound to your mouth. After a few blinks, you began to wake up and within a second you panked and a minute later realised you were chained.

Weak, scared, targeted, blood covered lips, chained and his favorite vulnerability he finally felt aroused at the sight. With lust in his eyes and an aura darker than night himself, he slowly kissed your cheek.

"Welcome to hell baby" he greeted, confused you closed your eyes and for once prayed you'd be able to wake up in where you left to only get the image of him drugging you and making you pass out. To then opne them and see the same sight.

"Wouldn't that make you?" She paused trying to yank the chains.

"Hades, satan the devil or whatever you humans call me for ruling the underworld. Then yes that's me and as you see, you're caged like a bug trapped in a spider's web. How cute. How naive to trust anyone you've properly met either. " he whispered the last bit in your ear as his lips traveled around your chest and neck leaving hickeys as he moved.

Groaning, you tried yanking the chains hearing a noise and hoping it ment it broke to realise no he fooled you with the sound of his nails knocking on the wood.

"Got you" he chuckled as you began scared, moving his lips towards your breast he sucked softly getting slight moans from your mouth. "Mm good girl continue with it an d maybe I'll spare your soul" he joked, sucking and groaning your other breast with his hands. Ignoring him and forcing your mouth to close. He raised an eyebrow and sat up, he then looked at your mouth and then his length.

"That wasn't smart now was it dsrling?" He asked, as his crouch hovered your mouth and his length being rubbed on your face as the other hand rested on the wall. "Noe open wide and if not, I can allways just shove it. Dont think about biting as i can manually remove teeth of needed" he mentioned as tears rolled down your eyes as he slowly entered his length.

"Good girl, suck it like that" he groaned, slowly moving his hips all the way in and out. With doing so he admired the trlaclesnt salty wetness driping from her eyes that he took a finger and wiped it. Caressing her face as he continued thrusting and groaning till he felt hard enough and then pulled out. Wiping her eyes again he grabbed the lube and posed the non negotiable question of

"May I pretty angel, take this as mine?" He whispered softly as he leaned down to her ear. Nodding yes a tear ran and he licked it clean, causing a slight shiver down her body. "Good" he replied, putting lube around his own length and stoking it on.

"If you cum on me will I get pregnant?" You asked shyly.

"Mm, well yes and that's my goal princes or should I say queen. Your body is mine after all." he tells, taking his fingers and tracing a cross between your chest as he watches a dark mark appear in a mini cross between your chest.

Crying harder knowing you've not only been kidnapping, but there was an even little chnace of seeing your family friends and well your little pet. "I love when you cry my love" he said softly as his fingers softly rubbed against you clit and his lips attach to yours. Knowingly you kissed back and surprisingly it felt like comfort but tasted like sin and poison. One your body will soon adapt to. As your mouths moved in unison, his fingers rubbed softly around your bud and you were finally able to relax and enjoy the feeling. He had an undeniable hold on your body, one your soul started to grow a liking too the longer her rubbed and kissed your lips. Soon you became hungry for more and grinded against his hand and with the hint he rubbed quicker as you moaned down his throat and his free hand now snaking behind your back. Moaning more you called his name, in which he loved begging you to say again.

"YOONGi!"you moaned louder as his stomach and cock felt it making it twitch slightly. stoping his finger he guided his tip and put his chin on your neck and slid in slowly, taking his time as you adjusted before moving faster. You pulled the chains trying to hold onto him but he shook his head no and softly held your body up with the help of the chains and began pounding into you.

No it was not a speed nor length you were used to, but the feeling you could by a heartbeat. You legs became weak, your back arched hard, your mouth could only stay open and your head was in a daze as he fucked you without mercy. His length was big enough to make you scream from the top of your lungs and beg for more. He loved that and too started moaning which soon started to sound like deep breathes and heavy grunts. He loved the warm, pulsing feeling of your pussy on him as it dripped with cum around him.

"Ah, fuck, That's hot!" he moaned loudly. Moving his hips closer, he pushed his length in deeper and the sounds of his hips crashing into yours echoed the room. You were now at a point of no return, all you could do was moan and take him, which only increased his horniness and overall arousal.

"I'm close!" yoongi groaned and panted as his hips movements slowed down, but the deepness was still there. Shopping, yoongi's body out of tiredness fell on top of yours and he kissed your neck softly. Without enough energy to pull out, he came deep, groaning in your neck and laying still. Both overly fucked out and deep breathing, laid there until yoongi got enough energy to unchain your hands and drink from the cup of blood that started to reek and fill the room. The room that once smelt like lavender and vanilla now smelled like sex and sheep's blood. Leaning down to kiss you, you kissed back with your body begging to ache like hell and body starting to contort you screamed in pain. Whispering something into your neck, he held you close to his chest as you grabbed and scratched his back till the blood came from it.

"Submit and it'll go quickly." he whispered tired as can be. Taking his advice, you closed your body and let it take over. Suddenly your eyes and hair became white as a dove and the pain stopped. Not only did he claim you as his, the kiss of blood crowned you queen of the underworld.

They laid naked as each could no longer have the strength to get up, but hold each other in a soft hug. Comferting and relaxing, considering what had to happen. They slept wedded that night, perfectly times as the full moon was now full and the ritual circle could light up red as the two came into harmony.