#shifter moth

[jestre]

She is here! 💙💙💙💙 I worked with Jitty with him drawing out the commission to be how I enjoy the soft idea of looking while being the female me who is Jessie. 💙

🎨: @jitterbugjive

[darkhersheys]

Random pages of my sketch book

[myut0eve]

Christmas draws of my OCs/DnD Characters!

[le-agent-egg]

kinda cringe but oh well. i started making a buncha ocs in 8th grade and i’m finally developing the world and stuff and i figured i’d make my sona!

friends said i’d be a moth, the place where i think i’d live is cold and kinda drab, so i like the idea of a rosy maple moth because i love colour an shit.. mof..

(there’s some yapping in the tags if you wanna know a bit more about this!)

[subukunojess]

OCs for the Phantom Moth AU

Hey guys. Trying to get this out of my head before it disappears, but I finally got an idea for some of my OCs for the Mario + Rabbids AU I came up with, The Phantom Moth. It took some research and reading great fics from mutuals to get something going. A few musical terms here and there as well!Without further ado, here are the OCs that will appear in my AU Fics:

Brio Harper (They/Them)

The Main Character and Protagonist for the AU! I'm still undecided whether or not to keep them or experiment with reader fic. I had never written the latter before. Well, maybe once a few years ago. But I'll figure it out. Brio is a gender-neutral musical name meaning vitality. Brio is a genderfluid nonbinary human who loves entertaining and creating things as well as living life and making new friends. They love several types of music and the supernatural/monsters. Due to their small rise in popularity, a childhood bully has placed a monster curse on them. The main focus in the AU is Brio coming to terms with their identity and what happens when the curse affects them in more ways than one.

Otieno the Rabbid (He/Him)

A black and white Rabbid who acts like the MC's bodyguard, agent, and advisor. He is loosely based on my past pet rabbit Marceline. To describe him, if he were in the Mario and Rabbids canon, he'd be similar to Edge but a little more energetic. Maybe not a Spark Hunter, but a Spark Defender? In this AU, Otieno is a rebel/vigilante type who's somewhat retired and somehow became friends with MC/Brio to the point that he helps them out however he can whether it would entail being a spokesperson or escorting someone out if they were making MC/Brio uncomfortable. Otieno left behind his shadows, but the shadows are on the hunt for revenge.

Chanson the Peek-A-Boo (He/Him)

Phantom's Right-Hand Ghost! Before being Phantom, Thomas Phan was a normal Rabbid outcast who would sometimes hang out in the lonely parts of the city. Near a graveyard/sewers, Thomas met two supernatural beings who had forgotten their names. One of them was a Peek-A-Boo who Thomas took a liking to because he could lure in anyone and enjoys talking about literature and the arts. He and the eccentric being love hanging out with Thomas. One night, something happens, and the two see Thomas in a ditch, wounded with a large bat and a phonograph. They both try to help but to no avail. They then witness Thomas's death and his transformation into Phantom. Still feeling enraged and confused at what happened to him, the Phantom unconsciously makes his only friends grow as well. After the breakdown, the Phantom decides to make a new name for himself and employ his friends into being his staff, also naming them. Chanson (French for Song) is the second in command and Phantom's advisor. He is the one who helps organizes the contest for Phantom to get a partner. Strict and Serious but understanding. He is used to Phantom's antics and has similar but minor siren powers like Phantom.

Misfix the Medician (They/Them)

The Healer of Phantom's staff. They along with Chanson are friends of Phantom when he was Thomas Phan. Unlike the others, Misfix gave a name for themself. It's a mixture of "misfit" and "fix". They are a nonbinary Medician who is in charge of healing anyone despite their eccentric and excited personality akin to the mad scientist trope. They are the wild card, but the best at what they do. In the main fic, they examine MC/Brio after the contest. They have three siblings who stay with them and are also employed by Phantom. Misfix is the second oldest. Along with Chanson, Misfix is the other giant of the staff who loves their size.

Deciso the Spellraiser (She/They)

The supposed holder of the brain cell for the staff besides Chanson. She is unrelated to the Spectral Siblings but is friends with Adagio. Deciso (Musical term meaning firm) is a living mage who can float, cast spells, and summon anything. She is considered a recent hire when one night she visits Adagio and discovers that he and his siblings are part of a comeback plot for some giant monster ghost bat. She joins the staff mainly to help the siblings out, but to also not make Phantom upset/eat her. Deciso acts like a mediator and deals with the relations between the upper/daily world and the dark underworld they live in. Out of the staff, Deciso is the only one who keeps her regular size, so she gets carried around a lot. Despite her initial worries, Phantom does not want to mess around with her. Mostly no-nonsense, but she does know how to let loose once in a while.

Glissando the Oozer (He/Him)

The Sniper of Phantom's staff. Misfix's younger brother. He is also the apothecary/poison master of the staff, able to detect poisons and create potions along with Deciso's help. Whenever there is an enemy monster that Phantom cannot handle or they need to kidnap someone, Glissando (musical term meaning to slide) is on the job to poison the monster or make elixirs with side effects. He is sly and sneaky. A chill kind of guy. He, Libero, and Adagio are size shifters curtesy of the Phantom.

Libero the Ghostly Walker (He/They)

An Extra Assistant to Phantom. The youngest of the siblings. Unlike his siblings, Libero (musical term meaning free) is a pure ghost who wears chains. While he and the rest of the staff liked to sing, he was the one who sang beautifully/the most. While Phantom's power grew back in the early stages of his transformation, there was an incident that made Phantom weak and damaged his phonograph. Libero comes to help but during this vulnerable time, he gets absorbed into Phantom. With the help of his family, he does get back out, but without a voice. His voice was unconsciously taken by Phantom which was used to repair him. Although Libero was saddened, he would gladly sacrifice his voice for an amazing ghost such as Phantom. Since he does not have any distinctive powers like his siblings, Libero acts as moral support and helps in the background whenever he can. He is mute and he uses sign language and writing to get his thoughts across. He can hum, but it would mostly sound like a ghostly moan with no distinct voice to it. Very curious, kind, and shy. Phantom (and eventually MC/Brio) would be the only ones who could hear him speak in their minds. Phantom can use Libero's voice in addition to all the others he absorbed in his voicebank to his advantage. Libero's voice is of a higher/lighter register.

Adagio the Depleter (He/Him)

The assassin of Phantom's staff and the Eldest of the Spectral Siblings. He is the typical brooding big brother type who doesn't want to deal with anyone and would protect his younger siblings with his life or afterlife as it were. He initially went against working with Phantom, saying that Misfix should get out of the situation by themself but after much convincing (ie. Hypnotism/Persuasion and threats), he reluctantly joined the staff. Adagio (musical term meaning in slow tempo) works along with Glissando in dealing with enemies of Phantom's plot. He knows how to steal the life force of his victims and has given pointers to Phantom on the matter. He along with Chanson acts like the foil to Otieno; bodyguards who would do whatever it takes to protect their charges.

Until next time! I can't wait to write these characters. Which one is your favorite so far?

[mag150cul-de-sac]

The first rule of shape shifting is to have fun and NOT be yourself

[bunny-jpeg]

hibernation

capt. john price

tags: smut/pwp, bear!price, size difference/kink, breeding kink, hibernation, shifter au, established relationship, living room sex, doggy style, rough sex, pregnancy

hefty lover, that was the only way you could describe your lover. the bear shifter known as john price. and you were his lovingly perfect mate.

price's paws were big, he was well over a head taller than you and when he showed you how strong he was, it made your knees wobble a little. "c'mere, lovie. come to your big bear." and like a moth to a flame, you got into your lover's arms. you held onto his hairy, strong forearms and felt protected by your grizzly lover.

you knew when the leaves started to change colours that your mate was going to get ready for the hibernation months. it meant being out in the woods more and acquiring a healthy diet of salmon and berries. fatty foods to bulk up during the long sleep.

you had your own food from the grocery store in town, you couldn't live off the diet of a bear. but, your mate happily fished and made sure he could make it through the winter. as a result of the bulking and the heart diet, your mate got much heavier and harrier. that didn't help your sexual attraction to him.

he started to notice your neediness when he kept catching the scent of your wet pussy. it only made him need you more. the attraction was mutual.

he knew soon he was going to be in a deep sleep, and he wanted you as much as he could get before the hibernation started. it all came to a head a week before his sleep started when he needed his mate more than anything.

"c'mere, lovie. come to your big bear." he palmed himself through his sweatpants. he was in a tank top and flannel bottoms. you could see the bulge in them and how hairy he was all over.

he looked like a protector, a provider. your big bear.

price soon had you over the solid wood coffee table that was your mate's project over the summer. he was painfully hard as he carefully took off your own sweatpants and your panties (they had little bears printed on them) and he admired your cunt.

he like his mate's pussy, a little fuzzy like him. he didn't need you plucked, shaven or waxed. he needed you the way nature intended. he cooed, "there she is, the showstopper." he cupped your warm cunt for a moment before he went to pull down his bottoms and get out his cock.

his briefs were under his heavy balls. he stroked his cock, he knew he was big. he could scare any man and make any woman drool with what was between his legs. but you weren't scared of anything, and only you were allowed to touch his cock.

you took your mate perfectly.

he rubbed his length up against your slit and chuckled, "ah, they're kissing, petal." he smeared his precum up against your needy sex.

you moaned, "please, honey." you felt the pleasure race up and down your body. his lust was infectious. his love was addictive.

only a wild woman could love a bear, and you were more in love with price than anyone else could be.

"mmm, you feel amazing and i'm not even in, beautiful." he licked his lips, he was hungry for you. his darling missus. when he sank into you, you felt heaven splash over you.

you gripped the edge of the table for support, some kind of support to hold onto while your larger lover moved against you with heavy thrusts.

price had been holding out on breeding you. it was wasn't easy for a human to carry a shifter baby, especially a bear one. and keeping up with price along was a task in itself.

but with you bent over the table, he couldn't help himself. he wanted a reminder of him as you got through the winter. he continued to thrust up inside of you. he was encouraged by your sweet moans, it made him hungry for you. he moved you up and down his cock, he needed you with a heated want.

you were a perfect little thing, his little human. his delicate little mate that he needed to protect. to love. to breed.

"that's it, love. you take me so fuckin' well. made perfect for me, you have the most beautiful cunt i've ever had the pleasure to fuck. you're heaven sent, a gift from mother nature herself. my personal goddess." he groaned while his mouth ran like a motor.

you whined in response as you felt your mate press his hairy chest against your back. he got his shirt off because he really pressed you up against the table. no wonder he spent the summer making sure it was strudy enough. a good place to lay out his mate and fuck her until she saw stars.

"that's my beautiful, girl." He said, "you look great under me. next time, i take you, we'll be face to face so i can watch you as you cum. my fuckin' angel, all mine." he continued to fuck you. he watched your ass bounce with each of his movements.

"please, john! ah! fuck, your cock feels so good." your eyes squeezed shut from the rush of pleasure in your core. he knew exactly how to make you feel good.

no other man ever made you cum before you met john price. on his first try he made your back arch and your toes curl.

your pulse quickened as the pleasure continued to build in your core. you loved being price's mate. to love him was a journey that you enjoyed. your pussy wetness drenched your thighs as price continued to fuck you from behind.

price knew how to be gentle, but where was the fun in that? not when he could bounce you on his hard cock at a feverish pace. pleasure bubbled in your soul as you felt on cloud nine.

such a rough lover, using size, experience and age to his advantage. he had you under his mercy. but that didn't matter to you, not when the shocks of pleasure bloomed in your head. not when you found the ache for your lover being filled. the bear shifter knew how to make heaven on earth. you held on tightly to the edge of the table as the movements grew faster. his cock hit against the softest parts of you.

"I love you."

"i love you too."

you whined a little and your feet dug into the patterned rug under the table. you bit your bottom lip to try and not be too loud. but price loved it when you were loud.

he wanted to hear every noise you made, it only turned him on further. price loved everything about you. you made him feel more wild than anything else, including turning into a bear. your allure had him on his knees begging for more. with you he could always be greedy, he was a possessive bear with you. territorial.

you didn't last much longer. not with such a heat pumping through your body. you were gasping with an insatiable want as he made sure you came before he did. you held onto the table tightly as you came. the clench in your body as you felt the inferno of lust around you.

price maintained his pace and fucked you through your orgasm. your heightened noises only sent him over the edge as his pace started to stagger. with a few heavy thrusts he finished inside of you. he held your hips up with his large hands to make sure it got all the way into your womb.

when he stropped, he wasn't finished. he had less than a week to make sure you didn't forget your mate over the long winter months.

-

price made a gruff noise and turned over onto his back. his eyes open, it wasn't quite spring yet. he raised his head and scratched his beard. he looked around the quiet bedroom with bleary eyes and noticed you not in the bed next to him.

even though you couldn't hibernate, you had been away from the nest for too long. he heard a small crash from the kitchen and he was up on his feet. he lumbered over and saw you by the oven with a tray of brownies in your hand.

you looked almost guilty at the sight of your mate standing there. you said, "sorry, big bear."

price smiled sleepily, "it's alright. you eat up for you and the cub." he came over and gave your soft bump a nice rub, "come back to bed soon. can't sleep without you." and gave you a kiss on the top of your head before he lumbered back to bed. back to sleep until the snow melted <3

[alnilaem]

bury me beneath the basswood tree

pairing: ghost/soap/reader [12k]

rating: 18+ only. minors don’t interact.

tags: non-con sex, kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, size kink, forced fellatio, forced cunnilingus, impact play, brief watersports, double penetration in two holes, forced breeding, implied hybrid/shifter au

Needing time away from her humdrum life at home, she ventures into the woodland for respite. Little does she know, straying into that cabin in the woods will be the worst—or best—decision she’ll ever make. Depending on who you ask.

all my thanks to @/ohbo-ohno! thank you for being the best beta reader and sitting through my abhorrent typos <3

AO3 MIRROR

The mountain’s breadth of trees and foliage are written with prose. 

It’s repetitive. Mind-numbing. She’s already passed this necrosed tree stump five times before. On the sixth circle, she treks through the undergrowth like it’s curdled milk, the tiny scythes of branches whispering against her arms and slicing her open the same way thumbs tear into oranges. 

Dehydration crystallises like sediment in her mouth. It makes her bones heavy, bending against her flesh as if they’re groceries about to tear through a plastic bag. The balls of her feet are calcified, her thighs chafed. They rub against her threadbare jeans the same way a match reacts with red phosphorus to produce a flame. It burns, and so do her muscles. They feel moth-eaten and spent. Hung out to dry. 

The stench of damp soil and sugar maple impairs her like an opiate. The peal of idle birdsongs grate against her ears. She’s sick of it—she’s been here for three days—and already, she’s sick of it. 

She tries her phone again. It’s unresponsive, no signal. She unfurls her map but it’s mottled with rainwater and mud. Her lungs feel dry, pruney, as the dew drops slipping off fern plants seem to replicate the tears thawing in her eyes. 

Evening mist hangs over the ground, and the sky turns red-bottomed as it progresses into nightfall. It’s as if the mountain is sentient. Nocturnal. Stirring from a torpor once the sun sets and awakening all that lives within it. 

A sob wracks her ribs. It has the same effect of a bullet, ricocheting. She keeps moving even though she doesn’t know where she’s going. She believes that should she continue walking, nothing will be able to catch her. Not the spindly tree branches that take the shape of arms or serpentine shrubbery. She won’t give the mountain any time to fossilise her, if only she keeps moving.  

Her movements are clumsy though. Her eyesight is hindered by panicked tears, turning everything shapeless and blurry. She keeps tripping and skinning her knees like the hide of a pomegranate, her flesh peeling back to show the red pulp of her innards. 

It was a rashly undertaken lapse of judgement that brought her here. To a conscious mountain that lives and breathes and feels her fear. It was her heart, empty, carved out and replaced by brutal loneliness. Her friends back home are heedless and her parents are never satisfied with what she does. She figured that if none of them would listen, the woodlands would. 

And listen, they did.

When she cries out, the wind howls. When she changes her direction, pivoting on her heel, the soil rumbles. She sees things—a shadow spotting her vision, not composed of matter—peeking from behind a tree trunk before quickly slipping away. She witlessly calls out, asking if anyone’s there, and is met with the forest's silent presentiment. She feels the stark pressure of piercing eyes sprawling down her dewy neck, sweeping over her body. 

The longer she spends lost, the more she sinks into Appalachia.

It pulls her down like molasses. Like she’s an innocent fly trapped in glue. Soon, she knows there’s no hope. She knows her scent is written into the bark of trees—supple, sugary. A treat for whichever predator finds her first. 

A brown bear, swinging its claws at her until her entrails are threadbare and striated. A snake, injecting venom in her blood. A bobcat if she’s lucky. It would be a quick death—sinking its loose jowls into either side of her neck until it snaps and she goes slack. 

She’s apt to let go. She’s keen to yield to the alluring call of the woodland to let go, to fall to the forest floor and sit there until she rots. Until the roots worm into her breathing wounds and branches start growing out of her mouth. The urge to stop moving and become one with the mountain is suddenly cogent, leaves no margin of doubt. It comes with the promise of eternal respite and divine mercy. She’s about to find a cliff to jump off of, but before she can, something catches her attention. 

A plume of smoke curling in the air. 

Whorls of slate-grey soot thinning and disappearing into the sky. She looks for the source and follows it blindly, shouldering past pine needles and hawthorn and all but sobbing as a cabin comes into view. It’s made of wood and the tufts of wildflower that sprout from its thin fissures. It looks neglected and eaten by the elements. Its vaulted roof is stained by the off-white assault of bird droppings, discoloured by acid rain. Some of the windows look covered with dewy newspaper, but still, she knows it can’t be vacant. The smoke undulating from the chimney tells her that.

She staggers onto the porch. Her fist rasps against the door, clippings of wood burying itself into her skinned knuckles as she wildly knocks. Silence. Not even the leaves flutter against each other. Fleetingly, a stint of panic seizes her. What if nobody’s home? But she’s twisting the knob and pushing herself inside anyway, dropping her bag to the floor with a thump, stepping inside.

The cabin makes for a liminal space, smelling of sawdust and pine. There’s a layer of dust on every surface, making the air thick. All the furniture is carved from wood and a couple taxidermied deers are mantled above the stone fireplace, looking more like warnings than decoration. The pelt of a black bear is unfurled across the floor, and a few trinkets are strewn around—a bookshelf of spine-cracked novels, dead plants hanging from the ceiling beams. A mountain of used cigarettes, but strangely, no ashtray. 

There’s everything but picture frames. Nothing she can use to humanise the cabin nor the people supposedly living in it.

She guides herself to the kitchen by feeling the walls. There’s a piped stove in the corner and cast iron tools hanging above the counter. Her stomach bubbles, and immediately, she starts scouring for food. 

There’s three barrels by the door, and upon popping them open, the stench of brine sprays her in the face. It’s fish with a crust of salt, preserved. In the other barrel is meat buried in shelled corn, and fermented poultry in the last barrel. 

It’s all raw and bloody. She steps back, gagging, turning her attention to the shelves that line the faraway wall. Jars of pickled cucumber and carrots. Garlic braids hanging from the edge. Rusty milk churns nestled in the corner. 

There’s a galvanised tub full of ice on the floor. She digs through it and almost moans at the jars of jam. She untwists one, sticks her fingers in it, and wipes it clean with her tongue and teeth. It’s tart and tangy but it’s food, sticking to the walls of her stomach, satiating her. And once she starts she can’t stop. She goes back to the wall and finds a stained jar, fishing out a handful of fermented cabbage, stuffing it in her mouth, her face tightly puckering at the sharp sourness.

The juice of the food goes spilling past her lips, sluicing down her chest. It sticks to the chasm between her tits and mixes with sweat, making her shirt cling to her skin, revealing the barest outline of her nipples. She’s so engrossed in keeling over the counter and stuffing her face that she doesn’t even notice the pointed shift in atmosphere. The deer outside stopping their rutting, the trill of birds ceasing. The leaves stilling, as if holding their breaths to hide. Thick, silvery clouds nestling together and eclipsing the sun, casting a thin overcast over the woodland, darkening the already-dim surroundings. 

She’s too preoccupied to recognise the tell-tale croak of the door swinging open. It’s tinny, but bullied by the sound of her smacking on marinated cabbage. She doesn’t notice the dull, throbbing footfalls. Pays no heed to the stench of blood invading her senses because she believes it’s coming from her dry, leathery lips that split open as she widens her mouth to fit the cabbage inside.

It’s only when the room darkens, a box-shaped shadow sweeping over her vision, does her blood run cold. She freezes with a handful of vegetable raised halfway to her lips, the brine rolling off a cabbage leaf like it’s an awning, dropping to the floor—drip, drip, drip—the rapid succession of shedding liquid hitting the floor sounds similar to the beating of her heart against her fickle, feeble ribs. 

The saline spray in her mouth gets soaked up by her tongue, making it puffy, too big for her mouth. She turns around clemently—treating the shadow like a wild animal—no sudden movements. She goes rigid. 

It can’t be human. 

It’s huge. Bigger than anything she’s ever seen before. Sweeping shoulders, broad thighs. Its neck is bent uncannily because it’s too big to fit in the doorway. Its chest rises heavily like a bull.

She tries to find a face, and when she does, the blood is drained from her.

It just makes her feel… uncomfortable. Its face is the poor imitation of a human, as if someone tried drawing one from memory but scarcely failed. Failed to capture the humanity, the animation, leaving it looking like a half-convincing resemblance. Its tapetum lucidum glows yellow, burning in the thin mist of moonlight that penetrates the newspaper sticking to the windows. 

It stares blankly at her. The hair on her arms stick up, a bead of sweat slices down her neck. 

“I’m sorry…”

The creature raises an arm and pulls on a hanging bead-chain, tugging on the light, which is simply a naked bulb in the middle of the kitchen. The kindle is weak but does more than the delicate moonlight. Just barely illuminates its face. His face.

She tries not to let her fear show. Tries not to preen under his depthless eyes, the mean twine of his lips. His hair that seems to have been shaved too closely to his scalp, if the nicks and small cuts on the shells of his ears are anything to go by. 

He grumbles an idle prusten. He rolls his elbows back—his shoulder blades unfurling like folded wings—and twists his thick neck.

“What’re you doin’ in my home?”

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, her words stifled around a wad of cabbage. “I– I’ve been lost for three days. I came up for a hike but lost my way and I saw your cabin and I’m sorry, but I’m just so hungry and–”

A deep, guttural voice peals from the living room. 

“Simon!” It says. “Where should I chuck the deer? It’s too big for the livin’ room.”

The aforementioned Simon, she presumes, doesn’t answer the unobserved voice. He keeps his eyes on her, face twisted into a puckered, mean mug.

A string of footsteps precede the face that appears behind Simon’s shoulder. A rounder, ruddier face. A salt-and-pepper stubble and eyes so blue they glow like bioluminescence. 

Johnny acts surprised as if Simon hadn’t smelled her from miles away. Her honeyed scent roiling off of her, curling into the air and thinning between the trees. Her sweat pooling in the gusset of her panties, raw and pungent. 

He’s purposely coy. It’s written into the furrow of his brows and the caper of his cupid lips but the girl is too disoriented to catch on. She looks at him and beseeches, but almost faints at the deer hanging limply over his shoulder. He holds it like it weighs nothing—a sack of sprouting potatoes.

He coos. “Who’s this?”

“Lost bird,” Simon grunts. “Found her diggin’ through our food.”

“Oh, poor lassie,” Johnny hums. More so to Simon than the girl, which makes her squirm. “She didnae mean any harm, Simon. She’s just hungry… tha’ right, lass? Are ye hurt?”

She stutters out a nod, gesturing to how her jeans cling to her knees, sun-bleached and darkened with blood. She rolls her shirt over her ribcage, showing them her wounded torso. How her skin sticks to her bones.

Johnny bristles. 

“The lass needs a place to stay, Simon,” he whispers. “And she’s hurt. Bleeding.”

They talk of her as if she’s advertised merchandise in a magazine catalogue. She squirms.

Simon turns to look at her. The depression in her cheeks due to her hunger and the split skin of her mouth. The pert curve of her breasts. The desperate look in her eyes. 

He grumbles, looks over his shoulder at Johnny. “I’ll start the fire. You take the deer out back and drain it ‘fore it hardens.”

“Aye,” Johnny says. He thumps away in clunky boots and a thin t-shirt and jeans. The deer sways with his gait and disappears behind the screen door when he steps outside. 

She redirects her attention to Simon, who’s already looking at her. More specifically, at her pulsing neck. His jowls are slightly unfastened, his pupils blown out and eclipsing his irises. 

Presentiment settles in her stomach. She blanches. 

Suddenly, Simon is grunting and gripping her arm, heedless towards her whimper of fear and fleeting stint of resistance. His nails are sharp, digging sickle-shaped impressions into her arm. He drags her down the hallway and into another room—a bathroom—and tugs the flickering light on. It lacks sheen, barely illuminates the room from its moss-covered nooks to the tiled floor caked with crusted dirt. 

(The lightbulb is so dull. It doesn’t reach the farthest corner of the bathroom where the radiator is placed. The radiator bathed in black, hidden beneath the lip of shadows, so she isn’t able to see the forgotten handcuff hanging limply from one of the pipes.)

Simon works his heavy body around the bathroom. He leans over the clawfoot tub—which he dwarfs—and twists open the spigot, watching as brown-coloured water slowly ripens into something clear, gushing out of the faucet. He stuffs a plastic plug into the rust-ringed drain. 

He straightens back into his full height. All-encompassing, panoramic. Simon is so impossibly large that it’s a wonder he has so much muscle packed under his skin. Rustic, hard thighs. A shirt that bends against his arms, about to snap. 

“Take a bath,” he commands. “Get y’rself cleaned up.”

Simon shoulders past her and ducks to exit the bathroom. There’s no door separating it from the rest of the house, but a multitude of beads hanging above the threshold to imitate one. She keeps her eyes trailed on it while she strips—peeling off her jeans, pulling her shirt over her head. Rolling down her panties and consciously hiding them beneath her other clothes. 

She clutches the lip of the bathtub for leverage and dips her toes into the water. Immediately, she melts. The hot water swallows her foot and travels like a spool of thread to the rest of her, weaving itself into her wounds, licking her open like the first thaw of spring. 

She submerges herself fully, bringing her knees to her chest. Her neck hoists backward and into the water, soaking all the grit and dirt knotted into her hair. It’s like plying through syrup as she lifts an arm, retrieving a homespun bar of soap, clutching it to test her grip. There’s coily hair knotted into it and sticking to the dried bubbles. She brings it up to her nose, sniffing. Hesitates before rubbing it into her skin and around her throbbing wounds. 

The water idly sloshes as she cleans herself. It’s a hollow sound, amplified by the echoey room. She trails her hand below her waist, slipping her sudsy fingers between her lips and stroking, rubbing herself clean. 

Beneath the tinny sounds of water surrounding her like a petticoat, something else peals out. Something like a whine. Her fingers cramp above her warm cunt and she goes taut. She turns her head to the threshold of the bathroom and nearly screams but her throat puckers before she can, blocking it, her mouth hanging open in a soundless screech instead.

It’s Johnny. He stands in the middle of the hallway, peering into the bathroom and staring at her, half-obscured by the bead curtains. He looks like a sit-and-wait predator like this—silent and unassuming, if not for his blindingly-white smile shining through the curtain like strobes of sunlight breaking past trees. He steps inside now that he’s been spotted, and that causes ice to lick her organs—she sinks her breasts below the water’s surface, squeezing her thighs together. She bristles as Johnny strides impossibly close, the lip of the tub cutting into his thighs.

He stinks of sweat and iron and wood. His t-shirt clings to his skin, darkened with deer blood, outlining the barest hint of his bulky chest.

He grins. “Brought ye some clean clothes.” 

“Oh. I… thank you,” she mumbles. “You can leave it on the toilet if you don’t mind?”

Johnny sets it down. A folded flannel and a pair of sweatpants. He idles a little longer, still smiling, before leaving the bathroom. She counts the minutes in her head and tries to find the right time to leave the tub, outstretching her hand for the towel once it comes to her. But the towel is just scarcely out of reach. The terrycloth grazes her fingertips, teasing her. It’s like it was methodically placed there. Bait at the end of a fish hook to ply her out of the water and stick her ass in the air, reaching over to grip the cloth and tug it over her breasts, stepping out of the tub.

Her eyes stay locked on the crude door while she changes. She buttons the flannel up to her neck and takes heed of the pointed absence of any undergarments, slipping her legs into the gauzy sweatpants, tying them at her waist.

Johnny bursts in as if on cue. He’s still slick with blood, his mohawk odd-angled, spun-thread and matted to his head with sweat. His cheeks bulge around another grin.

“Too big for ye, is it?” He pants. “Might as well take it off. Might trip and hurt yerself again. Wouldn’t want that happenin’, right honey?”

Johnny shortens the space between them in one stride. His fingers, thick and jaded, are already fumbling around the knot she tied, pulling it out of its bow and letting the sweatpants fall, pooling into a crimp around her ankles. 

The flannel is big enough to reach her thighs. Still, she clenches her fingers around the hem and tugs it lower, preening under Johnny’s smouldering gaze. It’s almost paradoxical how it works—his eyes are icy blue, yet they have the same effect as basaltic molten. Burning hot. He’s fixated on her skinned knees, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“Simon’s got the fire goin’,” he says. “Let’s go get yer wounds cleaned too, aye?”

Johnny’s walking out before she can blink. She follows after him, flustered, stumbling into the living room lit by a dulcet fire. Simon’s kneeled beside it, sticking his hand in to adjust a lopsided stock of wood, unaffected by the flames that eat away his arm hair. Johnny takes the girl by the scruff of her neck, guiding her to a hand-crafted chair placed conscientiously in front of the fireplace. He presses on her—the sensitive divot between her shoulder and her neck—and pushes her into the seat, unzipping a first-aid kit. 

Johnny takes her feet and pulls them into his lap. The angle makes her flannel hitch up, exposing her bare cunt to the hot embers of the fireplace, and the equally hot embers of Simon’s prying eyes. She squeaks and covers herself, averting her gaze as Simon’s stare darkens into the colour of midnight splash hanging over the sky.

“You’ll feel a wee sting,” Johnny warns. He rips the corner off a rag and drenches it in vodka, poising it over her flayed knees. “Should probably give my hand a squeeze or somethin’, ye ken? To lessen the burn, o’ course.”

She hesitates but slips her hand around Johnny’s all-encompassing one, her fingers barely meeting whilst wrapped around his palm. She winces when the ethanol meets her wound, shooting through her veins, and tries recoiling into herself. 

But the amplitude of her pain swells, and her muscles girdle. 

It’s Simon’s massive hand splitting itself across her thigh that keeps her pinned to the chair. His fingers bite rivets into her skin, the pinch overriding the sting of her tissue soaking up the alcohol.

“Stay still when he tells you to,” he grumbles. “Otherwise it’ll hurt.”

She wriggles uncomfortably. Tries not to flinch when the rag meets her knees again and burns her wound. Simon’s hand doesn’t leave her thigh until he’s throwing another block of wood into the fireplace.

Johnny hums. “So, what’re you doin’ up here? Religious retreat? Mental health?”

She smacks her lips, unsure if she should answer that. She chances a glance towards Simon and bristles because for some reason, she just knows that if she lies, somehow, he’d tell.

“Um. Just stepping away from home, I suppose,” she mumbles. “Friends. Family.”

“Oh. They dinnae care about you?”

She flinches. Not because of the vodka against her skin, but Johnny’s implications. 

“No,” she says. Her words are so fickle, so distorted by misery that not even she believes it. “They do care about me. I just needed space.”

He nods. Slowly, his eyebrows press together. “I don’t remember much of my family. It’s a wee bit odd. Can’t say if they liked me or not…”

Simon squeezes the back of his neck. “Enough of tha’. Pay attention.”

Johnny makes a sound like he’s humiliated. It’s only when he unrolls a spool of gauze, wrapping it around her kneecaps, is he afforded mercy when Simon changes the topic.

“Where’s the bird gonna sleep?”

“We’ve still got a cot in the root cellar, aye?” Johnny replies. “For hurricanes and tha’. Figured she wouldn’t mind it there. Wouldn’t ye, lass?”

Clemently, she shakes her head.

Simon grunts. He stands up, towering over them both. “The deer’s there, Johnny. What kind of hosts would tha’ make us? Puttin’ her up with a corpse?”

Johnny blushes as if he’s been scolded. His bottom lip curls out, petulant, a waspish colour flooding his cheeks. 

“Aye…” he grumbles. “Tha’s right. The livin’ room, then?”

The girl is sitting, her head oscillating between the two men like a pendulum as they talk. 

“No,” Simon says. “We’ll move the cot to our room.”

Johnny nods. He scratches his stubble, pretending to think. “It’s important we keep an eye on her wounds, too.”

“Exactly,” Simon says, petting Johnny’s head. “Smart boy.”

He clicks his tongue and Johnny shoots up, scurrying out of the living room to retrieve the aforementioned cot. Muffled sounds peal out from the root cellar below them. Johnny comes stumbling back up in mere minutes with a rickety cot fitted under his armpit and disappears into a dark room.

“Best get to sleep before it’s too late,” Simon splays his hand over the small of her back. “Y’must be tired.”

She submits to Simon’s touch, letting him guide her through the cabin and into the darkest room lit only by a lone oil lamp. 

Johnny is finishing up the cot when Simon releases her. He drapes a cable-knit blanket over the surface, fluffing up a pillow. She doesn’t point out how close it is to their bed, the lip of her cot almost touching their rickety mattress.

“Fair warnin’ lass,” Johnny begins, peeling off his shirt, kittening into bed. “Simon snores quite a bit. Dinnae be feart to smack his gob if he gets too loud, aye?”

She stiffly nods. She climbs into the cot and bunches the blanket around her, making a conscious effort to hide her bare legs. Simon crawls between them, the mattress sinking with his weight, and throws their whisper-thin blanket over his legs. 

Darkness penetrates the room when he blows the lamp out. The only smoulder is the silvery glow of moonlight invading the curtains and the reflective light in Simon’s eyes. 

He sits up impossibly straight, staring at her like a cryptid caught on a trail cam. It causes discomfort to congeal under her flesh, but slowly, the longer she looks, a bristle of sleepiness lays hold of her. She closes her eyes and falls into limbo. Her breaths thinning into a short, even pattern.

———

She’s between the threshold of awake and sleep when she hears it.

She can’t tell if it’s a dream or the amplified sounds of Appalachia. She feels as if she’s underwater or stuck in syrup, able to hear the rushing brook of her blood against her ears but unable to distinguish the sounds around her.

There’s a grunt. And a moan. The wail of the bed next to her snapping then creasing. Heavy breathing. Sprinting hearts. 

Her head is so muddled she can’t register anything. Her mind tells her that the violent slapping of skin against skin is the crack of thunder. That the strangled whimpers are the call of a cottontail. 

“Right there, Johnny?” A voice asks. “Takin’ my big cock so fuckin’ well. Greedy lil’ bitch, you are.”

A long, drawn-out whine chases after it. A choked-out scream as if something hurts, succeeded by a wet squelch. 

“Look at ‘er,” that voice jeers. “Think she’d take it? Better than you? Think she’d bleed all over it like– fuck… how I smelt it on her?”

The other voice—broken in, wispy—chokes on a response. It sounds a little stifled, as if speaking through something shoved in its mouth.

“No… nae better than me,” it mumbles. “Nae better than me…”

It’s like she’s drowning in purgatory. She can’t move, can’t speak. She’s caught in a phantasmagorical limbo between reality and fantasy. She can feel the serpentine hands of something with no material existence wrap around her and stain her slick with sweat, sweeping over the space between her legs, licking a wetness up her pussy. 

A dewy sound peals out. It’s a predator loosening its jowls, stringy and frothy, flaying its lips to bare its teeth. A rumbling roar rips out of its throat, animalistic. She can hear the popping of teeth sinking into flesh. The dull sound of skin breaking.

“Ah!” A squeal. “Simon, tha’– it hurts.”

She feels a vortex in her belly, an ache in her clit.

It’s like she resurfaces the water. All at once, she hears clearly. It’s a lone word whispered in a guttural cadence so close that she swears it’s mumbled against the hot hull of her ear.

“Good.”

———

She wakes the next morning with her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and a damp heat between her legs.

Sunlight filters through the gauzy curtains, hitting the bed next to her. The bed is starkly empty she notes, as she crawls out of her cot and pops the stiff muscles in her back, stretching. 

She pokes her head out of the bedroom and tiptoes around the cabin as if avoiding a barrage of landmines. There’s a downward force in her bladder that tells her she’s been in torpor for the better half of the morning, and a heavy crust in her eyes that shifts when she blinks. She finds her way to the bathroom and shucks the flannel over her hips, lowering herself on the toilet seat, emptying herself.

It’s the only stint of respite. The closest thing she can get to calm since losing her way in the mountain three days ago. She relishes in the idle birdsongs outside and the sound of overnight frost melting into the dew that slips off tree leaves, pitter-pattering to the ground. Listens to the stream of her pee peter out, and the ruffle of folding fabric as she tosses the flannel back over her thighs. She listens to the–

“How’d ye sleep, pretty girl?”

She flinches at the gruff voice. It’s written with sleep, barely lucid under a Scottish lilt. Her hands freeze under the running water of the tap as she watches Johnny waltz inside the bathroom, shucking his pants to his thighs and pulling out his cock, pissing in the toilet. 

She’s stiff. Fixed to the cold clay tiles of the floor, unable to be bent. She tries not to let her eyes wander, tries to block out the chubby mass of muscle swinging between his legs. 

“Oh…” her words are stifled by shock. “F-fine. I slept fine. Thank you again for opening your house to me.” She thinks back to last night—the whimpering, the croaking—and rashly decides to tack on, “But I did hear some weird noises. I could have been dreaming though.”

Johnny chuckles. “...Aye, it’s almost matin’ season ‘round these parts. I think you’ll be hearin’ more of that. It’s best to ignore it.”

Her body girdles when he sways his cock, shaking away the liquid on the tip. He stuffs himself back into his pants and pulls the flush, grinning. 

“Bet you’re still hungry. Simon’s wrappin’ up breakfast. Let’s go.”

He pats her bum and makes her squeak. He grips the hem of her flannel and reels it around his knuckles like a leash, tugging her into the dining area—which is more of a nook nestled into the living room—and pulls out a seat.

“Hope ye fancy porridge,” Johnny chuckles. He splits his palm across the top of her head, pushing her into the chair. 

She huffs and hoists her neck up, grimacing at the acrid scent of animal hide burning against the base of a cast iron pan. It takes a conscious effort to not crinkle her nose in disgust.

Simon ducks as he emerges from the kitchen threshold. He wields two bowls of food. One for her and the other for Johnny. She takes heed of how—despite his stature—Simon doesn’t have anything to eat.

However it’s a cursory thought, because she’s quickly pulling her lips into a weak smile and examining the bowl in front of her. Food is a generous word, since it looks more like coagulated milk than porridge and smells sour. Simon places a chipped plate of bacon alongside it. It’s curled because it’s overcooked, crusted with charcoal.

She swallows as Simon takes a seat next to her. Johnny, on the other side of her. 

“Looks delicious,” she hums. She turns to Simon, “Are you… not eating?”

He picks an off-white tendon from his canine tooth, flicking it away. 

He answers in a rigid tenor. “Don’t hurt your head over me. You eat your food.” 

She marginally shrinks into herself, embarrassment licking up her spine. She feels like a chided puppy, but perhaps that’s the sentiment. 

When she opens her lips and raises the spoon to her mouth, her flannel curls like a wisp of hair off her shoulder, baring her bruised albeit supple skin. She hastily pulls the sleeve back up. 

She speaks around the stale porridge and her rising apprehension. “Uh, do you have my clothes from yesterday?” She asks, squirming as her sweat glues the back of her thighs to the chair, sticky. “It’s just, uh, they fit me better.”

“Oh,” Johnny blinks, “o’ course.” 

She watches him stand up and slip through the backdoor. He walks towards a clothesline hitched between two trees and retrieves her clothes, returning with them tucked under his arm.

“Here ye go sweetheart,” he grins, setting them on her lap. Petting her head.

She slowly peels through her clothes. Her fingertips drag against her threadbare jeans, her overripe shirt, but never touch the sweat-imbued gauze of something more… intimate. Her maw tenses around the hot porridge. 

“Where are my… um…” she lowers her voice even though it’s redundant—Johnny is leaned in close, practically huffing against her ear, sniffing her neck. “... Undergarments?”

Johnny tilts his head, puckering his lips in confusion. He’s written with the innocence of a puppy—whether it’s real or fabricated, she can’t tell. The words have begun bleeding together, blotchy and unintelligible. 

“Panties, ye mean?” He laughs. “Ye never had any of those.”

She swallows thickly. 

“No, I… I did. I wouldn’t go hiking without–”

“Ye must be goin’ crazy, lass,” Johnny says. “This was all you gave me. Nae panties.”

He stares at her with large, intercosmic, unassuming eyes. His gaze flickers towards Simon. It’s so fleeting that she almost misses it. The sweep of his blue irises widening, eclipsed by his pupils. She tenses. Omniscience hits her like a brick.

Her tongue goes heavy in her mouth, melting her words. The porridge turns frothy in her gut, nausea sticking to her organs and presentiment curdling in the air. She tightens her throat around a gag.

“... When can you drive me into town?”

Johnny reaches over and grips her thigh. He digs divots into her flesh like a fish hook caught in a flayed gill.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as ye want, pretty. There’s nae rush.”

She feels bile crawl up her throat.

“Oh, well, I just don’t want to overstay my welc–”

“He’s excited to play host,” Simon growls. His words are marked by firm determination, leaving no room for objection. He leans over the table, his wifebeater clinging to his muscle, his wiry chest hair pressing against the soft cotton. “We rarely get visitors ‘round here and he’ll be upset if you leave. Y’wanna make him upset?” 

Finally, warnings blare like strobe lights in her mind. She fidgets in her seat, sweating, shooting a cursory glance to the backdoor. Calculating her chances of survival should she break through the mesh and make a run for it. 

“O-of course not. Not after everything you’ve done for me,” she stutters, feeling a bead of sweat travel down her neck. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for asking.”

Simon settles back in his seat. Johnny, too, frowning around his porridge. 

“Good,” Simon grunts meanly. “Now shut your gob an’ eat.”

She clemently chews away at her breakfast, preening under their smouldering gazes. Throughout her polishing off her bowl, she’s reminded Simon doesn’t have one. It’s unseemly for a man so sturdy to not be eating, but as Simon’s lips peel back, sated while he watches her take her final bite, she spots a spray of red liquid washing the spire of his fang tooth, glistening in the sunlight. 

“How’d you like tha’, pretty?” Johnny asks. He collapses whatever thoughts—whatever inklings—begin to seize her about Simon as he smiles and their bowls, disappearing into the kitchen.

Right away, Simon is hooking his foot behind a leg of her chair, using it to pull her closer. 

He’s centimetres away from her face when he says, “How ‘bout you start pullin’ your weight?”

Her eyes flicker up to see Simon hovering over her. He’s dewy with sweat, big and burly and drifting above her like the closet-dwelling monster from everyone’s childhood.

“You’ve caused enough trouble in my home,” he continues. “Ate a lot of our produce. It’s time you make up for tha’.”

She resists the urge to snarl. She doesn’t even want to be here yet Simon is insisting she fill her role—whatever that role may be. 

But as she hoists her neck up at him, she gets skittish and looks away, her tongue knotting. She knows it isn’t smart to upset Simon again. He’s a beefy man with sharp canines and vertical pupils, with more hair sprouting from his forearms than what’s considered normal. A man who expels deep tonal flutters instead of regular breaths. Who—despite his size—can’t ever be heard approaching.

So she smiles instead, asking, “What is it you need help with?”

“Floors need scrubbin’.”

He shoves a rag in her hand and holds out a bucket of sudsy water she hadn’t noticed before.

“Kitchen, livin’ room… just get to work.”

The water sloshes over the lip of the bucket when he sets it down. Simon stands to his full height and stalks out of the room, leaving her alone with her multitude of thoughts. 

Slowly, she stands up. She hauls the water bucket to the middle of the living room and is starkly reminded of her strength—or lack thereof. Simon had picked the bucket up so naturally, but with the weak tendons lacing her arms, she struggles. It doesn’t help that her vision is still spotty. 

She lowers to her knees, wincing at the chord of pain beneath her bandages. She awkwardly drenches the rag in the water and wrings it dry, poising herself above the floor, working the rag into the floorboards. 

She tenses when Johnny walks back in. He’s behind her. Unlike with Simon, she can feel him creeping up. She can feel his eyes on the lips of her pussy where her flannel hitches up while she’s bent over, scrubbing the floors. 

Her cheeks burn. She blindly reaches behind her to tug the hem down, covering her warm cunt. 

Johnny chuckles. “This is wha’ Simon has you doin’ out here?” 

She looks over her shoulder, her skin prickling when she sees an axe in his hand. 

“We’re goin’ to the yard to chop some wood,” he says, “but I see you’re already busy bein’ our bonnie housewife.” 

She stutters. That operative word, housewife, burns a hole in the snail-shaped cochlea of her ear. “No, Simon j-just asked me to. He asked me to.”

“I know, sweetie,” Johnny replies. He squats next to her and rubs her back in slow circles, trying to hike up her flannel again. “Simon’s just takin’ the piss. He’s a meanie like tha’.”

She tries shouldering him away but Johnny only holds her tighter. Simon reappears in the doorway, watching with his arms crossed. 

Johnny clears his throat. “Thought we’d spend time in the yard today. Doesn’t tha’ sound sweet?”

She looks at Simon who’s already looking at her through hooded, brutish eyes. She realizes that her autonomy is divested—that she has no choice but to follow what they say because something is very, very wrong here. 

Perhaps this is what the mountain had warned her of. In all of its howling and breathing, the branches gripping her and the delirium written into her psyche, maybe, it was all a warning. 

She hangs her head. “Mhm… sounds great.”

She has no time to process what’s happening before he’s folding his hand into the cavity of her armpit and dragging her up and out of the door, into the backyard. 

It’s more of a cleared grove than a yard. Dead tree stumps litter the small expanse, grass the colour of ripe lemons because it’s been seared down. There’s a block of wood sitting on a stump, split down the middle. Sun-bleached clothes hanging over the clothesline.

“Y’can watch here,” Johnny says, gesturing to one of the tree stumps. “We’ve got to chop wood for dinner tonight.”

He pulls her down on the makeshift seat, finally letting her go. And just as Johnny pivots, slamming the spire of the axe into the block of wood, she sees him scrunch his nose as he sniffs his hand, drinking in the sweat from her armpit. It goes up his nose and through his nasal cavity, making him quiver as if her sweat is an opiate. Disgust slams into her, sinking in her stomach and settling there like sediment. She doesn’t even notice Simon walking out of the cabin and reaching for the axe, raising it over his head, until the resounding sound of wood snapping peals out, and she’s jumping in her skin.

“No need to be feart,” Johnny laughs. “Just his usual routine.”

She watches Simon work. He looks like a beast on its hind legs like this—impossibly large and splayed out with his arms over his head, growling whenever he brings the axe down on the tree stump, splitting it in two. Sweat burns through his wifebeater and turns the fabric translucent, revealing the barest outline of his chest. His chest hairs are matted with sweat, his sinews straining with each chop of wood. His face is curled meanly into itself, his trimmed hair nicked in different places from at-home shaving and washed with sweat.

Every time he brings the axe down on the wood, expelling a guttural groan, something stirs in her. He does it with such force, such strength, it makes her wary. He fractures the wood along the grain without so much of a blink, without any stifling in his muscle.

All those horror films she watches alone—when her friends say they’re too busy to join, when they lead her on after planning a get-together that doesn’t come to fruition—finally catch up to her, sowing the thought in her head that if she stays, she’ll become the tree stump. Impotent beneath Simon’s hacking and eclipsed by his behemoth-like body. 

Her missing panties. Johnny’s sticky hands. Simon’s less-than-human behaviour. It all slams into her like whiplash. 

Her fear rears its head as a rashly undertaken announcement tumbling out of her mouth.

“I have to pee.”

She ignores the way Johnny perks up, as if that activated something in his brain. His ocular vein goes large, rapt, his pupils blowing out as he looks at her and then her navel where her bladder sits, suddenly grinning. 

“I can come with–”

“I’ll go in the woods,” she says. “Behind a bush or something, okay?”

Simon grunts. It’s a deep prusten sound as he splits another block of wood. Johnny pouts but lets her go, watching with those imploring eyes as she disappears behind some foliage. 

It’s now or never, she decides. 

She makes sure she’s concealed by the flowering of a tree before speeding up her walk. She moves like an unoiled machine, rusty, as her walk ripens into a run.

She doesn’t know where she’s running. She doesn’t know how far the nearest town is or how to find the trail she lost herself on, but she knows she needs to get far away from here. 

The woodland is labyrinthine. Everything looks the same. She hopes she isn’t sprinting deeper into the heart of Appalachia and straight into her new grave, but still, she doesn’t stop running. Not until her lungs wilt into themselves and turn pruney, not until her heartbeat plateaus. 

It’s as if she’s working against a rip current. She feels as if a part of herself is already woven into the woodland soil, feels herself written into the rotting, wet trees. It’s like she’s treading water instead of sprinting. And it’s like a supernova has erupted in her ankle as it gets caught under a root, sending her face first into the dirt. 

She reorients as quickly as she can. She raises to her feet but winces at the flaring nerves in her foot, and looks around for a stick she can use as a crutch. 

But something else catches her attention. 

A dog-eared paper taped to a Basswood tree. It’s been eaten by the elements, mottled, barely hanging on. She steps closer and reads the blocky letters across the front, her blood running cold in her engorged vessels.

MISSING PERSON

Fleetingly, hope seizes her, but she soon remembers nobody back home is heedful enough to report her missing, let alone realize she’s missing in the first place. Additionally, the year suggests that the flyer is three years old. Her eyes slink down, trailing over what’s still intact.

LAST SEEN: CLIFF TRAIL

$3,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION

Foreboding clings to her flesh. She quivers, her knees weakening.

FIRST NAME: J-

The tail-end of it is smeared, the ink bleeding and thinning into the paper. It’s unintelligible, so she trails her gaze lower, heeding the victim’s last name instead.

MACTAVISH.

“Sweetie!” Peals out from behind her before she can read any more. “What’re you doin’ all the way here? Had me and Simon thinkin’ ye ran away or something. Hah.”

Johnny hurries close and swallows her flinch with a tight hug. He frowns at the flyer. 

“Why’re you readin’ this silly stuff?” He asks. He tears it off the tree and crumples it up, tossing it away. “That shite gives y’nightmares.”

“Johnny, I–”

“You went pee?” Johnny asks. Nearly makes her screech when he dips his hand low and cups her cunt, feeling around for any dregs of liquid. He buries his fingers unnecessarily deep between her puffy lips, blindly massaging.

“No…” he clicks his tongue. “No. You didn’t. Did ye lie to us? It dinnae matter, sweetie. Here. Do it here, pretty. I’ll wait.”

She musters whatever pluck she has left to shake her head.

However her spine is fickle. All it takes is Johnny glowering, his eyes darkening, his pout upending and curling into something meaner, to force her back into submission.

“Simon’s already angry ye pulled this stunt, sweetie,” he says. “I’m helpin’ you out.”

A tear escapes her. It rolls down her gaunt cheek like the dew that dribbles down trees. She’s quickly crying, expelling howls that burn her energy. She trembles as she squats to the forest floor and pushes pee out of her. She sniffles as she stands back up and lets the liquid sluice down her thighs. 

“Good girl,” Johnny hums. “You’re so much sweeter when ye listen, ye ken?” 

She sobs into her palms, her ribs so brittle they rattle together. Johnny coos vacantly at her, rubbing her all over the same way one rubs stone fruit to test their ripeness, and croons at her swelling ankle.

“See what happens when you’re naughty?” He asks, picking her up, carrying her close to his chest. “Let’s get you home, honey. These woods are no place for a bird like you.”

She hates how she curls into him. It’s her repressed underbelly fighting its way to the surface because the accumulation of neglectful family and friends has soured her, carving a chasm in her heart that forces her body to respond to Johnny’s affections. He’s a warm body for her, a pair of listening ears. It’s scraps, but it’s more than she’s ever gotten.

They make it back to the cabin in what feels like minutes. Simon’s waiting next to the door with his arms tightly crossed, his face meanly pinched. He growls like a provoked animal. He hovers like an executioner. He’s the living antonym of light at the end of the tunnel, huffing like a bull as Johnny carries her inside. 

“How about you rest?” Johnny asks. He sets her down on her cot and pulls the blanket to her quivering chin, tucking her in. “Want some tea? What kind do you fancy?”

She purses her lips, trembling. Johnny sentimentally hums as if he’s sorry. As if he isn’t a part of her plight. Her piercing fear and deep-seated fatigue.

“Garden mint…” he says to himself. “I’ll be right back, bonnie.”

He disappears and returns a few minutes later with a cup dwarfed in his hand. Steam curls over the rim, thinning into the barren bedroom. He tilts it into her mouth, nursing her. 

With every sip she feels herself slip more and more back into the familiar territory of limbo. Her eyelids become heavy, her cognizance slackening.

She peels her tongue off her gums to muster a whisper. It’s so weak. Barely audible. 

“I wanna go… home…”

Johnny croons. He cups her cheek. “Honey, those people dinnae care about you. Not how me and Simon do. This can be your home.”

He raises the cup to her mouth again, stifling any protests on her tongue.

She hiccups around the drink, her eyes warm and wet.

That’s how she falls asleep. 

With hypnotic tea invading her bloodstream, turning her eyelids heavy. Turning her helpless.

———

She wakes with a start. 

It’s a crack of thunder that had stirred her, she realizes, instead of the enigmatic sounds of bed springs snapping.

The bedroom is dark and bathed in midnight light. She can barely see anything, save for the barest outline of Johnny in the bed next to her. When lightning strikes, illuminating the sky with a blinding impact crack, she’s able to see the swell of his body beneath his sheets and the shadow of his spun-thread hair. His chest rising and falling steadily. 

She’s caked with sweat. Her perspiration soaks her flannel and makes it cling to her flesh, which is flared up as if she rolled in a pile of poison ivy. Her mind is so cluttered she almost folds over as she stands up, testing the grip of her toes on the wooden floor, testing her ability to balance herself. 

She’s in limbo. A border space between heaven and hell, awaiting her execution. That’s how it feels as she tiptoes her way out of the room, reaching for an oil lamp, holding it out in front of her. 

It’s almost worse like this. A weak flame that barely illuminates her peripheral. She fears that should she turn too fast, an aberration will materialize from the margins of her view and tear her to ribbons. 

At this point, she supposes that’s a kinder fate. 

She slips into a pair of large boots because she can’t find her hiking shoes anywhere. She opens the door and pokes her head out, immediately met with the spray of rainwater on her face, the wind running through her ropes of neglected hair.

Sheets of heavy rain fall from the awning, creating another divide that keeps her trapped inside the cabin. She steps onto the porch, listening for any incongruous noises. Even if there were any, they would be bullied under the assault of rainfall. She can’t hear her own thoughts like this, can’t formulate a plan to get away from here once and for all.

So of course she doesn’t hear the floorboards settle behind her. Of course, she doesn’t hear the heavy drumming of feet closing in on her.

She doesn’t heed the body behind her until Johnny is sniffing up her neck and snuffing out the oil lamp, laying hold of her in a grudging grip. 

“You just dinnae listen, do you?”

He takes her by the scruff of her neck and pulls her back into the cabin, knocking the lamp out of her grip. It falls to the floor and flares into a crash, louder than the rain. Almost louder than her sprinting heart and the blood rushing to her ears.

She wrestles against his grip. “Fuck you both—you sick fucks!”

She almost vomits when her insults make Johnny moan, his cock fattening against her back in a crude Pavlovian response. Each time she struggles against him, his grip tightens. It reminds her of the mountain itself. The more she tries escaping its soporific arms, the deeper it drags her down. It’s fruitless for her to fight it—the whistle of the branches, the tight sinews of Johnny’s grip. 

He swings his arm around her neck, pinning her against his chest in a headlock. Her lungs stutter and her eyes turn dewy, her deep-seated fear ripening into paralyzing terror.

A web of lightning shatters the sky, and she almost dies right there.

It’s Simon but worse. A mutation gone wrong. A changeling, perhaps. He’s squeezed inside the threshold, breathing wildly. His wifebeater is torn in different places across his body, split around tufts of fur. Fur that is matted with thick ichor, wiry and sprouting from the spot behind his ears.

Another flash of lightning ignites the cabin, revealing the shaggy coat of hair on his chest. The sheet of fat over his stomach that flutters when he puffs, growling under his breath. He clenches his jaw because he can’t clench his hands, because his thick fingers have turned into claws, sharp spires covered in gore.

Simon snarls. Blood and spit drip from his bloodied teeth as if he’s a rabid animal with a limp maw. He rolls his shoulders and cracks the cartilage in his neck, the sound pealing out so loudly, it’s more like the popping of bubble wrap in rapid succession. 

She can barely see him through her tear-filled eyes. It’s the epilogue to her life as he strides in close, biting his talons into her hips and drawing out blood. A snarl of satisfaction escapes him when he smells it—her blood, sweet, albeit stale due to her dehydration. 

“Anyone ever told you you’re an ungrateful mutt?” He growls. “I give you food to eat an’ clothes on your back but here you are, tryin’ to sod off.”

Her cheeks dimple when he grabs her jaw. She opens her mouth to protest, but her grievances get smothered beneath Simon’s claws. He stuffs his fingers down her mouth, stunting her complaints. She gags and coughs around the taste of metal and mire crusted under his claws, bile shooting up her throat.

“Dogs don’t talk,” he tuts. 

He hoists his arm back and she puckers, preparing for an attack. However, instead of her cheek, Simon’s hand slices against her shirt. He tears her flannel into ribbons, making the fabric slide off her like water from a milk bath.

She stands naked, her skin pocked with fear. She shivers despite being pressed between Simon’s furry chest and Johnny’s warm arms. 

“‘Bout time someone taught you some manners,” Simon mumbles. “I was in the middle of my dinner you know? Fuckin’ rude to interrupt.”

She blanches when she sees a limp coyote behind him, splayed out on the porch. She recognizes it as the orpiment-coloured fur to the hair flossed between Simon’s teeth.

She screams as he wrestles her from Johnny’s grip, pulling her towards the bedroom. Simon throws her onto the stiff mattress, her spine shuddering from the impact. She tries covering herself, tries wrapping her arms around her body, but Simon is having none of that. 

He pounces, taking her hips and pinning them to the bed. He hovers over her, rainwater dripping from his broken nose, impossibly large as he makes up her whole world. Simon swallows her entire view, leaving her with no chances of escape. 

Her gaze flutters down to the chub outlined by his sweatpants and decides she’s left with no chances of survival, either.

She flails her legs as Simon slithers low, flattening his nose against her cunt. She lets out a protracted cry as he hitches his lungs and inhales, breathing in the musk of her bare cunt. The sweat stuck between her fuzzy hair, the sticky arousal that spreads as he forces her legs open. 

Simon hisses. It rides the ruck of his throat, expelled from his nose. It’s not in any capacity a human sound. It seems more like a bear flaring its nostrils, poised for attack.

Johnny notices the confusion between her eyebrows because he’s leaning in and murmuring against the shell of her ear, licking it.

“Remember wha’ I said about matin’ season, kitty?”

Johnny leans away, leaving it at that. Equivocal and cryptic and calcified into the furrows of her brain. She isn’t allowed to wade in her confusion though because Simon’s tongue is lolling out, sweeping a fat stripe over her pussy.

It’s like the first thaw of spring. Simon licks her open, spreads her out on his tongue. She can’t help the immediate warmth that courses through her, swathing her in silk. 

She cries out. Her back bends off the mattress when Simon pulls her lips into his mouth to suck. 

She looks to Johnny for help. She twists herself and tries reaching out, tries crawling off the mattress, but Simon is gripping her ankle and popping the gauze of her bandage with his claws, pulling her back down, wrapping his lips around her engorged clit.

Johnny’s face doesn’t show contrition, but is pinched in jealousy. He watches with a fat mass growing in his sweatpants.

She splits her hand over Simon’s shaved head, using the cauliflowered shell of his ear to try pulling him off of her. That only makes him growl, the vibrations quavering up her spine, his claws digging into her flesh. 

She folds her arms over her face, sobbing. Simon’s tongue is wet and hot against her pussy, lapping between her soft folds, slurping her juices. She flushes at how wet she is. At how pleasure leaks through the cracks in her resolve and spreads all over her, reducing her to a panting mess. 

Simon releases her clit with a pop. He raises to his knees, towering over her, and now she’s unsure if his glistening chin is because of the rainwater outside or her arousal. 

“Hold her down, Johnny.”

Her heart drums against her chest. Johnny crawls onto the bed and kneels behind her head. He pins her wrists down with his kneecaps, keeping her from squirming.

“Will ye let me put my cock in ‘er mouth?” Johnny asks. “Simon, will you–”

“Shut it,” Simon snaps. He shoves down his sweatpants, his cock springing out. All of her nerves bristle like rope, her heart sputtering to a stop.

Simon’s cock is fat and heavy. It droops between his thighs, drooling with precum. It’s stiff but hangs because he’s so large, the engorged tip angling downward, his balls plump, ruddy.

He chokes his hand around it, tugging it. Her throat closes in on itself but her legs instinctively peel apart. Her puffy lips spread open and she flushes at the sticky sound, hoisting her neck back to look at Johnny.

He has his cock out too, pumping it. He grins when they lock eyes and smacks his dick against her cheek. Johnny presses his cockhead into the corner of her mouth, using it to tilt her lips into a repugnant curl. It’s reminiscent of a smile, but it isn’t one. 

She wails.

They both make up her beginning and end. They trap her between themselves, leaving her with no escape. Simon at her feet, Johnny at her head. Each of the men are more intimidating than the other, both inspiring fear in her feeble heart. Both inspiring unwanted arousal between her legs. 

Simon slaps his flaring tip against her clit. She mewls and hates herself for bucking her hips into him. She’s dew-skinned as Simon pushes her knees to her ears, thumbing her clit.

He deeply inhales.

His chest expands, tugging at the steel-wool hair felted against his big chest. He quivers as he expels his breath, his mating call, and finally feeds her his cock, pushing past her first ring of muscle.

Her body tries curling in on itself like a Venus flytrap, but Johnny is quicker. He bites his fingers into her wrists and pins her to the mattress, keeping her still while Simon stuffs himself deeper. Johnny kisses her tears away while he does it. It’s oxymoronic and it’s betrayal—a Judas kiss—while he wraps his lips around sweet encouragement against her cheeks.

“Got so much fight in ye, sweetie,” he whispers. “Just stop strugglin’ and it’ll feel good.”

Simon leans over her, his cock slipping deeper into her warm cunt. The blood and saliva from his maw drips onto her chest, the blood is so fresh there’s still steam, hitting her like scythes.

Johnny’s getting restless. He watches raptly as Simon starts slamming his hips into her. Johnny ruts against the chafe of her brittle hair and hopes it will give him satisfaction by proxy, but it does little to offset the ache in his balls. His lip warbles.

“Simon, please,” a voice crack, “can I put my cock in ‘er mouth?”

“Fine,” Simon growls. His hips are piston-paced against the girl’s skin, unrelenting and uncaring to how her nails scratch striated lines down his chest in her struggle. “Just stop interruptin’ us.”

Her jaw cramps when Johnny cups her chin. He puppets it open and forces his fingers down. They’re caked with dirt as he swirls them over her tongue, coaxing up the warm spit from the furrow of her throat to be used as a natural lube. 

The only mercy she gets is the stint of time between Johnny pulling his fingers out and gripping his dick, laying it on her tongue. He forces her lips apart with the tip of his cock, smearing himself all over her. 

“So pretty like this sweetheart,” he hums. “Simon smelt it on ye. Hundreds of klicks away. How sweet y’are.” 

She doesn’t have the energy to decipher that. Most of it is being wrung on trying to fight the two men off, but it’s fruitless. Johnny is already slipping into her mouth, and her cunt is already stretched around Simon’s plump cock. 

Johnny starts pumping in and out, his cock embroidering a burn in the hinges of her jaw.

She lies there limply, but as Johnny’s wiry hair meets her nose, she realizes there’s one thing she can do. In her thrashing, she undertakes the lapse of judgement to clamp her teeth together, sinking them into Johnny.

He yells and pulls himself out. Johnny wraps a hand around himself, squeezing, placating the sting. A warm wash of tears twine his eyelashes together, long and babydoll-like. He looks to Simon, preening, imploring. 

“She bit me.” 

Simon slows his hips, only scarcely so. Only enough for her to fill her lungs halfway before he’s dragging himself out agonizingly slow, burying himself back inside. 

His eyes, hungry, flutter down to her. His lips wind back, revealing his sharp fangs. He snickers. 

“Now you’ve pissed him off, hm? Dumb girl. This is why puppies need owners.”

He pinches her clit, softly tweaking it between the pads of his fingers. He looks at Johnny and condescendingly smirks. 

“C’mere, boy. If she won’t suck you off, why not take a go at her other hole?”

She tenses. Fear washes over her like a rip current, all the way down to her ass that squeezes in protest. Her heart feels too big for her chest suddenly. She can’t even see Johnny’s blinding grin through her cloudy eyes as brine tracks down her cheeks, mixing with her sweat. 

She whimpers. “No–“

A palm whistles through the air, exploding into a crack of thunder as it breaks against the skin of her cheek. 

She lapses into silence. Little hiccups escape her while she peers up at Simon, sniffling. 

“Yes,” he says. 

He grips her by her hips and flips her over. This way, Simon’s on his back and she’s on top of him, his cock digging deeper. The position is etched with a degree of intimacy that causes heat to pool in her belly—she can feel his hot breath fanning over her face, she can see his feline-like eyes better.  

She almost jumps out of her skin when Johnny presses his fingers into her ass, trying to break her in. He thumbs at the puckered muscle, chuckling when it tries squirming away from him. 

“Cute little thing,” he says. “She ever been fucked?”

The way she sobs when Johnny forces his forefinger inside gives him his answer. He almost comes right there. At the sound of her slick lubing her up, at the sound of her being torn open like a stone fruit and her pitiful cries for mercy. 

“Stop…” 

“Stop?” Johnny repeats, “Sweetie, if I stop it’ll hurt when I fuck you. Ye need prep, silly.”

That only wracks her ribs harder. The patrionizing lilt in his voice, the way he pats her bum like she’s nothing but a dumb puppy. Johnny sinks another finger in, knuckle-deep, and curls himself into the walls of her ass, massaging it.

Simon starts thrusting again. He takes one of her tits in his mouth and tongues at her nipple, snapping his hips into her. It only adds more pressure to her other hole, the one being fingered open by Johnny.

“Y’think she’s ready, sweetie?” Johnny asks. He slaps his cock against her hole, teasing her. “I think she’s fuckin’ hungry. Look at ‘er winkin’ back at me.”

Johnny collects the saliva moulded into his gums and sputters out a wad of spit, wetting her tight asshole. He presses his cockhead against her opening, pushing himself inside.

She buckles, doubling over. Her cheek falls on Simon’s chest, chafing against his coarse hair. She’s never felt so full. Folded between the men and being fed two big cocks, left with no space to breathe. She isn’t given respite. No mercy. No time for her to stretch around their cocks.

Johnny splits his hand across the divot where her spine begins and shoves her into Simon. Her jaw hangs loose, her lips parted dumbly, her drool trickling onto Simon’s chest. She’s limp. Letting them have her way with her. Letting them brand her with their fingers digging sickle-shaped scratches into her skin. Letting them break her open with each of their jackhammering thrusts, letting their pants of encouragement and degradation swirl around her like whistles from the woodland, causing goosebumps to arise and her head to pound.

“Do ye feel it, Simon?” Johnny pants. “Is it comin’ on?”

His words sprawl by like a lazy river in her mind. Desultory, like lukewarm water. They don’t click into the empty chasm of her cognizance until something else happens. Something inhuman. Something that has her choking on the raw bile that scratches her throat and the spit coaxed into the rivets of her tongue by Johnny’s assaulting fingers.

Simon’s ramming gets shaved into stunted thrusts. It isn’t due to a loss of energy, but is due to something else keeping him from slipping out. A balloon pushing against the walls of her pussy, swelling inside her. It isn’t fat but is chubby enough for her to feel it, flutter around it.

The knot snarled into Simon’s cock plugs her up. She can’t pull herself off him because it’s puffed up past her cunt, keeping her stuck on top of him. It doesn’t help that Johnny keeps slamming his hips into her, riling the thin skin that separates her cunt from her ass, bending it to the shape of Simon’s cock.

Johnny gasps. “I’m close– shite, I’m close.”

She doesn’t want to admit it, but she is too. She feels her nerves begin to fray at their edges, her stomach wearing thin. Johnny slips his hand low and blindly sweeps at her clit, nibbling on the husk of her ear.

He only gets three more pumps in until he’s emptying his balls in her ass. He grabs her hair when he comes, puppetting her head back so her mouth falls open and he can spit inside. His thrusts are slow and deep and peter into something calm, his cock softening inside her. Johnny grins.

“Say thank you, kitty.”

It crosses her tongue as an unintelligible mumble. She can’t speak properly with Simon’s cock still in her.

Johnny chuckles at that. He wraps his arms around her and pinches her nipples. Twisting them, pulling them.

Simon’s so big beneath her, lounging like a bear. He fucks into her, his thrusts curtailing into sloppy snaps of his hips.

“He’s close, bonnie,” Johnny says. “Kiss ‘im when he comes. It’s what he likes.”

Finally, Simon’s knot unravels, his thick ropes of come sticking to her walls. He makes sure that the warm come dressing her is so deep, it’ll have no choice but to take. 

Her body betrays her when it crests and crashes into her orgasm. She’s flashbanged with blinding light, gushing out an off-white liquid that coats Simon’s thighs. It seizes her so deeply it hurts, the panoramic pleasure. An orgasm that makes her brain melt, makes her feel otherworldly.

Belatedly, she remembers Johnny’s order. She leans down to kiss Simon, her lips leathery against his. She only wants a modest peck—something to sate Johnny—but she can’t pull away because her bottom lip is caught between Simon’s teeth, pinched, and being sapped of its blood.

He laps it up before letting her go. 

He slips his softening cock out but keeps his come inside her with two fingers, his claws having retracted.

He huffs like a bull. He presses his heavy paw into her abused cunt, palming it. He reeks with a carnal musk, the aftertaste of his rut heavy in the air.

Suddenly, it all makes sense to her.

Simon is the crux of all cautionary tales. The mountains aren’t sworn off because of rabid raccoons or feral fishers but because of something eldritch, whose reputation and folklore precedes any proof of its existence. Whatever Simon is, it can’t be put into words or into anything material, so he’s condensed into the urban legends that have haunted the woods for centuries. The stories that keep hikers off needle-covered paths and unmarked trees and make them carry crucifixes in lieu of bear spray.

She doesn’t even realize she’s softly sobbing. It feels like that’s all she does these days.

Johnny hugs her as if he hadn’t taken a part of her dignity. 

He kisses her, kittening into her so that Simon is able to wrap his arms around them both, hugging them. 

The calm that lolls after the storm only bruises her further. They act so normal after they’ve stripped her of everything. Johnny massaging her thighs, Simon igniting a cigarette between his lips. 

“Will you ever let me go?” She mumbles against Simon’s chest. 

He exhales the smoke. “Go where, love? You came into my house, remember?”

Johnny won’t stop kissing her. He’s a pest that’s attached itself to her dewy flesh, trying to lick her clean. Simon curls his fingers in her and makes sure that’s where his come stays.

Simon takes another drag of his cigarette. “Not like anyone back home would miss you, anyhow.”

———

She watches with a smile on her face as Johnny roasts the flank of a moose on a homemade grill and as Simon chops some more firewood.

She lounges in a chair, swathed in her caribou-hide coat. Winter is at its height, laying a skin of pillowy snow across the mountain.

The cubs wriggle in her lap, pawing at the loose tendrils of her hair and trying to pinch her nose.

“Lookin’ so pretty today, mama,” Johnny hums. She giggles when he kisses her, scratching at the cubs’ bellies. 

“Ain’t she bonnie?” Johnny turns around and prompts Simon, “Our wee looker.”

Simon pauses his wood chopping and nods. He grips the hem of his lumberman’s jacket and raises it to his forehead to wipe his sweat away, revealing his chest and his hair that disappears into the waistband of his jeans. The cubs yip when he resumes his chopping, splitting a tree stump in two. 

She grins. 

She loves her family. Her providers and the offspring of their seed. She loves the cubs’ fine hair rubbing against her cheek when they jump on the bed to wake them up in the mornings, their blunt fangs biting her when they’re hungry, and the tiny chines on their back where their sharp spine will eventually grow in, just like Simon’s.

Briefly, she tries to remember her other family. The one that came before this one. But all that encompasses her mind is a supermassive black hole in place of memories. For some reason she can’t delineate them. The face of her father is blurry and the features of her mother fit together like a crudely sewn patchwork quilt.

She doesn’t remember much of her family. It’s kind of weird. She can’t remember if they liked her or not.

But she knows that doesn’t matter. Not when she has doting men around her and their litter hanging off her hips, another one currently swelling under her belly.

She pays no heed to the missing person posters taped to the fringes of the mountain that look eerily similar to her. Not to the K-9’s that try tracking scents but fail because she’s written with Simon and Johnny’s musk. She ignores the odd helicopter passing through each month, scarcely flying past their ramshackle cabin.

None of it matters because she knows she’s where she needs to be.

[lunadook]

Human Replacement Therapy Extended Universe (and inspired) Link Collection Part 1

EDIT: We've hit the Inline Link Limit! I've linked to a reblog containing more links. (The google doc linked at the bottom of the post will still contain everything in one place.)

Been seeing a lot of those Human Replacement Therapy comics and stories going around and I wanted to try and make a list of the first (?) panels/chapters of each one me (and helpful community members) have found so far, so..........

Part 2

Dragon [by ayviedoesthings] Fish [by welldrawnfish] Bat [by kaylasartwork] Puppy [by nyxisart] Mouse [by prettiestplatypus] Worm (I can't find the first one I'm too lazy) [by shaveyoureyebrows] Axolotl [by bubbleverseart] Goat [by kontonord] Elf [by squiretilde] Eldritch [by dawning-mars] Bird [by vy-canis-melodis] Slime [by pollypoirate] Slime (Written) [by mint-and-authoress] Slime (Written) [by scrubbinn] Slime (Written) [by sandyca5tle] Shifter (Written) [by calliecwrites] Cow (Written) [by josphitia] Bovine [by pennymations] Wolf [by gracewolfing] Coyote [by vanillayoteart] Werewolf [by tobydoeswrite] Werewolf [by cyberbeast99] Tiger (Written) [by tigergirltail] Mermaid HRT Poem [by ashleyrowanthewriter] Kitsune (Written) [by mothduchess] ??? [by home-sweet-hive] Sonic [by sonic-spirit] *break so tumblr will let this post*

Aves [by cozy-kitty-corner] Cat [by entroart] King Cobra [by thecrystalmountainsystem] Polymorph [by probablyplural] Human [by deadeyedfae] Werewolf [by lycans-art-kingdom] Mermaid [by noreo-oreo] Puppy [by noreo-oreo] Deer [by aster-is-confused] Lamia [by ariathelamia] Moth [by hyacinthdoll1315] Skunk [by sundaysstrawberrykombucha] Void [by v-draws-whatever] Dragon [by zykeroth] ??? [by transpandaart] Jaguarfolk [by jaguarfolkhrt] Sheep [by cr1zz0] Bunny [by grumpybunny-edith] Fox [by disappointedcreeper] Sparrow [by lylaslilacss] Animal? [by cutepastelstarsailor] Cow [by megamoonerjenny] Bug [by thebugautistic] Vrastelian [by silliestcreature196] Elf [by siimplyapril] Demon [by shockpulse] Wolf and Crow [by sunification] Bird [by tiredtiresias] Shoggoth [by aiden-nevada]

*break so tumblr will let this post*

Bird [by comfeeeeeeee] Bird [by nuclearraven-woman] Manticore [by redroversendjayover] Spider [by sweetspidergirl] Mouse [by alice-arty] Zombie [by sunnyrabbit05] Cat [by v0vivi0v] Cyberdemon [by kazsartcorner] Troll [by artvil-gang] Polar Bear [by frostehburr] Lamia [by robins-warudo] Shapeshifter [by maxine302] Vulture [by prollymad] Dragon [by a-being-that-just-is] Slug [by a-being-that-just-is] Cryptid [by thejaded0nes] Robot [by lavender-inkwell-99] Monkey [by mechanical-sunchild] Eldritch Dragon [by your-pal-nebula] Time Lord [by joyfulbeatrix] Digimon [by reticent-fate] Plant [by jalopytheplant] Slime [by ruckeysquared] Fox [by super-sayian-kitty64] Demon [by pugsofwriting] Weasel [by alice-of-heart] Sylveon [by constellarcreator] Robot [by squiddotmid] Eevee [by darlingsuperstition] Chimera [by gate4043]

*another pause weee*

Swolbold [by flowershakur] Type Green [by scpwiki-official] Dragon [by tresenellaart] Dragon [by theinsidiousdice] Robot [by raptorbricksart] Dragon [by koalaphoenix] Gem [by techno-toister] Hybrid [by ehksidian] Ktletaccete [by fenmere] Slime [by madelinemccoolname] Succubus [by lariumbreon]

Please feel free to let me know of any you know of that I missed or ones you have created and want added! I'll periodically update the post with anything I get links to.

I have also made a Google Doc containing all of the links, including the ones that aren't fitting in this post. Part 2 of this post, with more links, is here.

[pupsmailbox]

CRYPTID ID PACK

NAMES︰ abyss. alien. antler. apollo. azul. azure. barkscratch. belial. blade. blood. bloodhound. bone bones. buck. butcher. cain. carcass. carrion. cassius. celestia. circe. clawthorn. cloud. corpse. creature. critter. cry. crypt. cryptid. danger. dawn. dear. derby. dire. doc. dragon. drow. entiyne. eyesia. fae. fang. faun. fearprint. ghoul. gnasher. graves. grim. grimm. guts. hart. haunt. hide. hollow. hound. jawz. juno. katherine. keir. killer. komo. kraken. lagoona. locke. lucien. lumi. molar. morticia. mortis. moth. myst. mysterie. necro. night. oblivion. oisín. orion. phantom. poltergeist. rabid. raven. red. revenant. riegel. roadkill. roscoe. rot. sabel. scamper. scar. scatter. scum. scythe. serpent. shadow. shifter. shiver. shrill. siren. sky. skylar. snap. solace. sombre. specter. spector. spectre spite. spotlight. squid. stag. stalk. stare. stick. summer. sunday. sunny. teef. thunder. trix. unknown. vanessa. venus. vesper. vestige. via. voiddust. voider. wander. wanderer. watcher. wraith. wyvern. zeke.

PRONOUNS︰ abyss/abyssal. anom/anomoly. ant/antler. beast/beast. blood/bleed. brain/brain. canine/canine. chase/chase. chup/chup. ciph/cipher claw/claw. creature/creature. critter/critter. cryp/crypt. cryp/cryptid. crypt/crypt. crypt/cryptid. danger/dangerou. dark/dark. death/death. decay/decay. deer/deer. distort/distort. doe/eye. ent/entity. error/erro. faun/faun. fear/fear. fig/figure. fog/fog. freak/freak. ghost/ghost. gloom/gloom. gore/gore. gut/gut. hunt/hunt. hx/hxm. it/it. ix/ix. kill/kill. kit/kit. loch/loch. look/look. lur/lurk. maim/maim. mist/myst. moth/moth. mu/mutation. murder/murder. omen/omen. rib/rib. rip/rip. rot/rot. scare/scare. scream/scream. shade/shade. shadow/shadow. shift/shift. shx/hxr. spectre/specter. spook/spook. stab/stab. stalk/stalk. stalk/stalking. stare/stare. stare/staring. tear/tear. that/that. thing/thing. thxy/thxm. umbra/umbra. un/uncanny. unknown/unknown. veil/veil. void/void. watch/watche. weird/weirdo. woof/woof. worm/worm. ze/zem. 🐾. 👻. 🦑.

[premiumbitch]

THINGS TO MANIFEST - BILLIE EILISH THEMED PACK ! ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

MY WIFE MY WIFE MY WIFE. anyways, I decided I'd make this billie themed pack for the people who want to manifest themselves to be a completely different person, especially if they like Billie's personality and the way she carries herself! also for the amazing shifters who can script this about themselves! enjoy :)

⋆⛧┈┈┈┈﹤୨♡୧﹥ ┈┈┈┈⛧⋆

BEAUTY ♡ //

Your beauty feels like midnight—deep, mysterious, and quietly powerful, as if the universe itself paused to admire you.

Your hair flows like dark waves crashing against the shore—effortless, raw, and unapologetically yours.

Your eyes are like hidden galaxies, filled with stars no one has seen yet, holding secrets and stories that pull people in.

Your skin glows like the moonlight on still water—soft, ethereal, and quietly captivating.

Your smile is rare, but when it happens, it’s like the first note of a song that silences everything else in the room.

You carry yourself like you know the world is watching but don’t care—you’re a storm, calm on the surface and electric underneath.

Your beauty doesn’t demand attention; it lingers, like smoke curling into the air, unforgettable and haunting.

You have the kind of face that feels like art, layered and meaningful, something people can’t stop analyzing.

Light bends around you differently, wrapping you in an otherworldly glow that makes everything feel cinematic.

Your beauty isn’t perfect—it’s raw, real, and completely magnetic, like a song you can’t stop listening to.

Even in silence, you make a statement; your presence alone feels like an unspoken melody.

AURA ♡ //

You radiate a quiet intensity, like the bassline of a song you feel in your chest.

Your vibe is like the sound of rain at 2 a.m.—calming, reflective, but charged with unspoken emotion.

Being around you feels like walking through a dream—everything seems surreal and slightly tilted in the best way.

You carry an edge that makes people curious, like there’s always more to you than meets the eye.

Your presence transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary, like a black-and-white photo suddenly coming to life.

People don’t just see you—they feel you, as if your energy leaves an imprint on their soul.

Your aura is a mix of contradictions—soft and sharp, light and dark, calm and stormy—all at once.

You have a way of making silence feel full, like the space between notes in a perfectly written song.

Time feels slower around you, as if the world is holding its breath, waiting for your next move.

People can’t help but orbit around you, drawn to your energy like moths to a flame.

Your aura feels like a whispered promise—mysterious, magnetic, and impossible to ignore.

SMARTS ♡ //

Your mind works like a haunting melody—complex, layered, and full of unexpected twists.

You think in ways others can’t, seeing beauty in chaos and patterns in what seems random.

Your ideas feel like lyrics that hit too close to home—raw, emotional, and deeply resonant.

You have the ability to turn pain into poetry, finding meaning in places others might overlook.

Your brilliance is quiet but undeniable, like the kind of genius that doesn’t need to announce itself to be felt.

You approach challenges like a remix, taking them apart and putting them back together in a way no one expects.

Your creativity feels boundless, like you’re pulling inspiration from places no one else can reach.

You have a gift for finding the rhythm in chaos, making the complex feel effortless.

Your intuition is razor-sharp, allowing you to see through the noise and focus on what truly matters.

You don’t just solve problems—you make people feel something while you do it, like art disguised as logic.

Your smarts have depth, carrying the weight of someone who’s felt, seen, and understood more than most.

PERSONALITY ♡ //

You’re the kind of person who makes people stop and think, a perfect mix of mystery and relatability.

Your kindness is quiet but transformative, like the way a single note can shift the mood of an entire song.

You have a way of making people feel understood without them even having to explain themselves.

Your humor is sharp and unexpected, the kind that catches people off guard and leaves them grinning.

You inspire people not by trying, but by being unapologetically yourself—a reminder that authenticity is power.

Your energy is calm but electric, like the moment before the beat drops at a concert.

You have a way of making the unconventional feel beautiful, turning flaws into something people admire.

Your presence feels like a song on repeat—layered, addictive, and impossible to get out of someone’s head.

You’re the person people think about long after you’ve left the room, like a haunting lyric they can’t forget.

You make people feel safe and inspired at the same time, like they’re part of something bigger just by being around you.

Your personality is a masterpiece of contrasts—light and shadow, chaos and calm, vulnerability and strength.

You’re not just unforgettable—you’re unforgettable in a way that makes people see the world differently.

hope you guys enjoyed! requests are appreciated! lmk if you want anything! <3

[jestre]

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this. ( Your Gender )

Thank you! I shall go in confidence! (Drawn by @jitterbugjive as a commission of making the female version of my character like how I feel. 💙)

[hoesoflamentation]

𝖒𝖆𝕶𝖊 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖊 | 𝖜𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖔𝖑𝖋!𝖇𝖊𝖊𝖑 𝖝 𝖋!𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖗 (MINORS DNI)

// PART ONE !! // dead or alive | vampire!mammon x f!reader

// WARNINGS !! // werewolf!beel x f!reader, royalty/fantasy au, dubcon, furry elements, omegaverse themes, knotting, breeding/mating kink, scenting, marking, p-in-v penetration, no prep, pussy slapping

The duke’s bite marks on your neck had barely healed before your host, Lord Diavolo, summoned you to a celebratory feast. The kingdom was welcoming warriors from a far-off clan as an act of diplomacy, and each member of the prince’s court was expected to greet the guests.

The Demon Prince always trotted you out on occasions like these, believing that the presence of a half-human in his court was a testament to his father’s ‘benevolent’ nature. Grating as they were, you always accepted these invitations without complaint. Childhood friends or not, you understood that Lord Diavolo’s father only allowed you to stay in the royal court under certain conditions. But you didn’t blame the prince: because you were his longest friend, you also knew that he was just as much a pawn of the Demon King as you were.

And so, you kept your mouth shut. You put on your finest evening gown - a strapless mermaid silhouette made from wine-red demon moth silk. You spritzed yourself with a tincture of night-blooming flowers, the one Lord Diavolo had brought for you as a present from a business trip to Siren’s Island. For one night, you would survive.

At all of Lord Diavolo’s events, you were always the last to arrive (and the first to leave). Tonight was no different. By the time you arrived in the dining hall, the rest of the prince’s guests were already seated. Usually, the room would fall silent; Lord Diavolo would flash an apologetic smile as the room’s eyes turned to you, hustling to your seat at the last possible moment. But today, the hum of lively conversation didn’t cease, and you managed to slip in unnoticed.

The guests of honor were a hulking bunch - so broad and boyish that even in your tallest shoes, you still felt small. Everything about them was larger than life, from the way they laughed to the way they devoured their appetizers. They dressed strangely, too, strapped into ceremonial leather armor and draped in fur pelts. Surrounded by these foreigners, you felt like you were being held hostage on a Viking ship.

As usual, Lord Diavolo had sat you on the end of the table farthest from him, the seat typically reserved for the lowest-ranking guest. The clansmen didn’t even lift their heads as you slid into your dining chair… except for the one sitting next to you. 

“What’s that smell?”

The deep voice rippled through your seat like a small earthquake. You turned to investigate its source: a gargantuan pair of muscular shoulders, hunched to conceal the wrinkle of his nose; copper hair fluffing out in all directions like a lion’s mane. His spine was curved so far forward; you could barely make out the sharp angle of his chin beneath the fur cape slung across his shoulders.

You sighed and prepared yourself for the inevitable conversation about your humanness. “I’m only half-”

“No, not that,” he cut you off. “Smells like… flowers.”

“Oh.” You blinked hard. “You must mean my perfume.”

Thoughtfully, he nodded.

“Yeah. Smells… good.”

The young man smiled, then shifted awkwardly in his seat, his ears turning the same burnt color as his hair.

“Where I come from,” he rambled, “they say the person who smells best to you is destined to become your mate for life.”

Your cheeks warmed as he straightened to examine your face. As your companion drank you in, you noticed his eyes were an inhuman shade of violet... the mark of a shapeshifter. 

Life as a guest in the palace hadn’t taught you much about shifters. Most of them hailed from the clans that inhabited the far-off wildernesses of the Devildom, and didn’t interact much with the Demon King’s court. But you knew enough to recognize that your mortal side should be afraid of them. 

To your fragile skin and breakable bones, the fangs and claws on a shifter were no different from those on a vampire. Yet you were quickly finding yourself with a deadly habit; a taste for the supernatural. 

The longer you lingered on them, the deeper you sank into his amaranthine eyes. He held your gaze for only the briefest of moments before his shoulders rounded again, his gaze turning bashfully to the ground.

“What’s your name?” you blurted.

Without looking up from his plate, he replied, “Beel.”

His name echoed in your head for the rest of the night: Beel, Beel, Beel. Even as you excused yourself from the dining room early, that evening, your mind was consumed by thoughts of him.

However, you had learned from years of experience that the merriment of after-dinner drinks brought out the danger in even the gentlest of monsters. With a castle full of shapeshifters, you knew that the safest thing you could do was close your eyes and wait for morning... no matter how much your heart begged you to do otherwise.

Back in your guests’ quarters, you stripped off your gown and wrapped yourself in a black satin robe. The chest was embroidered in gold thread with the Demon King’s royal seal - a gift from Lord Diavolo, bestowed on your first night at the palace. 

That night, your eyelids fluttered shut as soon as your head hit the pillow. Instead of images, you dreamed in delicious sensations: broad shoulders encircling your soft breasts; rough finger pads tracing your stomach rolls; muscular thighs draped over your own. You couldn’t place a face or a name to these sensual vignettes, but they captivated your sleep nonetheless.

Whatever filthy nonsense had gotten into your mind, you didn’t want it to stop. From far away, you heard yourself moan in your sleep: “Feels so good.”

You were startled awake by a pathetic canine whimper ghosting over your ear: “Awoo!” 

Disoriented, you rubbed the sleep from your eyes and eyed the wall clock; the time was past 2:00 AM. Just enough moonlight crept in from between the curtains to illuminate a few tufts of ginger - was that fur? - in your bed.

You rubbed your eyes again, certain you were hallucinating. 

No, you weren’t mistaken: two fluffy ears wiggled playfully as the presence behind you squeezed closer, crying out like an injured dog as he humped you over your clothes. Frozen, you peered over your shoulder. Two violet eyes glowed in the dark, heady with lust. A ruddy tail flicked teasingly in the air, then grazed against your leg.

Beel. 

“You… you’re in my bed.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled into your shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep. Your scent kept drifting down the hall…” His fangs grazed your neck seductively. “I couldn’t think about anything else.”

You knew that you should feel furious; violated, even. You knew that you should scream in shock and horror. But against your better judgment, the feeling of his erection sliding against your thin robe left your heart beating erratically. 

“Sorry.” Beel hugged you closer and whined, his furry tail weaving between your ankles. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. You just smell so good…”

A light breeze blew through the window, the velvet curtains rippling to reveal a navy sky littered with stars. A full moon. You had heard rumors of the heinous acts shapeshifters committed under the influence of a new moon.

Could this be why Beel was acting so... forward?

Light danced across his copper tresses. You turned to face him, twirling a strand around your finger. He closed his eyes, his ears twitching, as if your slightest touch was too much to bear.

"Please," Beel whispered. “Just want to feel you… want to smell you…”

Unconsciously, Beel leaned toward you, his mouth so close that you could taste his breath, warm and sweet on your tongue. You unraveled, your body melting into his eager kisses. You moaned into his open mouth before your lips could even touch, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to bristle. You ran your hand over them, making him whimper.

“Don’t know how much longer I can control myself if you keep touching me like that,” Beel groaned. “Please, tell me I can…”

He rutted hungrily into your thighs with a moan, forgetting the rest of his sentence. But you understood what he was asking permission to do. As much as you knew Beel wanted you, he also seemed afraid of hurting you, in a way most supernatural creatures weren’t.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and tugged him closer. 

“Beel. Take me.”

Beel’s ears perked up as he nuzzled into your neck. 

“Mmm... you really shouldn’t have said that…”

You pressed your forehead against his.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

Something in him snapped.

“...You probably should be.”

Beel rolled on top of you and pinned your wrists to the bed - two electric purple eyes hovering over you in the dark. His lips crashed into yours, haphazard and wet and sloppy.

“You taste so sweet… like candy,” he breathed. “It’s addictive.”

Beel bent to kiss you again, tangling his tongue with yours in a mess of slobber and lust. 

“Can’t wait,” he breathed into your mouth. “Need more of you, now.”

Moaning in frustration, you arched upward into nothing as Beel rose to his knees and reached for your robe. Instead of coming untied, the satin ripped with a single tug.

Your breasts easily sprung free from the torn garment, the robe reduced to a pile of soft fabric beneath you. Beel growled in satisfaction as he bent to suckle on your tit. His sharp teeth grazed your nipple as you untied his jacket, eager to feel his bare skin on yours. He shrugged out of his sleeves without unlatching from your breast, tossing the top carelessly to the floor.

Chin covered in drool, Beel kissed his way up your neck until he came back to your lips. Your hand slid down his toned stomach, down the trail of orange fuzz above his v-line, dipping into his waistband just slightly; ghosting over his monstrous bulge. 

Beel shuddered as you palmed at his cock. Even through his pants, you could feel how hard he was for you. As your lips moved in tandem, his soft ginger tail feathered its way up your inner thigh, teasing at the slick spot between your legs. 

“Enough teasing,” he growled, pinning you in place with his leg between your thighs. “I want her.” 

He gave your bare pussy a wet slap that you weren’t expecting. You cried out louder than you meant to, until Beel clapped his palm over your lips. 

“Shh,” he hummed, pushing down his waistband. “Don't speak... wanna hear this pretty pussy talk t’me.”

You moaned against his hand, tears welling in your eyes, as you eyed his girthy cock. In this world full of monsters and magic, you had seen some unbelievable things, but the most unbelievable of all was Beel’s sheer size. No one had told you that shapeshifters would be so broad; that his cock would flare at the base and swell at the tip in ways that promised to bruise your hole before he even pushed past its entrance.

“It’s not gon’ fit-” you tried to mumble into his fingers, but it was useless.

Beel was already bullying his fat tip against your dripping folds, panting like a dog, as your toes curled into the satin sheets. He slowly pushed past your entrance, letting you feel every ridge and curve of his shaft with his first stroke. 

You felt your walls stretch, deliciously and painfully, around him, ultimately accommodating his gargantuan size. Wet pools trailed out of your pussy, onto your entangled limbs; spit dripped out of your mouth, onto the pillowcase.

“So good f’me, baby,” Beel huffed, his head dipping between your breasts as he deepened his thrusts. “Just a bit more-”

Both of you moaned aloud in a messy harmony as Beel bottomed out inside of you. His ears drooped and his face contorted with the effort, sweat beading on his brow. You pressed your forehead against his, planting a sloppy kiss on his lips. He groaned into your mouth; you raked your nails down his back. 

Beel’s pelvis slapped your stomach with loud thwacks! as he fucked you faster and faster, humping you with all the enthusiasm of a desperate teenager. 

“Ah-” he huffed, “-can’t hold back much longer… ready to fill you up… ready to give you my pups-”

Before you could even think about asking him to pull out, Beel crushed his hips into yours with a pathetic whimper. His knees started to tremble beneath him. Meanwhile, you were so cockdrunk that if he had tried to jump out, you had half a mind to lock your legs around him until he spilled his seed inside you, anyways.

“Please,” Beel whined, his voice thick with agony, “let me make you mine.”

Tears welled in your eyes as his fat head pounded against your g-spot over and over again, rendering you speechless. But your nod was enough for him: Beel released his hand from your mouth, bracing himself against the headboard as he pounded relentlessly into your tortured cunt. You clenched your walls around him, preparing for the release you could already feel swelling inside of him.

“Oh- Beel!” 

You cried out his name as he drilled one final thrust into your abused hole.

“Hah- cumming- hah,” Beel huffed, burying his face in your collarbone with a groan.

His face flushed bright red as spurts of seed shot from his tip, hot liquid pooling around your cervix. You could feel every cell of your pussy walls spreading to accommodate his bulbous base. An explosion of stars burst into your line of sight as you felt him expand even further inside of you, tugging at your insides in a way that made your walls gush.

As the high washed over him, Beel pushed your thighs into the bed in a fierce mating press, biting down on every bare inch of skin he could find: below your ear, on the side of your neck, just above your collarbone. His hands firmly grasped your ass cheeks, pulling you up and into him as he continued to mindlessly rut against you. Instinctively, your sensitive cunt tried to jump back - but you found that you were unable to move, his cock molding to perfectly fit the shape of your walls like lock-and-key. 

What... what did he do? Is this some kind of shapeshifter magic?

Your skin was littered with marks from his fangs by the time Beel lifted his head. When his gaze met yours once more, you found that the glow behind his violet eyes had softened slightly, their color fading into a soft royal purple. But the warmth between you had not yet faded, nor had the knot binding you two together. You figured that as long as you were both stuck here, you might as well give him a scratch behind his fuzzy ears...

Beel hummed contentedly as you stroked him, nuzzling into your shoulder.

"You know," he murmured, "I think you smell even better mixed with me."

a/n: the highly requested part two to my vampire(& now werewolf)/royalty obey me! au has finally arrived. if you want a part three, make sure to show some love <3 and let me know whether you ship reader with mammon or beel!

[cosmicroadkill]

Thinking about my shape shifter AU and how Cacao and Burning Spice would feel like they're stuck chasing after their prospective mates who in turn are busy chasing after someone who either isn't interested or was interested at one point.

I've gotten over my childish beef with PureLily but I still like the idea that it's rather one side; like Lily loves Vanilla but she's not *in love* with him the way he is with her or at least she isn't any more and if it's a case of not any more it could absolutely be because of how almost obsessive he is about her to the point that he'd do readily throw his life away for her with it being overwhelming and easily dipping into downright creepy.

In this case for Shadow Milk it would be Elder Faerie though I feel like any drop in interest would likely be in direct relation to Shadow Milk's fall though I could absolutely see him being just as if not *more* obsessive about his feelings if the update is anything to go off of.

Where was if Lily told Vanilla to move on he would, though it would be with an aching heart, Shadow Milk would and in this AU did keep trying with Elder Faerie.

All this while Cacao and Spice watch from the sidelines, heart in hand.

I can imagine them being confronted by Vanilla and Shadow Milk who try to make a move and maybe they're both hesitant, have that moment of asking if they're sure, if they *mean* it, asking that were Lily or Elder Faerie to change their mind would they change *theirs* because Cacao and Spice don't want to be second place consolation prizes, they want to actually be chosen.

But then again maybe Burning Spice wouldn't even give Shadow Milk the opening to change his mind, maybe he'd just accept and then strut and chuff to show off just how much better he is than that stuffy old moth; his claws and fangs are sharp, his fur soft, and his body a temple to the pure chaos and destruction he can cause; surely a beast would much rather another beast and someone who was once a close friend as their mate.

Cacao, though, oh Cacao

He's so soft and sweet on the inside, he'd want Vanilla to be sure of what he wants, wouldn't want to feel like he's trapping him, couldn't bare the idea of Vanilla leaving him to run off back to Lily so he'd need Vanilla to be certain and should be waiver there I can just imagine Cacao's ears slowly drooping, his tail still.

He can wait; he's waited for Vanilla before and he can wait some more...

[avonne-writes]

Carry You Home

A post-war kitty Gale (cat shifter Gale) drabble written for the "LCAPT fic off" game initiated by @middlingmay. And it’s a gift for @butdaddyilovehim99 💕 Featuring the most Gale-looking cat pic ever. Thanks @swifty-fox for brainstorming with me! (On AO3)

The sticky seed of some unfamiliar weed sticks to the fur on Gale’s legs, but he ignores the uncomfortable tugging sensation and just keeps running. Away, far away, anywhere but here. He’s done with this whole charade. To hell with it all. John can go find some other fool who can stand his goddamn womanizing.

Gale doesn’t care that it's only a facade. Sometimes, he wants to be the one being wooed and not watch John flirt with someone else. He thought... He thought they would go on a date, just the two of them, to the pretty creek in the woods close to town. All the exciting, cheerful sounds of the forest, the clear air, enough space and privacy for Gale to shift back and forth when he wanted. But John had to ruin it by chatting up three women who were on a walk.

They could have let the ladies pass and waited to be alone again, but John just had to do it, didn’t he? Maybe he didn’t want to be alone with Gale at all. He could have been looking for an excuse to cut their date short all along. Instead of laughing and walking with Gale, he charmed those girls until they were drawn to him like moths to the light, and Gale, sour in his disappointment, was left to trail behind until they finally parted ways.

Then, the fight. That terrible fight. It wasn’t too decent of Gale to snap the way he did, but it hurt so much to watch John flash his best smile at the girls, to touch their arms under one excuse or another, the way he should have touched Gale instead. Gale's tired of it. He can’t stand it anymore, to see the affection that's meant to be his given to another while he’s right there.

John didn’t understand - or didn’t want to - so, Gale shifted and ran away. It didn’t take more than five seconds and he was out of John's sight. Being small makes it easier to hide among the bushes. To disappear. He doesn’t matter anyway. He’s no one. Perhaps, he won't ever shift back again. Why bother? He’ll just live the rest of his years as a wildcat, nothing but the forest and the freedom of no expectations. He can live alone and -

"Gale!" John's cry interrupts Gale's thoughts. "Gale, please! Come on, doll, don't do this to me."

Gale stops to crouch low in the underbrush, his heart pounding wildly. His coat is too bright and clean to hide him among all the greens, browns and greys around, but he’s covered by a few thick shrubs and wide leaves where he is. He curls his fluffy tail close to his body and waits. He won't be spotted unless he moves.

"I'm sorry, okay?" John tells the forest plaintively. The canopies above them whoosh in sympathy. "I didn’t mean to hurt you, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it like that."

What you meant doesn't change anything, Gale makes a low, angry sound that John, thankfully, doesn't hear as he jogs down the path in front of Gale's hiding place.

"Shit." John mutters under his breath and runs a hand through his curls. At first, Gale thinks it's because of Gale not folding to his pleading, but a moment later, he sees the fake, wide smile that appears on John's face.

"Egan? That you?" An unfamiliar voice calls, and Gale is alarmed to see a stocky, middle-aged man with a camera approach John from the opposite direction they came from.

"Frank, buddy, the hell are you doin' out here?" John says and clasps the man's outstretched hand in greeting.

Frank launches into a long-winded story about bird watching and photography, and how his wife kicked him out of the house just to get some peace. From his vantage point under the shrubs, low on the cool forest soil, Gale can see John nodding along politely, but his eyes keep darting to the woods, searching for a flash of white that gives Gale away. After a while, Frank notices too.

"Everything okay?" He asks John, concerned.

"Yeah, just looking for my... my cat." John replies awkwardly, putting his hands on his hips the way he always does. Despite his pain and anger, Gale feels a tinge of fondness at the sight.

"You brought your cat out here?" Frank frowns. There’s something like pity in his expression, which makes Gale huff in irritation. Everything their generation does is chalked up to the fucking war, isn’t it?

"He likes going on walks with me." John says, fully turning away. "Gale!"

"Gale? Like your roommate?" Frank asks, his eyebrows trying to meet his receding hairline.

John falters for a moment, embarrassed that he slipped up in his panic to find Gale. "It’s a joke."

"Oh." Frank's face smooths out and he barks a laugh. "Let me help, the two of us will find him faster."

"Oh, I don't want to keep you."

"Nonsense." Frank claps John's shoulder. "My wife says my eyes are so keen I should've been a detective."

John chuckles good-naturedly. "If she says so, Frankie."

Frank walks towards the woods on the opposite side of the path from where Gale’s hiding. "What does your cat look like?"

John sighs. "Cream-white fur, white paws, bushy tail. Piercing blue eyes. As big as a small dog."

Sounds about right, Gale notes with satisfaction. He glares daggers at John. He hopes he can feel it.

Frank whistles. "Must be one mighty creature."

Gale preens. The sad look on John's face is especially vindicating.

"The most beautiful thing I've ever seen." John says quietly as he starts walking along the treeline again. "He's my best friend, you know. My partner. I just wish I knew what's going on in his head. It’s so hard to read him sometimes, and I don't realize I've done something wrong until it’s too late. I just want to make him happy, keep him safe."

An ache swells deep in Gale's chest and rolls through his whole body until the bitterness of his anger fades away to the illusion of salty tears. He can’t cry in this shape but he wants to. He wants it to rain down over his cheeks in big, fat drops, over the scars, for John to wipe and kiss them away, to whisper promises he can’t keep and tell Gale he loves him more than anything. He wants that, still - it hurts, but he wants it. As his impulsiveness vanishes, he realizes that life in the forest wouldn’t suffice. He would always long for Bucky.

"Sounds like a marriage." Frank snorts, shaking a few bushes that sends nearby critters running across the fallen leaves. Gale hears them scurry away from where he is.

"You bet." John laughs ruefully. "Feels like one too."

The cry escapes Gale’s throat before he could clamp down on the feeling that sparks it. It's a quiet, sad little meow but it stands out from the forest's low buzz regardless.

John's head whips up in his direction. "Gale?"

No use hiding anymore. Gale pushes himself up and walks out of the underbrush like some kicked pet, putting his paws on the path hesitantly because he’s not sure yet if he's ready to forgive everything or not. His tail rises in greeting, but when John darts towards him with a beaming, relieved smile on his face, Gale hisses at him.

"I'm sorry!" John raises his hands placatingly, then, in a quieter voice, "I'm sorry, doll."

"Oh my! What a beauty!" Frank exclaims when he spots Gale, his expression one of wonder.

Feeling shy and wary, Gale rushes over to John and weaves himself around his ankles, putting his front paws on John's right boot as he stares the stranger down. He doesn’t know where the hell the guy knows John from, doesn’t care - he just wants him to leave them alone, to give him a chance to shift back and let John give him a proper apology. He’s so focused on keeping his eyes on the man that he forgets he's angry long enough for John to stroke his head. But when the touch reminds him, he growls.

"Don’t be like that." John nudges him, then reaches lower to remove the spikelets stuck in Gale's fur. Irritated beyond belief, Gale bites his fingers, satisfied when John winces, but the hand doesn’t move far - it slides over Gale's back and combs at his fur.

"Hi Gale." Frank crouches down a few feet away, cooing like an idiot. Gale gives him a disdainful look. Honestly, this is the worst thing about being a cat. Interacting with people who want to touch him. "You weren't kidding when you said he was pretty. Never seen such a gorgeous cat in my life. What a unique colour. His fur is immaculate. And look at those eyes! Damn."

"I know." John says, all affectionate. If he thinks that's enough to make up with Gale, he’s sorely mistaken. "Sky blue."

Gale leans against John's leg. A part of him enjoys the praise. People always tend to heap it on him in this shape but never say anything when he's in his human form. His mom, for example, when he still lived in Wyoming. The only exceptions to that are Marge and John, the only people who saw the value in giving him compliments no matter how he stood in front of them. Gale learnt to take appreciation where he got it, even if it was received as a cat. Frank, of course, is unaware that Gale, the cat, and Gale, John's roommate are one and the same, but his words of awe feel good. Gale extends his legs in front of him and stretches, showing off his looks.

"If I were you, I would put a collar on him." Frank says.

"Nah, he's pretty good about comin' home to papa." John replies, a teasing note in his voice. For that, Gale reaches up to drag his clawed paws over the leg of John's trousers until John yelps and pushes him off. Frank laughs.

"Boy, my wife will be so jealous." He shakes his head, smiling. "Can I pet him?"

Gale’s answering noise of warning comes instantly.

"Ah, he doesn’t like strangers, sorry, Frankie." John says for him. Good. At least that much of Gale's feelings he does understand.

Frank waves him off and stands up. "I understand. I would love to photograph him, though. Proof for the missus." He winks.

John chuckles. Gale tilts his head back to glance at him and finds him looking back. Something he sees in Gale's eyes encourages him to reach down and scoop Gale up into his arms. It’s easier to let him than to protest.

"Why not?"

---

About a dozen photos later, John finally tries to say goodbye to Frank, but they're unlucky - the man decides to go the same way John's headed. He must be lonely, Gale figures, but it doesn't make it any less annoying that for lack of a graceful way to get out of the situation, John starts walking with the man while holding Gale in his arms.

It's comfortable, at least. Holding Gale just right in both forms has always been one of John's special talents. This time, Gale's paws dangle over his arm and his head rests in the crook of John's elbow. Since John can’t exactly put him down when he has just caught Gale after he ran away, it’s no use fighting it.

Resigned, Gale relaxes. He’s just a cat now. Loved and cherished openly where everyone can see. Something precious John can hold tight right where his heart beats, and no one bats an eye.

It’s bittersweet, but Gale will take it. The fight seeped out of him somewhere between John calling him his partner and the first apologetic caress over his silky fur. Gale tunes the conversation out and just drifts on the sense of peace and safety he feels in John's arms as the gentle sounds of the forest ripple around them along the path. After a few minutes, he falls asleep.

He doesn’t know how much time passed when he wakes up, but he’s still lying in John's arms, still warm against John's chest, but Frank is, at last, gone. They're almost at the edge of the forest, close to where their truck parks.

"Jesus Christ, finally." John blows out a noisy breath and swipes his thumbs back and forth over Gale’s fur. "Coast's clear if you wanna shift back."

Gale lets his eyes slip closed again and doesn’t move a single other muscle. He can feel John trying to lean over him to see his face better.

"Did you fall asleep?" John rocks him. As a reply, Gale moves his head in a way that looks like he’s saying no. It makes John snort. "Are you still mad at me?"

When no answer comes, John presses his face close to Gale. "Let’s talk about it."

Another shake of the head.

"What, you want me to hold you the rest of the way?"

Gale nods.

John laughs, sweet and rumbling against Gale's body. "All right, doll. I got you. I'll carry you home."

Although he knows he shouldn't, Gale purrs.

[cowsuponcows]

Hello, They Might Be Giants and Inanimate Insanity fans! May I present:

ii characters as tmbg songs!

Under a read-more because this is LONGGGG I cover almost every character

Lightbulb - Wearing A Raincoat

Pepper - She Thinks She's Edith Head about Salt and Museum Of Idiots

Salt - Your Racist Friend but it's about her. She's the friend's racist friend. And Bills, Bills, Bills

Mephone4 - I Am Alone and Kiss Me Son Of God and Cage And Aquarium

Paintbrush - You're On Fire

Baseball - I Should Be Allowed To Think

Balloon - Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head and Lazy

Nickel - Dead

Pickle - How Can I Sing Like A Girl? if you're not a coward. I Lost Thursday if you are

OJ - Let's Get This Over With

Paper - Ana Ng

Evil Paper - Operators Are Standing By, with 'go home' referring to fronting again and the lines about 'their portrayal on tv' being paper fronting instead of E.P.

Apple - Mr Hughes Says

Marshmallow - Bee Of The Bird Of The Moth

Bow - Super Cool

Mephone4s - She's Actual Size

Knife - An Insult To The Fact Checkers (warning for flashing in the video)

Bomb - Empty Bottle Collector it's a funky instrumental and I think it fits him

Synopsis For Latecomers is literally just people skipping season 1

Suitcase - Where Your Eyes Don't Go and Careful What You Pack and Snail Shell and Shape Shifter and Trouble Awful Devil Evil

Fan - Erase

Taco - Haunted Floating Eye for s1 because it's nonsense. Fits her facade. Canada Haunts Me mostly because of the beautiful sound to it and Taco being (metaphorically) haunted by her past. Also I Am A Ring to Pickle and This Microphone

Steve Cobs - Kiss Me Son Of God alternative version and Hate The Villinelle and Yeah, The Deranged Millionare

MePad - Mrs Bluebeard

Toilet - Now Is Strange

Mephone3gs - Push Back The Hands

Box - Am I Awake? and I Left My Body

Prime Shimmers - I'll Be Haunting You

Test Tube - Hall Of Heads or the entirety of Here Comes Science as a copout
Cherries - Violin

Microphone - All Time What

Tissues - I Like Fun

Cheesy - Boss Of Me

Yin - My Evil Twin

Yang - The Shadow Government

Trophy - Prevenge

Soap - Memo To Human Resources

Dough - The Biggest One

Bot - I Palindrome I and Re-PETE offender

Cabby - I Can't Remember The Dream

Goo - Aaa

Blueberry - I Broke My Own Rule

Tea Kettle - Feel Good Sublet

Clover - Experimental Film

Silver Spoon - Lucky Ball And Chain and ECNALUBMA

The Floor - Brain Problem Situation

Life Ring - Mrs Train about Tea Kettle

Candle - Say Something Nice About Detroit

Spoiled Lemon - The Mesopotanians

Walkie Talkie - Piece Of Dirt

Springy - Marty Beller Mask

Payjay - Pet Name

Thank you for reading this!! "Wow some of these are deep cuts!" Yep! I am autistic. I'd appreciate a reblog this took like a week